MacOS update question

[JHZR2]

My wife’s 2017 MacBook Air runs 10.15.7. I checked for security updates today, as it hadn’t gotten any in a while. It had the 22-003 patch, but up came the 22-004 and a safari update. I told it to install these, and afterwards it got stuck.

If I look at installation history, today it installed Safari 15.6 and security update 22-005. But it still shows updates that need to be installed, and it will show 22-004. Sometimes it will just get stuck checking for updates.

Does the latest update check for and include all older ones? I think the answer for this is yes.

Does anyone know why it is getting confused with the last update, and gets stuck with a spinning whee checking for updates?

Thanks!

 

[y_p_w]

There are going to be dependencies, and I'm sure that the incremental updates are suppose to be installed in order. But there are probably updates that don't require a previous update to install.

I remember when Apple used to release DMG download packages as updates. It was supposedly a good thing at a time when internet resources were tight. I had what I thought was an incredible 1.5 mbit/sec DSL connection and it could take a while. I think the idea was that it was better for organizations that had several Macs and could transfer them through an internal network or through external disk drives. The flash drives at the time were pretty small - typically 64-512 MB.

 

[alarmguy]

What timing, I just did my last update last evening.
I haven't experienced anything unusual, no issues or questionable behavior I updated my M1 MacBook Air (2020) a few days ago, I updated my i5 Mac mini (2018) and iPhone 13 last night.
My wife updated her M1 Mac mini (2021) this past week as well. All good.

Im sure you tried powering it down and restarting it, maybe their servers are busy checking for updates since this update just came out, most likely not but my phone did check for a minute or two last night, it wasnt instant.

 

[PWMDMD]

Hmm...I'm on MacOS 12.5 and 10.15.7 was released in September 2020. Any reason you don't want to update to 12.5?

 

[slo town]

Are you staying on Catalina for a reason (MacOS 10.xx)? A 2017 MacBook Air can be upgraded to Monterey (MacOS 12.xx). I'd try this, assuming you don't need to remain on Catalina for some reason.

Scott

PS As a long shot, run disk First Aid from the Disk Utility. For years I've run it occasionally and it reports everything is fine. Although I no longer remember the details, one time it actually found something corrupted and fixed it.

PSS Backup your files now!

 

[PWMDMD]

Are you staying on Catalina for a reason (MacOS 10.xx)? A 2017 MacBook Air can be upgraded to Monterey (MacOS 12.xx). I'd try this, assuming you don't need to remain on Catalina for some reason.

Scott

PS As a long shot, run disk First Aid from the Disk Utility. For years I've run it occasionally. Although I no longer remember the details, one time it actually found something corrupted and fixed it.

I agree with upgrading. I have a late 2015 27" iMac running 12.5 just fine.

 

[OVERKILL]

I agree with upgrading. I have a late 2015 27" iMac running 12.5 just fine.

Yup, I just did the 12.5 upgrade on my old Mac Pro, Monterey has been probably the best running version of MacOS I've used in years.

 

[bunnspecial]

AFAIK, 10.15.7 is most current and AFAIK the security update should bring everything up to date.

With that said, you can always manually download and install https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2093?locale=en_US

I'm with the others that there's not a great reason to stay on 10.15 on this particular computer. 10.14 is a different story as it is the newest version that will run a lot of programs, but I'd go all the way to macOS 12. It's been a good OS IME.

 

[JHZR2]

Thanks. I figured older hardware, running great, still getting patches… why upgrade???!?

 

[bunnspecial]

Thanks. I figured older hardware, running great, still getting patches… why upgrade???!?

The general rule of thumb is that the current version and the two previous versions get security patches. That means 10.15 will likely roll off getting patches in the next month or two, or around the time Ventura drops.

Also, even for versions still technically supported, the current version usually gets the patches first and not everything gets patched in older versions.