At Tenseg we make sure all our products (with the exception of random scripts) can automatically update themselves. For our applications we use a widely-used drop-in software updater named Sparkle. Here are a few important and not-so-important tidbits about this updater.

Centralized Updating

You’ve probably noticed how much the software update feature is identical to the ones used in many other Mac software products. That’s because it is the same software updater. But the one problem both us developers and you users come across with this updater is that there is no centralized location for software updating the same way there is for Apple’s software updates. If you want a centralized updater location before the developer of Sparkle gets around to it, I would recommend taking a look at AppFresh.

Update Authenticity

For any application that can self-update to the newest public release security is a concern for many users. What if somehow they ended up installing malicious code not from the developer’s website? This is a major concern for software vendors. To combat this we take the extra step of signing all distributions of all our Mac applications that will be both on the public Tenseg website and the updater’s backend with a DSA Signature. The primary build Mac has the private DSA key deep in its login keychain and the application binary includes the public DSA key as a resource so that it won’t install any updates that aren’t properly signed. This will eliminate the possibility of you unknowingly getting “bad code” on your system through any Tenseg Mac application.

System Profile Statistics

The software updater can automatically submit anonymous system profile statistics about your Mac to Tenseg once weekly when checking for updates. Feel free to look at the past month of that data for yourself. The Tenseg developers will be utilizing these voluntary user statistics to better plan what systems to support with future releases of our software. At second launch each of our applications will ask if you’re willing to participate in this profile submission, but at any time you can disable or enable it from the application’s preferences window.