Keeping your software up to date can be a pain. On the Mac, most software includes a menu item to “Check for Updates…” and a preference to check automatically. The problem with this approach is that your effort to get something done is interrupted by “New version available. Would you like to install?” The problem is exacerbated with software you run infrequently: just when you need it, there’s an update ready to distract you. A better dialog would read, “New Version Available. After we install it, I’ll remind you what you were trying to do originally. Promise.”
You could click “Do it later,” but that just kicks the problem down the road. Worse, it violates the DIO principle which says that you should strive to encounter new information only once: Do It Once. Handle it, delete it, change it into something else for later, or break into smaller tasks, but whatever you do, Do It Once. The DIO approach prevents the buildup of a half-done, to-do-later, on-the-list, undone, no-progress landfill that’s too big to attack and too disorganized to improve.
With respect to software maintenance, what if you could scan and update all of your installed software automatically? Well you can’t so forget it.
What you can do is use AppFresh smartly. It’s an application that tries to automate the software update process. What it does do is bring the task of updating many programs together in one interface. You can decide to deal with upgrades when you want, then be done with them. DIO.
What makes the automation of updating hard is that every software maker is free to use their own versioning notation and semantics. And while software installation on the Mac is considerably simpler than on Windows, there is no standardized way that also provides hooks for Automation Managers. So AppFresh’s challenge is to detect and facilitate software updating. Viewed this way, it’s a terrific program.
So the way to use it is to open it to the “Update Available” panel. Right click on the columns in the main view and make sure “Installed Version” and “Latest Version” are showing. Then:
1. See what version you have for any item in the “Installed” column. Click an item, then click the “Release” tab on the right sidebar to see the release notes for the latest update. Decide to update or not. If not, right click on the item and choose “Skip Update”. You can wait for the next one.
2. We’re going to update a program. Was the program easy to install? These are the ones you just unzipped or double-clicked the .dmg file, then dragged to the application folder. If so, click the down-arrow “Update” button. Watch the progress. If it doesn’t disappear from the update list, then click on the “Updating” item on the left sidebar and find the program. If there’s an error, try again. If it says, “Installer run needed”, then go find the installer package for the new version in your downloads folder and double click it.
3. If it’s a big-installation package like Microsoft Office, or you know it has its own updater like Adobe Updater, then update it outside of AppFresh. For example, Microsoft AutoUpdate is buried somewhere; I find it by typing ‘auto’ into Quicksilver or Google Quick Search Box.
4. If AppFresh continues to list a program under “Update Available” when you’ve already updated it, then right click on the item and choose “Skip Update”. Or you may see that the “Installed” column still shows the old version, even though you’ve updated it. This means that the software lists only its main version, even though we, and AppFresh, know there’s a newer version with a subversion number. It’s ok. Just choose “Skip Update”.
5. If there’s a program you don’t use often or don’t want to mess with (say a system program), then right click on it an choose “Exclude”. To see what you’ve exclude, and maybe unexclude a program you want to check on or update, look in the “Exclude” panel in the preferences. You’ll still be reminded about updates when you run the program later, assuming you have its “Check for Updates” enabled. So you won’t miss any updates.
It may look like a lot, but its easy to race through the list once you’ve done it a few times. Then your machine is updated, you won’t be interrupted while you’re working, and you’ve dealt with software maintenance simply and Done It Once.
