And the new file system came from the need for an improved file system for the iOS devices.
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Intel Expecting Apple to Transition to Custom ARM-Based Chips Starting in 2020
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I highly doubt that. FCPX and LPX are some of the best software around. I am not a fan of the "renting" Premiere Pro. Davinci is nice, but I prefer FCPX. LPX and Garageband beat the competition BY FAR in my opinion. As someone that just dabbles in this software, I find it far better than something like FL Studio. Aperature must not have sold that well since they dropped it. Nothing really beats out Lightroom.
Do you have a link for that? APFS rolled out to all Apple devices close to the same time, and it was to replace an aging file system. APFS is supposed to be more SSD friendly and less prone to error. HFS+ was first used on MacOS 8.1!
- there is no checksums for user data (like ZFS, Btrfs, etc.). If Apple was really interested in the Mac for professional use, they probably would have integrated checksums für user data.
- optimized for solid-state drives (SSDs) is an excuse for not considering hard drives during development. Macs with Spinnig rust are still being sold for a lot of money. In addition, hard drives are better (and cheaper) for storing a lot of data (server or external drives). You can build a file system that is suitable for SSDs and still runs well on classic hard drives. This is not the case with APFS. I am not an expert but I have read statements that show this quite clearly.
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I don‘t have a link, but i recall reading at the time that they decided they needed a new file System for ios because spinning disk-style made no sense. And didn’t they even roll it out first for iphones?
Some companies don’t need competition. For the iPod, no one came out with anything CLOSE to what Apple was doing. Yet Apple continued to innovate with their TOP seller, the iPod mini. They COULD have left it alone until someone came close, but they didn’t.
When a company doesn’t innovate, it’s not because no one is driving them to, it’s because at their core, they’re not driven to innovate.
And the number of ”true computer users” as a percentage of Apple’s total users are shrinking every year.
I followed the iWork apps VERY closely back in the day. I think “major updates every 6-8 weeks“ is a rose colored glasses “everything was better in the past” kind of view.
They did. Because if it was successful rolling out to millions upon millions of different iOS devices, they knew it was a successful strategy.
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From what I can see, iOS and MacOS supported it in the same year. It would make more sense for iOS to adopt first, since there are is need to support third party drives like with MacOS.
Yeah, about half a year earlier.
In spring, they used iOS 10.2 for test rollouts (the installer would convert the FS to APFS, check integrity, then revert to HFS+), then 10.3 for the final rollout. That same fall, 10.13 included it.
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Well, APFS was designed with flash storage in mind (and has attributes that make it a poor fit for spinning disks), and it also shipped on iOS first (by about half a year). But other than that, they clearly had the Mac in mind as well — it has various Mac-specific features.
1TB (5400-rpm) hard drive
iMac - iMac Technical Specifications
See all the technical specifications for iMac with the M4 chip and 24-inch display.
www.apple.com
1TB (5400-rpm) hard drive
iMac - iMac Technical Specifications
See all the technical specifications for iMac with the M4 chip and 24-inch display.www.apple.com
Your point?
If Macs and customers were properly considered, why does APFS run so poorly on hard drives that are still sold?
I can't find the link anymore. Apparently you can build a filesystem that is designed for SSD and still runs very well on spinning rust. Apple just hasn't taken it into consideration.
And because check sum (user data) does not work, something like self-healing is not possible. Of course you need at least two disks for this (e.g. Btrfs Raid1 or ZFS Mirror). [edit: or you have to sacrifice storage space on a single disk]
I can't find the link anymore. Apparently you can build a filesystem that is designed for SSD and still runs very well on spinning rust. Apple just hasn't taken it into consideration.
And because check sum (user data) does not work, something like self-healing is not possible. Of course you need at least two disks for this (e.g. Btrfs Raid1 or ZFS Mirror). [edit: or you have to sacrifice storage space on a single disk]
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For sure APFS is not the greatest file system for spinning drives. Given that spinning drives on Macs will soon be a memory, probably not the end of the world. (I have two dozen spinning drives in my synology NAS’s - I am all in favor of spinning drives - but they are increasingly rare in apple’s products, and likely won’t be in any of them when the refresh iMac.)
Hard drives are clearly disappearing from Apple's product line.
Nevertheless very customer unfriendly decision:
- they still sell Macs with spinning rust
- there are customers who have bought (or had to buy) a Mac with hard drive in the past. Macs are not cheap.
As external storage (even as internal storage in the Mac Pro) hard drives still make sense. Apple is just not interested in that. Apple especially considers the scenario with only one SSD or flash memory. Just like the iPhone.
I recall there being a minor release or three of iOS, where they converted the file system to APFS on the fly (leaving all the data and filesystem structure of HFS+ in place and writing new blocks for the APFS structure, pointing at all the same data), just to ensure they could - on millions of different phones - then the APFS blocks were recycled back onto the free list before the phone finished the upgrade. Then, when they rolled it out for real, they could say, “oh, BTW, you’re all running a new filesystem this morning” without there being major breakage (kind of an ingenious plan). And yeah, I recall it being iOS first, then macOS.
Yep, that’s exactly how I remember it. It caused some very slow OS updates for awhile and none of us knew why
Realize that there is a checksum on user data at the physical level:
Hard drives store a small amount of extra data for each sector. This is how drives are able to detect read errors. It is why failing drives get sloooow. They keep trying to read a sector over and over until they get a good copy. I think some drives even have a little bit of error correcting coding that's good enough to deal with a small bad spot.
SSD's store a massive amount of error correcting data with each sector. The nature of the technology is that you should expect bad cells throughout even a brand new SSD. The ECC makes them a viable data storage medium.
So - file system level checksums merely protect the data as it is sent over SATA or PCIe links, and while it sits in RAM buffers.
How do you run a scrub?
For example, what ZFS does on SSDs, is everything unnecessary?
"As data ages you might occasionally want to check for bit rot. Likely fsck_apfs can accomplish this; as noted though there’s no data redundancy and no checksums for user data, so scrub would only help to find problems and likely wouldn’t help to correct them."
For example, what ZFS does on SSDs, is everything unnecessary?
"As data ages you might occasionally want to check for bit rot. Likely fsck_apfs can accomplish this; as noted though there’s no data redundancy and no checksums for user data, so scrub would only help to find problems and likely wouldn’t help to correct them."
Read (or try) every block. If the read operation returns an error, you've now found a bad block. Whether you can fix it or not then depends on what redundancy you have. You could do the block reading at the file level or the block device level.
This doesn't help the situation where a block on your drive is bad, but the drive controller can use the block's ECC to correct it. Checking a drive's SMART status will let you know that the drive is developing problems.
As was mentioned in the comments to the blog, Apple would better serve the public by having ECC RAM - both main system memory and the RAM in the drive controller. Also, some sort of error checking for NVME and SATA data transfers.
That's exactly what I'm doing. Already bought a workstation and sold my MBP in anticipation of this, depending on how the event goes I might go directly to the store and buy an Android phone. This is just a terrible idea and I for the life of me cannot understand why.
#1 The timing is off, Intel has finally gotten their act together with Cooperlake and Tigerlake and will have a very impactful launch in Q4 when the first ARM Mac is to be released.
#2 Manufacturing isn't improving. This isn't just a problem with Intel but everyone and at some point optimizations will be all that remains, RISC or CISC withstanding.
#3 Compatibility especially with network and virtual machine stacks are becoming so much more important. Going ARM will relegate Apple to just a "toy" and nothing more.
#4 Lastly Intel isn't stupid despite what people claim. They are quite good at what they do and are equally capable as Apple's engineers. They simply make a different product you cant compare CISC to RISC. Plus who's to say that with the introduction of Big-Little designs being integrated into Amberlake that they could produce a MCP that includes a mix of CISC and RISC chips equal to or better than Apple? Just stupid all the way around. Unless Apple has massive massively better emulation stack than Microsoft they will be relegated to nothing more than a fashion accessory.
Maybe that's what they want? I know that the majority of the family will stay on Apple but that's simply because their devices are exactly that; "Toys". They watch Youtube, do some banking, websites nothing that an iPad of today couldn't handle. I on the other-hand use mine for work in ways they never would so I guess it could work. Perhaps my anger at Apple is more a factor of how terrible I know Microsoft is and wish Apple's challenge to X86 would break the monopoly. What a shame.
We'll see what happens but if it goes down like I suspect it will my wife's MBP is going up on Gazelle, I'm getting an Android phone and she's getting a iPad Pro replacement as an early birthday gift. Glad I bought a desktop PC for RTX voice when I did!
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#2 is nonsense. Manufacturing is always improving.
#3 is nonsense - 99% of the computer-buying population doesn’t care about virtual machine stacks
#4 is nonsense. Intel is stupid. They are not as good as Apple’s engineers. You can compare CISC to RISC. And I’m to say they can’t - the “little” cores your propose would still have to run x86, and x86 is inherently CISC.
This kind of hubris is the exact kind of thing that is going to sink Apple for good. You have no idea what you're asking for but because you shout the loudest you're going to get your way. I'm sure you'll be the first in line to complain when it goes badly (it will).
#2 is nonsense? Manufacturing ISN'T improving that's where the call for Moore's Law being dead comes from. Why does RISC perform better? REDUCED-INSTRUCTION-SET-COMPUTING. VS. Complete. What about "reduced" do you not grasp? The requirements for Intel to produce a processor is greater both in "instructions" and die-space. It's easy to build a processor that lacks 32bit support and less than half the instructions that Intel uses especially AVX512. With those restraints removed Intel can and would be able to produce a multi-stacked foveros based chip. I don't see Apple doing this do you?
#3 That is true but the big money in data-centers does especially with the rise of SDN. And those of us who work in that industry (me) absolutely needs to be trained and have expert ability using them. If I can't do that on a Mac it's DOA for me.
#4 I really think you do not understand how far ahead Intel is on a number of fronts. SSDs? You're welcome; and just about every modern instruction set too. This notion of "intel is stupid" comes from their foveros design and their desire to reduce not just the size of each transister but also the density. This is why people often say that Intel @ 10nm is equal to TSMC at 5nm because of the density which also matters.
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I designed powerpcs, sparcs, and even x86-64s. I have a PhD in electrical engineering with a concentration in solid state physics. I competed with Intel, successfully, for years. I have been hearing that we were at the end of Moore’s Law for years - since 1992, in fact. Yet everyone other than intel seems to be doing fine.
The people who design SSDs at intel are not the same as the people who design cpus. So let me be more clear: intel’s cpu designers are stupid.
Better?
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Sorry, to me this sounds like an adventure or better Apple advertising.
Fact is that this important feature is missing, which modern file systems like ZFS have. This shows to me that in the development of APFS, more interest was focused on iOS devices (and maybe MacBooks etc.). This was also my starting point.