I too like to review changes between images, but I’m just as content to run rpm-ostree status and/or rpm-ostree db diff to see what exactly has changed.
You should be forced to reboot though? And if you don’t want to reboot, can’t you just do an --apply-live?
I’m hoping to eliminate the extra reboot each day that is usually necessary to activate the latest image. I know that a lot of this will depend on exactly when the image drops from the repos (versus when I shutdown a host), which is why I was looking for some general feedback from others who might have done the same thing…I didn’t know if it’d be worthwhile in the long run, but I guess there’s only one way to find out. As for the –apply-live, I use it on occasion but I don’t want to rely on it for system updates (if that’s even possible).