Apple has already been under fire once this year for releasing something to the hundreds of millions of users without permission. Earlier this year, Apple and U2 decided it would be a spectacular idea to partner up for a new album and automatically distribute the album for free to all 500 million iTunes users.

Apple didn't stop there. In addition to adding the album to users' libraries, the company also automatically synced the CD onto every single iDevice that had auto sync on. There was an outcry from millions online, who wondered why an album had been forced upon them.

It seems now that Apple is following this model with something that they deem just a bit more critical; a security update. A vulnerability recently discovered in the NTP for Mac OSX required immediate attention and patching, so Apple made the executive decision to roll out a non-negotiable security update, CNET reports.

The ability to automatically issue security updates was rolled out by the company two years ago but never used until now.

Security analyst Ken Westin told CNET, "Apple's proactive steps to automatically remediate this particular vulnerability shows the need to quickly patch remotely exploitable vulnerabilities. However, the use of Apple's automatic deployment tool is not without risks, as even the simplest update can cause problems for some systems. In this case the update may have been so minor the risk of affecting other applications and processes was minimal."

For those who are not happy about Apple's automatic updates, they can be disabled in system preferences.

This time around, the feature was used to deter hackers from what was considered a serious exploit by both security experts and the Department of Homeland Security. To that end, perhaps Mac users should be thankful that our Apple overlords can act so quickly.