Having caught it red-handed at last, it was time to take to the log and discover how this update came about. The package .10_14.16U1638 was installed yet again, although it hadn’t changed from the version dated 29 October 2018, which I had noticed had already been installed at least three times on this Mac. On 31 December 2018, at 14:08, SystHist recorded another one of those mystery updates. Quite why it seemed to be updated every few weeks was a mystery to me, though. Although it’s sort of security data – it gives System Migration a blacklist of apps and software which musn’t be migrated – it doesn’t seem to get pushed out as a silent update when it’s changed. It lives in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/amework and is a bit of an oddity. Every few weeks, on Sierra, High Sierra, and now Mojave, my Macs tend to download the package and install it, even though it is almost always unchanged.
Ever since I first developed SystHist and was able to see exactly which packages were being installed on my Macs, one repeated installation has puzzled me: the Incompatible App List used by System Migration.
