Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Wow, I’m so fucking sick of this. Every ass munch who thinks he’s some kind of hot Mac jockey has some bullshit voodoo ritual he performs before, during, and after system updates, and the especially obsessive-compulsive ones run through a daily regimen of repairing permissions, deleting caches, updating prebindings, and ten other pointless things that make no difference from a day-to-day usage standpoint. If I were a developer, I’d write a daemon that continuously updated permissions, updated prebindings, and deleted caches every 5 minutes, sell it for $10, and retire next week. If paranoid idiots need to compulsively do these things, I might as well be rich because of it.

Read and remember this: There is no magic formula or ritual you need to follow to install updates. The steps for a clean, successful upgrade are very simple.

1. Get over your irrational system tweaking obsession. Just STOP! It’s not necessary. You don’t need to fix permissions constantly, only when you know for a fact that there is a permissions problem. You don’t need to update prebindings at every login. They’re updated when the OS needs to update them without your help. Stop deleting caches unless you know you have a specific problem with cached information.

Why do I have to point this out? It should be obvious to any thinking human being. The placebo effect of doing these stupid things is obviously very powerful, but 99.99999% of the time they accomplish nothing!

2. Don’t use “haxies” or other dumb software. They’re such a problem that Apple discards crash reports with “haxie” contents without even looking at them. Ding ding! That’s the fucking clue bell, people!

3. Install anacron. Anacron runs system maintenance scripts included with the OS and written and approved by Apple in the background at the appropriate time. Install anacron once and forget it. It’s all the system maintenance you need until a specific problem occurs.

4. Backup your irreproducible data every day. Wow! That’s damn important, and most people don’t do it. I think I’ll repeat it 3 more times.
Backup your irreproducible data every day.
Backup your irreproducible data every day.
Backup your irreproducible data every day.

If you don’t have at least two restorable copies of it, you don’t have it!
If you don’t have at least two restorable copies of it, you don’t have it!
If you don’t have at least two restorable copies of it, you don’t have it!

Backing up your data is the best way to protect yourself against any updating problems.
Backing up your data is the best way to protect yourself against any updating problems.
Backing up your data is the best way to protect yourself against any updating problems.

Screw all your tinkering with permissions and other pointless crap. Backup your damn data if you’re really serious about recovering from any problem, not just an update problem.

5. Run Software Update as normal and stop being paranoid. When the update comes up in SU, install it. Don’t wait a week. Don’t wait until you hear problem reports form others that are completely irreproducible on other machines. You have your data backed up, and you can recover from any problem, so you can confidently install any updates right away without worry. No amount of fiddling with prebinding will recover data, but a good backup will.

Really, installing updates isn’t bad, nor is it the traumatic ordeal so many people make it out to be. I’ve been installing updates for five years without a single problem because I keep my data backed up and stupid software off my machine. Get over your victim mentality. Instead of blaming bugs and engaging in superstition, take ownership of your damn data and responsibility for the health of your machine and proceed with confidence.