I have never updated via the Combo, although many people recommend it. In all the years that I have been doing this, I have never had an issue.
I've always used Combos to update, but my understanding is that the updates that come from the App Store are tailored to your specific Mac, and that would seem to make them the preferred way to go, reserving Combos for emergency use.
I had never heard about that "tailored" business, and I question how accurate that is. As I stated above, I have always downloaded and applied the Combo Updater, and never had any issues applying it. Yes, the download does take longer, but in my case, if I needed to recover back to OS 10.11.3, after installing OS 10.11.1, I would then just apply the OS 10.11.3 Combo Updater, and be back in business quickly. (While that download is going on, I just visit other sites).
I also keep all the updaters on a separate folder, and with having a copy of the initial, full OS 10.11.1 file. If instead I had downloaded and kept the two incremental updaters OS 10.11.2 and 10.11.3, after doing the OS 10.11.1 installation, I would then need to apply those two incremental updates. Imagine if there are more updates to the OS. I myself would rather just apply one updater file, and be done.
Like the Combo Update, one can download that incremental update without doing it through the App Store. Here is the link for that:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1858?locale=en_USI'm just going to stick with the Combo Updater. By the way, OS 10.11.4 is now in its third beta for testing.
