MacUpdater 1.4.15
While our users tell us that MacUpdater is the best app they have found in years, Apple rejected it from inclusion into the Mac App Store, because it is not ‘useful enough’. Meanwhile, Apple continues to distribute dozens of apps that are malware, or are from known Malware vendors!
I had not heard of this app, perhaps because it’s not listed on MacUpdate, either. (Besides the similar name, it competes with their Desktop product.)
It seems genuinely useful, though:
Nothing could be easier than finding out which of your apps are out-of-date with MacUpdater. Just launch it and let it scan your apps. You’ll see a list of all your apps, and apps with updates are listed in red. There are filter-options to display just outdated apps or ignore apps from being updated. The MacUpdater database has information about the latest versions of more than 30.000 apps (see FAQ).
I think there used to be another app that did this, e.g. by polling Sparkle feeds, but I haven’t heard about it in a long time.
See also: Mark Sealey.
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You are probably thinking of AppFresh, which was discontinued long time ago (though it still works in 10.13).
In the same spirit, there’s Latest https://mangerlahn.github.io/Latest/ (the name is not very Google friendly, it took me a while to find the site and I use it almost daily 😅) which is super basic, but does a simple job well.
It's not listed on the MacUpdate website, because they have a similar, but far inferior app called MacUpdate Desktop, so they outright banned CoreCode's MacUpdater.
I have been using MacUpdater for a couple of month and it is great. It checks for updates once a day and is able to do the update for most applications. MAS applications and some with an installer do not work which are about 5% on my system.
I have only really tried MacUpdater, and it's become one of my essential tools to have on the Mac. I have only had a quick look Latest, and it only covers app that use the Sparkle framework plus apps that are from the Mac App Store. Sure, those are already a lot of apps covered, and it's free, but with the license for MacUpdater you get support for apps distributed via Sparkle, MAS, Homebrew Cask, individual developer appcasts, releases via GitHub etc., and CoreCode also maintain their own database of apps, which includes apps that users have installed/updated manually… even some of my own Platypus apps have found their way into the CoreCode database. And last, but not least, you can ask CoreCode to add apps to their database, if they've missed some special/obscure software. If you look at the roadmap, they will eventually support installing MAS apps too, which would be a godsend, because ever since moving to a new Mac, the MAS simply ignores updates of some of the apps I bought on the old Mac: I always have to uninstall and re-install them. Apple is quite rotten here & there, and I welcome ever solution that avoids software products by Apple.
I use MacUpdate and had never heard of MacUpdater.
MacUpdater looks good but for a service like this which relies on a backend, I feel uncomfortable with MacUpdater charging only a onetime small fee (similar to AppFresh did and now that's defunct).
CleanMyMac X also has an option to scan for apps that can be updated (it supports Sparkle and App Store apps).
hi there.
glad to see MacUpdater (and our rant about the Mac App Store) mentioned here. if you have some questions about our app, i'd be happy to answer them.
> I had not heard of this app, perhaps because…
> It's crazy that these exist and I've never heard of them…
it is true that both 'MacUpdater' and 'Latest' are largely unknown because this particular popular website http://www.macupdate.com does not list them.
the fact that they list 30.000 Mac apps, and the only 2 apps they don't list are direct competitors to their 'MacUpdate Desktop 6' is probably no coincidence - they also killed 'AppFresh' this way back in the day. they are really doing a great service to Mac users...
i think it would be their good right not to list competitor-apps on their site, except the fact that they have a monopoly on the 'Mac App Listing, News & Discovery' market. there is simply nothing similar that has more than 3 users.
according to antitrust laws, monopolies are not allowed to block competitors in that way. if we weren't so busy 24/7 making sure that MacUpdater is awesome, we'd probably have looked into some antitrust lawsuit by now...
bye, julian
It was just a random comment :) Years ago I used to use MU all the time -- I'm pretty sure I checked it daily up until 2009 or so. Then for whatever reason I stopped using MU and now I just google search for whatever I need. Though from taking a peek at MU it does still look really useful.
