When Apple released macOS Ventura on 24 October 2022, it made an unannounced change. For the first time in over twenty years, the upgrade to the new major version wasn’t an upgrade at all, just an update. If that seems too subtle a distinction, let me spell out how profoundly that has changed macOS, and who makes the decisions.

When we upgraded from Big Sur to Monterey the year before, Software Update downloaded the full installer app from the App Store and ran that if you authenticated as an admin user. If you were only a standard user, you couldn’t install the upgrade, so there was no danger of someone in your family, for example, inadvertently upgrading your Mac without your involvement, assuming they are only a standard user and you have the power of being the admin user.

During the beta-testing phase of Ventura, many of us realised that Apple intended to change how upgrades would work. Because this wasn’t included in any of the beta documentation, nor announced officially by Apple, we were unable to warn folk until Apple released Ventura, by which time it was too late for many. As I warned at the time:
“If you’re intending to upgrade to Ventura, this is being performed as an update rather than a full install, so for an Apple silicon Mac already running Monterey 12.6 should only be around 6.37 GB in size. This should work for all Macs running macOS 12.3 and later, although download sizes will vary.”

It was Tom Bridge who first spelled out the profound consequences:
“As Admins inadvertently discovered — as Apple did not document this at WWDC or in the material that followed — during the beta period, macOS 12.3 – 12.6 see these “delta” updates as minor software updates, even if they would result in a major upgrade. That means the following things are true:
Delta updates do not require admin rights to install
Delta updates are substantially smaller
Delta updates install substantially faster
These are all great things for end users. No more 60 minute major upgrades that have to happen when the user can spare an hour! Standard users can upgrade on their own! Upgrades are much smaller!”

You might wonder why standard users should even be able to update macOS between minor versions. As Classic Mac OS was thoroughly egalitarian and never made any distinction between different classes of user, you could equally argue that every user should have admin rights anyway. What is clearly wrong here is that silently changing the upgrade mechanism has brought such a profound change in what standard users can do by themselves.

The evidence points to Apple not appreciating the consequences either: over three years later, its documentation still claims that “before installation” [of a macOS update] “begins, you’re asked to enter your administrator password.” That was published on 5 December 2025, and at its end it even explains carefully the difference between updates and upgrades, although that seems to have come to an end over three years ago.

Apple doesn’t appear to lay down any hard and fast definition of what differences there are between standard and admin users, other than the guidance that “standard users can install apps and change their own settings, but can’t add other users or change other users’ settings.” That’s consistent with a more general rule of thumb that a standard user’s actions should be constrained to those that only affect their own user account, whereas an admin user can undertake actions that affect other user accounts as well.

Applying that to macOS updates and upgrades suggests that standard users should be prevented from initiating either, as they clearly affect all users. It’s wholly inappropriate that someone who isn’t trusted to add another user should be trusted to install updates/upgrades that could render installed apps unusable, or in the worst case make that Mac unbootable.

Allowing standard users to update/upgrade macOS isn’t just a quirk that we have to get used to. By further blurring the distinction between the two classes of user, it questions whether all users should have admin privileges, and be done with the pretence that somehow being a standard user is in any meaningful way protective.

Perhaps the motivation behind this is Apple’s relentless drive to get us all to update/upgrade macOS immediately. That’s an obsession that ignores the many professional users who can’t afford to have their production platforms broken when crucial third-party products can’t work with the latest version of macOS. I think particularly of those involved in audio production, whose problems should be only too well appreciated by Apple.

As we prepare ourselves to enter the year that will bring macOS 27 to Apple silicon Macs, Apple needs to reconsider the status of standard user, and either block it from installing macOS updates/upgrades, or do away with it altogether.