Are Apple's MacOS Updates far too Frequent?

Apple has a product feedback page https://www.apple.com/feedback/ you can use to send them your comments. This discussion forum has other apple product users, but Apple does not use it for feedback. People answering your questions in this discussion forum would be other users, like you.

I also think that MacOS updates have become more frequent, mostly driven by security updates, most of which are considered important and essential, and maybe secondarily driven by bug fixes. The present day MacOS is more complex than it was in 1991 so that could make updates more frequent. However the MacOS updates are way less frequent than those for Windows machines, which can be quite intrusive. I work in aerospace and we have had long-duration spacecraft tests fail due to Windows updates forcing themselves unwanted on the workstations; we have had to take measures to prevent that.

Every 10-12 months or so Apple rolls out an entirely new version of the MacOS now. Times have changed considerably since 1991. But you can choose to not update when a new update (or upgrade) appears, or delay it to when it is convenient. That is not always so easy with the frequent Windows updates or Windows anti-virus updates. Anyone who has used Windows knows how it feels when you want to shut down your computer and take it somewhere and instead of it shutting down you see "applying updates ... warning ... do not shut down until updates are completed ..." and the process takes an hour or more.

I don't know if you have worked as a software developer, but "patches" can become problematic because they have limited scope, can be prone to unintended interactions with other parts of the code, and after multiple such "patches" one has something akin to a house of cards, e.g. a less stable build. Given that Apple updates are being rolled out to millions of users with myriad configurations, their "clean install" approach makes the most sense to me. Your automobile engine and oil change analogy is not a good one for software.

Can't patches (minor updates) to the system be a more effective and invisible way to keep a system up-to-date and safe, until a major update is needed?

We are all other users here and are not allowed to speculate, so you would need to ask the Apple Engineering team; however, since Apple never discusses their policies, you would most likely not get an answer.

Personally, we have a somewhat slow connection (and nothing faster available), so I dislike the 2.5 - 5 GB updates since it takes far too long to download - I don't care for the 12 GB upgrades either. But, it is what it is.

Speaking Only about the Size of the updates. Let us remember, Apple is transitioning from Intel to In-House CPUs. At same time supporting existing Intel CPUs.

Since, as of this writing, Apple has chosen not to offer the Standalone Updates for Big Sur. Thusly the updates for Big Sur must Included Both Intel and Apple Silicon code in the same update. Now we are talking of xx ? extra GB per update.

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