It’s not immediately clear why the update system is like this but agreed with author that it totally sucks. There’s an OS update waiting on me to install, stating it contains only a fix for the Mac mini m1, which I do not have. It would be one of those “flash all ye firmware” updates if I would run it. Every update is. Updates are atrocious. The only upside I can think of is that rootkits might have trouble persisting?