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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.
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...
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.
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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...
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
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.
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-...