What's New in macOS High Sierra: APFS, Metal 2, Photos Improvements, Safari Autoplay Blocking and More

[cgsnipinva]

I am in the minority here, but I feel like Apple has kind of skipped the last couple macOS updates. I get there is a lot of changes going on under the hood, but to a user like (again, minority, not much intensive work) me, it just seems very bland lately. I decided to retire macOS and use iOS only moving forward. Maybe with the changes instituted the last couple years, there are larger changes coming in the future.

I would say they are more than refinements - they are substantive under the hood improvements to enhance speed, stability and security. There have also been a series of updates to key applications including Notes, Photos, and iWork.

There is only so much you can do with the UI on a desktop. Personally - and this is only my opinion - MacOS is a great refined desktop/laptop/workstation OS. I am not a big fan of wholesale user interface changes too often.

Windows 10 has not changed a whole lot and no need to.

 

[Digital Dude]

I've been on the Apple beta program since the very beginning, and boy did I learn my lesson with High Sierra. This beta is a complete slug on my first gen 12-inch MacBook, and I'll have to wipe the entire system or buy a new Mac. Then again, the 12-inch MB was also a mistake, so I guess I'm on a roll.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

I hope that once the migration to APFS is complete, Disk Utility will still support HFS for a while.

Many of us will have HFS volumes and older external disks to deal with.

I will convert the internal drives in my Macs to APFS because both are SSD and I want to take advantage of native encryption.

But I have an external Time Machine drive and a media storage drive that are ~7 TB. Granted that is not much compared to what some Mac users have, but I'm just worried that converting large drives could be risky and time-consuming.

The bolded parts should give you a good idea of what is happening. The APFS upgrade happens on the boot drive only, all other drives are left as is. Disk Utility still recognizes both.

Understand, that the APFS is not feature complete -- just better than what is available now for SSD drives.

Compatibility

Can I use Apple File System with my existing hard disk drive?

Yes. Apple File System is optimized for Flash/SSD storage, but can also be used with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external, direct-attached storage.

Can I reshare APFS-formatted volumes using a network file-sharing protocol?

Yes, you can share APFS-formatted volumes using the SMB or NFS network file-sharing protocol.

You cannot share APFS-formatted volumes using AFP. The AFP protocol is deprecated.

Can I use my third-party disk utilities with an APFS-formatted hard disk?

Existing third-party utilities may need to be updated to support Apple File System. Consult the utility's documentation, or contact the vendor for compatibility information.

Can I boot macOS 10.13 from an APFS-formatted hard disk?

Yes. macOS 10.13 supports Apple File System for both bootable and data volumes.

Upgrading
How do I upgrade to Apple File System?

The macOS 10.13 installer offers nondestructive in-place upgrades from HFS+ to APFS for bootable volumes. You can use Disk Utility to convert external volumes from HFS+ to APFS format.

If I convert a volume to APFS, can I later revert to HFS+?

You can use Disk Utility to erase an APFS-formatted volume and reformat as HFS+. However, your data will not be preserved when you reformat the volume as HFS+.

 

[DNichter]

I would say they are more than refinements - they are substantive under the hood improvements to enhance speed, stability and security. There have also been a series of updates to key applications including Notes, Photos, and iWork.

There is only so much you can do with the UI on a desktop. Personally - and this is only my opinion - MacOS is a great refined desktop/laptop/workstation OS. I am not a big fan of wholesale user interface changes too often.

Windows 10 has not changed a whole lot and no need to.

Yea I completely see your point and I am sure macOS works very well for a large number of people. I guess I just was hoping for something a little more substantial in my eyes. I guess it will remain as is for the foreseeable future until they make changes to how a desktop environment operates.

 

[tipoo]

Looking forward to Metal 2 benchmarks. OpenCL was still faster than Metal 1 on most real software.

 

[Nugget]

I've been on the Apple beta program since the very beginning, and boy did I learn my lesson with High Sierra. This beta is a complete slug on my first gen 12-inch MacBook

You appear to be confused. There is no High Sierra Beta. As a long-standing member of the Apple beta problem I am sort of amazed that you are unaware of this. The beta is "coming soon."

Did you somehow get your hands on the developer preview DP1? It's not intended or expected to be stable or performant, as is the nature of first release developer previews. It's certainly not something Apple intended for you to install on your only computer.

 

[huperniketes]

I still think there's an issue with TM. There is no way it should take now 12 hours for this little amount of data.

I've had similar experiences, too. Sometimes it was due to Spotlight running on the drive I used for my TM backup of the drive being backed up. Other times, just because TM is finicky. So I can sympathize, because no backup utility should take that long.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

You appear to be confused. There is no High Sierra Beta. As a long-standing member of the Apple beta problem I am sort of amazed that you are unaware of this. The beta is "coming soon."

Did you somehow get your hands on the developer preview DP1? It's not intended or expected to be stable or performant, as is the nature of first release developer previews. It's certainly not something Apple intended for you to install on your only computer.

Did not realize that -- the tech press was referring to the developers getting the developer beta and that the first public beta would be at the end of the month. If it is still effectively in Alpha stage (aka developer preview), it makes more sense that some people are having more problems

The link you provided though is not the developer beta link - it is the public beta program.... developer beta is beta (just typically beta R1 is developer, R2 is public/dev, R3 developer, etc.)..... sure it is not in beta as the press stated.

 

[huperniketes]

It's in Sierra. I don't know if further back though. I don't seem to remember noticing it before now.

Whoa! Nice catch. I never noticed it before.
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Shouldn't be an issue. As it is, there's no problem transferring files to, say, a FAT32-formatted flash drive from HFS+.
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I hope this isn't what Apple is saying as their reason for not implementing end-to-end checksums. My 2012 rMBP's internal SSD was corrupted 2 times within 2 years. I have no idea which of my files were affected, but the OS got wrecked. IDK what was wrong, the SATA connection maybe? Obviously their error correction isn't the magic solution.

I've also had the internal drive on my mid-2012 MBP get corrupted. The geniuses at the Apple Store have generously replaced the cabling or motherboard when a restored drive was installed and the MBP still wasn't able to read it. I suspect there's a design or manufacturing defect in these models which Apple knows about, but would rather not publicize. I imagine that happens quite often.

 

[Nugget]

the tech press was referring to the developers getting the developer beta and that the first public beta would be at the end of the month. If it is still effectively in Alpha stage (aka developer preview), it makes more sense that some people are having more problems

On the developer site it is ambiguous. The download link calls it "macOS 10.13 beta" but then it's referred to as "The macOS 10.13 Developer Preview" in the release notes. In either event, there is no High Sierra release available to members of the public beta community at this time, which is why I think "Digital Dude" is confused and has unreasonable expectations for the piece of software he managed to obtain and install on his primary computer.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

On the developer site it is ambiguous. The download link calls it "macOS 10.13 beta" but then it's referred to as "The macOS 10.13 Developer Preview" in the release notes. In either event, there is no High Sierra release available to members of the public beta community at this time, which is why I think "Digital Dude" is confused and has unreasonable expectations for the piece of software he managed to obtain and install on his primary computer.

He may not be confused. Since he has stated that he has been a member for a while, and he likes jumping on early.... he is likely making a comparison of apples to apples and oranges to oranges. i.e. the R1 release to developers for each macOS version.

In the end though, nothing really matters until the public release of the software in the fall. No reasonably intelligent person has ever recommended installing betas on your primary computers.... only on secondary or hardware specifically for that purpose.

There is also a reason why the first release is developer only.... They don't want the first public one to be too rough on the public -- a nightmare on elm street would not be good even in beta land.

 

[Nugget]

He may not be confused. Since he has stated that he has been a member for a while, and he likes jumping on early....

He specifically mentioned the Apple Beta Program despite the fact that the public beta program is not relevant to the current availability of High Sierra. Plus, he's complaining about the speed of software that comes with release notes chock full of reasons to not expect it to be be fast. And he installed it on his only computer. That's precisely what confusion looks like.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

He specifically mentioned the Apple Beta Program despite the fact that the public beta program is not relevant to the current availability of High Sierra. Plus, he's complaining about the speed of software that comes with release notes chock full of reasons to not expect it to be be fast. And he installed it on his only computer. That's precisely what confusion looks like.

It has been commonly called the Apple Beta Program -- before it was ever open to the public. I don't try to parse too much into calling it the Apple Beta program vs the [Apple] Developer Beta Program vs the [Apple] Public Beta Program...

He just stated he learned his lesson - probably more people should learn the same lesson....

Not to mention that there are more bugs, but the distribution contains all sorts of debug logging that the release would not have.

I can remember installing Windows Chicago beta at work on a spare machine and all the new cool stuff.... The first time I clicked the network icon on the desktop.... boom the network came crumbling down around me.... I thought .... dam, bad timing -- I really wanted to play with it more on the network.... I went to the Netware server and saw it had abended.... did not pay to much attention to it.... restarted the Netware server and brought the company up again.... Then I went back to play with Windows Chicago again... clicked on the network.... and boom.... the network came down again (probably not a coincidence)....

It turns out we have always had SMC cards which supported a large packet format which was better for large data transfers.... but never used it because the drivers we were using did not support it.... Windows Chicago had drivers that would... so it would send out some large packets... but the Netware server drivers.... could not handle them and they blew chunks....

 

[ignatius345]

It shouldn't be that hard to share all photos with my wife - but it sure is. We each have a MBP, iPhone and iPad - we want a shared library that auto-syncs when we add photos on any of those devices but we do not want to share an Apple ID because we don't want to share contact lists, browser bookmarks and other iCloud stuff. This shouldn't be that hard!

I'm just spitballing here, but since Photos isn't cutting it: what if you created a new Google account that you both share, and use Google Photos on each of your phones, point it to that shared account, and sync your camera rolls. It should merge all your photos, I'd think.

I would also imagine that Dropbox could accomplish the same thing. I've heard that Google tends to recompress JPEGs (maybe someone can confirm this), whereas I don't believe Dropbox does. And of course there may be another cloud service I'm not thinking of that you could use the same way instead.

 

[huperniketes]

Apple should take the viewpoint that they don't know what it will be used for, just make a computer that can pretty well be used for anything requiring full power and configurability.

Yep. Provide the infrastructure. The supporting logic. The APIs. Let developers and users figure out how to employ them to solve their wants and needs.

Hence, slots. AppleScript. Automator.

But Steve hated slots.

 

[edenwaith]

When the new macOS name was announced, I think it was due to the "high" jokes that I didn't immediately think of what should have been a more obvious connection with the name: the Warner Brothers movie "High Sierra", one of the earliest movies with Humphrey Bogart playing the main role.

 

[mudflap]

Wait what? That's faster than the disk's theoretical throughput. You sure it's not just creating a pointer to the original file?

Edit: I read that it doesn't actually copy it; just creates a pointer. And blocks are copied as needed if you modify one file. I can imagine this being very useful for version control, and I'm thinking of how they can improve Time Machine with this. So, if I copy to an external disk for transfer or backup purposes, does it *actually* copy it? Has to.

Exactly. It doesn't copy the entire file, it just creates a pointer to the original file. Then if you revise the copy it will only save those differences. This will save so much space, too. I have to say out of all the new MacOs features, I'm most excited about the new filesystem.

 

[RichTeer]

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.

Oracle's ZFS has had encryption for a while now (a couple of years?), and I believe it's coming to OpenZFS soon (if it isn't already here). Totally agree with your views on ZFS, BTW! I'm still hoping that Apple will officially support it, even if it isn't the default.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

Exactly. It doesn't copy the entire file, it just creates a pointer to the original file. Then if you revise the copy it will only save those differences. This will save so much space, too. I have to say out of all the new MacOs features, I'm most excited about the new filesystem.

And I thought it was relying on quantum entanglement....

 

[huperniketes]

It turns out we have always had SMC cards which supported a large packet format which was better for large data transfers.... but never used it because the drivers we were using did not support it.... Windows Chicago had drivers that would... so it would send out some large packets... but the Netware server drivers.... could not handle them and they blew chunks....

Ah, the good ol' days when developers just knew there was no need to check return values and perform other data validation!
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When the new macOS name was announced, I think it was due to the "high" jokes that I didn't immediately think of what should have been a more obvious connection with the name: the Warner Brothers movie "High Sierra", one of the earliest movies with Humphrey Bogart playing the main role.

My first thought too.

 

[Markoth]

Oracle's ZFS has had encryption for a while now (a couple of years?), and I believe it's coming to OpenZFS soon (if it isn't already here). Totally agree with your views on ZFS, BTW! I'm still hoping that Apple will officially support it, even if it isn't the default.

Yeah, they've been talking about it (encryption) for ages. It'll be nice when it finally gets here.

 

[huperniketes]

Oh, and I forgot what I really wanted: turn off auto-play in Safari completely. That's ridiculous.

 

[bkkcanuck8]

Oracle's ZFS has had encryption for a while now (a couple of years?), and I believe it's coming to OpenZFS soon (if it isn't already here). Totally agree with your views on ZFS, BTW! I'm still hoping that Apple will officially support it, even if it isn't the default.

I doubt Apple will support ZFS as non-core technology.

There are issues with CDDL licensing and unless they had an agreement with Oracle about dual licensing or some sort of agreement, I doubt Apple would support it. That ship sailed long ago.

I vaguely remember something about patent issues with Netapp? Don't remember what became of that.

Then of course out of the box ZFS does not support case-insensitive modes do they? APFS has support for both case sensitive and insensitivity.

Apple will continue adding features that Apple feels are important for the future, but since Apple is out of the server market (except for some niche things)... I don't see Apple officially supporting the openzfs stuff... that will remain the domain of the openzfs community.
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Oh, and I forgot what I really wanted: turn off auto-play in Safari completely. That's ridiculous.

I did not realize how annoying "autoplay" was until I had to spend a few weeks being very careful on usage when I was working through tethering on my phone.... a few autoplay things just kept of blowing the data that I wanted to conserve for important work issues.... I used a lot of 4 letter words during that month.

 

[huperniketes]

I did not realize how annoying "autoplay" was until I had to spend a few weeks being very careful on usage when I was working through tethering on my phone.... a few autoplay things just kept of blowing the data that I wanted to conserve for important work issues.... I used a lot of 4 letter words during that month.

Exactly. Restarting Chrome, with its autoplaying "feature", used to be a nightmare. They've at least delayed playback until a tab with embedded video gets focus. But still! We know Google needs to stay in advertisers' good graces (Youtube lulz), but what's Apple's excuse for Safari?

 

[milo]

You appear to be confused. There is no High Sierra Beta. As a long-standing member of the Apple beta problem I am sort of amazed that you are unaware of this. The beta is "coming soon."

Did you somehow get your hands on the developer preview DP1? It's not intended or expected to be stable or performant, as is the nature of first release developer previews. It's certainly not something Apple intended for you to install on your only computer.

He didn't say the public beta. I assume he is talking about Appleseed, which does have a beta available already.