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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.
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?"
And it's not even Friday yet.
apple hardware only? or any SSD / pci-e flash card
Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
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/...
It's already been beta tested on all iOS devices for the past half year or so, with no widely reported incidents whatsoever. Also, some recent point macOS update already did a safe dummy conversion of everyone's disk behind the scenes, reported the results back to Apple and then discarded the changes; again, with no incidents that anyone noticed. So, uhm, yeah... I think the beta test is pretty much done at this point.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
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.
I think you're comparing Apples to Windows here...
*ba-dum ching!*
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
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.
You can already use APFS for non-root filesystems on any storage media with macOS.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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?
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...).
I would say that APFS earned its bones earlier this year when Apple pushed out iOS 10.3. This is actually the first time in history a vendor has actually converted this many people from one filesystem to another, with pretty much zero complaints on various forums. Had even an outlier even happened with more than 1-2 people affected, there would be people in the streets yelling about a "filesystem-gate".
I would dare to say that migrating to APFS on macOS will be relatively painless.
Only problem I can think of is that the drive may be inaccessible by other file systems.
If the OS breaks down for some reason, this may make recovery of data a serious issue.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
Killing AFP seems terrible to me unless they play nice with PostScript fonts would be one reason I wouldn't like it, though I imagine the number of people running Mac OS X Server on all flash configurations in a design environment or any other environment that requires resource forks is pretty. They may have worked that out, though I'd imagine as much as all Mac shops cringed doing so that Acronis Connect (formerly ExtremeZ-IP) on Windows server is now the norm.
> Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
It takes change control out of the hands of the end user.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Fair enough, but not enough of a reason not to upgrade. HFS+ must go at some point, you need to get it over with eventually. It's been widely known that this change was coming for quite a while, any external tooling has had enough time to migrate where necessary.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Phrases such as "Devices formatted as HFS+ can be read and written to by devices formatted as APFS." do not inspire confidence in comunication.
Windows kind of in the opposite boat by only allowing ReFS on the extra super pricey versions of Windows 10 post Creators Update. Windows required it to be a deliberate choice before, but kind of annoying that they hold users on it with lower versions ransom to buy a greater version of Windows to get what they already had.
Which end user is truly concerned about the file system? Which end user even knows what that is? As far as most users go, this is exactly the same as any other OS X update in the past: you either update or you don't; if you update, the system either works or it doesn't. It hardly matters why exactly the system may give you issues after an upgrade; in the past there have always been slight incompatibilities here and there after a major upgrade which have been ironed out by affected 3rd parties rather quickly. It makes no sense to be able to selectively opt out of those kind of system changes, and it makes little sense to opt out of this either.
If you can't run High Sierra for whatever reason right now (including concerns about the file system), stick with Sierra.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Have you met the end user?
In context of dealing with the Apple ecosystem I think its safe to say that taking the control out of the average end users hands should be construed as a good thing.
That is after all part of why people pay a premium for it.
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.
APFS, not AFP.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What gives you the idea APFS is "two months old"? It's been announced in June 2016, at which point it must have been pretty darn complete already, and it's been running on millions of iOS devices for the past half year with virtually no incident whatsoever.
And nobody's forcing you to upgrade to High Sierra, unlike Microsoft's extremely aggressive Windows upgrade push. That would be a comparable point, if Apple did a virtually automatic upgrade without your consent. Including a new file system in a major system upgrade is a far cry from that.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
NTFS still isn't mandatory on Windows. Lots of smaller drives are still VFAT.
I probably am close to the average end user. As long as my system keeps working, preferably better than before the update, I'm fine with it.
-- Cheers!
so the update will auto convert and then boot to a non apple hardware error screen on boot
It's not like Apple did the transitions to APFS seamlessly on hundreds of million of devices already without a hiccup,,,,oh wait...they did.
And smaller drives on a Mac can be FAT or HFS or whatever. If you order a new Windows laptop what is the default file system?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
Because being forced into APFS is terrible... why exactly?
Notwithstanding the fact that this Slashdot "article" looks like someone who was trying to reply to an email on an existing conversation accidentally posted an out-of-context chunk to Slashdot instead, clicking on the one link and looking at the bullet points would suggest that APFS is not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6, so that any computers running those prior versions would not be able to read or write to the updated devices, it sounds like Boot Camp does not support APFS, and it may affect network file shares. In other words, whenever you push your entire base toward a single standard there is bound to be a certain set of users who are going to have problems switching, but it sounds like Apple gets a free pass. It's bad for other people to force all of their users to move in a certain direction, regardless of whether they want to or not, but it's OK when Apple does it I guess.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Which end user is truly concerned about the file system? Which end user even knows what that is?
That's the argument? It's OK because Apple users don't know what a file system is?
If you can't run High Sierra for whatever reason right now
OK, but if Apple users don't even know what a file system is, how will they know if updating any one of their plethora of Apple devices might break compatibility with any other devices? If they upgrade, and it doesn't work, can they revert?
if you update, the system either works or it doesn't.
Is that the updated motto? Apple: it either works or it doesn't.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Yeah, I miss the days when Apple was filled with high-quality engineers from Next. Hard to find that kind of programmer these days. The quality pool has been diluted.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're really moving the goalposts here. Yes, it's "no worse" in every technical way. There are some things it doesn't do better: it doesn't increase your flash drive's internal capacity. It doesn't conjure unicorns any better than HFS+ did. It doesn't mow your lawn. There are some things it does worse: conceivably there's some program somewhere that does
to detect whether it's running on a Mac, and that program will break.
Macs ship with Samba built in. I'm gonna go ahead and say yes, it can be read by Samba.
I bet Windows can read APFS about as well as Mac can read ReFS.
It will support some devices that HFS+ doesn't, and vice versa.
Look, it's different. By every technical metric, it meets or exceeds HFS+. Sure, there are scenarios where the simple fact that it's not HFS+ will cause problems because that's the only thing an application knows how to use, but there aren't going to be many of those and they'll be fixed over time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Well, ya know, the patents on NTFS are surely running out by now, and Linux knows NTFS inside and out too. MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
... clicking on the one link and looking at the bullet points would suggest that APFS is not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6, so that any computers running those prior versions would not be able to read or write to the updated devices, it sounds like Boot Camp does not support APFS, and it may affect network file shares.
- Time will tell, but I have a hard time believing that High Sierra is going to convert external drives as well as boot volumes. If we're only talking about boot volumes, then being "not compatible with MacOS versions prior to 10.12.6" is only going to be problematic for a tiny number of Mac users.
- Why would the file format on a network file share matter? It should be irrelevant to any machine other than the server actually sharing the drive.
That said, I'm not planning to update to High Sierra for a good, long while. Sierra was a big bag of hurt; so as long as Apple keeps offering security updates for El Capitan, I'm good.
#DeleteChrome
Apple does get a pass. Mostly because they have always been a company willing to break backward compatibility at the drop of a hat. This is nothing new.
Microsoft does not because they are the kind of company that will make changes to their OS to ensure that specific legacy applications continue to work with new versions.
If you order a new Windows laptop
This is Slashdot, why on Earth would I do that?
To install Linux onto it?
I know that there are places that sell laptops with Linux pre-installed but this is Slashdot, who doesn't wipe the drive and install their own OS of choice anyway? There's just a much wider choice of hardware if one ignores which OS comes on the laptop knowing they'll just blow it away once the computer is in their hands.
The question to ask how the Windows partition is formatted on the drive from the factory is something someone might just notice as they go to gparted and blow away the partition. It might mean much in the end but this is Slashdot and people notice things like what formatting is on a partition.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
Yep, that's pretty much the argument. Do you think any end user cared when /usr was locked down a couple of years ago?
The people who need to know (developers) have long since known that this transition is going to happen and they've had a while to prepare for it if they needed to. What good does it do to allow anyone to opt out at this point? APFS is going to happen eventually, no two ways about it. If not this year, then when is it convenient for you to do the transition? It's a lot simpler for everyone involved to get it over with and have a clear technical base, instead of complicating the possible configurations.
If you've been sticking to behaviour Apple has been telegraphing for a couple of years now, you're not going to notice a thing. If you've been homebrewing stuff close to the file system on your own disregarding all advice or you have some very specific use case... well, this is your last chance. Your option to opt out at this point is to not upgrade to High Sierra.
If you need a random Windows analogy, Microsoft forced everyone to get their shit together with regards to filename handling by including a space in the "Program Files" folder. Stuff like this happens in technology every so often.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
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+.
Of course. You have the option to not upgrade. It's not Apple's "our way or the highway", by the way, it's the tech industry. Linux, Windows, network protocols, node libraries, you want the latest and greatest (note: not saying apfs is great!), it may break something. Apple's not doing anything different, they're just an easy target for the lazy and those that don't understand their business model.
How do I edit my sig.
Which end user is truly concerned about the file system?
Me! I work in a lab with nearly every OS imaginable, either on instrumentation or user-facing systems. A robust multi-OS filesystem is very important. I'd settled on HFS because I almost never use Windows, find FAT too small/limited, and find NTFS support a bit tedious and not MacOS friendly
I wander back and forth between Mac OS and Linux depending on how much coffee our BSOFH had today, so it's hard to guess what kind of file system I'll need to use to resurrect the smoking ruin of my workspace (Eurocratic, Military, Third World, IT and Management).
Just sayin'
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
just because it will happen doesn't mean you have to be on the first boat. Let the early adopters work with it and get the kinks out. That said. I haven't been following this and there seems to be a mixed consensus on whether or not this is a new FS or a long tested and safely stable filesystem.
Just another second banana
MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
I'd replace "MS" with "Most big tech corporations". Apple, Google, Lexmark, HP, MS are all very good examples of lock-in crap.
This terrible "article" isn't newsworthy. Who approves this crap?
Professional Genius
Why would the file format on a network file share matter? It should be irrelevant to any machine other than the server actually sharing the drive.
I'm just taking that from TFA. It *should* be irrelevant, but apparently it depends how the share points are set up.
Volumes formatted with APFS can't offer share points over the network using AFP. SMB and NFS are supported when using APFS.
Not being part of the Apple ecosystem, I'm not familiar with AFP or why someone would choose that over either SMB or NFS, but apparently there is a situation where converting to APFS will cause problems for network shares.
Sierra was a big bag of hurt; so as long as Apple keeps offering security updates for El Capitan, I'm good.
That's fine, but you wouldn't be able to read a USB device formatted with APFS. I don't know whether or not that matters for your particular situation, but Apple has made the decision that USB devices which are apparently initially set up on newer Macs will not be readable by older Macs.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Do you think any end user cared when /usr was locked down a couple of years ago?
I don't know, did it cause problems for anyone? If it didn't affect anyone, I doubt anyone cared. If it caused problems, I'm sure that people cared even without understanding the underlying reason why.
What good does it do to allow anyone to opt out at this point?
I guess we'll find out. If Apple forces an update to hardware and it causes problems, then we'll have our answer.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Gotcha. That makes more sense to me now.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
No one's holding a gun at your head to make you upgrade. If you run software that isn't compatible with High Sierra, then don't upgrade to High Sierra. Sierra isn't going to quit working immediately.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Taking out the headphone jack was nothing compared to the sheer guts required for making this mandatory and automatic.
Being forced to agree to what? If I don't want change, I'm not going to upgrade to High Sierra. If I'm going to upgrade, I'll take it as it comes and not pick the system apart for things I like and don't like. Ooh, I want the new foobard system process, but ergh, I don't like that libbaz moved from /usr to /System. Uuh, I like the new instant snapshot backups but ergh, I do not want that new file system. ...really?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
FWIW, AFP has been on the way out for a while now. Apple is moving towards standardising on SMB. The writing was on the wall that something would break eventually, and everyone who's concerned about that has had time to consider it.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
it's exactly like windows.
being forced into a feature solely to boost the size of the user base for testing (captcha: debugs)...... it's beta. it's two fucking months old.. will be less than six months old when sierra goes gold.. still beta at that point, afaiac..... and it's a damn file system... just, ya know, the most important piece of an operating system that uses storage. no big. good thing apple has a totally flawless history of introducing new features with no bugs, huh? absolutely nothing to worry about.. not the first time apple has forced something on users.. won't be the last. this one just has the potential to be the nastiest..
i get it though. i wouldn't want to run "..the worst file system ever" (l.torvalds) either. hfs dates back to 1985. the year 'back to the future' hit theaters. hfs+ enhancements to it are from 1998 (os 8.1... EIGHT POINT ONE.. 680x0 was still a thing then, for fuck's sake). it's about time they use a file system actually designed for a unix-like operating system (everything has been duct tape and bailing wire since the first osx). yo, apple..what the fuck took you so long? your meta data engineer finally retire? and your new youngins don't know how to byte-swap on read or write?
Actually, APFS has been in development for almost 5 years now. Pretty much right after they decided to ditch the ZFS Project (Thanks, Oracle!). And it was actually "silently" deployed publicly (sort-of) in iOS 10.1 (IIRC) (that was the bug-check you speak of). That is a lot longer than you claim.
https://www.macobserver.com/an...
And, Apple actually has a nearly spotless record when it comes to File Systems. You can say some things about HFS+; but "unreliable" ain't one of 'em! And, generating from the LACK-of "all my data is gone!" reports from iOS owners, it looks like, despite its young age, that APFS is already quite reliable. That's why Apple feels like it's ok to roll it out to macOS.
So, if your iPhone/iPad is on 10.1 or greater, you have actually been at least temporarily exposed to APFS for that long, and so has the rest of the iOS-owning-public. That's why they felt it was trustworthy enough to roll-out permanently in iOS 10.3. Because they had already done a "dry run" on Millions of iOS devices.
I think the reason that HDDs/Fusion Drives aren't being automatically converted to APFS yet, is that they have spent the lion's share of optimization up to this point on Flash-Based systems, and will eventually circle back-around to optimizing HDD metrics, too.
Apple is definitely not "done" with APFS; but it is far from a Beta at this point.
And as for age: How old, exactly, is NTFS? How about ext? For NTFS, the first version was created in 1993, and the most recent version in 2001. Not too bloody different from HFS and HFS+. As for ext, it started as just plain-ol' "ext" in 1992, and the most recent version ("ext4"), like most open-source stuff, has a more, er, "storied" history. It looks like it was finally adopted in 2008, which is still nearly a decade ago.
Well, ya know, the patents on NTFS are surely running out by now, and Linux knows NTFS inside and out too. MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
macOS has had Read support for NTFS since at least version 10.1, and "experimental" R/W support since, IIRC, 10.8 or so, if not earlier.
"Experimental" means you have to flip a config option in Terminal. Since NTFS is undocumented, Apple pretty much HAS to call their support "Experimental".
http://www.techrepublic.com/ar...
Fair enough, but not enough of a reason not to upgrade. HFS+ must go at some point, you need to get it over with eventually. It's been widely known that this change was coming for quite a while, any external tooling has had enough time to migrate where necessary.
I would be surprised if Apple dropped HFS+ support completely in less than 10 years, probably longer.
Yup, it's been silently deployed to millions of devices already, people have been hammering on it in private and public betas for months, and you are free not to upgrade to High Sierra on the first day. Same procedure as every year.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
That's fine, but you wouldn't be able to read a USB device formatted with APFS. I don't know whether or not that matters for your particular situation, but Apple has made the decision that USB devices which are apparently initially set up on newer Macs will not be readable by older Macs.
Time will tell; but I don't believe that'll be the case - I am assuming the Apple document from the summary is referring to the boot drive only.
The existing Mac situation is loosely similar. If you're setting up a boot drive, it is required to be (case-insensitive) HFS+. But if you're formatting an external drive, you are given other options, e.g. ExFAT.
Now, assuming I'm right... That Apple document is poorly worded and lends itself to misinterpretation.
#DeleteChrome
Indeed, it's probably going to stay an option for non-boot drives forever (technology "forever", meaning until the next major platform shift or so). It's basically "done", they just need to keep compiling the modules in.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Yeah, do people plug in USB sticks formated w/ FAT32 and expect it to be read in Macs, and then brought back to a Windows laptop?
I don't know, did it cause problems for anyone? If it didn't affect anyone, I doubt anyone cared. If it caused problems, I'm sure that people cared even without understanding the underlying reason why.
It caused some hiccups for developer tools, but those were ironed out in no time flat. Nobody. Else. Noticed. It's going to be the same with the filesystem. Millions of iOS users already didn't notice. And the few edge case people who work so close to the filesystem as to notice, they'll find solutions to whatever issues they'll face.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Because someone has custom software written around another file system?
The point is that no matter how good APFS is, there many be reasons some users can't use it. Apple's our way for f*** you is just plain wrong.
Add to that, Apple never gets version 1 right...it makes sense to hold off adapting an entire new file system for a few months.
It has already been running on millions of iOS devices longer than that.
Your point being? Do you believe a FAT32 USB stick will silently be converted to APFS when you plug it into a Mac? Errrrrrrr... no.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
They just don't want to build new code to support the filesystem being hosted on a deprecated protocol.
I imagine any large storage array would still be using hard drives, and thus allowed to be HFS+. And even if your boot drive is APFS, that doesn't do anything to prevent access to remote servers using the protocol.
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?
It has been working essentially flawlessly for awhile in millions of iOS devices running iOS 10.3, and was "trial ballooned" in 10.1 and 10.2.
Can APFS be read by Windows machines? SAMBA?
Well...it can be read by Windows machines via SMB (Apple's implementation).
breaking many workflows
I don't use graphical applications except for hobbyist stuff, much less do so on Macs, but what you describe seems to me to be far from an optimal approach. Wouldn't it be better to change the workflow so as to do all this editing by means of large-binary-aware source control systems, such as, let's say, Perforce Helix? You get the benefits of local working, with meaningful backup of previous version, and it only requires getting used to checking files in and out as needed.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Microsoft forced everyone to get their shit together with regards to filename handling by including a space in the "Program Files" folder.
Thanks for this bit of information. It never occurred to me that might have been the reason!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I read ReFS as ReiserFS and thought "oh, just like Microsoft to have a murdery filesystem."
You mean the PROGRA~1 folder?
APFS, because the file system is so central to every OS, has been tested for a long time.
No, to install Linux on it and then bitch about the lack of commercial support for it.
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.
From what I understand, they will either have to leave Time Machine in HFS+, or do pretty much a complete rewrite.
As you say, that will be interesting if it happens...
I'm the AC OP from the the quoted workflow comment. Since the early 90's, pretty much all print shops, design firms, magazines, packaging houses, etc. that use Macs have saved their work to a central NT based windows file server. We pretty much always used AFP over IP and we had no problems working off that server. At some point, MS stopped updating the AFP version in the SFM (services for mac). Around the time OSX came out it became necessary to use the 3rd party ExtremeZ IP to replace the frozen SFM. Around Mac OS Lion, Apple used their own version of SMB (SMBX) and it started working well with MS's native SMB 2 on their server. But Apple later moved away form SMBX and MS was using SMB3 and it went downhill fast, so everybody migrated back to ExtremeZ, now owned by Acronis, and all was well. The problems with using SMB instead were numerous. File copies were slow and unreliable, the finder would not accurately list files on the server and often jumped around as new files disappeared and reappeared in a flickering mess. Some of this could be negated by observing proper filenaming conventions, not making too many deeply nested directories and whatnot. But worst of all was Adobe InDesign's and Illustrator's tendency to crash when laying out a page of linked files on the server. Most page layout software works by pasting-up and laying out "proxy" images of highres raster images, vector files and other filetypes that reside on the server, sometimes across multiple volumes or multiple file servers and even multiple desktops. These linked files are often very large in number throughout a magazine or catalog or what-have-you. And of course those layout files had constant revisions and multiple people working on them in collaboration - designers, copy editors, prepress, etc. I remember an Adobe product called version cue that did something similar to what you suggest - a locally hosted check-in check-out system that supposedly made working off a file server more seamless while bringing the file local to edit. It never took off - either nobody was interested, or understood it, or they were just happy with the status quo, or Adobe killed it just because as they often do. The workflows we've all been using can be very fragile but the AFP solution just worked for everyone. I have no idea if the product you mentioned is applicable due to the complex nature of layout files *and* their reliance on linked raster/vector and text files. I'd be interested in looking at it but it would be a hard, nay impossible sell. More likely the print design industry would cease Mac upgrades for for a decade or so to preserve our much loved and time tested workflow. We have been spoiled rotten and we/they expect and demand to continue doing it the same way. Unless it was dead-simple and problem free from the get-go, which I doubt.
I've been upgraded to "bad"!
Well, ya know, the patents on NTFS are surely running out by now, and Linux knows NTFS inside and out too. MS just doesn't feel comfortable without some kind of lock-in.
In unrelated news, FAT32 is about to have patents run out, thankfully somehow patent encumbered exFAT was selected as the successor on SDXC instead of UDF.
Unless it was dead-simple and problem free from the get-go, which I doubt.
Thanks for the detailed information. I'm not sure a SCS would work, but I know that one is used by companies that work with huge file lists and also huge files, such as movie studios. It'd require training as the idea behind a SCS is kind of backwards compared to how people intuitively when it comes to editing, so there'd be a learning curve. In particular, a project's workspace (the set of files you download when you do a checkout, against which your checkins would upload changed files) would have to refer to files locally instead of spread all around the network, because you're always working on a local copy on your machine, not accessing files from elsewhere. On the other hand, there are benefits that become apparent when one needs to go back to a previous version of a work, branch it and start working on that for a different project, and also in managing everything centrally and having a full history of who did what and when.
Notice that SCSes such as Git are way better known, but they are optimized for managing a boatload of small text file and do a lot of text comparison for their magic to work, not for large sets of binary files, which is why I mentioned Helix. I don't know whether there are other binary-optimized SCSes out there though...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
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?
NTFS did get some updates although they're primarily failed attempts at extending the feature set. There was an attempt to replace the file description tables within NTFS with SQL Server and that became eventually Windows Search, there is Windows Disk Extender and it's spawn Storage Spaces that has attempted to somehow make RAID0 out of NTFS.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
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?
Yes, it is very insightful. Pretty much every Apple user I have ever seen has been stupid and/or gay.
Stupid is self-explanatory. It's the whole reason the Macintosh even exists: for stupid people who can't use a real computer.
Gay, that's something that is kind of strange. Apple used to have the gay pride flag colours in their logo, but maybe it attracted too many gay users? Nevertheless, the gays stuck around. Maybe they think spending more for inferior technology is somehow a status symbol? That would place them into the stupid category as well.
Since you're a little boy who wasn't born until the 1990s or perhaps after 2000, you wouldn't know anything of the history behind Apple, nor would you know anything about computers in general. Speaking of which, you don't belong on Slashdot, junior. Try over at Twitter or Facebook where things are simple and uncultured enough for you to understand.
HFS+ is shit and is dangerous. It's based on very old standards and is a total mess under the hood, not so different than NTFS.
https://www.cio.com/article/2868393/linus-torvalds-apples-hfs-is-probably-the-worst-file-system-ever.html
APFS also has huge Unicode issues:
https://eclecticlight.co/2017/04/06/apfs-is-currently-unusable-with-most-non-english-languages/
Btrfs is still in development and has quite a while to go. Filesystems are very difficult and are something you cannot fuck up on! You needs years of testing and verifiability before you push a new fs to market.
I hope Apple at least fixed all the Unicode bugs in this APFS release. I think I'll stick with ext4.
The one that finds out after installing it that some critical piece of software no longer works and tries to downgrade.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
indesign and Illustrator's link management expects to find an absolute path to those files upon opening the layout document. I don't see a 3rd party versioning app being able to communicate to indesign what the new paths are every time the file locations move.
Ouch! Damn, how can those softwares not provide something as basic as relative paths? o_O
Well, with an SCS the best that could be done would be to make a new /scs folder in all computers that will communicate with it, and configure them to checkout workspaces there. This way at least all links will be absolute in regards to a folder that is the same everywhere. Still a PITA though.
And the time it would take to move multiple GBs every hour just to accomplish this
That isn't quite the case. Locally checked out files continue there. The trick is to remember to mark them for checkin and do so after using them, and then remember to always check them out before using them. This way any newly changed file will be downloaded from the SCS, while those that are still the same won't. But yes, lots of mistakes can happen if anyone forget to do it in the correct sequence, particularly if one's in a hurry.
I wish you is good luck. Nothing much that can be done in addition to that...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
And how is this any different from software breaking for any other reason? Would the same TFA be posted with "Deprecation of library Foobar not optional"? That's one common reason why something breaks after a system upgrade. Why make such a big fuss about the file system in particular, which is probably one of the least intrusive changes since it works at an opaque level to most application code?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
The Unicode normalization issues have been fixed. At least according to a post in July by the same blog that you are citing: https://eclecticlight.co/2017/...
It's not mandatory for data partitions. Since vista it is mandatory for the partition on which windows lives.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My only gripe about APFS is the lack of checksumming. Which means no bitrot detection... which is a really bad thing when storing media for long term. One minor item would be the lack of deduplication.
However, this filesystem was definitely needed. It will change how a lot of things work, and upgrade security. The ability to back up via snapshots makes this very useful. The faster I/O due to copy on write cannot hurt either.
All and all, I think this will be the absolute best feature that 10.13.x comes with.
btrfs has been in development a long time. As a filesystem, it is OK. However, as a RAID manager, I'd stay away from it for a while, and leave RAID to Linux LVM or md-raid. It would be great if RAID worked, as that would allow for recovery from bitrot, but in the past 1-2 years, there have been people complaining about complete data loss on their arrays, so I would stay away from it for now.
Of course, in the ideal world, ZFS would be dual licensed under BSD + GPL, so it could be included as a root filesystem for Linux, macOS, etc., and all other filesystems used for specialized purposes (CramFS), or kept for legacy reasons.
The article doesn't talk about drives, though. It talks about systems. As though the only storage anyone has is a single drive that came from the factory. No clue what it will do on systems with a mix of storage.
Indeed, it's probably going to stay an option for non-boot drives forever (technology "forever", meaning until the next major platform shift or so). It's basically "done", they just need to keep compiling the modules in.
exactly. Like Carbon support. I think you can still run Carbon Apps. for example, QuickTime 7.
But that's being logical.
Apple will most probably drop HFS+ support within 12 months.
Remember, this company *removed* FTP support from Finder. The code was written, stable, and the format extremely well established...yet they removed it for...reasons???
I think it was removed for Security reasons, actually.
The previous version of the OS won't boot from APFS. So instead of being able to surgically excise enough of the OS to let you reinstall the previous OS (IIRC, this minimally amounts to turning off system integrity protection, booting from an external drive or recovery partition, and 'rm'ing a handful of files, but I usually nuke all of /System plus about a dozen files at the root level), you have to:
And worse, because it modifies the filesystem, you can't even take the shortcut of dd'ing it to a new disk to make up for not having a proper backup ahead of time. Your previous filesystem metadata is *gone*, so the only thing you can do if you don't have a backup is dd to a new disk, run Carbon Copy Cloner ($), and likely reinstall all your apps because the copy protection files have different inode numbers (well, the HFS+ synthetic equivalent of an inode number).
So instead of taking all of three minutes not including the install time and posing essentially zero risk to the user's data, a filesystem-replacing downgrade takes the better part of a day and leaves you with your backup as the only copy of your data during the entire period. Instead of being a low-risk downgrade that I would do without giving it a second thought, it's a downgrade that I would strongly advise against attempting even by the most technically adept people.
Apple should have waited a full release after the filesystem was *bootable* before even *considering* upgrading existing volumes. They should, however, set up *new* volumes with the new filesystem. But migrating existing disks the moment you consider it to be robust enough for a root volume is just plain insane. This makes me think that I should skip the next OS X release entirely and wait for the following major version. It's way too risky a change to not be under the user's control.
The forced upgrade was terrifying enough on iOS where, on average, the only thing of value is a handful of photos that haven't been copied to your computer or iCloud yet, where app developers aren't doing their own crazy copy protection schemes, and where I trust the backups to be complete. (For example, I can tell you horror stories of users losing all their photos because of Time Machine not backing up bundles that are open and Apple's software stupidly storing everything in an opaque library bundle for no good reason.) IMO, forcing upgrades on OS X so soon is, frankly, nuts...
...and completely unnecessary, too. I'm sure, being Apple, that the upgrade process happens silently in the background, similar to the way encryption happens, in which case there's nothing preventing them from adding a single button to Disk Utility that says "Upgrade volume to APFS" and asking the user whether to upgrade during the installation process.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Or how about Apple just used one of the existing file systems for Unix and Unix-like operating systems.
You know, flash-friendly file systems that support continuous TRIM and fstrim...
Like say... Ext4, Btrfs, JFS, XFS.
But that wouldn't have been very Apple-like, would it?
HFS+ is shit and is dangerous. It's based on very old standards and is a total mess under the hood, not so different than NTFS.
https://www.cio.com/article/2868393/linus-torvalds-apples-hfs-is-probably-the-worst-file-system-ever.html
And just because St. Linus spews out garbage, you lap it up like the good Apple-Hater you are:
But here's da facts, Jack. Read 'em and weep:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
APFS also has huge Unicode issues:
https://eclecticlight.co/2017/04/06/apfs-is-currently-unusable-with-most-non-english-languages/
Bullshit. APFS supports Unicode 9.0. PLENTY of multilanguage support!
https://developer.apple.com/li...
http://unicode.org/versions/Un...
Further, APFS is still very new. Apple is a multinational company. Do your REALLY think they won't be ironed-out sooner, rather than later?
Btrfs is still in development and has quite a while to go. Filesystems are very difficult and are something you cannot fuck up on! You needs years of testing and verifiability before you push a new fs to market.
And yet, Synology, to name a company with a LOT to lose by embracing a new filesystem, has gone all-in on btrfs on their new OS. Are THEY being foolhardy? Why not whine about THEM? They migrated from ext4 to btrfs virtually overnight!
I hope Apple at least fixed all the Unicode bugs in this APFS release. I think I'll stick with ext4.
Of course you will, you good little Linux fanboi...
My only gripe about APFS is the lack of checksumming. Which means no bitrot detection... which is a really bad thing when storing media for long term. One minor item would be the lack of deduplication.
However, this filesystem was definitely needed. It will change how a lot of things work, and upgrade security. The ability to back up via snapshots makes this very useful. The faster I/O due to copy on write cannot hurt either.
All and all, I think this will be the absolute best feature that 10.13.x comes with.
I REALLY don't know where this "No Checksumming" meme started; but it simply ISN'T true:
https://blog.cugu.eu/post/apfs...
And just an an anecdote, I Upgraded my iPhone 6 to iOS 10.3.3 a couple of nights ago. iOS 10.3.3 is APFS-based, period.
Not only did I regain about 3 GB of storage; but every single thing is about 3 times as fast! Some of that may be some code-optimization; but I think a good portion of it is due to APFS.
The article doesn't talk about drives, though. It talks about systems. As though the only storage anyone has is a single drive that came from the factory. No clue what it will do on systems with a mix of storage.
From what I have read, High Sierra will ONLY convert the Boot Volume, and then, ONLY if it is an SSD.
So, for the rest of anything, they will remain HFS+, or whatever they were formatted-as.
macOS, like most modern OSes, supports a bunch of different Filesystems.
Good to know, thanks. Wonder if like TRIM they'll only do that on SSD's that appear to have been shipped by Apple.
Good to know, thanks. Wonder if like TRIM they'll only do that on SSD's that appear to have been shipped by Apple.
Don't know. But at this early stage, I think they are proceeding extremely cautiously, one step at a time.
Would you REALLY rather they didn't take that approach?
No, not arguing with it. Just want to know what to expect.
It's actually fairly moot for me, High Sierra won't run on my 2009 Mac Pro anyway.
No, not arguing with it. Just want to know what to expect.
It's actually fairly moot for me, High Sierra won't run on my 2009 Mac Pro anyway.
I think they are doing this roll-out about as optimally and safely as they can. So far, I have yet to hear any "screams of a thousand users"; so I think this is going to go like the transition from PPC to Intel: Utterly transparent to the average user.
when did the linux kernel ever make a decision for the user as to what file system to use. distro maintainers decide that, and that can be overriden at install time.
And therein lies one of the many reasons it will NEVER be the Year of the Linux Desktop.
The previous version of the OS won't boot from APFS. So instead of being able to surgically excise enough of the OS to let you reinstall the previous OS (IIRC, this minimally amounts to turning off system integrity protection, booting from an external drive or recovery partition, and 'rm'ing a handful of files, but I usually nuke all of /System plus about a dozen files at the root level), you have to:
Having a full backup (Time Machine) has always been the only supported and recommended option to begin with. If you even know what dd and rm is, you're so far advanced beyond the typical user that you're entirely on your own and that you can find ways to downgrade if you absolutely have to. Downgrading is a rare occurrence in the first place, and it's even rarer for someone to attempt it the way you do. This is not a realistic concern for enough people to worry about.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...