Whoops! Apple breaks Software Update due to SSL certificate expiration

You really can’t make these stuff up. Apple users who tried to use Software Update this weekend were left looking at their screen puzzled due to a very cryptic message.

Turns out, someone at Apple forgot to renew the SSL certificate used for Software Update.

Image courtesy of 9to5mac.com

That resulted in a very awkward situation, where people could not update their computers, and the error message didn’t help at all to pinpoint the problem, at least for the users who are not very technically inclined. There were two versions of the error too; some users saw the error pictured on the right, whereas some others were more lucky and learned that “The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “swscan.apple.com” which could put you confidential information at risk.” Which, come to think of it, is even less reassuring for mom, pops and your friendly neighbourhood hipster who simply wanted to update their Macs to the latest and greatest.

Of course the problem has since been corrected, and Software Update works as it should now so if you were plagued by this problem during the weekend, you can update away.