Seriously, is it really too much to ask to bring a News app to macOS? I've emailed Apple about this multiple times in the past 2 years. I spend way more time on my MacBook than I do on my iPhone.
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What's New in macOS High Sierra: APFS, Metal 2, Photos Improvements, Safari Autoplay Blocking and More
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Seriously, is it really too much to ask to bring a News app to macOS? I've emailed Apple about this multiple times in the past 2 years. I spend way more time on my MacBook than I do on my iPhone.
That's what I thought when the name was announced.
This looks like exactly the update that is needed at this time. A solid system improvement without all the spangly stuff.
I'm loving the idea of APFS. This has far reaching benefits that go way beyond the more superficial UI improvements that most people focus on.
I'm loving the idea of APFS. This has far reaching benefits that go way beyond the more superficial UI improvements that most people focus on.
I think it should be called MacOS 10.12-1/2 not 10.13. Not really any huge "must-have" updates. Either the technology is plateauing or I'd hate to reiterate the belief that Apple can't innovate like they used to. I think Yosemite was the last OS to have a must have feature for me. At least they could have optimized the OS to perform better (for example, Sierra takes 4-5 times to boot than Windows 10 on the same hardware). Remember how lean Snow Leopard was?
At least there is Metal 2 which indicates they're FINALLY taking gamers seriously. But will they ever get close to DX11 for speed? I hope so. It would save me a ton of money in SSD not have to dual-boot Windows 10 for an occasional gaming session.
10.3 Panther - Expose, Fast User Switching, horizontal lines replaced by brushed aluminum
10.4 Tiger - Spotlight, Dashboard
10.5 Leopard - Spaces, Front Row, Photo Booth, glass dock, translucent menu bar
10.6 Snow Leopard - 100% Intel, Streamlined for Speed, app store and software updates
10.7 Lion - Launchpad, Mission Control, auto-hiding scrollbars, Autosave in Apps, iCloud, Airdrop
10.8 Mountain Lion - Notes, Reminder (now separate form Mail and Calendar), Notification Centre, Messages, Dictation, Game Centre, Air Play, Power Nap, iCal and iMessage become Calendar and Messages
10.9 Mavericks - Maps, battery life, tabbed Finder, iBooks, keychain password management, Tags, Compressed Memory, Gatekeeper security (for downloaded apps) *required for latest version of garageband, iMovie, final cut, visually loses the realistic interfaces
10.10 Yosemite - Bluetooth iOS 8 to text (Handoff), new transparent look, iCloud drive
10.11 El Capitan - Metal for games, cursor locator, split view, menu autohide, new spotlight
10.12 Sierra - Siri integration, unlock w/ apple watch, clipboard with handoff, online apple pay, APFS (apple file system)
At least there is Metal 2 which indicates they're FINALLY taking gamers seriously. But will they ever get close to DX11 for speed? I hope so. It would save me a ton of money in SSD not have to dual-boot Windows 10 for an occasional gaming session.
10.3 Panther - Expose, Fast User Switching, horizontal lines replaced by brushed aluminum
10.4 Tiger - Spotlight, Dashboard
10.5 Leopard - Spaces, Front Row, Photo Booth, glass dock, translucent menu bar
10.6 Snow Leopard - 100% Intel, Streamlined for Speed, app store and software updates
10.7 Lion - Launchpad, Mission Control, auto-hiding scrollbars, Autosave in Apps, iCloud, Airdrop
10.8 Mountain Lion - Notes, Reminder (now separate form Mail and Calendar), Notification Centre, Messages, Dictation, Game Centre, Air Play, Power Nap, iCal and iMessage become Calendar and Messages
10.9 Mavericks - Maps, battery life, tabbed Finder, iBooks, keychain password management, Tags, Compressed Memory, Gatekeeper security (for downloaded apps) *required for latest version of garageband, iMovie, final cut, visually loses the realistic interfaces
10.10 Yosemite - Bluetooth iOS 8 to text (Handoff), new transparent look, iCloud drive
10.11 El Capitan - Metal for games, cursor locator, split view, menu autohide, new spotlight
10.12 Sierra - Siri integration, unlock w/ apple watch, clipboard with handoff, online apple pay, APFS (apple file system)
Tiger was the one that got me off Windows XP. That system-wide search was the bee's knees. Everything else seemed incremental. Meanwhile, Windows kept radically changing (Vista, 7, 8, 10) but it's still clunky as ever, even if it supports cooler hardware like the Surface Book/Studio/Dell XPS.
I guess they did something similar to Ext3 to BTRFS: the new filesystem metadata is created in the old file system free space and points to the original data blocks without the need of duplicating or re-arranging them.
ZFS can't go into a mobile device, or a watch, tho.I wish APFS was a good enough replacement for ZFS, and I could go with something more integrated with the system for everything. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. ZFS is still the best. Here's hoping for future improvements!
EDIT: Well, unless encryption is important enough to you to forego most of the ZFS feature set.
And we already know how Oracle is about other companies adopting "their" features (google).
I sold mine under the belief that macOS Sierra would be the last supported OS. I could of gotten an extra year...
Most of the questions, if not all, are answered in the AFPS video Apple posted from WWDC. Its quite technical, but it explains a lot. All good stuff. The only thing that gets converted is the boot volume. Anything else you have to do yourself.
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I wish APFS was a good enough replacement for ZFS, and I could go with something more integrated with the system for everything. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. ZFS is still the best. Here's hoping for future improvements!
EDIT: Well, unless encryption is important enough to you to forego most of the ZFS feature set.
My understanding is that APFS is designed with SSDs in mind. ZFS was not. Its a great file system for servers and rotating hard drives, but there are quite a few design issues with it and SSDs. It'll work just fine on SSDs, but its not optimized for it.
The best feature they could add would be to completely delete Siri from the computer (ie. not just disable it).
This is answered by the following WWDC session if you want to really know how they did it in iOS at least (the same process applies for the Mac): https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/715/
Essentially, it doesn't touch your data at all. All the migrator has to do is write the APFS metadata blocks in the hard drive, that points to the same file data on disk, and once that's done erase all existing HFS+ metadata. Your files and folders are not touched in that process at all.
Pretty cool how they did that actually, they did trial turns in iOS 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 and finally did the real conversion for all devices in iOS 10.3
I'm disappointed that High Sierra seems to have no improvements to the performance of Time Machine. I've whined ad infinitum here about how slow this tool is. Right now, I'm in the middle of a 9.5 GB backup that TM says will take 18 hours. That is more than just plainly ridiculous. This isn't a huge new release that's being backup up. It's just a normal incremental backup. 18 hours? I mean, come on. Sure, maybe my mid-2012 rMBP having 11n wifi is having an impact. But there's no reason why a backup takes this long. At least there needs to be some kind of checkpoint built into it so that if the wifi connection is lost, like when I put the system to sleep, backup progress isn't lost and it can pick up where it left off the next time wifi comes up, and I don't have to start over. I like the functionality of TM, but I'm at the point where I want to find a different tool that actually works. As I've said before, my Yoga takes 18 minutes to backup. That's reasonable. 18 hours is STUPID. Oh, sorry, I just checked up on how the backup is going, and the estimated time is now up to 19 hours.
Come on, Apple, put a good backup tool into this product. This one is so unusable that I'll NEVER be able to take a full backup. That is irresponsible. Tim, you listening?
Come on, Apple, put a good backup tool into this product. This one is so unusable that I'll NEVER be able to take a full backup. That is irresponsible. Tim, you listening?
I wish APFS was a good enough replacement for ZFS, and I could go with something more integrated with the system for everything. Unfortunately, it doesn't come close. ZFS is still the best. Here's hoping for future improvements!
EDIT: Well, unless encryption is important enough to you to forego most of the ZFS feature set.
ZFS is meaningless in the context of Apple devices, where less than 1% has ECC memory and more than one hard disk.
ZFS is for servers, where 100% has ECC memory.
Also, as Apple said, their SSDs have ECC memory and do wear leveling, error correction, etc. in order that you don't need it and also they aren't obviously susceptible of mechanical damage.
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Based on what they did for iOS/tvOS:
File data is in the same format, metadata / directories are different. So it translates all the metadata, then changes the first block of the drive to point to the new metadata / directories , then deletes the old metadata/directories.
If anything fails, it aborts before it sets the first block, leaving none of the data on the drive modified.
For iOS, they actually did test upgrades during the 10.x OS updates, throwing away the APFS conversion at the end. So if there was an error on a volume, they could ask the user to send them more info/telemetry.
External drives aren't auto-updated, only the boot drive. You can convert your drives manually in disk utility.
I don't think they have announced what they will do for time capsule/external time machine. There are actually many different options for time machine volumes, including sparse disk bundles if you are doing a time machine backup to a FAT32 formatted disk.
They talked at WWDC on mobile time machine, the feature where backups are made locally on a laptop so you still have time machine functionality and hourly data snapshots while not plugged into the time machine drive. Since it can rely on the drive being APFS, it is greatly simplified - it just makes a drive snapshot once an hour.
Simple fact: Your data is only useful if it is correct. Do you care about the photos of your kids if they are just rainbows of JPEG compression artifacts? Do you care about your music library if it is loaded with pops from bit flips? Are your spreadsheets useful if what you read back off disk has different numbers or unreadable numbers?
No. It is useless.
Not treating data integrity as the first and most important goal of the file system is borderline criminal from an engineering standpoint. It doesn't matter if it's fast, it doesn't matter if it's secure... if the data is wrong it just doesn't matter. I have heard rumblings that Apple did not include data integrity because they believe their hardware will not acquire errors. That is the height of hubris, things always break in unexpected ways, and we have untold examples of this spanning decades. To believe otherwise is so folly that people who believe that should probably be fired.
It is an embarrassment that APFS does not provide data integrity from day one. Being better than HFS+ is not enough. A modern file system must take responsibility for the vast amount of important data its users have.
No. It is useless.
Not treating data integrity as the first and most important goal of the file system is borderline criminal from an engineering standpoint. It doesn't matter if it's fast, it doesn't matter if it's secure... if the data is wrong it just doesn't matter. I have heard rumblings that Apple did not include data integrity because they believe their hardware will not acquire errors. That is the height of hubris, things always break in unexpected ways, and we have untold examples of this spanning decades. To believe otherwise is so folly that people who believe that should probably be fired.
It is an embarrassment that APFS does not provide data integrity from day one. Being better than HFS+ is not enough. A modern file system must take responsibility for the vast amount of important data its users have.
I don't see how this isn't marketing nonsense. For some time now it seems that Apple has been refining their custom SSD firmware. There are most likely optimizations they can take advantage of between APFS and Apple-shipped SSDs. However, to put credence into the idea that APFS is "designed for SSDs" in some way that makes it better than ZFS is a serious long shot. I'd need to see some very compelling proof before I'd believe that. And even then it wouldn't matter because it makes no difference how fast your file system is if you don't know whether or not your data is correct.
Entirely incorrect. ZFS is completely meaningful in all situations. If your data is wrong it simply doesn't matter. ECC memory allows you to be pretty sure that what came out of memory was correct. There are many other points on the chain where failures can accumulate. Maybe there are issues with the platform controller firmware, or some electrical issue, or storage controller issues. ECC is good, ALL computers should use ECC today. I won't build another computer without ECC ever again. But ZFS and other file systems with data integrity (ReFS, BTRFS) are a critical step towards understanding whether or not you are storing garage.
Hmm. I'm using/testing High Sierra DP1 and I have to say that I am not that impressed.
1.) The changes to Photos, Safari... man, these are just applications.
2.) Siri voices... that could be done with a Sierra upgrade.
3.) APFS... was there but not bootable (without tricks).
4.) Metal2... IMHO is this one of the two real improvements.
5.) HEVC... the other real improvement, but why on earth no AV1?
All welcome changes/improvements, but no real new innovative features.
Note: Apple said to open source APFS but they have yet, after over a year, to do so.
1.) The changes to Photos, Safari... man, these are just applications.
2.) Siri voices... that could be done with a Sierra upgrade.
3.) APFS... was there but not bootable (without tricks).
4.) Metal2... IMHO is this one of the two real improvements.
5.) HEVC... the other real improvement, but why on earth no AV1?
All welcome changes/improvements, but no real new innovative features.
Note: Apple said to open source APFS but they have yet, after over a year, to do so.
File a radar. That's the only way stuff can be reported. They do read them and act on them. Google it.
[doublepost=1497670359][/doublepost]I like refinement updates. Personally I worry when they try to get too "innovative". MacOS is already brilliant.