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Updates on Macs take a very long time

I have a Macbook Pro 15" with High Sierra. The updates take an extemely long time and includes

a shut down and a good deal of waiting, false starts, and more waiting.


I have a Mac mini that takes several hours after the upgrade is supposedly complete before the

machine will boot properly. It has Yosemite and after a few upgrades that were available I have

declined to do upgrades that were subsequently available.


Why, and is this necessary? Upgrades of systems up to 10.10 never took anywhere near this long.

Is the source being downloaded and compiled and installed in a manner in which user intervention

is impossible?

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 26, 2019 11:01 PM

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Posted on May 27, 2019 6:59 PM

Your question sound like you may be asking about two separate things. "Upgrading" to a new version of the OS does take some time, although it usually doesn't take hours. Once the upgrade is in place, the computer will spend more time scanning all your data into Spotlight so you can search for it when needed. That scanning will slow operations somewhat, but it shouldn't prevent normal boot-up. OS "updates" are smaller and should take less time. There may still be scanning after these, but this still shouldn't be a problem. Two questions: 1) How much RAM does your computer have? 2) How full is your hard drive? All computers use some space on the hard drive for "virtual memory" storage of active data. If your Mac has only 4GB of RAM, it will require more hard drive space for this task. If the drive is nearly full, everything will be slowed as things are moved into and out of virtual memory to get the work done. You can improve this by adding memory or by clearing space on the hard drive. Just a suggestion.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 27, 2019 6:59 PM in response to anotherJeff273

Your question sound like you may be asking about two separate things. "Upgrading" to a new version of the OS does take some time, although it usually doesn't take hours. Once the upgrade is in place, the computer will spend more time scanning all your data into Spotlight so you can search for it when needed. That scanning will slow operations somewhat, but it shouldn't prevent normal boot-up. OS "updates" are smaller and should take less time. There may still be scanning after these, but this still shouldn't be a problem. Two questions: 1) How much RAM does your computer have? 2) How full is your hard drive? All computers use some space on the hard drive for "virtual memory" storage of active data. If your Mac has only 4GB of RAM, it will require more hard drive space for this task. If the drive is nearly full, everything will be slowed as things are moved into and out of virtual memory to get the work done. You can improve this by adding memory or by clearing space on the hard drive. Just a suggestion.

May 27, 2019 11:21 AM in response to anotherJeff273

Your hardware may be failing.


Slowdowns, crashes, corruptions, and instabilities can be an indication of a failing hard disk drive.


Try running the hardware diagnostics.

How to use Apple Hardware Test on your Mac - Apple Support

How to use Apple Diagnostics on your Mac - Apple Support


Caveat: the diagnostics aren’t entirely reliable and can miss some errors.


If you have an older MacBook Pro with a hard disk drive and plan on trying to keep it for a few more years, consider replacing the hard disk drive with an SSD.


It’s also possible that there’s add-on software that’s malfunctioning, or that’s corrupting the environment. If you have add-on anti-virus or anti-malware, or add-on netwrok-monitoring-and-firewall tools, or add-on cleaners or optimizers, remove that per the vendor instructions, reboot, and try again.


There’s also the possibility of add-on malware of some sort—most of that dreck is locally and directly installed (spoofed apps, fake updaters, cracked apps, etc), and the anti-malware can and variously does miss that.


May 27, 2019 2:30 PM in response to MrHoffman

This is not in the catagory of slowdowns, crashes, corruptions, and instabilities.

There are also no add-ons as you describe. The system and software run fine when there are no

updates or updates have FINALLY completed.

On the Mac Mini, after the update is supposedly complete, booting into the system produces

a black screen for about an hour or so before the login screen will appear. I do not leave the

black screen up for that long. I shut the machine down and periodically try to boot up. It is

only after the hour or so period that the boot up succeeds. This mini was purchased new

with Yosemite installed. As soon as update notices began appearing I exectuted the first

and the issue was very apparent. I doubt the machine was defective out of the box if it

started and ran without issue before the first update.


The updates are installed after restart, before the system boots. So I doubt that the "dreck" has any

effect, if it is there to begin with.

May 27, 2019 8:28 PM in response to franzkaiser

This is NOT about installing a new operating system. This question is about UPDATES to existing system.

The following are the two machines that have been taking excessive amounts of time after restart to install

UPDATES before they will boot properly.


The Mini should not show a black screen for over an hour with no indication of what the problem is or what

to expect before it will finally boot properly. I am sorry if I seem testy. But Macs are expensive and getting more

so without going through a maze of fix this, fix that, fix this, fix that, at great added expense. I droped some water

on another Macbook Pro I bought in late 2009. It trashed the keyboard. I was quoted a preliminary price for replacment

of the WHOLE upper case to replace the keyboard @ $1200.


Mac mini (Late 2014)

Model Name: Mac mini

Model Identifier: Macmini7,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i5

Processor Speed: 1.4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 2

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 4 GB

(this hard drive usage is current. Not at the time updates were executed. There was less use of the hard

drive at the time of updates)

HD: 297.9 GB free of 498.89 GB

My main use of this machine is as a dev server using installed Apache and php. I do web

related html/css/js dev and php dev WITHOUT MySql or any other database software)


macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)

Model Name: MacBook Pro

Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2

Processor Name: Intel Core i7

Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 4

L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

L3 Cache: 6 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Boot ROM Version: 83.0.0.0.0

HD: 469.45 GB of 498.88 GB

I use this machine mostly for download of still photos and video clips.

I do occasionally run photographic still post processing software.

May 30, 2019 11:11 AM in response to BDAqua

Better news:

I just upgraded my Mini yesterday with latest listed updates. This included installation of

High Sierra. It took some time. But the black, blank screen for an hour or to before the system

would boot did not occur.


I did this because I am interested in getting a magic mouse and noticed the system requirements

need a later version of the OS.

Updates on Macs take a very long time

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