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Advantages of HS compared to EC
- Thread starter boppin
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I would say the three biggest immediate benefits of High Sierra over El Capitan are A.) the new APFS filesystem (which mostly benefits systems with SSDs), B.) active and continuing development on core technologies as well as base applications like Safari and some of the ones you mentioned, and C.) Safari will now block videos from autoplaying. Not sure if the latter feature is available on the El Capitan version of Safari.
Also, High Sierra introduces support for HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding or H.265) the nominal heir apparent to AVC (or H.264). As more content is released in this new format, end users will benefit from smaller and quicker downloads.
I'm sure Apple has a list of new features in High Sierra on the marketing page on the corporate website. I upgraded from Sierra and I didn't notice many changes so I suppose most of them are incremental.
Moreover, third party developers eventually stop supporting older versions of the operating systems when they update their applications. It depends on the developer and of course whatever applications they write. We don't know what you do with your system, so it's impossible to make any sort of recommendation.
While I haven't encountered any, my assumption is that there are bugs in Mail, Calendar, Address Book and other applications.
All applications have bugs.
I haven't seen any showstoppers/dealbreakers, but I can't guarantee that you won't run into an inconvenience or annoyance.
I don't know.
It runs well on my 2010 Mac mini with 8 GB of RAM as well as my 2013 MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM.
Heck, for me, just having Safari block autoplaying video was reason enough to upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra.
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APFS has potential to be a real improvement, however at the moment it is only partially documented which means many drive utilities and recovery software wont support it. And other software may have its own problems when used with APFS until developers can fix the bugs.
Based on the Apples record and known High Sierra bugs I suspect it will take at least 4 updates before High Sierra is solid for production use.
As for the HEVC its irrelevant for my needs, much will depend on if and how developers will support it.
OP: you might want to see Apples High Sierra page before making any decisions. https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra/
And using APFS on hard drive isn't the best idea: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/introducing-apple-file-system-apfs.1977248/page-6#post-25434124
Based on the Apples record and known High Sierra bugs I suspect it will take at least 4 updates before High Sierra is solid for production use.
As for the HEVC its irrelevant for my needs, much will depend on if and how developers will support it.
OP: you might want to see Apples High Sierra page before making any decisions. https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra/
And using APFS on hard drive isn't the best idea: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/introducing-apple-file-system-apfs.1977248/page-6#post-25434124
I am a bit betwixted and between about upgrading to High Sierra from Sierra. My biggest concern is that my late 2015 iMac (5k 3.2Ghz. i5 w/16gb ram) might run slower as it seems to be the norm with software updates. can anyone confirm or deny this?
I want to do a clean install of it if I do decided to upgrade.
I want to do a clean install of it if I do decided to upgrade.
I wouldn’t worry about speed. There’s barely any difference between a 2017 and 2015 Mac anyway. If anything, it should be a bit faster with the new Metal UI acceleration.
It’s the bugs that are stopping me ATM. That, and there are no real user-facing features I care about.
Clean installing is a waste of time, IMO.
Heck, for me, just having Safari block autoplaying video was reason enough to upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra.
You can get this feature in Sierra too. I think the only Safari feature that’s HS-exclusive is the tracking blocking.
"Advantages of HS compared to EC..."
I don't really see any.
That's why at this point in time I still use El Cap on both my 2012 Mini and my 2015 MacBook Pro.
No plans to "move any further forward" at this point.
I don't see APFS to be a plus -- rather, it's a liability, too new and unproven.
HFS+ is a known-good and reliable system.
Even if the time comes when I do move to High Sierra, I'm going to "stay back" on HFS+....
I don't really see any.
That's why at this point in time I still use El Cap on both my 2012 Mini and my 2015 MacBook Pro.
No plans to "move any further forward" at this point.
I don't see APFS to be a plus -- rather, it's a liability, too new and unproven.
HFS+ is a known-good and reliable system.
Even if the time comes when I do move to High Sierra, I'm going to "stay back" on HFS+....