Comments on: Is there a better way to keep your Mac apps updated?

By: Christopher Grant

Christopher Grant — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:14:28 +0000

+1 AppFresh. Been using it for 1-2 years. Never crashed. No buggy feeling.

By: V

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:32:00 +0000

AppFresh has not working very well for me at all since Snow Leopard. I haven’t tried MU but I’ve thought about it since the $20 a year comes with other benefits. I think, perhaps, discounts on their bundles—which are bad ass.

That said, I loved AppFresh for many a year; if it works for you, then I am jealous and congratulations. By the way: it is crashing on my MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz with 10.6.3.

Be Well,
V

By: Bradley Dichter

Bradley Dichter — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:18:53 +0000

CNET TechTracker is free. While not buggy, it does flag up to date apps as not because of a variation in the version numbering from their database. It does check for updates daily so that is a plus.

By: dave

dave — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:56:16 +0000

I use appfresh and it seems to get worse and worse, every scan finds 20-30 apps that need “updating” but after going thru them only 1-3 usually are correct all the others are up-to-date> I have used it for years on 7 different machines and all the same results.

By: Milind Alvares

Milind Alvares — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:56:24 +0000

Oh come on Tom! Why would you go and accuse me of being in cahoots with some company I’ve written about? It’s a terrible to hear (although I suppose it feels good to say). In fact I think MacUpdate is sleazy for redirecting a search for AppFresh to its MacUpdate desktop page.

Reason I mentioned AppFresh developers aren’t proud of their app, is because of this distinct warning on the AppFresh page:

Careful, Though
Please note: AppFresh is still work in progress and released as a Development Preview. We cannot assure that AppFresh is working correctly on every setup. Although installing applications using AppFresh has been heavily tested, please make sure to have a working backup.

That kind of a warning doesn’t exactly brew a lot of confidence if you ask me. That said, I’m sure it works for the vast majority—it’s always the vocal minority complaining on the web. I still can’t blame myself really. It crashed twice on me, so I checked for reviews, then I checked the app site and saw the big warning. Didn’t feel like recommending such a product. Perhaps I should do some more testing to see what’s the deal with that.

By: Der Golem

Der Golem — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:37:19 +0000

+1 for Appfresh with a caveat. Occasionally, it will not remember that an app has been updated, or list it twice. Because it accesses iusethis, it will not recognize updates for more obscure software.

It’s updated regularly, works really well on my Leopard systems (I’m not using Snow Leopard). I run it once a month, after backing up my system.