macOS 11.6 Availability?

[Levi_]

Hey Everyone,

Are any of you seeing that the 11.6 macOS update/upgrade is unavailable? I can't seem to get it on any mac from the Software Update in System Pref's or via the softwareupdate CLI. Does anyone know what's going on or is it just me?

[jcarr]

Only the update is available currently.  Neither the .ipsw nor the full installer are available.  To update a system, the following command does the trick:

sudo softwareupdate -iaR

To upgrade or restore a system however, you'll need to use the 11.5.2 full installer or .ipsw and then update.

[Levi_]

@jcarr I tried your suggestion and tried a few others, still no updates :/. This is across at least a dozen Macs I've tested so far. I'm going to say at this time it's all of them at this point...

[jcarr]

@Levi_ If your device is managed and updates are deferred, you may see this.  An unmanaged device running macOS 11.6 would also see this, but any version of Big Sur prior to 11.6 should see the 11.6 update.

[mm2270]

Yup, because this 11.6 update was critical and needed to be deployed sooner rather than later, I had to push a change to our restrictions profile to turn off the software update deferral option. Or none of my Macs would see the update since it hadn't passed the 7 day mark since becoming available. I don't love pushing out such updates literally a day after they drop, but such is life and zero day exploits.

@Levi_ I would double check your config profiles to see if you're pushing a deferral like that. That could be why they aren't seeing them.

[Levi_]

Good call. I had removed the referral date and I had accidentally chosen to save it to new devices added. I changed it for all devices and now I can see it. Goof on my part. 

[chrisB]

Apple (unofficially): “The macOS Big Sur Update is a security update only and we will not be releasing a full installer.”

see also https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-big-sur-11-6-update-20g165-is-live-whats-new/

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[Levi_]

I get it, but why not just make it 11.5.3 at that point lol.

[mm2270]

@chrisB Thanks for that info. That's just incredibly stupid and short sighted on Apple's part. So if we have to wipe and reload any Big Sur Macs for right now, we will only get them to 11.5.2, and then have to download the whole 11.6 update again? What's wrong with Apple these days?? This patches a zero day exploit for crying out loud! They've put out full installers for other updates that had far less serious issues, but for this one that prevents spyware from making it onto devices, nope, no full installer update. Ugh! So much for Apple taking security seriously.

[MikeF]

This has been released.