Apple Update Server

[Stephen Hart]

Anyone else having problems with getting the latest High Sierra update?
I've tried half a dozen times, several at night, and the download always times out.

[Ray Bentsen]

I didn't have any problem ... either with my iMac or my MacBook Pro.
I presume that you are referring to the 10.13.1 update.

[Stephen Hart]

It's entirely possible that my problem stems from background downloading of a pile of podcasts. It's annoying, though, that the update download process is so fragile that a download just fails and you have to start over.

[Stephen Hart]

I think I figured this out.
We have two iMacs and on my wife's App Store was set to automatically download updates, while mine was not set to automatically download updates. So I think her iMac was using up much of the bandwidth, causing my iMac to lose the connection.

I still don't know why App Store on my iMac had to start the download from scratch each time.

[ChrisO]

macOS 10.13.2 is available.

But rather than downloading any update from the App Store, I would advise going to https://support.apple.com/downloads and downloading the desired update from there. If your internet connection is interrupted (or is very slow) the worst that will happen is your download will be hosed and you'll have to start over.

If you're updating from the App Store and the connection is bad or too slow, you can wind up not being able to restart your computer, you may then have to use Internet Recovery.

We've had many customers come in to MacTraders that were unable to complete the update.

[Stephen Hart]

That's an idea. At least I can get iTunes separately from High Sierra 10.13.2.
FWIW, I just restarted my wife's iMac after it finally finished the download in App Store.
Then I started the download again on my iMac and it failed after only a few minutes.
Nothing else seems to have any particular problems with downloading on my iMac (at least beyond the slow DSL).

I'll try your suggestion.

[A couple of hours later, after starting the iTunes download]
Well, what I'm seeing is pretty similar to what I saw with the App Store app. The Safari download got to about 122 MB of 277 MB downloaded and has now stalled. Stopping the download and resuming it seems to--whoda thunk it?--resume downloading. That's better than the App Store, which in my experience always starts over from scratch.

[12/10/2017, The Next Day]
I downloaded the combo update for 10.13.2 overnight and installed this morning without glitches.

[Stephen Hart]

ChrisO, of MacTraders,

Thanks for this tip.

I sure wish Apple would set up a comprehensive download/streaming system that would feature easy resume for stalled downloads, a centralized system for scheduling for all downloads and a system of prioritizing with automatic pause whenever a download seems to be competing with other downloads. This is also an issue for iOS apps, where automatic download is now the most sensible system, but you'd want them to pause if you're streaming something.

[Stephen Hart]

BTW, I just updated Final Cut Pro X, Motion and Compressor and all three updated without hitches via App Store.
It seems as if it's the very large downloads that hang up the process when using App Store.