14 DAY TRIAL // Back in July 2015 when Microsoft started the Windows 10 rollout, the company turned to a highly-controversial strategy to convince Windows 7 and Windows 8 users to upgrade: it downloaded the new OS in background and used a confusing prompt to start deployment.
And now it appears that Apple is using similar tactics to deploy macOS High Serra on devices that haven’t been updated just yet, with a new report revealing that the company employs an approach that’s very similar to the one that Microsoft embraced nearly two years ago.
Basically, what Apple does is download the macOS 10.13 High Sierra update in the background without letting users know about it, and when all files are ready, it pushes a prompt asking for permission to start deployment.
The prompt itself, however, was developed in a way that gives people very little choice, as it offers only two options, “Install” and Details.” There’s no button to close the message or to refuse the update.
Disable update downloading in the background
TidBITS writes that the hidden way to refuse the update is to click “Details,” which then gets the user to the App Store when more information on the High Sierra update is provided, and to then close the Store window altogether. This is obviously a method that’s not by any means intuitive or straightforward, so Apple has become quite aggressive in pushing the High Sierra update to users the Microsoft way.
One way to prevent this silent upgrade from being downloaded in the background is to actually disable the option that allows it.
In the App Store, head over to the settings screen and disable the option that reads “Download newly available updates in the background,” but make sure that you keep both “Automatically check for updates” and “Install system data files and security updates” options enabled.
It goes without saying that Apple hasn’t said a single thing about this aggressive macOS High Sierra push, but judging from what happened in Microsoft’s case, it won’t be long before the company comes under fire for this behavior.
