Keeping Up To Date on Plugin and App Updates

[TomDay]

JNUC 2013 inspired me to dig right in this weekend, when I got home. First up, creating Smart Groups for computers with out of date flash, java, silverlight, Chrome, Firefox etc. The create a policy to install the latest version on any computers in this Smart Group. Curious if anyone knows of some site of site aggregator, etc that would notify you immediately of any new update release of items like those mentioned above? Just an easy way to stay informed of new releases?

[mikeh]

My process is pretty manual at the moment - check macupdate.com for updates; subscribe to new-release mailing lists (mostly open-source packages) and/or security notification lists. I also regularly read Mac-specific web sites (macnn.com, macintouch.com) and rumors sites for news about new updates.

I'm starting to experiment with autopkg to download new packages. It's more focussed on Munki integration, but it might help automating downloads. You might have to build the recipes for downloading some of the non-major packages, though. https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg

[bentoms]

If you download the MacUpdate desktop app & subscribe. It will scan your mac for any apps & automatically can add them to a watch list for you to be notified via email.

I ran mine on a newly built mac with CS6 Master Collection installed, then added some others such as Firefox that we do not support by assist with.

This latter point has been really helpful when there have been releases of Firefox that fail to use system wide proxies. (V19 or 21). As we had the answer to what had changed before being approached, & whilst Firefox isn't on our supported apps list... We could still send a targeted email alerting our users.

[TomDay]

fantastic, thx for the info Guys. Just subscribed to macupdate!