MacOS High Sierra

https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra/

by rbanffy • 9 years ago

551 610 9 years ago

apple.com

cjsuk5• 9 years ago

Does anyone know of any issues with this before I press the button?

feketegy• 9 years ago

I would wait at least a couple of weeks until all the quirks are ironed out.

Especially if you're a programmer, allow a little time for all the apps to catch up and update their versions.

High sierra comes with big changes like the Apple File System, and I'm sure there are a lot of stuff going on under the hood.

twobyfour2• 9 years ago

Yup, it's a well established truism at this point that if you need a stable system (or don't have excellent data backups) you should never install the .0 version of any Apple OS. And while many Cocoa apps should be forwards-compatible out of the box, if you rely on Homebrew it may be several months before the packages you need are all updated.

cjsuk5• 9 years ago

I’ve got a spare machine and will run it on first. I don’t do any dev on the box; it’s all remote. I use git client and macvim to update some markdown docs occasionally but that’s about it. Rest of it is on the end of SSH and via web.

falsedan4• 9 years ago

beta has been public for like 3 months, most apps have updated already.

martimarkov• 9 years ago

Seems like I still don't have that button... ;(

jmkni2• 9 years ago

IIRC it doesn’t support Fusion drives, so I can’t upgrade my Mac Mini yet.

chillaxtian• 9 years ago

You can, it just won’t convert the drive to APFS.

soneil• 9 years ago

They're supported, they're just not upgraded to apfs. At the moment, only SSDs get upgraded automatically. Not entirely clear why, or whether that's a long-term plan.

andy_ppp• 9 years ago

Homebrew often seems to have important packages break with each major macOS release. I’ll let you go first, anyone know of anything at the moment?

daenney• 9 years ago

I've been running it since dev preview 1, no Homebrew issues whatsoever over the past 2+ months.

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

Have a look and see if any of the packages you use regularly are on their 10.13 issues list: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/18493

Tehnix7• 9 years ago

Have been on it since beta 3 or something. This has been one of the more smooth transitions, no dev tools broken, and only few apps had some quirks that I filed bug reports for, which are now fixed.

The APFS change really isn't something you are likely to hit, heck you'd have to go out of your way to make it a problem.

Deffo recommending it :) Speed ups are nice!

charlesdm• 9 years ago

Speed ups? Where are you seeing speed ups? I'm on a Macbook (last gen) and have been using High Sierra for the last month or so. Aside from my changed desktop background, I haven't actually spotted (any / many?) changes.

archagon• 9 years ago

Do you know if the APFS conversion affects Bootcamp at all?

veidr• 9 years ago

Do you really have the button? I saw this headline and tried to update the Macs I have that are waiting for this update, but none of them see it in the App Store.

And the page linked still says, "Available 9.25".

Tehnix7• 9 years ago

You can try some tricks from here https://appletoolbox.com/2016/11/macos-app-store-updates-not....

Namely, try going to System Preferences -> App Store and press Check Now.

cjsuk5• 9 years ago

Not yet. I assume it won't appear until this evening for me. I like to think ahead :)

dezzeus• 9 years ago

The Pacific Timezone (PST) is currently in the middle of the night; I suppose we have to wait for them to wake up.

bshimmin• 9 years ago

One of my guys ran into https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/8788 - it was hellish trying to figure out what was happening.

cjsuk5• 9 years ago

Thanks for the heads up. I was considering using vagrant on this box. I'm currently RDP'ing into a windows box in the office and using that for vagrant most of the time at the moment.

SolarUpNote• 9 years ago

You won't be able to connect to a shared drive using AFP anymore, if you get the new file system APFS when you upgrade. Apparently you only get APFS if you have a pure SSD drive (not Fusion).

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208018

  APFS and file sharing
  - Volumes formatted as APFS can't offer share points over the network using AFP. 
  - APFS supports SMB and NFS, with the option to enforce only SMB-encrypted share points.

duskwuff• 9 years ago

You won't be able to connect to a shared drive using AFP anymore, if you get the new file system APFS when you upgrade

Not quite. You can't share your drive over AFP if you've formatted it as APFS. Connecting to a remote AFP share is unchanged.

Infernal• 9 years ago

So I read the note you quoted as "an APFS filesystem can't be exported over the network via AFP", but what you wrote seems to say "a machine running the APFS filesystem cannot mount an AFP exported filesystem".

I don't think your conclusion is supported by the snippet you quoted.

m6w6• 9 years ago

Will Aperture still run on High Sierra, or is Photos already a viable replacement?

coldtea11• 9 years ago

Photos will never be a viable replacement for the full Aperture professional use cases -- they have different goals.

Aperture might or might not run on HS (not sure), but holding to it until Photos catches up is not very good strategy, at some point it will just stop working (and it's not getting any new fixes, updates, etc).

Better move to Lightroom or something similar.

4ad16• 9 years ago

Better move to Lightroom or something similar.

I don't want to rent software, and I don't want to install the dreaded Adobe installer. What other good alternatives are there? Darktable doesn't pass the test.

cygned• 9 years ago

Using Affinity Photo after using Lightroom after using Aperture. It's pretty good, actually, and enough for what I do.

tomislav• 9 years ago

I found that Capture One is a decent replacement.

Synaesthesia2• 9 years ago

I’m sure it still will run. I ran iMovie 2009 with no problems.

mullsork• 9 years ago

Sort of off topic but what has happened to the web design team at Apple? Their landing pages used to be extremely pleasant to read but by now I often struggle to read their headlines. The blurred background with text on top is not easy on my eyes at all. Perhaps my eyes are starting to go bad...

Their page for the new iPhone had the same issues. In my opinion their web designs has gone down hill this year.

samstave• 9 years ago

Hipsterism is a thing, apple may hold a patent on it.

agildehaus• 9 years ago

Plus there's obvious rendering problems with the site's nav on Chrome. Made obvious when you click that little bag icon at the very right of the nav.

I'm convinced they don't bother to visit the site on anything but Safari anymore.

briandear• 9 years ago

To be fair, a large number of sites seem to never visit their sites on Safari. Have a look at the Javascript console when using Safari. All sorts of small issues that are simple fixes but they get ignored, especially when it comes to javascript embeds such as help desk widgets.

systoll• 9 years ago

That only affects people with 'experimental web platform features' turned on in chrome://flags.

Apple is using 'backdrop-filter' in its CSS. Safari's the only browser to support it ATM, but it degrades gracefully. If you have that flag set, though, chrome lets you see their half-finished implementation.

madeofpalk• 9 years ago

Yeah, this page isn't the best example, but they're still killing it with the product pages https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/ https://www.apple.com/iphone-8/

oneeyedpigeon5• 9 years ago

They still have that janky scrolling which degrades the experience, for me.

metafunctor• 9 years ago

I don't like the look of these pages. Parallax on everything makes it feel like it's 2010 all over again.

kccqzy3• 9 years ago

It’s funny that I can’t even scroll the iPhone 8 Plus landing page at 60fps on an iPhone 8 Plus.

nu11p01n73R2• 9 years ago

Took some time to realise that "Available 9.25" meant 25th September. The box looked more like a disabled button.

smcleod• 9 years ago

Yes, American dates are confusing and illogical at the best of times, I wish America would standardise on the international ascending order date style of 25/09/2017.

bigtones• 9 years ago

They even change date formats within the same section of the website, so no consistency at all. They use a slash in their date "9/25" for a Beats offer at the bottom of https://www.apple.com/mac/

wmeredith• 9 years ago

I agree. The faux-button is a pretty inexcusable piece of interaction design. It's like underlining for emphasis on the web. Don't do it.

alainchabat• 9 years ago

It looks like a theme from themeforest. They must have had a tight deadline

tangue• 9 years ago

I had the same impression and check some older pages :

https://www.apple.com/itunes/ and https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/

The main changes are :

- JS triggered animation (webagencies do love this ). - San Francisco instead of Myriad as a font

mcjiggerlog• 9 years ago

Those pages are so much more readable and responsive. Scrolling is not smooth at all on the OP.

jasonmaydie• 9 years ago

They succumbed to the insidious parallax scrolling website syndrome that has been plaguing almost all the corporate website these days

intended• 9 years ago

The web page has some duplicated and dithered text.

pantulis• 9 years ago

What about performance on older machines? My mid-2010 MBP is still supported, but I'm afraid of switching if performance takes a hit. It has dual 512GB SSDs and 8GB RAM, so it runs Sierra with more or less success, but it's usable.

With all this filesystem level changes, does High Sierra have more hardware requirements than Sierra?

robin_reala5• 9 years ago

Same hardware requirements as Sierra: https://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/#hardware-require...

yoz-y• 9 years ago

I have installed 10.13 on a mid-2009 macbook pro using the installer patcher hack. It works quite fine, I did not notice any difference with Sierra. I have a single 256MB SSD and 8GB RAM. On a side note, I did not get the APFS update, I assume this is because it is a third party SSD.

Cthulhu_2• 9 years ago

UI wise it should make more efficient use of your MBP's GPU, thanks to Metal 2, but on the other hand that efficiency may be negated again by more visual effects. Things like blur (which cost performance) can be disabled in accessibility settings though.

abledon• 9 years ago

Not for 2010 models: https://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/#hardware-require...

___> ' Metal 2 Supported by the following Mac models: MacBook (Early 2015 or newer) MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer) MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer) Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer) iMac (Late 2012 or newer) Mac Pro (Late 2013) '

shurcooL• 9 years ago

Metal isn’t supported on a MacBook Pro that old. I think it requires MBP 2012-2013 or so. My late 2011 MBP doesn’t support it.

tomaskafka• 9 years ago

Installed on a 2012 non-retina 13” mbp, everyhing feels faster (probably no benchmark gains, but much less UI latency, faster app switching etc.). Thankful, I don’t need anyhing more from the update :).

thomasdd2• 9 years ago

If it's so lag-g-g-g-ing and non-responsive as iOS11. Then I better wait with the update :|

Tehnix7• 9 years ago

You have problems with iOS 11?

Anyways, it's definitely stable, honestly I feel like it's the most stable .0 release I've been on (have been going beta -> GM on almost all releases).

thomasdd2• 9 years ago

I do experience lagging even on basic stuff like writing SMS or other-text inputs... (waiting 2-3 seconds for the soft keyboard to response). I'l have to do some Option->Reset when I find time... [iPhone 6+] Not good when you can't trust the device... once my iphone freezed for X seconds, then I realized that random social post were posted to FB, while I tried to touch the display... :) And that scares me :) I have to give a try to the "Reset" options :)

4ad16• 9 years ago

I experience lagging on iOS 11 on both iPhone 7 and the 10.5 inch iPad Pro.

There was no lagging on iOS 10.

Basic things like swiping across home screens lags and feel jittery. Also when you unlock and the apps come into view it's annoying laggy.

coldtea11• 9 years ago

Have had no lag-g-g-g-g problems with iOS11. Maybe it's the device?

afro88• 9 years ago

iOS 11 on my iPad Air 1 is laggier than iOS 10, but on my 6S is faster than iOS 10. Not sure why..

TurboHaskal• 9 years ago

Is it recommended to format the computer and start fresh after upgrading?

gt2• 9 years ago

Noone I know does this.

gmac• 9 years ago

My understanding was that recent versions of Mac OS have an upgrade process that works a bit like this anyway — i.e., behind the scenes it's doing a fresh install, then copying your files back across. But I could be wrong.

coldtea11• 9 years ago

I do this every 1-2 major OS releases. Copying from backup gives you a cool total defrag for system and user files, and cleans up all the BS that has accumulated (config files, stuff no longer need, use, etc).

I have a script that installs all my settings, brew packages, etc, even App Store apps, from external backup disk -- I'm up and running in 2-3 hours after the base install.

davidcollantes• 9 years ago

Everyone I know does. I do install afresh each time.

fleetfox• 9 years ago

"Metal 2" Is that a new thing or just an incremental update? What is their position on Vulkan?

hugo19941994• 9 years ago

Metal 2 is their new low level graphics API

No OpenGL 4.6 support (still at 4.1)

No Vulkan support

mrmondo4• 9 years ago

As per my other comment, I believe Metal 2 is likely the cause of the lower latency resulting in a much faster UI.

aneidon4• 9 years ago

The biggest change I’m hoping for (but not expecting) is the ability to sort shared iCloud albums by time taken, not time added to the album. Currently they’re all but useless for something like a shared album from a vacation, because it groups photos by when family members upload them. I tend to upload photos at the end of each day, but other family members who were shooting on a normal camera waited until the end of the trip to upload their photos. The end result is that photos that should be appearing next to each other instead show up at opposite ends of the album. Infuriating.

4ad16• 9 years ago

I'll settle for when shared iCloud albums support a decent size and resolution.

iCloud Photos is frustratingly bad, but I don't want to buy into other cloud ecosystem, like Google's. Does anybody know if it's possible to replicate the integration with Photos on both iOS and macOS, so I could write my own sync thing?

aneidon4• 9 years ago

Not aware of those issues, what exactly are the limitations?

petercooper3• 9 years ago

The biggest change I’m hoping for (but not expecting) is the ability to sort shared iCloud albums by time taken, not time added to the album.

This isn't a criticism of you, but when a major OS update comes down to trivia like this, it seems a bit of a shame to me. I remember the 10.2-10.6 releases and just how significant they were and it feels like rearranging deck chairs in comparison nowadays.

aneidon4• 9 years ago

Just to clarify, I’m very excited overall for the update, although of course it is lots of under-the-hood stuff. When I wrote biggest I meant the biggest feature I’m not sure will be launching with the update.

coldtea11• 9 years ago

This isn't a criticism of you, but when a major OS update comes down to trivia like this, it seems a bit of a shame to me.

There's a whole new FS that went into production in something like 4-5 years (unheard of) among lots of over things...

gradstudent• 9 years ago

I remember the first time I saw Spotlight. It was magic. Then came Expose. Wireless that worked. Sleep that worked. Trivial configuration of things like sshd, apache and samba.

Amazing days.

Lately I only upgrade when forced. I ran 10.8 until earlier this year when I finally upgraded my machine. Then I spent a week trying to figure out how the hell to get gdb working again because binaries now require code signing and there's this horrible new thing called System Integrity Protection that tries to protect me from myself. They also took away my Escape key and replaced it with this TouchBar nonsens just because I wanted an i7 CPU. To put this into perspective: I practically live inside vim.

wiredfool• 9 years ago

Snow Leopard was a boring release, but a very nice OS. This release feels like it might be similar.

dkersten4• 9 years ago

I've been finding the same with iOS updates lately. iOS 11 has some nice improvements, imho, but they're not any major advancements, just the usual incremental improvements. Could have just called it iOS 10.4 and be done with it. That wouldn't be PR-friendly enough though.

kiliankoe3• 9 years ago

I submitted a radar for this last year or the one before, it was closed as a dupe, so there's at least two people Apple knows that want this feature^^

mikeytown2• 9 years ago

Switch to Google Photos[1]; it's amazing. I'm always a little worried about what they are doing with all the data though...

[1] https://photos.google.com/

roymurdock• 9 years ago

Workaround: download the photos to your local storage and create a new album with them, you can then sort them correctly by date taken. Can delete the original and reshare if others want access to the photos in chronologically taken order.

mosselman• 9 years ago

I am excited about the new Photos, I am hoping I can stop having to use Lightroom and other tools aimed at real pro's to manage and edit my hobbyist photo collection.

q-base2• 9 years ago

I'm totally with you on that one. My biggest hope would be to be able to use only Photos in my photography flow.

mrmondo4• 9 years ago

The biggest change I’ve noticed since testing each of the betas and now running the final release is the significant decrease in interface / UI latency, it feels significantly faster to use and is a welcome upgrade.

pazra• 9 years ago

That'll be because Windowserver now uses Metal 2 to render UI, so if Apple's claims that it's 10x faster than Metal 1, then that's probably where the UI performance improvements have come from.

mrmondo4• 9 years ago

That was my suspicion as well, it’s quite a dramatic improvement.

lloeki4• 9 years ago

I personally own an entry-level Early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with a i5/HD4000, and the iterative improvements they made with each major release really shine through. A machine that was previously described in every single review as underpowered on that department especially WRT Mission Control can now handle any number of windows I throw at it at a steady 60fps, including those blurs and transparencies which I previously had to disable back in the day, and even when compiling, say, GHC. As an extra bonus, the maximum video RAM on that machine was offset from 1024MB to 1536MB at some point (either Mavericks or Yosemite). Similarly, the Mid 2014 one (i7/HD5000) I use at work can handle the main display as well as external screens (including an ultrawide) without breaking a sweat. So much for planned obsolescence.

snuxoll2• 9 years ago

Expose (or whatever the hell it's called now) is significantly faster on my 2015 5K iMac, the animation used to lag with as little as 6 windows on my workspace, I've seen it handle around 24 now without dropping frames. The upgrade to Metal 2 for WindowServer is a pretty nice performance boost.

mvdwoord2• 9 years ago

Does anybody have more information on this claim of a keychain vulnerability in High Sierra... just saw it fly past on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912254053849079808

on High Sierra (unsigned) apps can programmatically dump & exfil keychain (w/ your plaintext passwords) vid: https://player.vimeo.com/video/235313957 #smh

delinka3• 9 years ago

I’d like a bit more detail. Instructions to repro ideally. Too much is left out of the video (show me the items it will access and the access permissions for those items) and I’m inclined to think it’s staged or Mr. Wardle didn’t understand something fundamental (e.g. if you built/debugged the app on the same system where you made the video, you may have already authorized the app to fetch items from the keychain.)

mvdwoord2• 9 years ago

So would I.. normally quick to dismiss. I'm not familiar with Mr Wardle, but he seems to have some serious followers. I was hoping someone here has some background information.

benashford• 9 years ago

It showed the "unknown developer" warning box when running the app, would that have been shown if the app was already authorised to access the keychain?

EwanToo• 9 years ago

That seems insane, but the tweeter and the video appear legitimate

wila2• 9 years ago

There's another HN topic about that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15329527

thought_alarm• 9 years ago

Hasn't that always been the case?

Years ago I moved all of my important passwords to a secondary keychain that remains locked for precisely this reason.

altitudinous• 9 years ago

It doesn't seem like a real vulnerabilty to me - it is not remotely executable, it has to be run by a signed in user on the actual device.

When you go to facebook.com, your device must surely decrypt the keychain to plaintext to prefill the password field so it can send your password to facebook.com - Thats how it works.

So this seems like normal functionality to me, someone has just put it in a command line. Someone has just reverse engineered the keychain decrypt that happens all the time.

Am I missing something?

aardshark• 9 years ago

Yes. When an app accesses the keychain a dialog box is presented to the user with "Allow", "Always Allow" and "Deny".

If "Always Allow" is chosen, then the app will have permanent permission to access _only_ that particular password in the keychain.

This vunerability appears to bypass that dialog entirely and dump the entire keychain in plaintext without requiring the users permisson.

thefreeman2• 9 years ago

Yes, you are completely missing how the keychain works.

When you go to facebook.com, safari requests access to the facebook.com password via the keychain api. At which point you are supposed to be prompted by the OS, and if you allow it, the keychain api returns the decrypted password only for facebook.com.

The vulnerability being demonstrated is able to decrypt every password in your keychain, without prompting the user in any way.

lloeki4• 9 years ago

There is already a CLI tool, albeit secured by a GUI prompt asking for permission:

    $ security find-internet-password -s www.facebook.com -g

This one seems to bypass asking for permission somehow.

AsyncAwait4• 9 years ago

Apart from APFS, I really like that anti-tracking/ad blocking is now built into Safari itself.

extra88• 9 years ago

And Safari 11 is available not just on High Sierra but also Sierra and El Capitan.

johanj• 9 years ago

Unfortunately only High Sierra gets Intelligent Tracking Prevention: https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/911066050556436482

Still a good release though.

markdog122• 9 years ago

Shame that APFS will not be available for fusion drives, :(

Many millions of those devices out there.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018

moduspol2• 9 years ago

At least not on release of High Sierra.

We'll probably see it later, but I haven't seen a clear statement either way.

markdog122• 9 years ago

Looks like it is: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/apfs-fusion-drive-high-...

tomp5• 9 years ago

Safari now uses machine learning to identify advertisers and others who track your online behavior, and removes the cross‑site tracking data they leave behind.
Safari now uses machine learning to identify advertisers and others who track your online behavior, and removes the cross‑site tracking data they leave behind

I'm starting to like the business model of buying the product more and more.

There was a recent thread somewhere (here, reddit, FB?) asking "What feature would it take for iPhone users to switch to Android?" - the answer for me is, Google changing its business model (or else completely open-sourcing all of Android and all of its core apps (mail, maps, browser).

vetinari14• 9 years ago

In Android, it is not mandatory to use Google apps - you can use your favorite browser, mail or maps instead of the Google ones. Firefox, Nine or Here, for example.

Tepix• 9 years ago

Your typical Android phone calls home around 1200 times per day. Getting that number down to zero means making it pretty much unusable.

grecy• 9 years ago

Pfft. I bought a super cheap Android phone, and can't even download a single app without signing up for a google account!

koolba• 9 years ago

Is that referring to blocking ads or just tracking cookies? Why not just block all third party cookies?

tomp5• 9 years ago

IIRC the idea is that (1) it allows third-party cookies of the websites you actually use (like Facebook so FB integration works), and (2) it allows cookies on new websites for the first day or so, and then it starts blocking them.

More info: https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...

kccqzy3• 9 years ago

Apple left ad blocking to third party developers. You can find plenty of ad blocking apps on the App Store. I imagined they did this for political reasons because they don’t want to the arbitrator of deciding whether something is an ad or not.

raesene63• 9 years ago

I agree, the good thing about Apple and Microsoft is I know what they want to sell me.

Apple want me to buy relatively expensive devices on a regular basis and ideally a cloud subscription.

Microsoft want me to buy subscriptions to their cloud services and ideally devices running their OS.

In both cases the value for them is fairly clear and they have limited incentives to do anything that might jepordise those revenue flows.

Companies like Google who (IIRC) get over 90% of their revenue from advertising, need to make money by selling information about me to 3rd parties for advert targeting, which I'm not so keen on.

Personally I prefer to pay someone for a product/service directly.

roblabla4• 9 years ago

And yet, microsoft started incorporating ads inside of windows 10. The business models helps, but if you can both sell a product and get ad revenue, why wouldn't you ?

In apple's case, they have a fairly small but dedicated marketshare that cares deeply about those issue. That's why I trust them to not sabotage their product. Microsoft has a monopoly, they don't need to care.

gruturo• 9 years ago

True for Apple, not for Microsoft. Windows 10 is stuffed with tracking and telemetry and puts ads in front of you (screen saver, start menu, etc). They are absolutely NOT famous for respecting your privacy or wishes.

mcv6• 9 years ago

And yet, Apple has been pushing me in a direction I don't want to go with their recent OS X versions. I paid a lot of money for my mackbook and was quite happy with Lion, but was recently forced to upgrade because apparently Lion is way too out of date.

So now I'm on Sierra, and I absolutely hate it. I thought it'd mostly just be uglier, but it bugs me with updates I don't want or need but am not allowed to ignore. And I hate their in-your-face notifications blocking an important part of my screen. (How about at the bottom next to the dock? Or in the menu bar? Just not over an active working window.)

bitmapbrother5• 9 years ago

Google doesn't sell user information. Also, Microsoft also has a search engine and ad business that do the exact same thing and just because it isn't successful that doesn't allow you to give them a free pass. Additionally, they preinstall third party bloatware on their OS and send tremendous amounts of telemetry back to their servers.

Diederich• 9 years ago

Companies like Google who (IIRC) get over 90% of their revenue from advertising

According to, which references an official looking SEC form: https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-Googles-revenue-comes-...

"86.5% of Alphabet’s revenue still comes from their advertising business, which is driven by searches in web browsers"

That's a hell of a lot.

I wonder how quickly their other revenue sources are growing? A ton of companies are using Google products in a paid capacity. They're really very good.

tresp2• 9 years ago

agree WRT apple, but MS is super aggressive in terms of telemetry (maybe they want to target both groups of customers, advertisers and us)

lolatlogan• 9 years ago

I've never thought about it this way. I was wanting to transition to using all Google products and services from Apple but might just further invest in Apple and start using their cloud service as opposed to Google's.

vijaybritto• 9 years ago

"Personally I prefer to pay someone for a product/service directly." This wont work in our part of the world where access to tech is more important than ethics to a lot of people.

manigandham2• 9 years ago

Personally I prefer to pay someone for a product/service directly.

Sure, but the vast majority of users do not want to pay for the vast majority of internet content.

gr3yh47• 9 years ago

Microsoft want me to buy subscriptions to their cloud services and ideally devices running their OS.

Microsoft pretty clearly wants 100% telemetry about everything you do on your computer - to the point where they will explicitly override user settings to the contrary - so you are underestimating the scope of their motivation

wstrange• 9 years ago

Personally I prefer to pay someone for a product/service directly.

You can.

Gapps for business. $5 a month. No scanning of your email, etc.

mavhc• 9 years ago

Sonos shows that even if you buy the expensive product they'll still try to exploit your privacy. Only solution is open source everything

toasterlovin• 9 years ago

Apple has publicly committed themselves to certain approaches wrt to privacy. If they fail to act as they have said they will, class action lawsuits will follow shortly.

lern_too_spel4• 9 years ago

Nothing prevents you from using a competitor's core apps on Android. Those apps could be even better at stopping tracking than Apple's. On iOS, you're stuck with whatever maps or browser Apple decrees.

zeveb• 9 years ago

I think this is a really key point: on Android I have the option to install whatever software I like, from whomever I like. There are tradeoffs, of course, but I am free to choose between them.

On iOS, I wouldn't have that choice.

earenndil2• 9 years ago

Uhmmmm...what? You can install google maps, chrome or firefox (although these don't count because they're just safari skins. But if someone wanted to they could implement real chrome or real firefox for ios.) You can install any number of third-party keyboards, alarm clocks, what-have-you.

canes1234562• 9 years ago

You are right that the product comes from the business model. You are however completely wrong about what Google should do. Advertising is not an evil thing that needs to be eliminated. It is a much better revenue source for building services compared to selling hardware. Apple organization is fundamentally built around selling hardware and software as a package for an upfront cost. The organization is design to perfect something than release it. This is 100% at odds with what you need to do with services. You need to iterate all the time and not be trying to perfect something for the new iOS release.

Your advice would lead to maps, gmail, etc be becoming worse but their hardware still not keeping up with apple.

namelost• 9 years ago

Passive advertising is not an evil thing that needs to be eliminated. But when companies start building dossiers on all of us that even intelligence services would be jealous of, that is evil.

tomp5• 9 years ago

This is 100% at odds with what you need to do with services. You need to iterate all the time and not be trying to perfect something for the new iOS release.

This sounds like it _should_ be true, but unfortunately, Apple has a much much better track record of supporting its old devices that Google. So, yeah, the "service" might work, but what help is that if my 3-year old Android phone was hacked yesterday because Google (or OEMs) don't bother patching it any more?

pteredactyl• 9 years ago

Unless they mask your IP address I don't see how this removes cross-site tracking.

jayd16• 9 years ago

So how many decades are we going to hear about how bad it is that Google knows what kind of toothpaste I like and how important privacy is before we actually see a real world benefit?

Can someone point to any situation in the past where the conclusion was "good thing the ads were less targeting to my interests!"

xenihn• 9 years ago

Can someone point to any situation in the past where the conclusion was "good thing the ads were less targeting to my interests!"

You should be thinking more about the future.

marricks• 9 years ago

Groups that get more and more power pretty much never give up that power willingly. Google's NEED to understand your desires, track your behavior, and read your emails to sell more and better ads is them accumulating power.

So, even if you think Google will always have your best interests at heart, the governments they work with certainly don't. China could exploit their knowledge to target dissidents. Would Google do that? Perhaps, just censoring internet was anathema to Google in their early days, now Google respects Chinese censorship.

To be honest, I'm not comfortable with my own government knowing what I want to read online or what I say to my friends, let alone authoritarian ones. The future is pretty much already here on that one though as government already does.

splicer• 9 years ago

Not exactly from the past, but how do you feel about this scene from Minority Report? https://youtu.be/7bXJ_obaiYQ

bzbarsky• 9 years ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h... has an example (Target, not Google) where that could very well be the conclusion, yes (or rather "too bad the ads were targeted so well"). That's off the top of my head, since that one hit the national news pretty widely.

marrs• 9 years ago

Google's personalised search results have already contributed strongly to the political polarisation that we are seeing in the US. And that's to say nothing of Google's internal politics that is seeing the ostracisation of liberal leaning points of view. See James Damore as a case in point.

tapanjk• 9 years ago

From High Sierra page on apple.com:

Automatically use Safari Reader for every web article that supports it, so you can view websites without ads, navigation, and other distractions.

This will come in handy since I hit the reader mode on articles as soon as the page loads and the reader option is enabled. On a side note, I like Firefox too because it has a reader mode built in. While Chrome has plugins to make this happen, having this feature as a first class citizen makes a difference. Of course Chrome has other strengths and I spend a lot of time in it, but I end up using Safari or Firefox for reading on the web.

stutnh34tnnt3• 9 years ago

Yes! When I saw this, I leapt for joy! I have been wanting a feature like this. No more having to see modal pop-overs asking me to subscribe their crappy newsletter. It's about time!

makecheck• 9 years ago

It’s kind of crazy just how many resources of humankind must be expended to make up for obnoxious behaviors, whether it is burning cycles on ad-blockers or cleaning up other peoples’ garbage.

For all the power we have expended, humankind could be so much further along than we are.

I wish the people who spent energy making terrible ad experiences would just quit their jobs and apply their talents to something of actual value.

dnautics• 9 years ago

What is 'actual' value and who gets to decide?

Raz22• 9 years ago

I worked in ads company. I understood that I was producing waste. But I treated it as a puzzle. Tasks were really challenging and salary was more than average.

blinkingled• 9 years ago

Safari now uses machine learning to identify advertisers and others who track your online behavior, and removes the cross‑site trackingdata they leave behind.

Do my Safari Google searches still go via Apple by default though? I guess that's totally ok if you're in Team Apple? It's just sadly naive to believe a corporation has your privacy interests in mind in the absolute.

nicky03• 9 years ago

When did Safari Google searches ever go via Apple? I think you have got a bit confused somewhere.

jug3• 9 years ago

Yes, one thing that has probably helped Apple is that their business model aligns with what their users want. Not having to be a weasel about it, not forcing users to just have to live with something. Last thing I saw was Microsoft pushing Edge ads from within Windows 10 itself. Ads – in an operating system?!

nxc18• 9 years ago

Apple also advertises their own services in their OS. My iPhone and MacBook spam me with iCloud ads constantly.

This isn't really an excuse for MS. Really I'd just like both operating systems to not bug me.

cookiecaper• 9 years ago

The other day someone was asking why Facebook wants people to adopt to React, which is generally just a question about why all of these software vendors want to eat the world and become the source of everything that commands user attention.

This is why. Apple can use its influence to harm its competitors by frustrating the mechanisms used to promote their monetary interests, making a (legitimate) claim that doing so is beneficial to the user.

Microsoft articulated the goal well in its 1998 memos, the infamous "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". They want platform control because once you control user attention (and developer attention by extension), you can wedge your way in and do things that benefit your company over others.

Facebook controls the front-end library used by a large portion of all sites, not just facebook.com. If Apple's machine learning mechanism notices some common patterns between Facebook's code for React and Facebook's code for user tracking, either organically or because Facebook does a couple of nudges to make sure that happens, now Safari is broken, evidenced by its inability to correctly render a large portion of the web. If Facebook only had control over code running on facebook.com, then Facebook would be the apparent source of any user-facing breakage.

Note that users are not the customer being catered to. They are, rather, the resource being exploited to provide the energy necessary to undergird the MegaCorp's power expansion, in service to the other MegaCorps doing large-scale advertisement, endorsement, and censorship/speech control deals with them.

feelix• 9 years ago

When installing a major OS update it's often worthwhile to do a clean install. As a shameless plug of some free software I made, Install Disk Creator will make you a bootable USB installer out of any USB disk you have laying around made from the macOS installer that you download from Apple.

pyrophane• 9 years ago

Now all I need is a type-c usb drive :(

akulbe• 9 years ago

Or a USB_A-to-USB_C adapter.

It looks like the USB-C sticks already exist.

https://smile.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias...

JamesFM• 9 years ago

While I think Disk Creator is awesome for certain I’ve never found that a fresh install is needed for macOS upgrades. They have maybe the best upgrade process in the biz right now.

gecko• 9 years ago

Honestly, I haven’t even bothered doing that with Windows in a pretty long time—maybe since the 7 to 8 transition, after which they’ve had a pretty robust upgrade path. About the only place I do do that regular is on Linux, but that’s because it’s stupidly easy to do so due to the packet managers, not because I actually have to.

asah• 9 years ago

A friend's said the same thing, but like other responders, I haven't bothered in a long time.

What's the benefit?

Terretta7• 9 years ago

Thank you! Used this last week, worked a charm.

Perfect tool is a SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive with USB and USB-C.

AHTERIX5000• 9 years ago

I'm curious about recommending clean installations. What kind of issues people usually encounter with macOS upgrades?

jtth• 9 years ago

It used to be a thing but really isn't anymore.

It's only an opportunity to re-evaluate what autoruns at startup and what you want running in the background. This means people feel faster once they delete all of those things. You'd do just as well by removing them yourself.

rsync• 9 years ago

"Install Disk Creator will make you a bootable USB installer out of any USB disk you have laying around made from the macOS installer that you download from Apple."

Wow - thank you! I have a half-page of self-written documentation about turning an apple installer into a bootable USB that I hope to never have to use again ...

dawnerd• 9 years ago

Since when have you needed a usb installer for macOS (besides hackintosh)?

cuckcuckspruce2• 9 years ago

If you have more than one Mac you might want to create a USB install stick so that you only need to download the installer once, on a Mac that you'll upgrade later.

ditn• 9 years ago

Just a heads up - seems GPGTools has issues with High Sierra; those using PGP might want to hold off.

https://gpgtools.tenderapp.com/discussions/beta/2348-macos-h...

synthmeat2• 9 years ago

Though I appreciate the effort they're putting into GPGTools, issues preventing one from using it on Sierra went on for more than half a year after Sierra went public.

I deem that unusable.

parent5446• 9 years ago

How is that unusable? If you just don't upgrade it still works.

cornedor• 9 years ago

https://gpgtools.org/releases/gpgsuite/release-notes.html looks like that has been fixed. Have not tried it.

ue_• 9 years ago

Somewhat off topic, but I'm becoming to realise that reading product pages like this is sort of like reading only the advertising pages of a magazine, but in this case I have the choice of what advertising I want to view; it's not enough to simply get information about the new system (I don't even have a Mac) but I need to be sold it as well. And the advertising is very impressive - strong colours, beautiful photography, crisp and clear screenshots and the "flat" icons. I can understand why there are so many people taken in by this advertising.

moduspol2• 9 years ago

I can understand why there are so many people taken in by this advertising.

Some might even argue the software is pretty good, too!

AhtiK• 9 years ago

Does not mention official eGPU support -- any ideas if it's included and how stable?

bischofs• 9 years ago

been waiting for this as well, there is a little asterisk next to the egpu that says "coming spring 2018"

scarlac2• 9 years ago

An in-depth review was posted here on HackerNews. It's not considered ready for consumers yet, and was announced for developers to try it out.

baby• 9 years ago

I love that they feature the HTC Vive for Virtual Reality. Looks like they understood what was the best headset :)

I've been actively looking into developing games for the Vive, anyone has tried doing that on a macbook pro?

fhood2• 9 years ago

Also the most expensive one.

wlesieutre7• 9 years ago

It would work fine, but compile times are obvious slower than a desktop with a better CPU. High Sierra adds official support for external GPUs on thunderbolt and you'll definitely need one.

Apple sells an enclosure (Sonnet's) with an RX 580. I thought this also came with a $100 Vive discount, but that promo must have ended.

https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphic...

wlesieutre7• 9 years ago

Also note that Metal has less CPU overhead than OpenGL. Beyond the compile times, you'll be more likely to run into CPU bottlenecks while running games/applications that are OpenGL based.

seanalltogether• 9 years ago

I'm assuming apple file system is only enabled if you do a fresh install right? Or is there an option to switch to it during the upgrade process?

pivo• 9 years ago

My understand is (haven't tried it yet) that the conversion happens automatically but only if you have an SSD.

macintux• 9 years ago

To be precise, a non-Fusion Drive SSD. Fusion Drives have been dropped for now.

symlinkk• 9 years ago

your filesystem will be automatically changed to APFS, no need to reinstall (Apple did this already with the iPhone as well)

cpncrunch• 9 years ago

Is this something that I want? My gut feeling is that I don't want a brand-new file system...

majewsky3• 9 years ago

Don't know how it works for the macOS upgrade, but the iOS 10.3 upgrade converted all existing filesystems to APFS in-place.

oschrenk• 9 years ago

What keeps me from updating that I am confused about the way forward regarding FileVault & APFS. I currently have FileVault enabled as I need my drive to be fully encrypted (liability for my clients). I want my backups to be encrypted as well.

But now APFS solves disk encryption on FS layer instead of going through CoreStorage. And I'm confused about the way forward for me.

Is there some documentation that explains 1) What happens to FileVault/Backups during initial conversion? 2) Am I better off to disable FileVault and then encrypt using APFS? 3) How does the APFS full disk encryption work? Does it have any problems, especially backup related? 4) Can I enable/disable FileVault after the conversion?

Tsiklon• 9 years ago

From my personal experience with the developer betas on my laptop;

I experienced no issue during the conversion of Corestorage Filevault to APFS Filevault. The conversion to APFS was offered as an option to me during the Developer Beta series.

I am not sure whether this will be done automatically for the release version. However I do understand that the conversion will only be offered to systems with Flash Storage only, whereas Fusion Drive and Hard Disk equipped systems will not. (as per: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018 )

I found that the process required no interaction on my part and that my system came back up without issue. Likewise, there was no change with how Time Machine operated for me, in fact I don't believe that Time Machine backups are touched by the conversion process.

On another fusion drive equipped system I have, I was able to manually enable Filevault after filesystem conversion to APFS. You should be able to disable it after conversion too, though I've not yet tested this out.

lloeki4• 9 years ago

That was a concern to me before I migrated two laptops: one had FileVault enabled and the other not†. The conversion dealt with FileVault without a hitch. Even better, enabling FileVault on the non-encrypted one after the conversion let it encrypt without even the reboot previously required with HFS+, one less excuse not to enable it.

Backups to an external disk are still done to HFS+. External disks formatted as APFS either do not show up as available disks to backup to or prompt to format the disk back to HFS+ (I encountered both cases as I was trying to put TM into submission on that one). Remote backups (over AFP) are unaffected and still use (optionally encrypted) sparse bundles. So Time Machine itself appears to have not changed much in that regard. Local snapshots do leverage APFS snapshots though and are browsable at /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots.

† A mistake on my part following a restore from Time Machine where I did not enable encryption.

bmh_ca• 9 years ago

Not exactly on point, but I found this to be an excellent read & comfort:

https://macdaddy.io/apfs-backup-software-developers-perspect...

AsyncAwait4• 9 years ago

Like the other commenters here, I can confirm that the FileVault -> APFS transition went smoothly.

godzillabrennus2• 9 years ago

Anyone know how the APFS conversion goes if you have hardware RAID setup?

I’m sporting a Mac Pro mid-2010 and have a RAID-5 array that’ll need to upgrade.

kccqzy3• 9 years ago

And I'm even more confused about how things should go about for more complicated Core Storage setups. I have several disks with Core Storage. All of them have multiple logical volume families in a single logical volume group. And some are encrypted and others are not. I also have Core Storage volume groups that span multiple hard disks and/or hard disk partitions. I read the Ars review but that doesn't cover APFS in much technical detail at all. I'm really missing those Core Storage deep dives in Siracusa reviews.

seanwilson• 9 years ago

Apple are always good with their marketing but I can't see any upgrades here that seem like they'll make much impact for me. Mobile upgrades are slowing down as well but it feels like for desktop there hasn't been any game changing improvements for a long time now.

kbd2• 9 years ago

I still haven't updated to Sierra because I depend on Karabiner. Just tried the newest version of Karabiner-Elements and it still doesn't do everything I need.

casion• 9 years ago

I had the same issue, but I switched from Karabiner to https://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/ and I couldn't be happier.

It did take a bit of extra time to replicate my Karabiner setup, however controllermate is much more capable and the overall result has been worth the effort.

revscat• 9 years ago

This is the first I have heard of this app. What problems has it solved for you?

karmajunkie2• 9 years ago

Does it allow you to implement the conditional mapping of karabiner for capslock,i.e. By itsrlf its escape, with another key its ctrl? That's the one thing I've gotten so used to having that I don't know if I could go back. Im remembering now why I never did make the leap to Sierra.

ensmotko• 9 years ago

Is it possible to rebind the caps lock key? That's the only reason why I have Karabiner-Elements installed, using the caps lock key for delete_forward is the best thing ever.

otterpro• 9 years ago

I regretted upgrading to Sierra because I lost my favorite functionality of Karabiner. But I got most of the features back when I started using Hammerspoon. It's not GUI friendly, but it's doable and there's a lot of scripts available. It's similar to Window's Autohotkey which I use at work, but Hammerspoon has a sane, real language (Lua).

My other suggestion is to actually replace keyboard. ErgoDox EZ and Ultimate Hacking Keyboard have almost all the features I need from Karabiner, but is saved to the firmware, so I can take the keyboard anywhere and it just works. Also, they're mechanical keyboard, so it's nice to type on.

kbd2• 9 years ago

I use Karabiner to remap all the keys/buttons on my Razer Naga (so I can avoid using Razer's awful software). I've looked into Hammerspoon but it's not clear if/how I can remap keys only from a specific device.

blumomo2• 9 years ago

Tweet claims that macOS' user Keychain can be dumped by unsigned apps.

See HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15329527

hellofunk• 9 years ago

This is already mentioned and discussed right here on this very page.

ksec• 9 years ago

All of my Mac Stolen from home burglary meant I could never try it out. Have they fixed the scaling system on Retina Mac, where all enlarged scale, ( Where you choose Larger Text or Smaller Space ) fonts and windows looked washed out?

I cant be the only one who want a Retina Mac but need bigger fonts and Icons because i am getting old.

amckinlay• 9 years ago

Are there any improvements to the Dock? Apple really needs to open up an API for Spaces so we can have a proper tiling window manager that works across Spaces without buggy hacks.

fairview14• 9 years ago

Apple File System.
Your data is under new management.

Ok, should I expect it now finally to be case sensitive? Or is that still science fiction for MacOS?

lee• 9 years ago

Case sensitivity does already exist, it's just turned off by default.

kiliankoe3• 9 years ago

Apfs ist case-insensitive by default, probably due to legacy reasons.

raindev• 9 years ago

I've tried to use macOS with case sensitive filesystem for some time (before APFS). Works mostly fine but there're applications that break (Steam and Intellij IDEA are the two I remember).

tresp2• 9 years ago

there was a tremendous ATP episode about this exactly, maybe 6-9 months back. John's explanation of case sensitivity and file systems is a real gem, if anyone can remember the title

TheSoftwareGuy• 9 years ago

I think not. suddenly changing something like that could break a lot of applications

glitchedmob2• 9 years ago

So, while going through this page, I decided to check out the Safari product page, and saw this http://i.imgur.com/GXQAQVK.png. Does anyone here have any clue what they mean by having a second safari benchmark next to the Windows 10 browser benchmarks? Are they just trying to say "If our browser did work on Windows 10, this is how it would perform"?

orangea• 9 years ago

It is saying that safari on mac is 4.3x faster than firefox on mac, and also that safari on mac is 4.2x faster than firefox on windows (at executing javascript).

glitchedmob2• 9 years ago

Oh ok. That makes a lot more sense, thanks

iamgopal• 9 years ago

Am I sadist to think that this all feature simply slow down my Mac more and hinder my ability to code better ?

feelin_googley2• 9 years ago

"Conclusion

In this blog post, we briefly discussed High Sierra's "Secure Kernel Extension Loading" (SKEL) and demonstrated a new 0day vulnerability that can be exploited to fully bypass this new `security' feature.

Unfortunately when such `security' features are introduced - even if done so with the noblest of intentions - they often just complicate the lives of 3rd-party developers and users without affecting the bad guys (who don't have to play `by the rules'). High Sierra's SKEL's flawed implementation is a perfect example of this. [There are many other examples.]

Of course if Apple's ultimate goal is simply to _continue_ to wrestle control of the system away from it users, under the guise of `security', I'm not sure any of this even matters."

https://www.synack.com/2017/09/08/high-sierras-secure-kernel...

maxxxxx4• 9 years ago

It's always interesting how they implement security features. With Vista MS introduced UAC which is a major headache if you develop any automated tools. But most users I have observed will always press "Yes" automatically because they have no idea what the message really means. The result is that life got worse for developers often forcing them to do less secure hacks and overall no gain in security.

ethbro3• 9 years ago

MS + Google (via only recently more finely-grained Android permissions)

It amazes me at the arrogance in assuming users are idiots, so it's not worth engineering features for them.

"Warning: This installer is attempting to replace core Windows files. Do you want to allow it to do this?" isn't hard but gives substantially more useful information than "Do you want to allow this installer to do stuff?" (Current UAC)

kbenson2• 9 years ago

The result is that life got worse for developers often forcing them to do less secure hacks and overall no gain in security.

But, for comparison, life got considerably better for me. I fee much safer (but not safe, there's plenty to worry about with just access to my user files) knowing when something is requesting Admin privileges, and because of the UAC prompts it's actually possible for regular users to run as non-admin and still get stuff done.

The amount of windows boxes that aren't running email clients and web browsers with full privileges by default is a huge advance for the whole world. That people aren't as careful as they should be with allowing that access sucks, but I think it's probably an order of magnitude at least better than what came before with regard to how easy it was to gain full access on Windows boxes through simple exploits. To say that there's been no overall gain in security in windows completely ignores the absolutely horrid state of security on Windows a decade or more ago. There are reasons why Windows is much better with respect to security today, and UAC is definitely one of them.

eridius6• 9 years ago

It's unfortunate that there is an alleged 0day in this functionality. I don't know why the author is trying to accuse Apple of having the real goal of "wrestl[ing] control of the system away from it users". SKEL looks like a very good idea to me, and the presence of a bug does not make it any less of a good idea. It's also unclear in what way SKEL is supposed to be taking control away from Apple's users anyway. If anything, it's giving control to the users, because the users now get approval power over any KEXTs.

eugeniub2• 9 years ago

The biggest problems I have had with my Mac came from a kernel extension that I didn't know got installed, and didn't get uninstalled when I uninstalled the accompanying program.

e40• 9 years ago

Try making a change to the /usr filesystem, for example. It's very hard in recent versions of macOS. It sounds like this type of thing is going to be harder in the future, and that's what the GP is talking about, I believe.

mahyarm• 9 years ago

It's part of an overall trend. For example the gatekeeper security settings ux has slowly been removing options to run unsigned binaries bit by bit.

In 10.12 there is no obvious way on how to run unsigned binaries now. When you double click on an app multiple times, it refuses to run. If you go to security settings you cannot run the unsigned binary from there. You have to right click on the app and press open to get the old dialog that would allow you to run an unsigned binary like it's some sort of easter egg. In older versions you didn't have these restrictions.

bsimpson• 9 years ago

Ugghhh - that parallax attempt in the Photos section is so gross.

miles• 9 years ago

Download link is live now: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-sierra/id12462847...

SkyMarshal• 9 years ago

*>Reader. Always on. Automatically use Safari Reader for every web article that supports it, so you can view websites without ads, navigation, and other distractions.

This is interesting, how does a website signal that it's ok for you to block all its ads?

jalfresi• 9 years ago

By publishing on the public web?

eridius6• 9 years ago

It doesn't. Safari auto-detects when to offer Reader mode, and what's new in Safari 11 is you can then configure the website to automatically start in Reader (you can do this through Safari preferences, or by right-clicking on the URL bar).

krisdol• 9 years ago

cmd+opt+i, select the ad element, delete it. What the website considers "OK" is never a factor as to whether your browser can block an ad.

goblin89• 9 years ago

Ever wondered how to “sell” your client an under-the-hood refactor which they can’t immediately experience, but which makes your life so much easier?

Take notes from the copy introducing High Sierra. Apple starts with APFS and doesn’t really get to new end-user features until a few screens in.

therealdrag04• 9 years ago

I wish the Finder didn't suck so badly. Maybe they'll update that someday...

scarlac2• 9 years ago

As far as standard user-friendly file managers go, I'd say it works well.

So what sucks specifically, in your opinion?

therealdrag04• 9 years ago

I made a list about a year ago, but some things that come to mind:

- No cut (to paste) (so I have to have two windows open or go back and forth to perform a cut?)

- In tree view, pasting pastes to root folder, not selected folder.

- I think `enter/return` to `rename` instead of `open` is absurd.

- Have to memorize shortcut to open 'go to folder' path field, instead of toggling always enabling path field.

(Grew up using Windows, started using Mac 2 years ago)

grzm2• 9 years ago

Have you tried any of the Finder alternatives, such as Path Finder[0]? I'm not sure if it's a result of me adapting my workflow to the environment, but I find I don't actually use the Finder very much. Between ⇧⌘G (Go to Folder) and Launch Bar[1] (the first thing I install on a new system), actual Finder browsing is pretty rare for me. Of course, different people have different workflows and needs, and I can understand people who might want an alternative.

What do you personally find lacking or inefficient? What changes would you like to see?

[0] https://cocoatech.com/#/

[1] https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

therealdrag04• 9 years ago

Some things that came to mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15334905

At one point I looked at alternatives, but I wasn't ready to buy one. And since most editors and IDEs have "Show in Finder" options, that I use sometimes, I'd still have to augment my workflow to get around it.

feelin_googley2• 9 years ago

https://eclecticlight.co/2017/09/24/high-sierra-automaticall...

Posted to HN over the weekend so few have probably seen it.

One user referred to this "feature" as "beyond creepy".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326924

Tweets from the developer were quickly removed from Twitter.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170924180858/https://twitter.c...

"1. Xeno Kovah(<-) @XenoKovah 17m17 minutes ago More Copy link to Tweet Embed Tweet Replying to @XenoKovah @NikolajSchlej @coreykal

A design requirement we were given early on by Privacy was that we can't just scoop up everyone's firmware and send it back for analysis

1. Xeno Kovah(<-) @XenoKovah 15m15 minutes ago More Copy link to Tweet Embed Tweet Replying to @XenoKovah

In my perfect world we would have rolled this out way back in 10.12 as just a silent data collector"

Once again, remote, "silent data collect[ion]" from all users, in this case from a hidden partition on user-owned hardware, is on by default. Nor is user asked for consent.

This is not meant to be "alarmist".

EFI is an open specification. Anyone can write EFI applications and anyone can use EFI type partitions for whatever purposes they like, assuming that the computer belongs to them, i.e. they paid for it. EFI usage is not exclusively reserved for companies like Apple.

Perhaps if the remote check was on a more familiar partition type where more familiar files are stored, the privacy issue might be better illustrated.

cpr• 9 years ago

Why do you call it data collection?

It's simply ensuring the firmware (which is really part of the hardware--though nothing's "hard" until you get down to the microcode interpreter on the CPU) hasn't been altered.

The only "data" collected is: Has this Mac been compromised?

burnte2• 9 years ago

It's being called data collection to be alarmist. It's the same thing as the iTerm bug last week. There's a genuine issue that is blown out of proportion by the network-Temperence movement. I agree that this should be an opt-in or at least opt-out thing, collecting anonymous checksums to start to watch for EFI vulnerabilities is a little different form sending Apple your DNA profile to be sold on the human clone black market.

rphlx• 9 years ago

It's interesting to watch how Apple marketing - at least on some products - has become increasingly technical over time. It was certainly rarer to see them explaining the intricacies of a file system - the cost of retrieving the size of files within a directory, etc - in, say, 2001 or 2011.

They've gone from "here are five colors you can chose from" to, in some cases, something almost approaching an lwn article.

gciruelos• 9 years ago

maybe it is a consequence of increased technological knowledge in the general populace? i don't feel that it has increased, but maybe Apple's marketing team arrived to that conclusion.

memco2• 9 years ago

One minor thing I'm excited about is instant folder sizes. Right now, I open the info panel and go do something else for a minute while it calculates the size.

poulsbohemian• 9 years ago

Went to upgrade an iMac and an MBP to High Sierra today. The iMac took well over an hour. The MBP is the first Mac since my LC back in 1990 to be bricked during an OS upgrade. While I should be praising Apple for that kind of track record, I'm not exactly thrilled. I mean, it's not just a restart-and-try-again, it's a flat out "WTF do I do now?" bricking.

normanzb• 9 years ago

Say goodbye to videos that auto‑play. Full of gimmicks, thats why some very basic bugs such as CJK inappropriate line breaking never gets fixed, because those fixes aint going to be attractive for eyes.

They blocked auto play video sounds just because some abusing the video tag? That is just going to push those scammy people finding the other way to annoy their users, such as, playing the audio separately in a audio tag or decoding and playing audio using javascript. Of course they can block those too to make it a even more backward browser, but indie web game makers are going to be suffered from that.

MacOS High Sierra

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