Does MacOS on MacBook Pro need weekly reboot? IT support team is implementing forceful weekly shutdown

Question

IT support team in my organization is enforcing periodic forceful shutdowns of the developer Macbooks using JAMF or some other kind of mechanism. This is damn annoying. In my experience, I never faced any problem with the Macbook even if it is running for weeks and months, when I know what I am opening and whether I am gracefully closing the applications or not. And if I am rebooting my system periodically at my convenience it works much better for me. Absolutely no performance issue I have ever faced because of the lack of reboot. And I have observed the newer versions of Macbook Pros using arm64 architecture-based Apple M1/M2 chips are even much more efficient. The rationale being given is IT support found some engineers(maybe newbies or whatever I don't know) reporting performance issues with their systems.

Now the IT team wants to forcefully shutdown everyone's system once in a week when they want. This is ridiculous and highly annoying to me unless I'm missing something. So the veteran IT admins, does such kind of forceful weekly shutdown of Developers' Macs make any sense? Could there be any sound rationale behind such a disruptive step? Does MacOS really need such kind of weekly reboot to operate efficiently?

To further clarify the question, there is no dispute or opposition to the system reboots as and when needed for OS updates or critical applications updates, or security updates of any kind. The importance of rebooting 'for a cause' is not under dispute here.

But the question is it really necessary to keep on rebooting the Mac every week for it to perform efficiently? If so, what is it in the OS architecture or functioning that necessitates it? Looking for technical details on the operation of the OS I may be missing.

Answer 1

I think you already know the answer to your question, which is: no, there’s no magic to rebooting weekly for efficiency. If it were really necessary, the OS vendor themselves (I guess Apple in this case) would be recommending it.

Obviously I don’t know much about your company, so I don’t know if this will work for you. But my suggestion would be to quantify your lost productivity and raise that issue through your management structure. For example, if it takes you an hour after each forced reboot to get your environment set back up the way you like it, then you can ask your manager whether they’re willing to sacrifice that hour of your time on a weekly basis, or whether they’d instead like to take up that issue with the IT department.

This really shouldn’t be your battle; this should be a business decision.

Just don’t be shocked if the answer comes back that, yes, the company would prefer you to spend that hour reëstablishing your sessions, etc, rather than to have the IT department change their policy or make an exception for you.

As others have (very validly) pointed out in their answer, not rebooting for months isn’t really an option, so perhaps you can come to an agreement that you’ll reboot every other week, but at a time of your choosing, and if the uptime exceeds a certain amount (perhaps three weeks), then the automated system can reboot.

^{I’ll add that I have an intense dislike for “IT Voodoo”, aka operating a computer based on superstition or belief without testing. If you feel it appropriate in your company’s culture/environment, you could challenge your IT department to quantify their belief that rebooting on a set interval is necessary. But I expect this will go nowhere.}

Answer 2

Unfortunately most companies don't treat their developers like the VIP's and diva's they are, don't bow to they their obvious all-compassing technical expertise and won't exclude them from policies, that while possibly suitable for regular people, might inconvenience their developers.

In my experience, I never faced any problem with the Macbook even if it is running for weeks and months, when I know what I am opening and whether I am gracefully closing the applications or not. And if I am rebooting my system periodically at my convenience it works much better for me.

That's why you're a developer.

When it works on your laptop it must be the best solution everywhere and for everybody.

Absolutely no performance issue I have ever faced because of the lack of reboot.

This not about your stamina though.

Now the IT team wants to forcefully shutdown everyone's system once in a week when they want. This is ridiculous and highly annoying to me unless I'm missing something.

You are missing something.

In short:

• Developers write bad code.

• Bugs and security vulnerabilities get found.

• Updates get released that address those vulnerabilities.

• Too frequently: Rinse and repeat.

Unless automatic updating is enabled generally end-users are not diligent with regards to installing those updates. That is where a proper enterprise IT security team won't leave the update schedule up to the discretion of the end-user (even when that end-user is a developer or admin even) and they will/should force install security updates in a timely fashion to reduce and eliminate exposure to known security vulnerabilities.

Many (OS) updates require a restart of the application to take place and some require a full reboot.

A proper update management solution tracks after which update(s) a reboot is required and will force that reboot only when necessary. Ideally it offers a grace period where the end-user can perform that required reboot at their discretion and will only force that reboot after that grace period expires. It bears repeating, developers write bad code, so the current update management solution may not support that yet, it may only get that feature "in a future release" and the best you security team can do to force updates to get enabled is a weekly mandatory reboot.

That doesn't exclude that your otherwise capable enterprise security team is (forced to) simply implement a policy rather than a genuine technical solution.