Howard Oakley Lists Apple System Updates
On his Eclectic Light Company blog, Howard Oakley writes:
I’m delighted to announce what I think is a unique resource: a detailed listing of all updates to macOS over the last four years and more, with links to full information about each. These include regular updates, security updates, and Supplemental Updates. You can access this list at this page.
Remember that Howard’s System Updates page exists the next time you are trying to recollect precisely when Apple released a particular macOS update or want to see how many updates some version of macOS has received. Apple’s release note pages (such as this one for macOS 12 Monterey) lack dates, which renders them annoyingly unmoored in time.
I’ll probably just stay with Mactracker. It’s always provided what I need and goes a lot further back than four years.
13.2 – 23 Jan 2023, Build 22D49 says Mactracker.
Is that correct?
Mactracker is a fine program which I’ve been using for years. However, it doesn’t even attempt to be as comprehensive as Howard Oakley’s (essentially live) database is in terms of explanations of various system changes, detailed descriptions of what those changes are from version to version, long technical discussions of the ramifications of certain changes, etc. etc.
Hardware configurations and dates of release? -->Mactracker
System software changes and detailed descriptions? -->Oakley’s System Update page.
EveryMac.com or Mactracker are good for hardware specs, dates and supported OS.
Oakley’s new database is probably the first place I would check regarding specific versions and changes for macOS 10.12+. He is a phenomenal resource on the software/OS side who understands a lot about what is happening under the hood and is very good at explaining and illustrating technobabble.
Some of what he is doing with this updates list is to note files that were changed in each update. This may not be useful for everyone, but if you write an app that is dependent on particular modules within macOS, for example, you might need to track changes that could break your work. This can also be useful to the wider user base if features start behaving differently immediately following an update.
It is also handy to have a nice list of dates for each iteration linked to the content of those updates. Something Apple is not always very forthcoming about.
Too bad it is limited to only recent OS versions.