4 ms·

No extra rate limiting required. With ~1.7 billion active iOS devices, the infra must be under a bit of a strain to deliver even a relatively tiny 50 Mb delta.

No extra rate limiting required. With ~1.7 billion active iOS devices, the infra must be under a bit of a strain to deliver even a relatively tiny 50 Mb delta. For this particular update, my iPhone downloaded over 100 Mb and MacBook over 1 Gb.

rudian 5y ago
My iPhone 11 Pro downloaded over 900 Mb and it was up to date until now.
- slownews45 5y ago
  The scale of data involved in this crazy. 1GB/update * 1B devices potentially? We are in exabyte range. I've also noticed somewhat slower downloads on new updates on my 1GB connection. Ideally their caching network really is everywhere. I wish they'd do the Microsoft thing of letting you update based on others local downloads. For campus networks some of these updates can really load things up. I'm also at 900MB+
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    > letting you update based on others local downloads They do, you can set up a Mac as a content cache for system updates for other Macs on the same network.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      Windows just does this out of the box which seems to work pretty good.
      - GeekyBear 5y ago
        Until your home system starts sharing the update without explicit permission and you get a surprise bill for running over your monthly bandwidth cap?
        Gigachad 5y ago
        Windows by default only shares within your local network. Optionally you can turn it on for the wider internet and it does not seem to use that much data in my experience.
        GeekyBear 5y ago
        That was not the case when Windows 10 shipped. It shared with the entire internet by default and many people got hit with surprise bills.
        iggldiggl 5y ago
        It also spammed literally dozens of network connections for downloading, with the result that almost all of your bandwidth would be hogged by the updates and everything else slowed to a crawl.
        GeekyBear 5y ago
        This is why these sorts of features should require explicit approval by the user before they become active.
  - djrogers 5y ago
    Apple's been doing this for years with Content Cache on macOS - it used to be an osx server capability, but they rolled it into the regular macOS release a while back. You just turn it on for one of your Macs, and everyone on your subnet (or multiple subnets with a little extra work) can now use a local cache of updates. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-caching-on-mac-mchl9388ba1b/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-cac...
  - varenc 5y ago
    > I wish they'd do the Microsoft thing of letting you update based on others local downloads Apple does let you do this! It just takes a little more work to enable. You need a macOS device on your local network. Then in Preferences -> Sharing, enable “Content Caching”. This will transparently cache OS and app updates for all Apple devices on your local network. If any device requests an update your caching server doesn’t have, the caching server downloads it first and then serves it to the client. This can minorly speed up updates even when they're not already cached. It also caches shared iCloud file contents as well. (But with E2EE, so the server can’t see the content). I keep a caching server running and really see the speed up. It's great if you’re setting up a new phone and installing lots of apps, making it particularly useful for corporate IT.

rudian 5y ago

My iPhone 11 Pro downloaded over 900 Mb and it was up to date until now.

slownews45 5y ago
The scale of data involved in this crazy. 1GB/update * 1B devices potentially? We are in exabyte range. I've also noticed somewhat slower downloads on new updates on my 1GB connection. Ideally their caching network really is everywhere. I wish they'd do the Microsoft thing of letting you update based on others local downloads. For campus networks some of these updates can really load things up. I'm also at 900MB+
- marcellus23 5y ago
  > letting you update based on others local downloads They do, you can set up a Mac as a content cache for system updates for other Macs on the same network.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    Windows just does this out of the box which seems to work pretty good.
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      Until your home system starts sharing the update without explicit permission and you get a surprise bill for running over your monthly bandwidth cap?
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        Windows by default only shares within your local network. Optionally you can turn it on for the wider internet and it does not seem to use that much data in my experience.
        GeekyBear 5y ago
        That was not the case when Windows 10 shipped. It shared with the entire internet by default and many people got hit with surprise bills.
        iggldiggl 5y ago
        It also spammed literally dozens of network connections for downloading, with the result that almost all of your bandwidth would be hogged by the updates and everything else slowed to a crawl.
        GeekyBear 5y ago
        This is why these sorts of features should require explicit approval by the user before they become active.
- djrogers 5y ago
  Apple's been doing this for years with Content Cache on macOS - it used to be an osx server capability, but they rolled it into the regular macOS release a while back. You just turn it on for one of your Macs, and everyone on your subnet (or multiple subnets with a little extra work) can now use a local cache of updates. [1] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-caching-on-mac-mchl9388ba1b/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-content-cac...
- varenc 5y ago
  > I wish they'd do the Microsoft thing of letting you update based on others local downloads Apple does let you do this! It just takes a little more work to enable. You need a macOS device on your local network. Then in Preferences -> Sharing, enable “Content Caching”. This will transparently cache OS and app updates for all Apple devices on your local network. If any device requests an update your caching server doesn’t have, the caching server downloads it first and then serves it to the client. This can minorly speed up updates even when they're not already cached. It also caches shared iCloud file contents as well. (But with E2EE, so the server can’t see the content). I keep a caching server running and really see the speed up. It's great if you’re setting up a new phone and installing lots of apps, making it particularly useful for corporate IT.