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APFS Is Not Optional (apple.com)
From a new Apple knowledge base article: When you upgrade to macOS High Sierra, systems with all flash storage configurations are converted automatically. Systems with hard disk drives (HDD) and Fusion drives won't be converted to APFS. You can't opt-out of the transition to APFS.
Mac products a few years ago.
Was this approved accidentally...?
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Someone able to explain why this is bad... or good... or whatever the point of this posting is?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Mac products a few years ago.
Do you need someone to pat you on the head, loser?
They used to be pretty good with support pages. Now they just have a Genius behind the counter, and a 2 sentence post on Slashdot describing what is happening.
And it's not even Friday yet.
apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card
..to the compulsory live beta test being conducted on your data.
AKA the Windows 10 experience.
So glad Apple is trying to give Mac people the best of both worlds!
So this means High Sierra is a one-way upgrade, 'cause Sierra (and older) doesn't grok APFS. Well, not totally, but you'd better have a full Time Machine backup before upgrading, and if High Sierra breaks something you like (e.g., old but great Garage Band sound generators, old but great software, some driver for some great thing you use) you'll have to do a complete wipe, including re-formatting the drive, before re-installing Sierra (or older) from scratch and then restoring from Time Machine.
Workable, and thankfully Time Machine and Apple's Recovery Mode works so well, but damn you'd better have a reliable Time Machine drive, and better yet some install media with your last working Mac OS.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I am going to have a roast beef sandwich for lunch, I will opt out of the potatochips. However, lettuce, tomato and mayo are included with each order. You cannot opt out of the lettuce, tomato and mayo.
High Sierra Format (HSF) is the early logical file system used for CD-ROMs in 1985 and 1986. The later ECMA-119 and ISO 9660 standards are based on revised HSF. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm not a Mac guy, so I had to look this up: Apple File System (APFS) is a decent modern filesystem with most features you'd expect from something developed somewhat recently. Here's a FS comparison where you can compare it to the latest and greatest competing formats like Linux's ex4 and Btrfs, Sun's (Oracle's) ZFS, and of course Microsoft's NTFS.
Features uncommon elsewhere include native snapshotting, encryption, and error correction.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Yeah, I know: filesystems take a long time to mature and not lose data. You want your FS tested — widely — before you rely on it to not eat data.
Here's the thing: iOS 10.3 included an upgrade to APFS. Since March, every updated iPhone and iPad has been running this in production. Most of them have no idea, because it's basically invisible. I haven't heard of any problems stemming from this change.
So, while OS X has different (more variable, probably) use cases from the sealed systems in iOS, it's very likely that in "normal" usage, APFS is going to be reliable for folks.
No editing, no real approval, just slam it out there as long as it fits the ideology you're pushing.
Only apps can app apps, and AppFS is the appiest app system that lets you app apps that app other apps!
Apps!
What about a Mac with two internal drives, a non-Apple SSD and regular HDD? The HDD prevents the OS from using APFS?
#DeleteFacebook
apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card
Damn good question.
Knowing Apple, I think we may sadly already know the answer.
So?
You can already use APFS for non-root filesystems on any storage media with macOS.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Is this even news? It was certainly reported quite extensively at WWDC that Apple planned a migration of all SSD devices to APFS. As others have pointed out iOS has already done this transition.
If you go onto the 'What's new in APFS' talks at WWDC from this year and last year, it describes how the conversion process works to minimise the risk to the data structures. New data structures are built in free space, then a full check is done, and only if the conversion passes a filesystem check and is 100% successful is the transition signed off and the old data structure removed.
This only applies to the system drive and for SSDs only - non-system, or non-SSD drives aren't going to be routinely converted.
The entire iOS base was transitioned successfully last year - successfully in the sense that most people don't even realise that it happened.
For spinning rust this is to be optional - mainly because the benefits are significantly fewer: so the cautious should just remain on traditional hard drives (because if we don't trust shiny new software we wouldn't trust shiny new tech like SSDs that might have shiny new firmware anyway, right?)
What is genuinely interesting is whether the Time Capsule will see some development. The snapshotting features should make it possible to build a much better incremental backup system: here's hoping that development time goes into that.
It would be a weird stance if they did though, since APFS is better than HFS+ in litterally every way.
Including readability and writability by the non-macOS operating systems that you have installed on other partitions in Boot Camp in order to port your Mac apps to those other operating systems?
Or are Mac owners expected to carry an external drive on which to store any file that should be accessed by more than one operating system? And if so, in which file system should said external drive be formatted?
I was worried they'd try to make me to buy new hardware to get a modern filesystem.
The only reason any other OS can read HFS+ is because someone reverse-engineered the structure and wrote drivers. So go ahead and write drivers for APFS.
And end up on the business end of a patent infringement lawsuit. Microsoft is already requiring royalties for exFAT from every manufacturer of SDXC hosts and cards.
This is a good upgrade to improve the file system. Among other things it improves protection against hackers and hostile governments (try and find another kind...).
whipslash, if you still come around this site, could you please do something about msmash?
This submission should be considered totally unacceptable for the front page. The topic matter is interesting and very relevant, but the summary itself is beyond atrocious. As you can see, it is completely lacking any and all context. I can't see how any editor would look at this submission and think it's anything but garbage. Yet apparently msmash considered it good enough to put on the front page of this site!
This isn't the first time I've seen shitty summaries put on the front page by msmash. But it is one of the worst examples I can think of. This summary is just so utterly horrid.
Could you please seriously consider removing msmash's editorial duties and responsibilities? This summary suggests to me that msmash should not be putting submissions on the front page. It doesn't matter if this ended up on the front page intentionally or accidentally. Regardless of the specifics, this summary in this form should not have ever ended up on the front page here.
Please consider replacing msmash with an editor who is at least somewhat capable of posting summaries that aren't complete shit like this one is.
Phrases such as "Devices formatted as HFS+ can be read and written to by devices formatted as APFS." do not inspire confidence in comunication.
It takes change control out of the hands of the end user.
Yeah I can't count the number of Mac users I've heard complaining about not being able to control which file system they use....
Yes that was sarcasm.
Seriously, hardly anyone actually gives a shit. If it works then it is fine. As long as it doesn't cause problems 99.99999% of users aren't going to give a shit. The few that might are probably running linux anyway. Quite frankly you will have a hard time even finding Mac users who could tell you what the current file system used on the Mac is and even fewer that could tell you why it matters.
I don't know whether it was APFS or a 10.13 beta itself, but one of them badly broke most of my software from before about 2014, and some since. The Office 2008 apps, for instance, would either not launch, or would launch and beachball forever. There's also the matter of the required normalization forms for file names only being enforced at the highest-level APIs. It's trivial to make a file which can't be read or deleted on this file system (or for that matter, to make a file that makes it impossible to read or delete some other file).
so the update will auto convert and then boot to a non apple hardware error screen on boot
Or do you like being forced to "agree"?
Oh noes! Apple made a decision about how they think their technology will work best and imposed it on users!
[Obligatory pearl clutching]
[Obligatory steeple comment]
[Obligatory proprietary comment]
[Obligatory lock in comment]
[Obligatory Linux is this close to winning on the desktop comment]
Are we done now?
Now you're saying "Well, so what if it's no worse?!?!?!".
Can APFS be read by Windows machines? SAMBA? How about cameras (it says it "upgrates" flash, but does it mean USB flash or SSDs?)? What if the upgrade fails, will a downgrade work so you can get back to the old system? Does it work with all devices currently out there? If it doesn't, given no choice, can you roll back the changes?
I better get in line at Best Buy right now, I'm sure people will be standing in line for this release!
Seriously though this is another reminder that maybe I need a new laptop. This MacBook I'm typing on is somewhere around 10 years old and it's stuck at macOS 10.11, which will soon be two versions behind. I hit this wall before when my previous Apple laptop was stuck at 10.4 as I recall. Sure there's hacks to work around the software enforced system requirements but I think I got my money's worth out of this.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No, not Apple hardware only. I've formatted a Sandisk thumb drive and an WD USB drive with APFS.
It's just a new file system. You should be able to use it in place of HFS+, anywhere where you could use HFS+.
Total non-story. MS recently did the same thing and made ReFS not optional in Windows 10 Pro.
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/APFS_Guide/FAQ/FAQ.html
This terrible "article" isn't newsworthy. Who approves this crap?
Professional Genius
way to go apple
Taking out the headphone jack was nothing compared to the sheer guts required for making this mandatory and automatic.
I see a lot of people suggesting that because APFS was "tested" by migrating iOS devices, this bodes well for MacOS devices. On the surface, this seems true (and the install base is much larger) but MacOS is not iOS. The applications aren't the same, the use case is generally not the same. The backup and restoration process is not the same. There are a lot of major differences that leave me hesitant to believe that this migration will be the same. It could (and probably will) go very smoothly for most users, but for those who have trouble, the impact will be much greater. If an iCloud backup is hanging out there and an iPhone or iPad fails somewhere in the process, you just start over. Restoring a MacBook is a little... trickier.
Honestly, I'm okay with the whole idea. HFS could stand an upgrade. My concern is that Apple, once again, has decided to shit on enterprise, education, and other large installation bases. As I read the upgrade process last week, it seems that they've failed to provide an easy method of migration for IT departments who manage large groups of users with current OS versions. Sure, new machines that show up should be easy enough to deal with, and those users that upgrade through the automated process (provided everything goes okay) should be in the clear, but applying an image to machine with an old OS and HFS is impossible without doing a migration and firmware update. If you're an IT administrator in a mixed environment... well... have fun with that.
So if you have disk images that you deploy to all your Macs, you must in the future maintain even more images based on different filesystems or go all-in for APFS.
No wake on lan, or wake from off, what everyone else calls WOL.
No xserve for you
No more GUI for pf in OSX Server
Coming soon: No pf firewall. No ARD. No sshd, No static IP addresses. We're Apple. We have the courage to move forward toward the cliff edge.
because you're too fucking stupid and young to take control of anything. the fact you didn't realize that and posted anyway validates my point.
If I were to have a dual boot setup with macOS and Linux, would the forced APFS break my computer? In other words, the article sounds as though it forces the entire solid state HD to APFS. And, if you have an entire SSD in APFS, would it prevent the installation of Linux, i.e. partitioning to a supported format?
Does anyone know if Apple has published (or plans to publish) documentation/code so other operating systems (Linux for example) can support APFS partitions?
Or is this another example of Apple creating something proprietary and not sharing?
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
APFS is currently unusable with most non-English languages
I have SSD that it is on and it is Mac OS Extended (Journaled) so I call BS as we are pretty far along the Beta track now.