Reboot needed

LookIt: Reboot needed:

I used to make fun of Microsoft for their updates to non-essential software that, after installation, required a reboot. Apple has now trumped them. The recent update to Digital Camera Raw Compatibility “extends RAW file compatibility for Aperture 2 and iPhoto ’08 for the following cameras” and “also addresses issues related to specific cameras and overall stability”. And it requires a reboot.

Note to Apple: this suggests that someone has messed up badly on determining which components of the operating system are critical to its operation

Not really. More that the release notes were worded badly.

Those updates actually update frameworks within the core of Apple OS, and they aren’t JUST for Aperture or iPhoto, but any application that uses the frameworks. You’ll see it in use in the preview function of the “open file” dialogs, for instance, so these updates actually live pretty deep in the OS.

It might be nice if you could update things that deep in the OS and not worry about it until a later reboot activates them, but that gets complicated.

So the problem here isn’t that Apple requires a reboot, it’s that it did a lousy job of explaining what it was doing and why. But then, we’ve been complaining about how they document updates for a while, and it’s only marginally improved from “fixes stuff”.

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