Stay current on a broadband budget

What’s the most efficient way to obtain software updates for my iMac and MacBook without exceeding my broadband cap?

[ COLIN HEATON ]

Ian Sleightholm replies: The largest updates you’re likely to need are to macOS itself. Rather than downloading them from the Mac App Store, check Apple’s support pages ( support.apple.com) a day or so after release. Search for something like ‘macOS 10.12.5’, and get the smaller, incremental

[ WWW.TECHLIFE.NET ]

update (which updates only from the version immediately before its target), not the much larger Combo version. These are delivered as disk images, which you can copy to and reuse on additional Macs. Mac App Store apps can be copied from one Mac to another, but you may be asked for your Apple ID to reauthorise the second one. See apple.co/29b5KzD if you have trouble. OS X Server can cache updates for macOS, apps, personal iCloud data, and other store downloads when one Mac requests it, and distribute it to others as needed, but this imposes its own overhead.