![]() Looking through the rest of the installer’s payload, it doesn’t appear to be a particularly extensive update. Only many of the files in the installer package are dated 21 July, almost two weeks after 10.13.6 shipped. If those firmware versions are anything to go by, whoever built this installer did so before Apple finalised 10.13.6, and made the assumption that it would be run on all Macs capable of running High Sierra, not just the 2018 MacBook Pro. It gets even stranger when you look through that list of EFI firmware versions, because several are one version older than those which were installed with the update to High Sierra 10.13.6 released on 9 July, a few days before this MacBook Pro model. That could perhaps be because Apple’s new T2-equipped models use a different update mechanism, something we’ll just have to work out for ourselves. Except, as far as I can see, for the only models which it is supposed to update, the MacBookPro15,1 and 15,2, whose EFI firmware doesn’t appear in the list. The first thing that’s striking is that one reason for the size of this update (just over 1.3 GB) is that it contains EFI firmware upgrades for every other model of Mac. If Apple isn’t telling us what is in this Supplemental Update, the only way ahead – other than putting together several different stories which have been leaked out to some members of the press – is to look inside the installer package, as usual with the help of Suspicious Package. If any security release notes exist, Apple has not released them. Nor has Apple distributed any notes to its Security-Announce mail list. Which still has no release notes providing any further information about this Supplemental Update. There have been many updates which have failed to come up to that expectation, but that has, I’m sure, been unintentional.Īpple fails to give us any inkling of what aspects of “stability and reliability” might be improved, and refers us to “detailed information about the security content of this update” not at the page containing its security release notes, but at Apple’s main list of such notes. ![]() The first sentence is crass in its assumption that anyone would ever provide an update which it didn’t believe would improve “the stability and reliability” of the system being upgraded. This starts with the most uninformative download page I have seen for a long time: I’m hoping that at least one of them will be responsible for the unglamorous but vital task of generating release notes to accompany updates, because last week Apple has exceeded its own unhelpfulness in the Supplemental Update for its newest model, the 2018 MacBook Pro. I’m delighted for them, delighted that Apple is hiring some of the best, and hope that they hit the ground running, so that macOS and other Apple products are properly documented again. Over the last few weeks, I have heard of several fine Mac journalists who have recently been hired by Apple.
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