The Behind-the-Scenes Changes Found In MacOS High Sierra (arstechnica.com)

Apple officially announced macOS High Sierra at WWDC 2017 earlier this month. While the new OS doesn't feature a ton of user-visible improvements and is ultimately shaping up to be a low-key release, it does feature several behind-the-scenes changes that could help make it the most stable macOS update in years. Andrew Cunningham from Ars Technica has "browsed the dev docs and talked with Apple to get some more details of the update's foundational changes." Here are some excerpts from three key areas of the report: APFS
Like iOS 10.3, High Sierra will convert your boot drive to APFS when you first install it -- this will be true for all Macs that run High Sierra, regardless of whether they're equipped with an SSD, a spinning HDD, or a Fusion Drive setup. In the current beta installer, you're given an option to uncheck the APFS box (checked by default) before you start the install process, though that doesn't necessarily guarantee that it will survive in the final version. It's also not clear at this point if there are edge cases -- third-party SSDs, for instance -- that won't automatically be converted. But assuming that most people stick with the defaults and that most people don't crack their Macs open, most Mac users who do the upgrade are going to get the new filesystem.

HEVC and HEIF
All High Sierra Macs will pick up support for HEVC, but only very recent models will support any kind of hardware acceleration. This is important because playing HEVC streams, especially at high resolutions and bitrates, is a pretty hardware-intensive operation. HEVC playback can consume most of a CPU's processor cycles, and especially on slower dual-core laptop processors, smooth playback may be impossible altogether. Dedicated HEVC encode and decode blocks in CPUs and GPUs can handle the heavy lifting more efficiently, freeing up your CPU and greatly reducing power consumption, but HEVC's newness means that dedicated hardware isn't especially prevalent yet.

Metal 2
While both macOS and iOS still nominally support open, third-party APIs like OpenGL and OpenCL, it's clear that the company sees Metal as the way forward for graphics and GPU compute on its platforms. Apple's OpenGL support in macOS and iOS hasn't changed at all in years, and there are absolutely no signs that Apple plans to support Vulkan. But the API will enable some improvements for end users, too. People with newer GPUs should expect to benefit from some performance improvements, not just in games but in macOS itself; Apple says the entire WindowServer is now using Metal, which should improve the fluidity and consistency of transitions and animations within macOS; this can be a problem on Macs when you're pushing multiple monitors or using higher Retina scaling modes on, especially if you're using integrated graphics. Metal 2 is also the go-to API for supporting VR on macOS, something Apple is pushing in a big way with its newer iMacs and its native support for external Thunderbolt 3 GPU enclosures. Apple says that every device that supports Metal should support at least some of Metal 2's new features, but the implication there is that some older GPUs won't be able to do everything the newer ones can do.

Comments

Does Apple still have a QA department?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like every other update of MacOS and Xcode break something big. I'm even thinking of migrating to a VB-based Hackintosh for my Mac needs just to be able to rollback bad updates.

I'm excited about the new file system. I've corrupted HFS so many times.. But I'm gonna wait several months until the critical bugs are sorted out before I go there.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[dgatwood]

Sounds like you have bad RAM or a bad hard drive. I mean sure, buggy HFS+ implementations (e.g. in the early days of Linux on PowerPC Macs) can result in some of the most spectacular corruption I've ever seen, but Apple's implementation is *amazingly* solid. In two decades of running multiple Macs, I've only seen corruption that didn't get auto-repaired a few times, and every instance has either involved faulty hardware or a sparsebundle served over AFP (Time Machine to an ABS).

No, the big benefit of a modern filesystem is not reliability so much as the ability to take snapshots and back up those snapshots without worrying about files changing while you're backing them up. This might even be enough to make Time Machine and iCloud reliable without bizarre surprises. For example, a few years ago, a friend of mine lost his entire iPhoto library because he kept iPhoto running all the time; iPhoto keeps its library open, and Apple foolishly made the iPhoto library an opaque bundle, so when iPhoto kept the library open, it prevented not only the library metadata, but also the photos themselves from getting backed up. Supposedly that got fixed a long time ago, but I still have a fair amount of distrust towards Time Machine as a result of that incident, and the whole reason behind not backing up open files was that you couldn't reliably snapshot the bundle at a given moment in time; that epic failure would never have happened if Time Machine had been built on top of proper snapshots to begin with.

Databases have the same problem. You can safely back up a MySQL database (with InnoDB, anyway), but to do so, you have to snapshot the entire database, including its journal, all at once, not copy it a file at a time. And so on. There are entire classes of problems that go away when you have proper volume-level snapshotting capabilities. That's why not switching to ZFS was, IMO, the single dumbest mistake that Apple's senior management made in the past twenty years, and possibly in its entire history. Now that we're getting APFS (a decade later), maybe we'll finally get the robust backups that we should have had back in Snow Leopard.

Don't get me started on Xcode, though. Its problems, IMO, have less to do with a lack of QA and more to do with Xcode being what happens when you take a 16-year-old piece of software (ProjectBuilder) and combine it with a 10-year-old piece of software (Interface Builder) and then continue developing the resulting software for another nine years. It started out too complex, and when they had the chance to fix that in 2003, instead of actually simplifying the fundamental architecture, they gave it a re-skin and hid a bunch of the functionality. And then they added IB to the mix and then they started piling on all the code signing stuff and tried to cram installer package support into it and... well, the result is that "Xcode : an IDE :: iTunes : a music player", and the result is unsatisfactory for precisely the same reasons. But I digress.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[Anonymous Coward]

When blasting multiple write threads at the same time on the same volume I got HFS+ corruption very reliably. Otherwise, it's fine. Now I use Linux and Windows for load testing and I keep MacOS for developing when traveling.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[dgatwood]

Was it a 1 TB Seagate drive, perchance?

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[TheRaven64]

What do you mean 'still'? Upgrading to 10.4 if you had enabled File Vault (home directory was an encrypted disk image, mounted on login) worked fine, right up until the first reboot (typically a month later) when your home directory became unreadable (eventually I discovered that this was only true for 10.4 - 10.3 could read it fine). No OS X / macOS has gone as badly since then - apparently their QA department didn't test the configuration of people upgrading from 10.3 and using one of the flagship features of 10.3.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[tonywong]

HFS+ uses largely single-threaded data structures which require catalog file locks that that make it hard for multiple processes to access the same data at once.

This is probably why you're seeing corruption, and why HFS+ pretty much sucks as a modern file system.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll probably be happy to know that the editor in Xcode was just rewritten from the ground up in Swift.

Re:Does Apple still have a QA department?

[dgatwood]

Actually, that's kind of depressing, because it means that IMO, their PMs are completely out of touch with where the major problems actually lie. The editor is really the only part of Xcode that I haven't had significant problems with. I have never once had a crash while selecting or typing. The worst bug I've found in the editor is that if you Command-/ to comment out the second line of a multiline macro, it won't let you comment out the first line. If that were the worst bug I had seen in Xcode, I would consider it one of the ten best apps on the platform. Rewriting UI code that is basically working well is a colossal waste of engineering resources that could be better spent fixing the steaming pile of hurt that lies underneath it.

It's all the other code besides the editor that basically needs to be thrown out and rewritten—the project editing, loading/saving, indexing, find-in-project, etc. all have either frequent crashes or major performance problems or both. And the "Fix Problem" part of code signing has been nightmarish for me, too, at various recent points in time. And when they replaced the simple, working concept of build platform and CPU with these crazy "schemes" a few years ago, they inflicted what is quite possibly the most unusable UI I've ever seen. It makes actions that should be simple difficult, for no obvious reason.

And the project file format and the IB file format are unholy nightmares from you-know-where for anyone who deals with version control. IB's tendency to make huge changes to files when you made zero functional changes, for example, is the sort of stupid crap that simply shouldn't be tolerated in serious software. Just looking at a nib (xib) file changes the "last saved in version" attribute, and asking it to show you a window or view as it would appear on a different device causes it to change all the numerical values for the position of every single item in every single view.

So no, hearing that they are rewriting the one piece of mostly working functionality does not make me happy. It's a bit like going to buy a used car and having the dealer say, "Well, the engine is burning oil, the brakes are metal-on-metal, and the driver's seatbelt doesn't work, but on the plus side, we were able to replace the steering wheel cover that was discolored after the last owner impaled himself on the eight-inch metal spike sticking out of the dashboard when the brakes and seatbelt failed."

Re: Does Apple still have a QA department?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you just⦠wait a few months to update? Wait until 10.x.3 or .4? I don't understand your dilemma. Why roll back updates when you can wait to update?

Re: Does Apple still have a QA department?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you the same that posted on the testa note?

APPS! APPS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

APPS!!!

Oh. Wait. APFS? What is Apple thinking?

I see BeauHD has learned to use paragraphs...

[QuietLagoon]

... cool. That A Good Thing. Let's hope it continues. :)

Re:I see BeauHD has learned to use paragraphs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has been crack for me over the years, but every summary has drawn parallels from the WPD subreddit; at best ran through google translate.

Re:I see BeauHD has learned to use paragraphs...

[Anonymous Coward]

... cool. That A Good Thing. Let's hope it continues. :)

Um, no. The paragraphs being separate are because the text is

QUOTED

from another source.

that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's clear that the company sees Metal as the way forward for graphics and GPU compute on its platforms.

No.... an Apple only proprietary graphics API is not the way forward. Vulkan is the way forward. It will be available on Windows, Linux, smartphones, BSD, everywhere... except Apple, apparently.

Metal is about vendor lockin, but they don't have enough of the total computing market to make that work out in their favour.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenGL used to be the way forward but Apple hasn't updated it beyond OpenGL 3.2 stable, or OpenGL 4.1 with lots of breakages (like tessellation). Good luck with Vulkan.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[BLToday]

MSFT : DirectX
Apple : Metal

I'm all for Vulkan but Apple is not one to let others control an essential API. Remember when DirectX was behind OpenGL at the beginning and then passed OpenGL in speed and feature set?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[jcr]

Metal is about vendor lockin

No, it's about performance. If OpenGL could do what Metal can, they'd stick to it.

-jcr

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Pseudonym]

Vulkan is the way forward.

Have you actually read the Vulkan spec?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP didn't mention OpenGl. The comparison is metal to vulkan. Vulkan is an industry standard. Metaql is just not going to get much game support.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[serviscope_minor]

No, it's about performance. If OpenGL could do what Metal can, they'd stick to it.

I guess Vulkan doesn't exist then, huh? Most of the arguments both for and against Vulkan seem to be that it's more explicit than metal. This makes it harder to program but has more opportunities efficiency available. Also, of course Apple released Metal long before Vulkan, but that's mostly because their OpenGL implementation was lagging shockingly far behind the standard.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now OpenGL has features that go beyond rendering stupid bump mapped and PBL that Monkeyshit Corp is bragging out loud.
Hell, not everyone is on board with Vulkan either, cause it lacks simplicity.

And the only way DX is going to succeed is for Monkeyshit Corp to keep sponsoring developers, literally. DX is dumb and ugly as fuck.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
With the right approach you can get OpenGL to outperform your precious stupid Metal.

You stupid dumbfucks iFags.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually their OpenGL implementation has all the right features. I mean what else do you need beyond all the graphics pipeline components that 4.1 provides?

Do tell.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Plumpaquatsch]

The OP didn't mention OpenGl. The comparison is metal to vulkan. Vulkan is an industry standard. Metaql is just not going to get much game support.

Ohh, maybe he wanted to compare it to something that actually existed when Metal was first shipping, not something that only was announced half a year later.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Also, of course Apple released Metal long before Vulkan was announced

FTFY.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it did exist. Metal and Vulkan are both highly based off of AMDs thin layer API that was being developed at the time. Just Apple didn't want to wait or play with others, so they came out with theirs before a portable standard was finalized.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

jcr@@@mac...com, wow.

Fanboi much? Credible not that much?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Metaql is just not going to get much game support.

Yeah, who needs the hundreds of millions of well-heeled customers who own those devices anyway? Who do they think they're kidding? There's no money to be made there!

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Khyber]

No, Metal is about vendor lock-in. To boot, we already had a graphics API called MeTaL, made by S3, back when the first Unreal Tournament came out. It was shit then, and I'll wager on this new API being shit when Apple tries to put it out.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not. It has nothing to do with vendor locking. It has everything to do with the OS. Windows and Linux have different APIs and programming languages for doing anything. In Linux most software is C, on Windows it's either C# or C++ and on macOS it's Objective-C and Swift.

OpenGL or Vulkan are not enough to build an application that does anything. You need a lot of native code to find out which accelerator card you're on, which display you're on, for audio and many other things.
DirectX doesn't map to ObjC just like Metal doesn't map to C/C++ in any decent fashion. Metal works decently with the rest of the Kit APIs from Apple and makes a lot of sense in that way.
Any application will depend on multiple libraries such as GIO, GLIB, GTK, and others. There are no reasonable bindings between any widget toolkit and Vulkan.

Actually you can see this by trying to write a notepad like application for each one of those operating systems. On Linux the stack is not very stable. For example, for Audio, we've been told to use OSS, followed by ESound, ALSA and then JACK or PulseAudio. That is absolutely insane and it happened in the past 10-15 years. macOS and Windows have been a lot more stable.
On Linux, for GUIs we've had XLib, TCL/TK, GTK, QT, QT2, GTK2, QT3, QT4, GTK3, Cairo, EGL, OpenGL, OpenVG, SDL, Wayland and many others at the different layers of the stack and it's shit. You shouldn't have to rewrite a large portion of your application every 3-4 years.

Microsoft has 3 APIs for the GUI applications:
* Direct3D (in different versions but a Direct3d 3 app works with your Direct3D11 Windows unlike a GTK1 application on your GTK3 desktop).
* GDI/GDI+ for classic GUI applications.
* WPF for modern GUI applications (built on top of Direct3D).
All 3 APIs are accessible from all Microsoft programming languages.

Apple has a single UI API for Mac OS X based operating systems that is basically a gradual and mostly compatible improvement of the NextStep API from 30 years ago. It's been called in different ways but it's basically AppKit or UIKit from Cocoa. AppKit and UIKit used to work well with OpenGL. Now that OpenGL has no real future, they've decided to write an API that glues correctly with the rest of the Cocoa APIs. Yes, you can even reimplement it on Linux since you have the header files, just like Wine reimplemented DirectX over OpenGL.

Let me ask you this: why would you want an universal API? Any universal API is either huge and bloated (OpenGL like) or least common denominator of the common functions of all OSs (so it's not feature rich). Might I remind you that Java promised to be the unique API for all OSs? How many Java applications are you using right now? How many of them are written in AWT or Swing? Cross-OS APIs are troublesome and slow and you shouldn't bother. That is the reason for buying game engines from third parties: they abstract that crap and give you a common API. You just have to choose the game engine that better suits your needs, feature-wise.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[BronsCon]

You're absolutely right, while I'm sitting here enjoying the whole cake, I may as well cut off a 10% slice of it for you.

What? You'd rather have the 90%? Especially when supporting the other 10% means redoing 50% of the work? You don't think it's worth the investment to redo 50% of the work that the 10% might not pay for? I think you might be right about that if you're actually asking the questions I'm implying you should be...

Re:that's not the way forward.

[BronsCon]

Maybe the rest of 4.1 that their implementation lacks or implements incorrectly?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[BronsCon]

You don't realize that you can call external libraries from any language... do you?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that apple has absolutely poor support for OpenGL. None of their software can support anything above OpenGL 4.1, when the hardware (and Microsoft, Linux, BSD, etc) can support 4.5. They also perform noticeably worse in benchmarks than even the open source Linux drivers.

Jobs was a very proactive supporter of OpenGL, OpenCL, and other cross platform open initiatives. Sadly, after he died, very little effort has come from Apple to improve their support. In fact, OpenGL 4.2 came out less than a month before Jobs resigned as CEO. Before this, OSX had a very good track record with OpenGL driver stability and performance.

So yes, Metal "might" be faster than OpenGL, but Apple hasn't recently put any much effort at all into getting all the performance they can out of the cross platform alternatives. They could also support Vulkan AND Metal, even poorly, to aid in the porting of Vulkan apps and games to OSX, but they haven't.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Pseudonym]

You don't realize that you can call external libraries from any language... do you?

You can also use a motorbike as a moving van by hooking a trailer up to it.

In practice, using most libraries in most languages requires a layer of glue. The bigger the impedance mismatch between the library and the language, the thicker the layer of glue.

Objective-C is a case in point. It's a more "object oriented" language than Java or C++, since it is more serious about late-binding. That makes it difficult to do a direct translation of an Obj-C API into C++. It's even worse in Java, which only provides native support for C.

Generally speaking, modern libraries designed for use in lots of languages are either written in C with a pure C API with other language bindings implemented on top of this, or provide a hand-curated C API sitting on top of the "native" API.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[BronsCon]

Ok? And that has stopped countless game developers from using OpenGL on macOS... when? And the GPU drivers Metal has to interface with certainly are not written in Obj-C; hell, I doubt Metal itself is, for that matter. That sort of lessens your point, does it not?

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Pseudonym]

Ok? And that has stopped countless game developers from using OpenGL on macOS... when?

Just in case I didn't make this clear, you can indeed use C libraries in almost any other language.

The converse is not true. See DirectX and Cocoa for further details.

Re: that's not the way forward.

[BronsCon]

Funny, I use Cocoa interfaces in C, C++, Java, and even Pascal. I actually learned it was possible from a client of mine who develops Mac software in Pascal.

Re:that's not the way forward.

[jcr]

With the right approach you can get OpenGL to outperform your precious stupid Metal.

Been there, evaluated that. You're wrong.

-jcr

Re:that's not the way forward.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Except it did exist. Metal and Vulkan are both highly based off of AMDs thin layer API that was being developed at the time. Just Apple didn't want to wait or play with others, so they came out with theirs before a portable standard was finalized.

They didn't "want to play with others" because "others" wanted a proprietary solution tailored to their high end chips. If anything Vulkan as it wants to be one day only exist because Apple went ahead and did what Vulkan now copies. I repeat the facts: Apple's Metal was shipping half a year before Vulkan's new focus of also working on mobile devices was even announced.

Re: that's not the way forward.

[Pseudonym]

Point taken. There is a hand-curated C binding to the Objective-C object model. It's inconvenient but possible, and there's still a large impedance mismatch.

Re:fuck apple

[Z00L00K]

Reading the title makes me wonder if Apple has done changes to the High Sierra CD format.

most stable macOS update in years

[93 Escort Wagon]

I ran Sierra for some months... then eventually reformatted and went back to El Capitan. I'll be in no hurry to "upgrade" to macOS High Sierra, thank you very much.

Fortunately El Capitan should continue to get security updates at least until High Sierra is itself replaced.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[theweatherelectric]

I ran Sierra for some months... then eventually reformatted and went back to El Capitan.

Why?

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[TheRaven64]

I've only noticed one difference since the 'upgrade'. The 'mark as junk' button in Mail.app has been replaced with a 'move to junk folder' button, which completely breaks if you have more than one email account, because you can no longer have a single spam folder, but have to instead use the junk folder on each mail server. It also breaks the custom rules that you can configure to run when an email is marked as junk. It provides no benefit at all (previously, hitting the 'mark as junk' button would move it to the junk folder if that was your default action for emails marked as junk) and breaks things. Apparently the Mail.app team is a deeply unhappy place. They seem to be taking every crappy misfeature from the awful iOS mail app and porting them, rather than actually improving anything.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you sent Apple feedback? I think they really do read user comments.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[TheRaven64]

I've filed a bug report, provided a trace, sent them mechanisms for reproducing, and pointed to the pile of Apple user forum posts of people with the same issue. No fix yet.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[jeremyp]

Junk mail is organised in a hierarchy. There's a top level junk mail folder where you can see all your junk mail and it has a child junk mail folder for each mail account. Seems like the best of both worlds.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[TheRaven64]

Except that it's stored on the mail server, whereas I want it stored locally inside my local items folder. I have a mail rule set up in the 'perform this action for junk mail' bit of the preferences dialog that moves all junk mail to this folder, and I've had that rule set up since Mail.app supported junk mail filtering (replacing a prior rule that dumped things there if they had the relevant SpamAssassin rules set). They've broken this functionality for no apparent reason, when the original behaviour worked fine.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[Plumpaquatsch]

Except that it's stored on the mail server, whereas I want it stored locally inside my local items folder.

Why the hell would you want to do that? Isn't the major point of recognizing junk mail (apart from the obvious of not seeing it in your incoming folder) to not download it onto your computer until you go to the SPAM folder and tell your mail client to download it )and moving it out of that SPAM folder in the process)?

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[TheRaven64]

Spam filtering locally requires that you download the mail. Doing it on the server (which is not what we're talking about) would mean that the learning would be separate. I keep an archive of spam so that I can quickly train new spam filters to know the difference between email I expect and email that I think is junk. The current implementation in Mail.app downloads the mail, runs it through my filter rules, and then stores it in the relevant local folder (so that I can read all of my mail offline). When I notice the spam filter has missed something, I used to hit the mark as spam button, at which point it would be moved from the current local folder to my local spam folder. I can do this offline, when I have no Internet connection. The new mechanism sends it back to the server from wherever it ended up.

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[Plumpaquatsch]

Spam filtering locally requires that you download the mail. Doing it on the server (which is not what we're talking about) would mean that the learning would be separate. I keep an archive of spam so that I can quickly train new spam filters to know the difference between email I expect and email that I think is junk.

So how do you put a "new SPAM filter" into Mail.app? Your argument makes less sense the more you go into the details. Just stop, okay?

Re: most stable macOS update in years

[TheRaven64]

Huh? I don't want to put a new spam filter into Mail.app (though new major releases in the past have come with rewritten spam filters, which benefit enormously from having a pool of spam available to train), but in the past I've moved spam filtering between multiple systems, which is why I want to keep a log of spam messages. That's largely irrelevant though: Mail.app has a system in preferences to determine the action when a mail is marked as spam. These rules work fine for mail that is automatically flagged as spam. Prior to Sierra, they worked fine for mail manually marked as spam. In Sierra, there is no mechanism for manually marking mail as spam and triggering these rules, instead the 'mark as spam' and 'run move to a spam folder which is not the one that I designated' actions are conflated into a single button and there is no mechanism for subsequently running the rules that I've defined for how to handle spam. This is a regression.

New Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

WHERE IS IT????

Why does Apple Hate Mac Pro owners?

Why is Apple so filled with HATE?

Re:New Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're doing it wrong. Mac computers are designed to look good on a desk ; for your computing or data needs, use pen and paper or an iPad.

Re: New Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Pro" tag is just a reflection of the disappointed ego of its customers. Kind of like calling an illiterate person "professor" to boost their ego!

Re:New Mac Pro

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how you do it, by the way.

http://news.images.itv.com/ima...

The interesting thing

[guruevi]

Replacing HFS with APFS brings a lot of new features similar to ZFS but it's also going towards the Android/iOS security model where the system and user data are separated and the system read-only without a root user anymore.

Although it will probably be trivial to break out, we're moving more towards commercial ecosystems that no longer will support tinkering with the OS.

Re:The interesting thing

[Joe_Dragon]

no longer will support tinkering with the OS and apple that can be app store only and maybe apple only drivers for usb / TB / PCI-E stuff. Just wait for the cost of adobe CC to go up by 30% to cover apples cut.

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that would happen. Apple knows software companies like Adobe and Autodesk have enough clout that the user will follow whatever OS it is on to use the software. Eg if Adobe released their graphics suite on Linux with a easy to use installer and a price without the 30% markup on the Windows 10 store/Apple store price I think a lot of offices/companies would jump OS. Especially when Linux is heavily used already for render farms and graphics editing software such as 3dsmax and Maya.

I actually don't mind not being able to tinker with the OS if the OS is used for a specific purpose. I'd just use it for work, home stuff (finance, typing stuff) and study. and use Linux for tinkering. The reason I dont mind is because I *****loathe***** windows' current model where a installed program can litter its files all over the place and when you uninstall it it still leaves traces of itself behind in multiple folders and in the registry. I hatg how when you look inside the windows folder theres a folder with gigabytes of information that does nothing except give information on how to uninstall a program. I miss the old dos days when deleting a directory meant erasing a program completely leaving no trace of it behind. Even window 3.11 was better at this than windows 95 onwards because every programs settings were stored inside its own ini file and didnt litter crap all over the place in the registry. So if they separate everything out so every program keeps to its own space, that is a good thing imo. Ideally what I would like to see is programs having access to 3 folders only. The folder it installs in which nothing else can touch and requires root access to change, a settings folder which keeps 'ini' files of your customizations and third, a user specified folder where user puts their savefiles.

Re:The interesting thing

[Cmdln Daco]

Switching to a totally new filesystem is also a slick way of making sure people don't revert back to an earlier version of MacOS. The old MacOS will no longer read your drive after the upgrade.

Re:The interesting thing

[Cmdln Daco]

Insert verbiage here about 'the hood of the car welded shut.'

Why would you want to touch the engine? Eeeeew! You'll get your hands dirty!

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Ain't that the fucking truth.

Re:The interesting thing

[dugancent]

Time Machine will still be HFS+, so you can roll back easy enough.

Re:The interesting thing

[dgatwood]

Switching to a totally new filesystem is also a slick way of making sure people don't revert back to an earlier version of MacOS. The old MacOS will no longer read your drive after the upgrade.

Not true. 10.12.4 (Sierra) has full support for APFS, just not as a boot volume.

Re:The interesting thing

[angel'o'sphere]

That does not make much sense.
On HFS user and root stuff is seperated as well, just as on any unix system.

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

> Which Linux fanboys jack off too.

Heh. I could describe myself as a Linux fanboi: since kernel version 0.99pl13 or thereabouts.

If there's something I don't jack off to, it is a Tesla. I won't describe *what* I tend to jack off to because it would be severely off-topic here, but it surely ain't a Tesla, no way.

Re:The interesting thing

[Joe_Dragon]

some apps still need an system wide ini / settings folder. Also it maybe an system wide folder per for games that can be used for mods / user maps / user add ons.

also an map edit .exe should be able to write to the main app folder.

and other app stores like steam can not be locked out. That can install apps / update apps / install workshop stuff and mods to apps.

Re: The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a linux fanboi, since 97. I do not jack off to Teslas. Though I think electric cars are a good idea overall, I'm not going to buy one for another few generations.

Re:The interesting thing

[drinkypoo]

Not true. 10.12.4 (Sierra) has full support for APFS, just not as a boot volume.

If you can't boot from it, is that full support? When you couldn't boot ZFS on Linux, we didn't call that full support.

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this analogy is that you absolutely can touch the engine when running on a system with APFS and/or SIP. You just need to use the well documented options to disable the integrity protection features. That way Jane the idiot who thinks you need blinker fluid is stopped from fucking up the engine, and Elizabeth the mechanic who knows what she's doing can still open the bonnet if she needs to.

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

0.99pl13?

Watchtower distro, on an Amiga, perchance? :D

Re:The interesting thing

[guruevi]

No, they're taking away the root user out of the OS, no more daemons running as root, no more sudo. And they're separating the file system as in creating different volumes (a form of partitioning) for the /System and the /User and making /System read-only.

Re:The interesting thing

[guruevi]

Apple's stated goal is to have /System reside on a different volume than /User and mount /System read-only and the only way in would be through a signed boot loader and/or update. They will also take out disabling SIP and remove the root user completely (no more daemons running as root or sudo).

Re:The interesting thing

[angel'o'sphere]

There always will be a system/root user.
Otherwise you could not make upgrades. E.g. if /System is mounted read only, during upgrades it would need to be remounted, or the "upgrade process" would need special abilities to byass the file systems permissions.

Any links for the stuff you mention? It sounds interesting.

Re:The interesting thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Why to go up to 30% when already everyone else is paying royalties so that Apple and Microsoft cuts can be paid?

No reason to put Apple users pay 30% more, when everyone pay 30% more!

Re:The interesting thing

[dgatwood]

Fair enough. I should have said it provides native read-write support. I'm not sure why it can't boot from it; maybe the boot loader is missing critical bits or the frameworks get confused when running on a non-HFS+ volume in some subtle ways. Either way, the point is that you don't lose access to anything. It just makes reverting a royal pain in the you-know-what.

And if it is a boot loader issue, then there's a nonzero possibility that Sierra reinstalled on top of High Sierra would be able to boot from it.

Re:The interesting thing

[mattack2]

Stated where?

[citation needed]

Re:The interesting thing

[guruevi]

developer.apple.com -> Download the APFS Beta or view the WWDC workshops on it. This is not yet implemented in the current beta and most of the information is 'confidential' but your Apple Enterprise rep has a slide on the end of monolithic imaging. They want enterprises to start using DEP (where your device gets bound to your organization during ANY (re)install), Apple Store and MDM for any releases after High Sierra.

Re:The interesting thing

[petekjohnson]

Since the bulk of macOS and iOS actually falls into /bin /sbin /usr /var and so on, can you explain what separating /System would gain anyone? Unless Apple decides to completely rewrite the folder locations of the BSD subsystem, this would never work.

Re:The interesting thing

[guruevi]

The BSD subsystem would be part of all that, basically the "OS" and everything that falls under it would be 'protected'. It's already the case, you can't just write to eg. /usr/bin even in current versions of OS X when SIP is enabled, with the new APFS those portions would simply go read-only from a file system perspective.

HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

The main problem with HEVC is the patent licensing. In order to use HEVC you need to get 3 different patent licenses from 3 different patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, and Velos Media).

There are some companies with HEVC patents, like Technicolor, which aren't in any patent pool so you also need to get a patent license from them. Technicolor says they have done this "to enable direct licensing" of their HEVC patents. Sounds convenient.

The patent licensing situation has reduced the x265 developers to begging the patent pools for better licensing terms. I recognise the x265 team is trying to make a buck but I think they'd be better off focusing on building an AV1 implementation than throwing their lot in with HEVC. HEVC's licensing is just not web friendly.

Luckily, the HEIF image format is content format agnostic (presentation and slides). In principle you could use HEIF with VP9 or with AV1. Apple may never support VP9 but I don't think they can avoid adding support for AV1 in future. AV1 will have too many advantages over HEVC (better performance, royalty-free licensing) to ignore.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain to me how this is bad when both nvidia and amd's newer cards do hardware HEVC encoding?

As a computer user you've already paid for it in your card so youre not seeing a extra charge to use it. Even if I'm for VP9 or AV1 I've already got the HEVC encoding capability to use for free in my video card.

Secondly, as a end user if I want to play back HEVC videos there are many arm TV boxes I can get for under $100 which do hardware HEVC decoding.

It looks to me like HEVC will win with home content eg game recordings while something else VP9/AV1 or the like will win on the web eg itunes movies, google play movies, youtube content where someone (Google and Apple) has to pay.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Can someone explain to me how this is bad when both nvidia and amd's newer cards do hardware HEVC encoding?

Because the royalty licensing cost is passed on to you as the end user. You're paying extra for the codec rent. Additionally, there are, for example, content distribution royalties. So a company like Netflix is paying extra for merely transmitting HEVC content over the Internet and those costs also get passed on to you as the end user. Additionally, the Velos Media patent pool hasn't even announced its royalty rates. Who knows what they'll charge.

In the end, this anti-web licensing creates a pay-to-play environment where only the big boys can afford to play. I don't know about you, but that's not the web I want.

Secondly, as a end user if I want to play back HEVC videos there are many arm TV boxes I can get for under $100 which do hardware HEVC decoding.

There are many ARM TV boxes that you can get for under $100 which do VP9 decoding. There will be plenty of ARM TV boxes which you can get for under $100 which do AV1 decoding once AV1 is finished.

Formats, like HEVC, which require payment for patent royalties work against your individual interests. Don't support such formats.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything has hardware HEVC (and hence HEIC) decoding support these days anyway, so this isn't a problem.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

this isn't a problem

If it wasn't a problem then the Alliance for Open Media wouldn't exist and they wouldn't be developing AV1.

But it does. And they are.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[mattack2]

No they don't. Patents support innovation, by allowing people to make money on their inventions.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

HEVC is out now, and has broad industry support from embedded hardware manufacturers (set top boxes, roku-a-likes, cameras, camcorders, etc.), as well as software players like Microsoft and Apple.

I feel that VP9 is a dead-end in many ways: It's a "standard" that really has only one controlling interest: Google. VP9 has virtually zero mindshare outside the Googleplex; I'm not aware of any dedicated cameras, camcorders, set top boxes, etc. that support VP9.

AV1, on the other hand, looks very compelling... it actually has broad industry support, from big players like Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, Google, all the way down to silicon makers like Broadcom, Xilinx, RealTek, ARM, AMD, and NVIDIA.

AV1 stands a good chance of killing HEVC entirely (and they deserve it, given the licensing minefield that has to be negotiated to use HEVC)

While AV1 sounds awesome on paper, it's important to know that AV1 isn't completed yet, the bitstream is scheduled to be "frozen" in Q3 or Q4 of 2017, and even that doesn't mean the standard will be at version 1.0. Hardware that supports AV1 isn't expected until Q4 2018 at the earliest.

It's disingenuous to complain that Apple isn't going to include AV1 when it isn't - and won't be - ready before High Sierra.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

HEVC is out now

VP9 is out now and has broader use than HEVC.

as well as software players like Microsoft and Apple

Microsoft supports VP9 in Edge.

VP9 has virtually zero mindshare outside the Googleplex

Netflix uses VP9. Wikipedia uses VP9. And, of course, even though it's inside the Googleplex it's difficult to ignore that YouTube uses VP9. YouTube no longer offers 4K video to Safari by default due to Safari's lack of VP9 support.

set top boxes, etc. that support VP9

Roku has VP9 support, Chromecast Ultra has VP9 support, Android phones have VP9 support, etc, etc.

AV1, on the other hand, looks very compelling... it actually has broad industry support, from big players like Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, Google, all the way down to silicon makers like Broadcom, Xilinx, RealTek, ARM, AMD, and NVIDIA.

Right. Just like VP9. When will Apple add VP9 support?

It's disingenuous to complain that Apple isn't going to include AV1 when it isn't - and won't be - ready before High Sierra.

Show me where I complained that AV1 won't be in High Sierra. Quote me. Maybe re-read what I wrote.

In the meantime, let's acknowledge that Apple hasn't joined the Alliance for Open Media. When will Apple join?

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Patents support innovation

Why doesn't the Internet Protocol require royalties? Why doesn't TCP require royalties? Why doesn't HTTP require royalties? Why doesn't HTML require royalties? Why doesn't PNG require royalties? Why doesn't baseline JPEG require royalties? Why does the W3C Patent Policy require that all web standards be royalty-free?

How much innovation do you believe would have happened on the web if you had to pay rent on every layer of the stack?

What's special about video that it can't conform to the established norms of web standards? There's nothing special about it. VP9 achieves it and AV1 will achieve it. HEVC does not.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

In the meantime, let's acknowledge that Apple hasn't joined the Alliance for Open Media [aomedia.org]. When will Apple join?

Why single out Apple? It's not like Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Canon, Nikon, LG, Philips, HP, or Lenovo are members either..

It's silly to criticize Apple for adding support for a codec which "all of the above" are also supporting.

Honestly, I'm all for open codecs, but after waiting years to see Vorbis, Opus, Theora, and VP6-VP8 adoption stand at an effective Level of Zero, in spite of being competitive (or better) while not having a patent minefield, I've grown wary of the ever-growing next shiny thing that goes nowhere.

AFAIK, AV1 is the first industry-wide co-developed open codec, unlike others (VC-1, VC-2, Theora, and VP4-9). It combines components of Thor, daala, and VP9. It has real promise, and I look forward to see it.

At the end of the day, I wonder if any of the new codecs will make much headway vs H.264. H.264 is everywhere, and is "good enough" - much like how DVD has doggedly hung on inspire of the superiority of Blu-ray & HD streaming. We've seen something similar with audio codecs; MP3 is still a top format, in spite of the huge advances in coding efficiency with Opus, and the various flavors of AAC.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Why single out Apple?

Because Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla have joined. Apple is the last major browser maker who hasn't.

VP6-VP8 adoption stand at an effective Level of Zero

VP6 and VP7 were used by Flash and by Skype, VP8 is mandatory to implement on Android and is used in video calls, and VP8 is used in WebRTC.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Opus

And I should also add that all browsers support Opus in WebRTC (even Safari in Safari 11) and Opus is mandatory to implement on Android since Android 5. Skype also uses Opus (the SILK encoder comes from Skype).

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

And yet, I cannot plug a flash drive with my music in Opus format into my 2017 model car's stereo and expect it to play.

Nor can I plug it into my brand new Blu-ray player and hear music.

A big wide world exists outside the web browser, and in many of them, MP3 is the only game in town.

I'll be thrilled if BlueTooth's next iteration mandates Opus support for its A2DP profile. I suspect I'll be disappointed, as few device makers implement anything other than its only mandatory codec, SBC. (Though there is sporadic support for AAC or AptX, so I have some hope)

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

And yet, I cannot plug a flash drive with my music in Opus format into my 2017 model car's stereo and expect it to play.

I can't help you with your buyer's remorse. I can tell you that Vorbis and Opus audio and VP8 and VP9 video play just fine on my iPhone 7. VLC for iOS works well. Maybe get an iPhone 7 and plug it into your car.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

You realize there's a big world outside of the web browser, right? Take a look at the home theatre isle at your local electronics store; visit a camera shop. When I see a codec move into that market, I take it seriously.

It's not at all surprising to see Google's codec is mandatory on Google's Android OS and Google's WebRTC. That's a no brainer.

Apple has patents in the HEVC pool, and if memory serves, the late Steve Jobs lead the (failed) charge to try to get VP8 into the MPEG patent pool, so there may be bad blood with respect to the various incantations of VP8/9.

Google is supporting its codec, and Apple appears to be supporting the codec they worked on. AV1 is interesting, but VP9 is less so: Netflix's internal testing showed x.265 outperforming VP9 by an average of 20%.

So Apple isn't exactly crazy in deciding VP9 isn't worth its time; HEVC is the better codec, and is the ISO/ITU/MPEG standard.

If AV1 meets its goals, then it can give HEVC a run for its money - and I'm all for that. But for 2017 and likely most of 2018, HEVC is the codec to beat.

I did realize after posting that VP6 & 7 were On2's proprietary codecs before they were bought by Google; sorry for that.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

why do you keep insisting that the embedded market doesn't matter? It dwarfs the PC/phone/computer market.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

More than half of YouTube views came from mobile devices in 2016. The embedded market for video isn't bigger than mobile.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

You realize there's a big world outside of the web browser, right?

It's not so big. More than half of YouTube views were from mobile in 2016. Regardless of whether that's mobile browser or mobile app, it's bigger than any other electronics category.

Google's WebRTC

It isn't "Google's" WebRTC. All browsers implement WebRTC, even Safari 11. Here's a blog post about Microsoft's WebRTC implementation in Edge.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

Selection bias, much? You're clearly cherry-picking your data.

You can point to the videos and photos shared and iCloud and say that Apple dominates the market; that doesn't make it so.

What about virtually every recent Blu-ray and DVD player, which can stream Hulu and Amazon video?

Or automotive media players for the Kids in the back?

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Selection bias, much? You're clearly cherry-picking your data.

Prove it.

What about virtually every recent Blu-ray and DVD player

In 2015 there were only 43.5 million blu-ray players total in households in the US. And that's after 9 years of availability.

Or automotive media players

Global car sales for 2016. 77 million cars were sold.

Global smart phone sales for 2016. 1.5 billion smartphones were sold.

Global PC shipments per quarter in 2016. 70 million PCs are sold every quarter.

The numbers don't lie. Your argument is unimpressive.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

So you want to compare the number of cars -- which cost $30-90k a phone, and lasts upwards of 20 years to a smartphone which costs $500-800 and lasts for three years? That's a false equivalence if there ever was one.

And you compare sales number for Blu-ray players the US alone vs worldwide sales for phones? Seriously? The PlayStation alone sold more than 80 million units -- to say nothing of the 60 million (and counting) PS4's, or the 30+ million Xbox One's. That doesn't count players sold by Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Yamaha, Toshiba, Phillips, Vizio, and dozens of Chinese brands.

Nor are you counting the number of normal DVD players which can queue up Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon Prime video.

Home entertainment hardware Isn't often replaced every year, unlike a phone. I've bought 5 phones for every Blu-ray player I've owned - because the Disc player has more longevity. The situation is even more lopsided with cars.

There's a huge difference between the number of devices sold and the number of devices in use. It's not terribly surprising, but phones are disposable - it's often cheaper to replace the thing than repair. I sure as hell don't buy a new car every two years, but a phone? Sure... no problem.

Unsurprisingly, when long lifetime devices are designed, they plan for the long term, instead of what is trendy or shiny at the moment. Nobody is going to care about VP9 six years from now, but H.264 will still be common. MP3 will be with us forever...

You add support for codecs which will be around long term.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[sl3xd]

So you want to compare the number of cars -- which cost $30-90k a phone

Correction: $30-90k per car, not per phone.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

So you want to compare the number of cars -- which cost $30-90k a phone, and lasts upwards of 20 years to a smartphone which costs $500-800 and lasts for three years?

Yes. This is the dominance of the smart phone in the electronics category. This is why the "must have hardware support now" argument has always been weak. Mobile is the dominant platform and the hardware changes often.

The PlayStation alone sold more than 80 million units -- to say nothing of the 60 million (and counting) PS4's, or the 30+ million Xbox One's

Lifetime. In any case, there's nothing stopping the PS4 or the XBox One supporting whatever codec they like in software. Your original argument was that entrenched, embedded devices with no possibility of upgrade dictate codec success, remember?

Either way, the numbers are pathetic relative to phones and PCs. And remember: more than half of YouTube video is watched from mobile devices.

Nobody is going to care about VP9 six years from now

Of course not. We'll all be using AV1. I repeat: 1.5 billion smart phones sold per year, 280 million PCs sold per year. All other categories are irrelevant in the face of those numbers.

Your argument is still unimpressive. I'll just get on with listening to Opus audio and watching VP9 video on my iPhone 7.

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't "Google's" WebRTC. All browsers implement WebRTC, even Safari 11.

Then what the fuck are you complaining about?

Re:HEVC and HEIF

[theweatherelectric]

Who's complaining? I was correcting ignorance. VP8 support is mandatory to implement in the WebRTC spec. sl3xd didn't understand that.

Metal 2? Idiocy

[Gravis Zero]

I don't understand why Apple is resisting the Vulkan API but it's going to cost them many game titles that could otherwise be available for Apple's platforms. Even if Metal 2 is superior on a design level, they are still cutting off their nose to spite their face. Frankly, I don't understand why Apple shareholders stand for it.

It's coming, Pro Bro

[SuperKendall]

First of all if you really need some high performance Macing, there's the iMac Pro coming out at the end of this year...

But I don't know why you are even asking where the Mac Pro is, since everyone who cares already knows it's coming after 2017.

Re:It's coming, Pro Bro

[Cmdln Daco]

Apple has to wait until the processor they are designing into the new Mac Pro goes obsolete before they can release it. Jony is that way about the insides of the computer. He loves retro, but not on the outside of the box.

Re:It's coming, Pro Bro

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking for some high performance macing? Plenty of volunteers are here. Post your home address and hope for the best.

Re: It's coming, Pro Bro

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, intel will be releasing the 18 core Kaby Lake in a few weeks to OEMs and Apple users can cream their pants.

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Outdated PC/Laptop Tech

Not increasing the max allowed amount of memory on their laptops for over seven years is the best example of that I can think of. My $1,900 ThinkPad has four times as much memory as you can get in a top of the line MacBook Pro. They haven't been Pro models in years. We need more memory.

Re:Vulkan sucks ass.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't kill the metal

The metal will live on

Direct3D tried to kill the metal

But they failed, as they were smite to the ground

OpenGL tried to kill the metal

But they failed, as they were stricken down to the ground

Vulkan tried to kill the metal Ha,hahahahaha

They failed, as they were thrown to the ground

Aargh! yeah!

No-one can destroy the metal

The metal will strike you down with a vicious blow

We are the vanquished foes of the metal

We tried to win for why we do not know

Rave tried to destroy the metal, but the metal had its way

Glide then tried to dethrone the metal, but metal was in the way

GNM tried to destroy the metal, but metal was much too strong

WebGL tried to defile the metal, but WebGL was proven wrong

Yea!

Metal!

It comes from hell!

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll say, as a game developer that has written a) OpenGL, b) Metal, and c) Vulkan renderers, I have no problems with Metal.

A year since "release" and Vulkan is still half baked - we're up to sub point release FIFTY ONE. Sit down and write the basic Vulkan code required to just cope with the swapchain and get back to me. In 2 weeks. It will make you self harm.

Metal is actually quite nice. They've hit a nice level of exposing power vs not making you have to fuck with every bloody register setting in the driver. The main problem is the Obj-C interface. Doing profiling and seeing how much time is eaten by obj_msgsend() will make you sad for a "high performance" API. But taking some time and making C++ shadow classes for some of this mitigates it.

It's now a year since Google featured Vulkan at IO and the Android situation is the typical cluster fuck. We've done the work, but have no intention of shipping until Qualcomm (Adreno) and the Mali people make drivers that aren't hot garbage.

Not an apple fanboy by any stretch (Want me to rant about xCode? Got a free week?) but uninformed people should stop constantly pushing for Vulkan without appreciating what a mess it is - especially on mobile. It will probably get there -- enough people are invested to make it happen. But it's not there yet.

We're only a 15 months past initial release, and the extension fiasco that is OpenGL is starting in Vulkan...

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that you hate them makes me love Apple even more.

I've heard every bullshit argument about Apple for 40 years, and yours ranks as one of the worst. Congratulations bottom of the barrel Slashdot poster with a high user number.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Jeremi]

Frankly, I don't understand why Apple shareholders stand for it.

Do Apple shareholders even know what an API is? (Serious question -- I don't know any Apple shareholders to speak of, so I don't know what their level of technical understanding might be. My suspicion is that most of them just look at Apple's products from a consumer perspective; i.e. either they work well and are shiny, or they don't/aren't)

Metal

[unixisc]

I really miss the glam metal of the late 80s-early 90s. Guys like Motley Crew, Twisted Sisters, Trixter, Black 'n Blue, Queensryche, Vixen, Ozzy, & so on

I don't own a Mac, but heck, if I'm getting METAL, it might be worth the price

It's silly to support HEVC and not VP9

[Sycraft-fu]

While HEVC is probably going to be useful in the future, since it does offer good compression and the licensing is likely to get sorted one way or another, VP9 is useful NOW. Google will send you videos in VP9 format if it can since not only is VP9 Google's format, but it gets better per-bit quality than MP4/AVC. Well given that Youtube is, by far, the big name in video hosting for the 'net, makes sense to support it. On top of that, Netflix has started making use of it as well. They are the very biggest commercial streaming service. So between the two it is a massive amount of use.

I can't see why you'd want to add HEVC, which is brand new, still having licensing issues and thus has next to zero adoption before VP9 which is already a major force. I mean shit even Edge supports VP9 these days. Safari and IE are basically the only browsers that don't these days (and IE is deprecated).

Re:It's silly to support HEVC and not VP9

[dgatwood]

I can't see why you'd want to add HEVC, which is brand new, still having licensing issues and thus has next to zero adoption before VP9 which is already a major force.

If you can't see why, then you've forgotten the first rule of business analysis:

Follow the $$$.

Apple owns some essential HEVC patents. Therefore, it is in their financial interest to make HEVC popular. Moreover, they have a financial disincentive to make VP9 more popular, because doing so would slow HEVC adoption, thus reducing the amount of money that they will make from licensees over the limited lifetime of the patents.

Further, Apple also owns patents on H.264, and anything that increases VP9 adoption would also decrease H.264 adoption, and thus would have an immediate negative impact on their bottom line.

With that in mind, I can't see why they would want to add VP9 support just to make it easier for their competitors to avoid paying them licensing fees. :-)

Re:It's silly to support HEVC and not VP9

[TheRaven64]

Apple owns some essential HEVC patents

What do they have? The only thing that had in the H.264 patent pool was a token patent relating to the QuickTime container format (which is why that became the standard container format for MPEG-4). That's probably expiring soon, if it hasn't already, and I haven't seen much CODEC R&D from Apple in the last decade.

Re:It's silly to support HEVC and not VP9

[Plumpaquatsch]

Apple owns some essential HEVC patents

What do they have? The only thing that had in the H.264 patent pool was a token patent relating to the QuickTime container format (which is why that became the standard container format for MPEG-4). That's probably expiring soon, if it hasn't already, and I haven't seen much CODEC R&D from Apple in the last decade.

ProRes 4444 XQ - oh, wait, that's not for people pirating movies(*), so it obviously doesn't count.

(*) Unless they do so professionally

Re:It's silly to support HEVC and not VP9

[theweatherelectric]

What do they have?

Apple has a number of patents in the MPEG LA pool.

Re:Vulkan sucks ass.

[SuperKendall]

I would DEFINITELY like to subscribe to your podcast, and listen to it backwards.

Re:Too bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody working there can spell "Innovation" anymore, let alone be a leader in it... Its like a Cart Without horses, going uphill. ...

Apple's become a broken-down, wheelless cart, full of maggot-infested horse dung, sitting & rotting in the desert sun.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Cmdln Daco]

Wall Street refers to Apple as a 'gadget maker.' They really only see the iPhone. Any other product lines are seen as side products. People in Wall Street look at Apple and basically consider the Apple Watch and the Macintosh as about the same thing: a side distraction for Apple.

To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[SuperKendall]

Replacing HFS with APFS brings a lot of new features similar to ZFS but it's also going towards the Android/iOS security model

Sure that's fine and all but I don't think many users will see a difference, power or otherwise. It's just more secure for those that leave the locks in place.

To me the more interesting thing is, Apple is not phasing this in as an optional FS you can install, but instead going balls-out and making conversion the default option for every install! That means millions of Mac users when the upgrade (and historically most will in a short period of time) are all going to be converting the entire filesystem out from under the installer...

Tell me developers out there that your blood does not run cold at the thought of trying something like that at that scale...

Apple does have a bit of a leg up in that a lot of developers will try installing it first and they can shake out most of the edge cases that way, but still.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that they've already done this. The iOS 10.3 upgrade converted the underlying filesystem to APFS.

Yes, it's true that the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad are a much more constrained - much more predictable - environment than the Mac. But it's not like Apple is doing this completely blind. And honestly? If you're going to do it, what better time than at an OS upgrade, when (you would hope) users would have a current backup of their important data?

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[TheRaven64]

They've already deployed APFS for all iOS devices. These are a nice place for FS testing, because they all tend to have regular backups and they have a debug interface that connects to Apple-controlled software for collecting problem reports. On top of that, the macOS beta testers probably include a lot of people who do weird things with their FS. I still wouldn't entirely trust it on release (the general rule of thumb is that it takes 10 years for a new FS to become stable), but it's probably had a better stress test than any other new FS. I'd be interested to know if more data is stored on APFS or ZFS at this point.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[BronsCon]

they have a debug interface that connects to Apple-controlled software for collecting problem reports

You mean like the telemetry that people keep complaining about whenever Microsoft tries to do it? Did I just hear someone imply that Apple does the same thing?

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[SuperKendall]

Although that's a great point that they did a similar conversion for iOS, to me that's not nearly so impressive because in IOS the operating system has tight control over how the file system changes... it doesn't have third party deffraggers or a bunch of hard links the user added or any one of a million other odd things people could choose to do with the filesystem in an open system.

The developer beta probably does help shake out major issues though as they would be a group more likely to have messed with the filesystem in strange ways than others.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[TheRaven64]

No, I mean like the crash reporter stuff that Windows and macOS (and a load of Linux distros) have had for 10+ years.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[BronsCon]

Right, people are complaining about the telemetry in Windows 10 that can't be disabled; that's the only telemetry you can't disable in Windows 10.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the crash reporter stuff that only reports if you say yes?
Sure, that's no different from Microsoft's unremovable telemetry.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[antdude]

Were there any major issues of APFS in iOS devices? I have not seen and heard of any since its public stable release.

Re:To me most interesting is automatic switchover

[Anonymous Coward]

when (you would hope) users would have a current backup of their important data?

LOL.

I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[rho]

Currently running El Capitan, and thought about upgrading to Sierra. These are the highlights of Sierra according to the App Store:

1. Siri everywhere! No thanks. It's helpful to turn speech-to-text when I'm driving two tons of car. If I'm at a computer, I have a keyboard. Don't get me wrong, good speech-to-text (and in reverse) is awesome when it helps somebody. But as an ordinary able-bodied computer user, I don't trust any corporation that is recording everything you say to their device.

2. Copy/Paste Everywhere! No thanks. Because current security requirements involve passwords that look like line noise, I'm leery of any changes to copy/paste that means my root password may live on forever in some corner of iCloud.

3. Auto login with your Apple Watch! Great, now the thief who steals my computer will also lop off my hand to steal my watch.

4. Apple Pay! Pass.

5. Access your desktop files from your phone! Great, now the thief doesn't have to sever my hand, he can just cold-cock me while I'm talking on the phone and get access to everything. Maybe Apple was smart enough to limit desktop file access with Touch ID? Great. Now we're back to hand-lopping.

6. Tabs in Apps! Eh. Tabs can be great. Tabs can be awful. Tabs are many things, but they are not a marquee feature.

7. Picture in Picture! Auto-play videos on Web sites are a pox on the Internet. Bringing this putrid idea to the desktop is a mortal sin, and Apple should be ashamed of it. And if you're one of those people who say "but I want to watch my Sportsball team play while I'm doing my Paywork!" you are a terrible person and you should be watching the Big Game at the Sportspark or at a Sportsbar. Watching it on your computer while you pretend to do Paywork makes you a tool.

8. Photos library! As a technically minded user of Apple products for many years, having lived through spotty transitions between iPhoto, Aperture and Photos, I don't trust Apple to curate my photo library at all. Instagram is better. Stop pretending to be a friend to artists, or stop breaking things.

9. Apple Musi--(dramatic record scratch) Hold on now. I'd happily pay $10/month for unlimited access to all music forever, especially if that means that every time I play a song from some Danish screamo band they get a cut. My problem is that I can't help but assume that the Danish screamo band gets 2/3rds of a cut, and Apple gets the other third. I'm pretty sure Apple isn't sharing whatever revenue they acquire from mining our music habits, so this is all around a bad deal.

10. Bling in iMessage conversations! I text people on Android devices often. Asi no se puede. Otherwise, bling is fun! However, I'm not using iMessage on my computer. So I don't care about emojis or fireworks. Anyway, I assume High Sierra is a more stable version of things I don't care about? Hard pass.

Re:I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[TechyImmigrant]

>1. Siri everywhere! No thanks. It's helpful to turn speech-to-text when I'm driving two tons of car. If I'm at a computer, I have a keyboard. Don't get me wrong, good speech-to-text (and in reverse) is awesome when it helps somebody. But as an ordinary able-bodied computer user, I don't trust any corporation that is recording everything you say to their device.

I'm writing a book. It's technical so has quite a lot of mathematics in it, but also a lot of normal text. I'm using Latex. I figured it might be a good time to try speech input since I'll be doing it for 2 years and the technology has probably improved somewhat over the last 20 years. I tried every speech-to-text system available to me and it's hopeless. The attempts of the computer to hear jargon correctly are laughable. Trying to enter equations is a lost cause. There is no way known to mankind to get it to correctly put in $ instead of 'dollar' when I say dollar. I can type in equations 1000% times faster.

Re:I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[TheRaven64]

My problem is that I can't help but assume that the Danish screamo band gets 2/3rds of a cut, and Apple gets the other third

If that were true, then this would a a much better deal for the artists than pretty much any distribution mechanism other than CDBaby. I suspect that Apple's cut is actually a lot higher.

Re:I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[Applehu Akbar]

8. Photos library! As a technically minded user of Apple products for many years, having lived through spotty transitions between iPhoto, Aperture and Photos, I don't trust Apple to curate my photo library at all. Instagram is better.

Dumbing down iPhoto into Photos by taking out user-designed folder organization was a change that has sold millions of copies of Adobe Lightroom.

Re:I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that they have been dumbing down a lot of software, including Keynote....

Re:I thought about upgrading to Sierra

[Anonymous Coward]

10. Bling in iMessage conversations! I text people on Android devices often. Asi no se puede. Otherwise, bling is fun! However, I'm not using iMessage on my computer. So I don't care about emojis or fireworks.

I'm also on El Capitan because Sierra offered absolutely nothing that was worthwhile (but I'm not as angry as you). However, I've seen AppleTards on MacRumors and elsewhere complaining that High Sierra still doesn't have message bling. So, at the very least, it appears that you're wrong about that one. Yay?

This year, I feel like APFS may be enough reason by itself to upgrade. None of the other stuff sounds like it'll hurt the experience too much (unlike iOS 10, which was a severe regression in usability - skipped), so whatever. Oh, and killing autoplay in Safari. Long overdue, jeesus.

Does APFS do away with "._" files?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the mild annoyances of using macOS/OS X is the littering of the dot underbar (i.e., "._foobar") files. Does this go away with APFS? Thanks in advance.

Also, does High Sierra fix any of the myriad of problems macOS has with mounting NFS? Have they added support for NFSv4 yet?

Re:Does APFS do away with "._" files?

[TechyImmigrant]

One of the mild annoyances of using macOS/OS X is the littering of the dot underbar (i.e., "._foobar") files. Does this go away with APFS? Thanks in advance.

Also, does High Sierra fix any of the myriad of problems macOS has with mounting NFS? Have they added support for NFSv4 yet?

What about the Icon\r litering my git repos?

Re:Does APFS do away with "._" files?

[TheRaven64]

Yes and no. Those ._foobar files don't appear on HFS+ either, they're only there for things like NFS or SMB shares or FAT filesystems that don't have the ability to store some of the metadata that Mac apps expect to work. The VFS layer transparently maps the metadata to and from these dot files when using a filesystem without the relevant metadata support. There are basically three solutions to this problem: silently lose the extra metadata (probably a bad idea), report an error to the program (which probably doesn't have handling for it) or store it somewhere else (which is ugly, but at least something that you can hide in the GUI). The ideal solution is for every (local and network) filesystem to support storing arbitrary metadata, but I don't know how we get from here to there.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

support of metal doesn't mean you don't have to write Vulkan, it simply means you now MUST write metal + vulkan/directX/OpenGl if you want to support more than a single platform. So fuck off, this doesn't reduce complexity or make anything easier or better, it just increases the effort required to write X platform.

Pretty sure opposite is true

[SuperKendall]

Jony is that way about the insides of the computer.

I don't think you understand, he's more like a robot that does what he is tasked with to obsession.

The guiding principal this time is "replicability". You wanted replaceability world? Well Ive is going to give you a computer you can replace individual pins on the CPU on if you desire, or think alternating silver and gold would simply look cooler.

Each fan blade of the 300 whisper quiet micro-fans will be detachable, each core of the CPU removable and lovingly polished for maximum throughput. In fact CPU and GPU cores will be interchangeable and you will be able to increase the instruction pipeline to whatever size you like.

I hope you all really wanted modularity because you are going to see so many modules your head will explode, not that the resulting mess would stick to the completely hydrophobic surfaces that make up the ten thousand case panels.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

support of metal doesn't mean you don't have to write Vulkan

Actually it does. It means you only need to support Metal and Direct3D and that covers every reliant consumer personal computer OS.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[SvnLyrBrto]

And what exactly are the advantages of Vulcan over Metal? No, really... serious question. Because just about every time I've seen an argument for Vulkan vs. Metal it's been all ideological purity, not technological superiority.

Does Vulkan have features that are missing in Metal (And Metal 2)? Is the performance better? Do they control patents that are being denied to Apple? If I don't care so much about free software, the GPL, and all that, but want to be able to use the better product, what's the BFD?

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[speedlaw]

Wall Street wives use iPhones.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Misagon]

I think that Apple does not want users to be able to run comparable benchmarks and find out how much less graphics horsepower their machines have compared to gaming PCs.

It might also be emotional: that they don't want Macs to even approach the world of PC gaming, with the aesthetic and community that it has being so different from the Apple image.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

But they care more about vendor lock-in than about running lots of games or supporting industry standards.

They supported OpenGL. It got them nothing so fuck industry standards.

Sell it to us

[JeffElkins]

Sell me macOS to use on the Intel box of my choice or in a VM. Thanks!

Re:Sell it to us

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:Sell it to us

[fermion]

MS Windows is a beautiful OS because it is designed to be used on any POS hardware that falls off the back of a truck. This is incredible useful, and represent a significant technological advancement. It also results in serious compromises that limits what the OS can do, and limits the type of legacy thing the OS no longer needs to support.

So, Apple never supported the lame parallel port because it was, well lame. When firewire became useful, SCSI, which was incredible useful and fast, was pushed out the door. It was possible to transition between processor families because the old stuff could go away.

Remember that the need to support legacy products pretty much meant the MS Windows could not really take full advantage of the new chips, so the x86 Intel and AMD development were basically starved because the gamers and few HPC customers could not support development. It was Apple's move to Intel that gave it the funds to progress.

In reality if you can figure out how to get the OS to run on cheaper hardware, Apple really does not do anything t stop the private consumer. I have never seen a lawsuit where Apple has sued an end user for using it's OS on unsanctioned hardware. What Apple is not going to do it support its use because there is no upside or profit in it. People who want cheap hardware are not going to spend any money, and not going to support the advanced technology that Apple represents.

Re:Sell it to us

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the need to support legacy products pretty much meant the MS Windows could not really take full advantage of the new chips, so the x86 Intel and AMD development were basically starved because the gamers and few HPC customers could not support development. It was Apple's move to Intel that gave it the funds to progress.

That sounds off. Mac Os has less then 4% market share (and windows has 90%).
Now, intel has 80% market share (and AMD has 20%) in there, so a rough estimate (80% of 90% =) 72% of the chips are intel chips used for windows.
Now, Mac Os add's 4% (they're flat out intels), so that is a (4/72 * 100 = ) 5.5% increase of intel chips.
You're saying that this 5% increase in chip sales gave it the funds to progress?
Does that sound right? Or does it mean that Mac Os is having the advantage of having 90%+ of it's chip development paid by Windows users?

Re:Sell it to us

[jeremyp]

Apple is a hardware company. They sell computers, phones, tablets and watches. If you don't want to buy one of their computers, phones, tablets or watches, they don't care that you are not using their operating system.

Re:Sell it to us

[drinkypoo]

What Apple is not going to do it support its use because there is no upside or profit in it. People who want cheap hardware are not going to spend any money, and not going to support the advanced technology that Apple represents.

The problem is that nerds make purchase recommendations. Now granted, a portion is so attracted to Apple's polish that they will actually build unsupported hardware to run their operating system, but the majority are alienated by Apple's approach to business. They could have a lot more market share by embracing nerds that won't give them a lot of money, which would in turn result in their having more control. Isn't that what everyone always says Apple really wants? I mean, they have stacks and stacks of money, already.

Re:Sell it to us

[ausekilis]

MS Windows is a beautiful OS because it is designed to be used on any POS hardware that falls off the back of a truck. This is incredible useful, and represent a significant technological advancement. It also results in serious compromises that limits what the OS can do, and limits the type of legacy thing the OS no longer needs to support.

That's the beauty about standardization, there are much fewer compromises. We are not talking embedded software on a custom chip a-la PS1 and Saturn (and newer consoles to some extent). We are talking the x86 instruction set as it has evolved over the years. Mac OS and Windows don't differ here. The only difference is custom drivers, which Windows pushes to third parties and Linux has managed to do fairly well for years.

So, Apple never supported the lame parallel port because it was, well lame. When firewire became useful, SCSI, which was incredible useful and fast, was pushed out the door. It was possible to transition between processor families because the old stuff could go away.

Except the old stuff never really went away. People hold on to their Mac's for years. I know someone that finally went to OSX 3 years ago. Prior to that he had held on to a macbook running OS 9 that had all his photos and apps he needed. He only upgraded because it was getting hard to find replacement parts. They also haven't updated their underlying hardware in macbooks in 3 years, powermacs even longer.

Remember that the need to support legacy products pretty much meant the MS Windows could not really take full advantage of the new chips, so the x86 Intel and AMD development were basically starved because the gamers and few HPC customers could not support development. It was Apple's move to Intel that gave it the funds to progress.

Umm... what? It was only recently that Intel finally decided "enough of the old crap" and removed some of the old instructions that were no longer actively used. Apples move to Intel was due to stagnation of the PowerPC. Jobs stated they weren't impressed with the development of the architecture. 2003 was also when AMD moved to their Athlon line and Intel released the Pentium 4. Apple was nowhere near the top 5 PC manufacturers of 2003. The market also grew 27.6% that year, maybe some part of that was Apple, but they certainly didn't top Acer.

In reality if you can figure out how to get the OS to run on cheaper hardware, Apple really does not do anything t stop the private consumer. I have never seen a lawsuit where Apple has sued an end user for using it's OS on unsanctioned hardware. What Apple is not going to do it support its use because there is no upside or profit in it. People who want cheap hardware are not going to spend any money, and not going to support the advanced technology that Apple represents.

Apple has made a name for itself as a premium brand and they do spend a fair amount of time making sure the whole system is well integrated. I would never call them "advanced technology" though. As mentioned many times in many threads, they haven't updated their Desktop or Laptop lines in years prior to 2017. Asus has been engineering thin gamer laptops powered by the latest hardware a few months after retail release of those parts. What's Apples excuse? Too much money not enough engineers? The iPhone is continually playing catch-up with features of premium android phones. It's been out for how many years and just now gets a respectable, non-obfuscated file system with file manager? How hard was that to do from the beginning?

Re:Sell it to us

[caseih]

You didn't read the OP's post very well. He said, sell us a version that can run in a VM. That's a lot easier and more like the existing Mac ecosystem. Apple could even sell the OS with their own VM software that provides a certain set of custom virtual hardware. That would make the OS useable for a lot of people, and would provide a quite decent user experience.

I concede that's not in Apple's interest of course, since they make their money selling the hardware.

Re: Sell it to us

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'd have to support every random piece of hardware (and hardware combo) out there or get blamed and refunded. Linux users should be familiar with this, though people care less because no one pays money for Linux on the desktop.

Re:Sell it to us

[fermion]

The same support issue exists. MS makes an OS that runs on anything, which is why I run in a VM on my Mac. Mac OS is not designed to run on anything.

Re:Sell it to us

[PeeAitchPee]

People who want cheap hardware are not going to spend any money, and not going to support the advanced technology that Apple represents.

Not true at all . . . many of us spend tons of money on hardware per year but refuse to pay a ridiculous price for commodity Intel-based hardware in a pretty aluminum case. My company's workstations are tools, not toys or fashion statements -- I don't care what they look like as long as they do what we need them to do. We build monster-class workstations sourcing our own parts that burn circles around the highest-spec Mac you can order and that include all port types, not just the ones Apple sanctions or approves, at a fraction of the cost (usually around 40% per workstation of what the highest-end Mac would cost ). There are available Windows and Linux versions of all of the software tools we use (and a few that are Windows *only*). Sure Apple hardware is nice, but it's super expensive, so if you don't care about the OS, commodity Intel-based hardware offers the *same exact thing* at much better overall value.

Re:Sell it to us

[caseih]

There's no reason Apple couldn't make a VM that provided a specific set of hardware to the virtual machine, and this VM could run anywhere, on any hardware combination.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

And you think an apple only API is going to get them MORE?

Heh :) That's cute.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

So Android supports direct3D or Metal now?

Last I checked, Android was rapidly becoming the dominant operating system for the public.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

And what exactly are the advantages of Vulcan over Metal? No, really... serious question.

Industry support. Vulkan will allow the same code to support every other major OS outside the Apple ecosystem, so will have 20X as many games as Metal ever will, not to mention better graphics drivers.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

But they care more about vendor lock-in than about running lots of games or supporting industry standards.

They supported OpenGL. It got them nothing so fuck industry standards.

Suported OpenGL? What with a version that has always trailed the current version by quite a few versions? And what do you think Maya and the other 3d CAD apps use on a Mac?

Re:But does using MacOS

[Anonymous Coward]

But does using MacOS still make you gay?

Yes. With High Sierra you become not just gay, but a rampant, screaming queens. Women become rampaging bull-dikes.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a shame that your public don't spend. If you want to actually make money as a developer, Android isn't your target.

Re: fuck apple

[Type44Q]

Done changes?!

What are you, a fucking Okie??

iOS and Mac OS unification...

[Immerial]

...as I understand it. It allows for software to work for both iOS and Mac platforms, which is especially important since the graphics on the iOS stuff is custom silicon. It would make more sense for Vulcan if the iOS stuff was running NVIDIA or AMD graphics... but it isn't.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Wootery]

I think that Apple does not want users to be able to run comparable benchmarks

But you can run Windows on a Mac.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[jeremyp]

That comes into the "ideological purity" category, not the "technological superiority" category.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody gives a fuck about android.

Re:But does using MacOS

[Applehu Akbar]

Women become rampaging bull-dikes.

No, that's just because you're using your Mac at a university.

High Sierra?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that a CD-ROM format?

I can't wait for the next OS release, "Rock Ridge"

Re:Too bad...

[Zurkeyon3733]

What a pathetic trolling attempt...Your Weakness Of Debate was Highlighted by your Ignorant Response. :-D

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, if you say so. I'd argue that it's a pretty convenient technical feature (i.e. *technological advantage*) to be able to use the same interface across OS.

APFS on Third Party SSD's

[ThatNakedGuy]

I was excited about APFS, but now I wonder if Apple will couple it to some technology only present in Apple SSD's.
I'm running a Samsung 850 Pro SSD in my 2012 MBP and it's awesome. But I can foresee Apple saying "how dare you use a Samsung product! No APFS for you!"

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[UnknownSoldier]

> I don't understand why Apple is resisting the Vulkan API

Because Apple suffers from Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome.

Sometimes they are correct, others times no.

If they would just fix their shitty OpenGL 4.5 support everyone would be happier instead of inventing yet-another-standard

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[BronsCon]

Well, if it technically can't run on anything that's not a Mac running a recent version of macOS or iOS, I'd say Metal is technically deficient. Vulkan has the technical ability to run on pretty much anything non-Apple, and that limitation exists only because Apple won't adopt it; nobody but Apple can adopt Metal, so the situation for Vulkan can potentially improve (on top of already being a better situation to begin with) while the situation with Metal cannot.

Metal is what you do when you're the market leader, not when you're trying to gain market share.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

To make clearer what the other replier said, yes Android (worldwide) dominates the OS percentage - but, and this is key - Android users don't buy apps.

If you look at app store revenue - which as an app developer is what matters - Apple clearly leads over Google Play.

Android is a mess, with a variety of reasons and one of them is the hardware and the lack of software updates. If the vendors (both handset and chipset) can't be bothered to provide timely OS updates what makes you think they will provide updated vulkan or OpenGL updates?

Google needs to get this mess sorted out, and quick, otherwise at some point a shift will occur leaving Android (and hence Google) behind.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, "ideological purity" would be because its open source, or closed source, etc.

Vulkan is a technological solution to a problem - advanced 3D support across multiple platforms, allowing cost savings for multi-platform software.

In the end however it is all a moot point, because while iOS has decent hardware under it Apple is still crippling their Mac hardware with substandard performing GPUs meaning no one is going to seriously invest in high performance graphics on macOS anyway.

Re: Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Cross platformability falls in technical superiority in my book.

I'm a nerd. I recommend Apple to everyone.

[Brannon]

Because:
1. My "friends and family" IT support role drops to basically 0 when those friends and family have Apple products.
2. As a nerd, I know good engineering when I see it.

Lots of nerds like Apple products. In my experience people who really understand technology have respect for Apple products & Apple's philosophy (even if it doesn't fit their needs).

The people who hate Apple, by and large, are tech wannabees who think that spending all day on stackoverflow to figure out how to print to a wireless printer makes them l33t or something. I find this group of people to be boring and stupid--and I'm glad that Apple doesn't try to appeal to them.

Re:I'm a nerd. I recommend Apple to everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tim Cook, it is you?

Are you really a nerd? I doubt.

Lots of nerds LIKED Apple products. In my experience people who really understand technology HAD respect for Apple products & Apple's philosophy

I am writing this on a 4-year old MacBook Pro, with an i7, 2.9GHz, 8GB, SSD, 5GHz wifi and 3360x2100 graphics.

Am I able to buy a much better Apple notebook today? Not really...And the price of the entry levels machines are an abuse.

OS/X is getting worse in each release, and quite frankly, I am thinking of deleting Sierra and running *BSD here. This coming from a guy that used to had a paid Apple developer account.

I already bough a el cheapo Lenovo, running OpenBSD there, and quite happy with it.

Tim Cook if fucking it up for us. I wont pay the double price for a high end machine as I pay for the top of Line Dell XPS. Forgot it.

BTW, I am one of the boring tech-wannabees with 20K points in "Unix and Linux".... Will you tell me you never asked help in Stack Overflow? right...

Re:I'm a nerd. I recommend Apple to everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. My "friends and family" IT support role drops to basically 0 when those friends and family have Apple products.

Right, because now they know you're an idiot and stop listening to you for advice. Some of them make the mistake of actually buying an Apple product once, but when the inevitable inability to do anything outside what the Lord Saint Steve blessed rears its ugly head, that device soon begins collecting dust in the closet. Soon, they've wised up and they're happier with a decent alternative - any alternative - while asking someone with a brain for advice.

Of course you never hear from them again.

Re: I'm a nerd. I recommend Apple to everyone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either way, that's a win.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Doing profiling and seeing how much time is eaten by obj_msgsend() will make you sad for a "high performance" API."

Use Swift? Non-NSObject-basaed classes and struct method calls don't go through obj_msgsend() and some functions may even be inlined directly.

Doing a large project in Swift 3 at the moment and having a blast with it.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

So does about 50% of the American Public

parallel port

[Anonymous Coward]

Parallel ports worked just fine for printers. They were not very good at doing other things, but not being able to screw in a phillips head screw with a hammer is not a flaw.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Industry support. Vulkan will allow the same code to support every other major OS outside the Apple, X-Box, PlayStation ecosystem, so will have -20X as many games as Metal ever will, not to mention worse graphics drivers.

Fixed that for. Every mayor game is targeted for consoles. There won't be a single console that will ever support vulkan.

Re: Metal 2? Idiocy

[Anonymous Coward]

Cross platformability falls in technical inferiority in my book.

Fixed that for you. Just like OpenGL was always inferior to Direct3D because it was handcuffed by the need to be cross platform.

Re:Metal 2? Idiocy

[sl3xd]

Half of what I hear about Vulkan is that it's an "industry-standard" dumpster fire; it came out considerably after Metal and DX12, and still reeks of half-baked thoughts rushed to market.

Were I calling the shots, I'd give Vulkan more time to polish out its issues.

For those that feel differently, there's even moltenvk which appears to layer Vulkan on top of Metal.

And, of course, many of the major graphics engines just abstract DirectX, Vulkan, Metal, and OpenGL away from the game developer anyway, so it's hard to see how it'll be a real issue.