Apple’s new update has a number of little things under-the-hood — not a showy, glamourous update, but one of “tightening the screws”. Sure, maybe it should have been a 10.5.9 update rather than a for-sale 10.6.0, but it is a lot of hidden work that is often difficult (read: expensive) so needs a transaction to recoup some of the costs. I don’t like giving out cash when I don’t have to, but this is useful stuff.
Some of the changes will probably filter down into 10.5.x, but not all — only enough to reduce their engineering costs of back-ported support issues.
One interesting one is the Printer Drivers Update.
The gist: Software Update will also update drivers for third-party printer.
OK, not earth-shattering revolutionary stuff, but what I see is:
Apple Software Update will begin to update third-party content on your behalf
That’s like updating the extra little free tools I have, such as Adium, sfCubed, MailDrop, Perian, Cha-ching, Visual Hub (if it wasn’t toast), VLC. It’s a step towards that goal, which is really: making it simpler to update.
Google aggregates RSS feed in Google Reader; RSS can easily represent updates with a rich XML digital description; these could be “subscribed to” in Software Update. We therefore have user-selected update channels, just like OpenSource and Linux have (for free).