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skirmisser

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 2, 2012
86
8
Anyone installed the latest High Sierra betas on the 2012 retina MacBook Pro? How does it compared to Sierra 10.12.6?
 
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I have 10.13 Beta (17A330h) installed on an Early 2013 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 16GB, 512SSD, GeForce GT650M 1GB and Intel HD Graphics 4000 and APFS File System. I honestly can't really compare it to Sierra, as the MacBook was not in service for a good while, and essentially had no use when Sierra was the mainstream version of OS X. I will say that it is not as stable as it was previously, mainly with El Capitan, and that is primarily with VMware Fusion Professional 8.5.8. I have not had a chance to really evaluate battery life, but one thing I did notice pretty soon off the bat was that the GPU performance has improved or has been tuned to appear to have improved. One of the most common complaints regarding the early MacBook Pros with Retina Display was the jerkiness of on screen animation (dock animation, web page scrolling, etc.) but I can honestly say in that regard High Sierra is noticeably improved the experience when it comes to a smooth interface. It's as if Apple has really spent some time on some of these older machines to make them very usable once again. I am not sure if it is a driver improvement initiative or perhaps capping the GPU FPS so it will not reach a point where it does struggle with redrawing animations, etc. I will be installing the current version in just a moment as it has downloaded in the background...

Not to run this in the ground, but I will repeat the same thing that High Sierra and other's have posted before installed. Make sure you have a fresh, current Time Machine backup of your computer before you install! High Sierra is not as stable Sierra from any of my usage, but I do use it for day-to-day computing and get by fine. I do experience an application crash from time to time, but don't recall seeing an OS X crash. Always have a good Time Machine backup before installing.

Also, if you ever use Telnet (I don't know many Net Admins that don't for troubleshooting SMTP, HTTP, among many others) copy it out /usr/bin and place it somewhere safe. After the upgrade, place it back to /usr/bin. Otherwise, the High Sierra installer removes it from your system.
 
I am still facing random WindowServer crashes, GPU crashes up to complete system crashes with the GeForce GT650m 1GB on a mid 2012 MPBr especially using Chrome seems to aggravate this.

In apple's developer forums people report the same issues for this GPU series with High Sierra beta, at least one person also confirmed here in a WindowServer related thread for a GT670m of the same GPU generation.

Rather subjective I've seen some improvements during the last betas, but still happening way too often for me.
 
I have 10.13 Beta (17A330h) installed on an Early 2013 15" MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 16GB, 512SSD, GeForce GT650M 1GB and Intel HD Graphics 4000 and APFS File System. I honestly can't really compare it to Sierra, as the MacBook was not in service for a good while, and essentially had no use when Sierra was the mainstream version of OS X. I will say that it is not as stable as it was previously, mainly with El Capitan, and that is primarily with VMware Fusion Professional 8.5.8. I have not had a chance to really evaluate battery life, but one thing I did notice pretty soon off the bat was that the GPU performance has improved or has been tuned to appear to have improved. One of the most common complaints regarding the early MacBook Pros with Retina Display was the jerkiness of on screen animation (dock animation, web page scrolling, etc.) but I can honestly say in that regard High Sierra is noticeably improved the experience when it comes to a smooth interface. It's as if Apple has really spent some time on some of these older machines to make them very usable once again. I am not sure if it is a driver improvement initiative or perhaps capping the GPU FPS so it will not reach a point where it does struggle with redrawing animations, etc. I will be installing the current version in just a moment as it has downloaded in the background...

Not to run this in the ground, but I will repeat the same thing that High Sierra and other's have posted before installed. Make sure you have a fresh, current Time Machine backup of your computer before you install! High Sierra is not as stable Sierra from any of my usage, but I do use it for day-to-day computing and get by fine. I do experience an application crash from time to time, but don't recall seeing an OS X crash. Always have a good Time Machine backup before installing.

Also, if you ever use Telnet (I don't know many Net Admins that don't for troubleshooting SMTP, HTTP, among many others) copy it out /usr/bin and place it somewhere safe. After the upgrade, place it back to /usr/bin. Otherwise, the High Sierra installer removes it from your system.
17A330h is quite an old beta. It came out a month ago, and is beta 5.

The current beta is beta 9, which IMO is very good, even with my hacked install on a 2009 13" MacBook Pro. I can't comment on the 2012 models though, and I'm using HFS+, not APFS.
 
OP:

If you are still using (low) Sierra and haven't yet installed High Sierra... we are so close to the "final release"... that if you've waited this long, it might be wise to await the final public release and then experiment with that...
 
17A330h is quite an old beta. It came out a month ago, and is beta 5.

The current beta is beta 9, which IMO is very good, even with my hacked install on a 2009 13" MacBook Pro. I can't comment on the 2012 models though, and I'm using HFS+, not APFS.

The beta updates have been rather erratic and unpredictable, meaning I am notified about an update (i.e. beta 8) and it downloads and appears to install on the reboot, but when restarted the same update appears as an update. When an install is attempted again, it goes through the process again and finally the update disappears. There is clearly an issue with the updates this machine has had. As stated earlier, it was not in service for a while, and an Internet Recovery was performed, and placed it back to 10.8.5, in which it was upgraded to 10.12 and then 10.13. With that said, I know some of these issues have occurred more than likely the upgrade patch taken compounded by the fact it is beta software. I intend on erasing the SSD and will install OS X using the current version on the clean drive.
 
I installed it on my 2012 rMBP when public beta... 8, I think, came out. The OS animations are significantly better in High Sierra than they were in Sierra. I have the downloads folder pop out in the grid, which always stuttered to animate in Sierra. That stutter is gone. Similar story for other animations and Safari scrolling. (Incidentally, going from other browser to Safari is a crazy experience. It's so much more fluid.)

Otherwise, everything seems exactly the same to me.
 
I had it on mine prior to the battery replacement program swap and it was working just fine for me... I did have an issue with one of the updates failing and having to work around that, but got it cleared up again and working fine
 
Was having frequent crashes as well until beta 7. Wouldn't say the current beta is ready for a final release, but definitely usable now.
HighSierra-rMBP2012.png

Also using Apple File System, works just fine.
 
I also have a 2013 MacBook Pro with Nvidia 650m. I'd like to echo the extreme Windowserver problems, especially in Chrome. I often get random blocks of webpages or videos rendering strobing blocks of garbage like this GIF from the Ars review:

Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif


Coming from El Capitan directly, it is the worst upgrade I've ever made. To counter what others have said, besides the horrible constant graphics errors, the overall framerate of the OS seems much choppier for me than it was in 10.11.

I wish I could easily downgrade.
[doublepost=1506503227][/doublepost]I also have a 2013 MacBook Pro with Nvidia 650m. I'd like to echo the extreme Windowserver problems, especially in Chrome. I often get random blocks of webpages or videos rendering strobing blocks of garbage like this GIF from the Ars review:

Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif


Coming from El Capitan directly, it is the worst upgrade I've ever made. To counter what others have said, besides the horrible constant graphics errors, the overall framerate of the OS seems much choppier for me than it was in 10.11.

I wish I could easily downgrade.
 
I can't install it at all - I get the 'no entry' sign on the first reboot during install. Guess I will have to go the the Apple Store if I want to install. But no biggy I am pretty happy on Sierra.

edit: OK well I just did a PRAM reset and also removed Google Drive from start up and I am happily on High Sierra. Not sure which one did the trick.
 
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