Hello Fellow Technophiles,
The Apple news for today is that they have released updates for iOS 10 and macOS Sierra: iOS 10.2 and macOS 10.12.2. Please note that these are updates and not upgrades and we therefore recommend them for all users currently using iOS 10 or Sierra. “What is the difference between an update and an upgrade?” you may ask. That’s a great question! Thanks for asking!
In the software world, an upgrade is generally a changeover to a completely new version of the software. For the macOS, this would be a change from Leopard to Snow Leopard, or for iOS from iOS 8 to iOS 9. This upgrade may be based largely on the version it replaced or could be fundamentally rewritten from the ground up. This means that there may be compatibility or stability issues that were not present in the last release.
An update, on the other hand, is generally a minor set of changes that either add new features to the existing software, but doesn’t fundamentally change it, or addresses bug fixes. This second category is the reason to always perform Apple software updates. Any glitches that the engineers are aware of and are able to be fixed will be rolled out as software updates. They can also include security updates to address newly found vulnerabilities in the system.
To get software updates for your Mac, open up the App Store app. On your iOS device, go to Settings > General > Software Update.
As always, before performing any upgrade or update, it is always recommended to back up your data. In fact, before you do anything else, if your data is not backed up, now is the time!
Thanks for reading!