In Podcast 104 we were talking about shortcuts and workflow tricks. Well here is one from community member Kerry Smith who says…
I managed to eliminate a huge time-waster and annoyance for myself today, rather by accident. If you use a Mac and own a lot of plug-ins by certain manufacturers (NI, Avid, Sound Toys and Plug-in Alliance for me) you probably have experienced that if you go to update them all, then you must download each plug-in as it’s own installer (either pkg or DMG). You then have to run the Apple-standard installer for each plug-in.
Normally, I had to sit through each installer and click the various “Okay”, “Accept” and “Continue” buttons. Often going through this process takes longer than the actual installer process does. It really makes me appreciate Waves’ system.
Today I downloaded and updated about 10 plug-ins by a certain manufacturer. But, once I had all of the installers down, I shift-clicked them all open at the same time (I usually do one at a time). What I discovered is that, although I had to launch each installer, once I clicked on all of the Legal and Continue boxes for the first plug-in, I wasn’t asked to do it for the others.
I was so happy and I don’t know exactly why this works (maybe the Apple Installer program doesn’t self-quit because other installations are active?) but I think I saved 40-60 clicks and the navigation to the associated buttons. As far as I’m concerned, this is a workflow win!
Mike says - I wonder whether is was because all the installers were from the same manufacturer so the terms and conditions were the same. I suspect you wouldn’t be so lucky if they were from multiple manufacturers as the terms & conditions would be different. If anyone is doing a bulk install please try this out and report back your experiences as this could be a real time saver.