Upgrading The Operating System

Why Upgrade?

If your computer's working well, you may decide to leave well alone but Apple do release security updates as well as other important changes so it's worth keeping it as up to date as possible.

Using Software Update

Apple have included an excellent utility called Software Update with your new machine. Software Update is accessed through System Preferences. You will find it under the System section. It has two options, one shows you all the updates installed so far and the other allows you to set how often it checks for updates - daily, weekly or monthly. It also allows you to check manually.

This system works well and will also offer to update you to the latest version of your operating system. If you are currently running Tiger - OS 10.4 then it will not update you to Leopard - OS 10.5 as that is a chargeable upgrade but only the increments within Tiger. So if you are running OS 10.4.6 you can update free of charge to OS 10.4.11. At the time of writing, Leopard is at 10.5.3. Panther got as far as 10.3.9 and Tiger 10.4.11.

So, what happens if you use Software Update to update the operating system. Well, usually, all goes well and it's a painless operation, but if you have or suspect you have something causing problems, there's another way which may help.