Since daily software updates are acquired in the wee hours of the night, your computer needs to be awake during those times to get the required updates. With the new schedule feature in OS X, Panther, you can now configure your computer to automatically turn itself on and off at these times. For the most part, your computer needs to be on from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. every day, so this may actually be counterproductive, causing unnecessary wear and tear on your computer.
If you’d rather not leave your computer on all night, every night, if you want your computer to sleep at night, or if you simply turn your computer off when you’re finished working with it, you have two options for keeping up with the required updates. Either you can try to remember to get them manually from the File menu, or you can download and obtain a third-party tool to obtain the updates anytime the computer is on and idle.
Getting them manually is easy, if you can remember to do it. Just choose File>Software Update. Having a third-party utility do it for you is even easier, and a good one is Atomic Bird’s Macaroni, detailed next.
