“Even by the standards of recent macOS releases, this year’s High Sierra is shaping up to be a low-key release with few high-profile user-visible improvement,” Andrew Cunningham writes for Ars Techinca. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to iCloud-backed iMessages and family iCloud storage plans, but support for tables in Notes and flight status updates in Spotlight aren’t exactly life changing (not unless your life is continuously interrupted by extremely small and specific problems).”
“But to call High Sierra a minor release is to ignore the big under-the-covers changes it brings to the Mac, some of which have been in the works for years now,” Cunningham writes. “New filesystems and graphics APIs may be hard to demo to more casual users, but there’s plenty in this release that lays the foundation for more visible changes somewhere down the line.”
“We’ve drilled down into some of the more esoteric technical aspects of APFS in other pieces (at least, APFS in its current Sierra beta form), so what I want to focus on here is what APFS is actually letting Apple do in macOS,” Cunningham writes. “One of the more obvious benefits, and the one Apple showed off on stage during its keynote, is the ability to copy files on the same disk without actually physically storing two different copies on the disk. Native support for solid-state drives and encryption is harder to quantify, but is nevertheless important given the increasing prevalence of both. But what Apple stressed to me in particular is how much more flexible APFS can be, both with current technologies and when it comes time to implement future tech.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait until all of our Apple devices are using the modern APFS!
SEE ALSO:
APFS: New file system is Apple’s foundation for the future – April 10, 2017
Apple’s iOS 10.3 delivers brand-new Apple File System – March 28, 2017
iOS 10.3’s longer than usual installation likely due to switch to new Apple File System – March 28, 2017
Apple releases iOS 10.3, watchOS 3.2, and tvOS 10.2 – March 27, 2017
You must back up your iPhone and iPad before upgrading to Apple’s iOS 10.3, due soon – March 10, 2017
Apple’s iOS 10.3: A very, very important upgrade – January 25, 2017
APFS: What Apple’s new Apple File System means to you – June 24, 2016
APFS: New Apple File System promises more speed, flexibility, reliability – June 17, 2016
The feds’ll hate this: Apple’s new APFS file system ‘engineered with encryption as a primary feature’ – June 14, 2016
Buh-bye HFS+, hello APFS (Apple File System) for macOS! – June 14, 2016
Apple can do better than Sun’s ZFS – October 26, 2009
Apple discontinues ZFS project, turns attention to own next-gen file system – October 24, 2009
Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server’s ZFS goes MIA – June 9, 200
The keynote indicated that Apple sees this as more of an evolutionary release than a revolutionary one. Hopefully it will be like Snow Leopard, which is still the benchmark for stability.
Apple phasing in new video and image formats that need expensive licensing to go up against a “two-year-old group including Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Intel, Netflix, and Amazon” which has “declared its intent to develop future open-source, royalty-free media formats for video, audio, and images.” Oh, those minor players, what do THEY know? Apple has a new HQ, and, ah… Tim Cook!!! Yes! …and, ah… er… ooh! a TOUCH BAR… that’s mo’ betta. /snark
Now if they could just evolve out the ugliness introduced with 10.10. Seriously, the flat look is getting REALLY old, please bring back Aqua.
But more importantly, give us back our scroll arrows. Taking them out was one of the stupidest things Apple has ever done.