Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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...
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.
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...
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 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.
> 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...
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...
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
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?
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.
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...
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...
You mean the PROGRA~1 folder?
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.
Actually, in addition to the "Recovery Partition", OSX/macOS has had the ability for quite some time to automagically download and install the ORIGINAL OS for your particular Mac, and/or to create a USB Installer. No "Install discs", "Recovery Partition", or TM backup needed.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-...
No, to install Linux on it and then bitch about the lack of commercial support for it.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
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.