Apple Confirms macOS 12.3 Deprecates Kernel Extensions Used by Dropbox and OneDrive

[Bustycat]

As a OneDrive user that just installed version 22 (including the Files On-Demand "experience"), I honestly fail to see what the big deal is. It's just one more setting. If you want to have all your files always available offline (as it is my case) you just tell the app to do so. You know, go to the OneDrive folder root, right-click, "Always keep on this device" for the whole folder...

Users are not furious about the feature itself, but it is for how unreliable the new version is.

 

[Bustycat]

As a OneDrive user that just installed version 22 (including the Files On-Demand "experience"), I honestly fail to see what the big deal is. It's just one more setting. If you want to have all your files always available offline (as it is my case) you just tell the app to do so. You know, go to the OneDrive folder root, right-click, "Always keep on this device" for the whole folder...

The problem is it doesn’t work properly.

 

[0414562]

I moved on to other services (iCloud Drive works great!) and never looked back. Crazy how relevant DB was – and how hard they fell by bloating their offerings.

I keep hearing this "how hard they fell". You do realize Dropbox is doing just fine right? Still works much better than iCloud Drive. I'm not having syncing problems or data loss in Dropbox. Cant say the same for iCloud at the moment. I mean yeah maybe you and your buddies have switched. Doesn't mean they fell anywhere.

 

[0414562]

I hear about bloat but I only use the basic file syncing / sharing features. not the enterprise features they were pushing. Maybe the app is a little larger and slower but it hasn't been the worst offender for me. I still have a couple of apps that use DB-specific APIs for dif-syncing changes and they are not planning to switch to other providers. DB's syncing is still the fastest and most reliable. I think I'll continue to use it for some files, even now.

This. Still the best sync service of the majors. Not even close. OneDrive is a turd. iCloud is a turd. Google Drive isnt terrible but its still not Dropbox.

And they just removed some of the bloat with the Dropbox window thing that was in the client. Theyre back to concentrating on the stuff that matters.

 

[cmaier]

I keep hearing this "how hard they fell". You do realize Dropbox is doing just fine right? Still works much better than iCloud Drive. I'm not having syncing problems or data loss in Dropbox. Cant say the same for iCloud at the moment. I mean yeah maybe you and your buddies have switched. Doesn't mean they fell anywhere.

Their stock is about half its all time high. Seems like a fall.

 

[0414562]

Their stock is about half its all time high. Seems like a fall.

If stock price were the only indicator maybe you'd have a point. But in Feb of last year they reported all time high earnings of 2 billion. They had gone from 14 million to 15 million users year over year. Q3 of 2021 they had added another million users. This is not a failing company. Can you tell me why GameStop is $93 a share? By your measure they're a successful company because of their stock price. GameStop is a joke.

 

[cmaier]

If stock price were the only indicator maybe you'd have a point. But in Feb of last year they reported all time high earnings of 2 billion. They had gone from 14 million to 15 million users year over year. Q3 of 2021 they had added another million users. This is not a failing company. Can you tell me why GameStop is $93 a share? By your measure they're a successful company because of their stock price. GameStop is a joke.

You are playing straw man very well.

Now which of the things you say I said did I actually say?

 

[0414562]

You are playing straw man very well.

Now which of the things you say I said did I actually say?

Straw man? Did you actually have an argument? I just saw a ridiculous statement. I just provided the facts to back up my statement that they're doing just fine.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Many OneDrive users are outraged by the better experiences.

This is a limitation of the Apple File Provider API. Apple broke this for OneDrive and DropBox. Maybe this how the get people to use the bug free, superior iCloud drive 😵

 

[JKAussieSkater]

Why does Apple constantly remove support for kernel extensions and APIs?

It feels like any Apple product is perpetually bound to being in beta-testing.

 

[cmaier]

Why does Apple constantly remove support for kernel extensions and APIs?

It feels like any Apple product is perpetually bound to being in beta-testing.

Because kexts are horrible for security and system reliability. They’ve been phasing them out for years and developers have had a ton of notice.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

I wonder how many other products will be impacted. E.g. Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Lightroom Classic both have embedded cloud offerings.

 

[chucker23n1]

"Deprecates" just means they remove support and/or express disapproval.

"Deprecates" means "signal that this will be removed in the future".

It's not clear to me if the article is saying that 12.2 deprecates it and 12.3 will remove it, or (what the article seems to suggest) if 12.3 will deprecate it and 12.x or 13.x will remove it.

(edit)

The answer is apparently neither. Instead, it's been deprecated for a while, but Apple has granted an exemption via temporary entitlement, and is no longer willing to grant it in the future. So there's no technical change, but a procedural one.

 

[nealibob]

"Deprecates" means "signal that this will be removed in the future".

It's not clear to me if the article is saying that 12.2 deprecates it and 12.3 will remove it, or (what the article seems to suggest) if 12.3 will deprecate it and 12.x or 13.x will remove it.

(edit)

The answer is apparently neither. Instead, it's been deprecated for a while, but Apple has granted an exemption via temporary entitlement, and is no longer willing to grant it in the future. So there's no technical change, but a procedural one.

That explains why it's happening in a point release. It seemed like a pretty big change for a mid-year update otherwise.

 

[LordDeath]

I am confused.
I was looking forward to upgrading to Big Sur last year because it would allow Dropbox Smart Sync without the need for a kernel extension.
This is even confirmed here by Dropbox: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/filesystem-integration
It says:

"If you have macOS Big Sur 11 or later, you don't need to install the system extension to use Smart Sync."

Running

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

confirms this on my system still running 11.6.3. So what is precisely going away with 12.3? There is no 3rd party kernel extension from Dropbox in use anymore.

 

[svenmany]

Straw man? Did you actually have an argument? I just saw a ridiculous statement. I just provided the facts to back up my statement that they're doing just fine.

It's just two different definitions of "fall". You were saying they didn't fall because revenue and user base is up. @cmaier is saying they did fall because their stock price dropped. You're both right.

The original comment was that Dropbox fell because they introduced bloat into their product. No idea which kind of fall they were referring to.

 

[jdxcode]

No, deprecate is the correct word. Obviously both of the developers knew about it in advance and have made the necessary adjustments. "Break" would be if they didn't warn anyone, and you install the Beta and all of a sudden Dropbox or OneDrive doesn't work, and the developers have to scramble to fix it.

Deprecate means the functionality still exists but it shouldn't be used and is likely to be removed. It's definitely the wrong word for MacRumors to use here because if it was simply deprecated there wouldn't be a problem.

These were deprecated back in 10.15: https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/

 

[svenmany]

Deprecate means the functionality still exists but it shouldn't be used and is likely to be removed. It's definitely the wrong word for MacRumors to use here because if it was simply deprecated there wouldn't be a problem.

These were deprecated back in 10.15: https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/

You're quite right about the definition of deprecate. But, I took a look at the MacOS release notes. Apple is the guilty party in the misuse of the word deprecate. This site is just parroting them.

 

[usagora]

Deprecate means the functionality still exists but it shouldn't be used and is likely to be removed. It's definitely the wrong word for MacRumors to use here because if it was simply deprecated there wouldn't be a problem.

These were deprecated back in 10.15: https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions/

Actually, it's Apple's choice of words, not MR's. I guess Apple's own developers don't know what they're talking about then? Or perhaps the use of the term isn't as strict as you think. I think the main point here is that everyone knew ahead of time what this change would mean. To say they "broke" something implies they didn't realize what the change would mean until an issue was discovered.

macOS Monterey 12.3 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes.

developer.apple.com

 

[svenmany]

Actually, it's Apple's choice of words, not MR's. I guess Apple's own developers don't know what they're talking about then? Or perhaps the use of the term isn't as strict as you think. I think the main point here is that everyone knew ahead of time what this change would mean. To say they "broke" something implies they didn't realize what the change would mean until an issue was discovered.

I don't think Apple's developers are any different than any other developers. We all have a very specific definition of deprecation. We even have special keywords we add to our code to indicate something is deprecated. There would be no place to put the keyword if the code was gone 🙂. Deprecation is defined in the dictionary, with respect to software, in this exact way; it's a warning that the functionality will be phased out in the future.

You have a narrow view of "broke". There is a standard practice in software to classify certain intentional changes as "breaking changes". The understanding is that downstream code has to deal with it by changing their own code. OneDrive and Dropbox are downstream from Apple, and this change broke their code.

I really don't know who writes the release notes. Certainly it's not a developer. The word "Deprecations" should have been replaced with the phrase "Breaking Changes".

 

[usagora]

I don't think Apple's developers are any different than any other developers. We all have a very specific definition of deprecation. We even have special keywords we add to our code to indicate something is deprecated. There would be no place to put the keyword if the code was gone 🙂. Deprecation is defined in the dictionary, with respect to software, in this exact way; it's a warning that the functionality will be phased out in the future.

You have a narrow view of "broke". There is a standard practice in software to classify certain intentional changes as "breaking changes". The understanding is that downstream code has to deal with it by changing their own code. OneDrive and Dropbox are downstream from Apple, and this change broke their code.

I really don't know who writes the release notes. Certainly it's not a developer. The word "Deprecations" should have been replaced with the phrase "Breaking Changes".

Sorry, but I'm going with Apple's official release notes on DEVELOPER.apple.com over the opinions of forum members on this one. Obviously someone on Apple's developer teams writes the release notes. It woudln't make sense for them to let a non-developer employee (or even a developer not involved in the particular software in question) write the release notes, as they wouldn't be knowledgeable about the details. I'm not go back and forth on this any further, so I'll leave it at that.

 

[jdxcode]

Sorry, but I'm going with Apple's official release notes on DEVELOPER.apple.com over the opinions of forum members on this one. Obviously someone on Apple's developer teams writes the release notes. It woudln't make sense for them to let a non-developer employee (or even a developer not involved in the particular software in question) write the release notes, as they wouldn't be knowledgeable about the details. I'm not go back and forth on this any further, so I'll leave it at that.

I was a senior engineer at Dropbox when Apple deprecated this functionality in 2019: they made a mistake by putting the word "Deprecations" there. Also, engineers usually aren't the ones writing these things. That's for technical writers.

Apple is also known for having pretty poor documentation anyways. A lot of stuff is out of date, missing, or incorrect.

 

[Tagbert]

That explains why it's happening in a point release. It seemed like a pretty big change for a mid-year update otherwise.

Apple has been making changes and releasing features in point releases for a few years now. I think it is better if it reduces the pressure to ship-at-all-costs with the dot-zero release.

This particular change is not that large but it does have a small impact to a large number of customers of these sync providers. It doesn't sound like the apps will cease functioning without the fixes but the offline files feature will require manual intervention until the updated version is release.

 

[chucker23n1]

Apple has been making changes and releasing features in point releases for a few years now. I think it is better if it reduces the pressure to ship-at-all-costs with the dot-zero release.

Adding stuff in point releases or minor releases is fine; removing stuff is a bit questionable. Consider an admin who checks if your setup runs with 12.0, then is surprised to find that it doesn't with 12.3.

Actually, it's Apple's choice of words, not MR's. I guess Apple's own developers don't know what they're talking about then?

They've phrased it poorly.

Or perhaps the use of the term isn't as strict as you think.

It is.

 

[Ressayflex]

OneDrive literally just had an update a day or two ago that now appears to integrate with the File Providers API built into macOS. OneDrive now shows up under Locations in the Finder sidebar instead of as a folder under Favorites. I know Microsoft has been talking about updating OneDrive to support File Providers for a while (as opposed to the kernel extension that's being deprecated) so perhaps they're already starting to roll it out.

Still not M1 native though, but I haven't noticed any performance issues on my MBP.

you can already get the Apple Silicon version as preview, I have it installed on my MacBook Pro 16' M1, havnt had any issues. Is it safe to assume this version would work fine, or could it still rely on the kernel extensions?