Now that Apple has removed the --ignore flag from softwareupdate, it’s recommending you use the forceDelayedSoftwareUpdates and enforcedSoftwareUpdateDelay flags (more details in Device Management Profile: Restrictions), which are supposed to, in theory, delay an updates user visibility a certain number of days after the update’s release.

The number of days delayed may not be precise

The number of days delayed is imperfect at best. I tested a 7-day delay and even 6 days after the release of the update, it was suddenly available. And here’s an example of someone last year who didn’t see an update released 10 days before, even with only a 7-day delay.

System Preferences and softwareupdate may not be in sync

In my own testing, if you delay an update but a Mac is two or more updates behind, softwareupdate -d -a or softwareupdate -l will still show an update available to download, but System Preferences > Software Update will show Your Mac is running the latest software update allowed by your administrator.

That can be a problem if you rely on a program like Nudge, which uses softwareupdate to determine whether an update is available but points users to System Preferences to do the actual update.

At this time, unless Apple makes significant changes, I wouldn’t recommend using the delay update profile settings if you have any utilities that use softwareupdate to check whether updates are available or not.