Oddity installing 12.5 update

[N9JIG]

This was kind of weird... I went to install the 12.5 update on the wife's M1 iMac on Wednesday night during the updates orgy I was doing (5 AppleTV's, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, 2 watches and 3 Macs).

I got all the watches, phones, iPads and TV boxes done and went to do the Mac's. The iMac was first, and I went to "About this Mac" and clicked "Software Update". It then showed 12.5 was ready to install (I had 12.4 already). I clicked to start the process and it went back to the Checking for Updates and then showed no update was available. I then tried it on the other Macs in the house and neither of them showed it was available yet.

The next morning the updates were there and installed just fine.

I am assuming that Apple rolls them out in some sort of preference, by region, state, ZIP Code, length of toenails or something as I have had to wait a few hours or the day after general release on occasion, usually for MacOS updates. The other stuff usually comes up immediately. What I found weird was that it showed an update then cruelly took it away like a petulant child. The 12 hours I had to wait were excruciating to be sure but I survived somehow.

All is well with the world again, I have all my iStuff updated and so far it is all good except that I cannot see the battery life remaining on my AirTags. Those people I am stalking won't tell me when the batteries die so I suppose I will have to guess.

 

[Imac Sam]

Yes. That happened to me as well. It is most likely some sort of load distrubution thing per Ip address of your home location. They are most likely doing it to keep the servers from getting overloaded. I have seen it happen before at the University I work at. We go to do OS updates maybe a room of 40 Macs and then try again on a 2nd room, and none of them see the update. A few hours later the update magically shows up again.

 

[BanditoB]

I have found that if you check for updates a two or three times in a row, they will usually show up and then can be installed. As you mentioned, Apple does roll these out on some sort of regional basis to help manage their server loads, but you can get around this by taking the above action.

As to the AirTag battery status, I read that they changed the behavior to only show the battery status when it gets low. Why? Who knows as this does seem like a step backward.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

As to the AirTag battery status, I read that they changed the behavior to only show the battery status when it gets low. Why? Who knows as this does seem like a step backward.

I read it’s presumably because the load level shown wasn’t very exact, so they decided to show it only when necessary.

I think there has been a dubios similar decision regarding the battery load level a few years ago, but I don’t remember which device that was or the exact circumstances.

 

[BanditoB]

You're likely correct. Coin cell batteries' voltages remain fairly consistent throughout their useful life and then drop off dramatically and quickly when they are about to die, so the original indicator that Apple had was probably more of a guess than an actual reading.