softwareupdate becoming deprecated?

[jrogersnh]

With Apple deprecating softwareupdate --ignore to block upgrade popups, how is everyone blocking these popup notifications moving forward? This was a major help to avoid user annoyance when we were testing the new OS versions in our environment before lifting the restriction.

[sdagley]

@jrogersnh For MDM managed Macs softwareupdate --ignore is supported in macOS Catalina 10.14.6. In Big Sur however the only option will be using a Configuration Profile to defer updates.

[jrogersnh]

Thanks @sdagley ! I was worried about that. softwareupdate --ignore was so easy to implement / remove and reset that it'll be a bummer to have to move over to config profiles for this...

[talkingmoose]

Additionally, you can disable macOS from checking for updates after the 90 days. It won't stop someone from manually checking and seeing an update is available and it won't stop admins from installing them, but it should disable notifications about available updates.

Going forward, take Apple's gentle guidance and deploy updates within 90 days of release. That's your window for testing and updating people. Also, speak with your Apple rep. about getting access to AppleSeed for IT to test new releases before they're released. At some point in the future, Apple may not be so gentle. :-/

[Jason33]

@talkingmoose Totally agree with 90 days. Prior to my taking ownership of our Jamf environment at my company, we werent managing software updates or OS upgrades through JSS. The previous admin relied on the user to manage that stuff. All well and good for the 80% of people that stayed on top of updates, but we still had some users on El Capitan and Sierra!