My mid-2012 MBP (non-retina) is still humming along thanks to a few upgrades over the years (16GB of RAM, 1TB SSD), but now that I've skipped an entire form-factor cycle, it feels like it might finally be time for an upgrade this year. I was going to purchase one in the next week or two, but I'm curious if there's any merit to waiting for High Sierra to come out first. Usually with a new computer I manually migrate data to clear out the cruft, but years of working in IT has given me a cautious and superstitious approach to computers and it seems like moving data on an HFS+ disk to an APFS disk feels safer than HFS+ to HFS+ and then doing the in-place upgrade to APFS once High Sierra comes out. Perhaps it's just superstition, but part of me feels like upgrading a filesystem in-place may lend itself more to data becoming corrupt or files being lost. Am I crazy about this?
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Wait for APFS before purchase?
- Thread starter bvp663
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Why don’t you just format it and do a clean install when High Sierra comes out? That way you can use it now, and later when you do your format it’ll be just as fresh as if you just bought it.
Just keep an external backup before updating to High Sierra.....I'm not seeing the concern here honestly.
No the benefits of a faster computer for a few months far outweigh any perceived upgrade issues (I have just online upgraded without changing a thing for years no worries) Just make sure you have a good copy of the system on a back up drive and you should be all good.
Not really - if your concern has to do with reliability, continuing to use HFS+ for a little while isn't a bad call. I plan on using HFS+ for at least a year after APFS is formally released. APFS looks pretty awesome, but like any new release I expect it to take a little while to reach and then exceed the reliability of what it replaces. That's not a shot against Apple - rather, I've just observed this with most software in general. I'm glad Apple is replacing HFS+ - but HFS+ as of 2017 can still easily and reliably meet my needs, so I can wait a little while before switching my main machines to APFS should any issues arise.
Now is a good time to buy. The Kaby Lake MBPs have good improvements over the Skylake versions, and macOS Sierra is running well. When Sierra was first released, it has A LOT of annoyances. Almost all have been resolved. Waiting for High Sierra to be released means you may be stuck with an OS with many of those early-release annoyances and Apple may not give you the option of reverting to the stable final release of the previous OS.
Also, if you do wait for APFS to come from the factory, by then you will probably also be asking yourself whether you should wait for the next MBP revision with the Coffee Lake or Canon Lake or Lake Superior CPU, resulting in an even longer of cycle of waiting all while you could be achieving better productivity by purchasing now.
Now is a good time to buy. The Kaby Lake MBPs have good improvements over the Skylake versions, and macOS Sierra is running well. When Sierra was first released, it has A LOT of annoyances. Almost all have been resolved. Waiting for High Sierra to be released means you may be stuck with an OS with many of those early-release annoyances and Apple may not give you the option of reverting to the stable final release of the previous OS.
Also, if you do wait for APFS to come from the factory, by then you will probably also be asking yourself whether you should wait for the next MBP revision with the Coffee Lake or Canon Lake or Lake Superior CPU, resulting in an even longer of cycle of waiting all while you could be achieving better productivity by purchasing now.
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