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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.
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.
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.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.