Getting told update is needed for my iPhone to connect to Mac, but download doesn't work

[romad (Dennis Swaney)]

@alvarnell

Has nothing to do with macOS updates and your Mac can still be updated with background updates to such things as MRT and XProtect as well as these iDevice updates. They don’t require a restart and have always been very quick and trouble free for me (as opposed to the OP’s recent experience).

Aren’t those supposed to be listed in System Report/Software/Installations? The only items I have listed there are seven 1Password and one AdBlock updates and the oldest is from 2019.

[Simon]

They should be. Sort by install date, most recent first. I see the last update to XProtect and MRT on my main MBP was on 2/4.

The list also shows MAS updates and 3rd party updates (Zoom for example).

In that list I also see a RosettaUpdateAuto took place after I installed the 12.2.1 update. Didn’t know Rosetta does auto updating on its own. Makes sense though. Sneaky, but I like it.

[alvarnell]

Yes, they should be, as long as you have both “Automatically Check for updates” and “Install system data files and security updates” enabled in System Preferences->Software Update. If you don’t enable both of those then you will never get those background updates.

[romad (Dennis Swaney)]

@Simon

Sort by install date,

Thanks, that did it. I then sorted by Source and have it showing those from Apple first.

Looks like the most recent Security Update is 2020-006. The MRT, XProtect, Gatekeeper were updated this month.

[alvarnell]

@romad

Looks like the most recent Security Update is 2020-006.

That wasn’t a background update. It requires you to accept the install unless you have “Install macOS updates enabled”.

@romad

The MRT, XProtect, Gatekeeper were updated this month.

I’m guessing you meant within a month as MRT & XProtect were last posted on Feb 3. There hasn’t been a Gatekeeper update since mid October 2019, so not sure why that was updated for you. It’s no longer used, so not a big deal.

[romad (Dennis Swaney)]

@alvarnell

I’m guessing you meant within a month as MRT & XProtect were last posted on Feb 3.

Oops! You mean today isn’t February 30th? Yes, it was on Feb 4 for me

[david19 (David Weintraub)]

Just a note: It now works. I had plugged my iPhone in, got that annoying dialog box telling me to update. My choices were either to ignore and getting it popping up again in a few minutes, or hit install, drag the installation dialog box off the screen and ignore it.

This time, I hit install, and it actually installed. Don’t know what changed. Maybe it was an OS update of some sort.

[Dan_W]

I had this problem last week. After much Googling , I fixed it.

It turns out I had upgraded XCode but never run it since. It seems that XCode upgrades the same library that the mystery dialog also wants to upgrade. So all I had to do is open XCode, tell it to update its command line tools, and voila! The mystery dialog disappeared and hasn’t come back since.