
Apple Begins High Sierra Automatic Rollout - ingve
https://512pixels.net/2017/11/apple-begins-high-sierra-automatic-rollout/
======
sarreph
It is a shame to see Apple using the same tactics as iOS with macOS, which in
my opinion a different beast when it comes to upgrades.

I really regret upgrading to High Sierra, because — thanks to a still unfixed
graphics driver issue, my 2014 rMBP reboots/lags/breaks when using the GPU.
Fortunately, I managed to remedy it with a beta Nvidia driver; without a pro-
user mindset, I can only imagine how many people are frustrated by this issue
alone, not to mention their apps breaking as a result of a 'forced' upgrade!

High Sierra has the same lack of 'internal polish' as iOS 11, and as a result,
it's going to leave a lot of users scratching their heads in anger.

Part of me misses the days when getting an OS X update was an event that
required a trip to an Apple Store to pick up (read: pay) a DVD :)

~~~
AHTERIX5000
I'm having significant problems with High Sierra on MBPR 2013. WindowServer
memory usage can get up to 5-8 GB before it starts to consume insane amounts
of CPU and the system basically locks up and I need to reboot the system.

Also simple application drawing starts to fail too, I've encountered visual
errors like this [https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-2...](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Sep-23-2017-12-41-55.gif) in multiple applications,
Xcode's console/stdout window breaks often. Quite interesting features for a
stable release indeed.

~~~
eklavya
This bug frustrated the hell out of me and was fortunately fixed in 10.13.1
update. There are a couple more window manager related bugs (I think), it
crashes and logs me out frequently while watching videos in VLC.

~~~
danieldk
I was running into a bug with Sierra where the Cocoa version of Emacs would
sometimes trigger a bug in DisplayServer that made it use 100% CPU.
Fortunately, that is solved in High Sierra.

Unfortunately, I have some other fun regressions:

\- Preview has become pretty much unusable. It crashes often when zooming
PDFs. It also often doesn't linearly go through pages/slides when pressing the
down key when a thumbnail is selected.

\- The other day my MacBook Pro (2016) showed the charge icon, but it didn't
actually charge. I noticed when it was at 5%. Unplugged and plugged the
charger and it works again.

\- Keynote doesn't open (some?) presentations produced with PDF2Keynote
anymore. This worked fine in the previous version of Keynote.

------
vlunkr
I feel like I'm seeing a trend here. An OS reaches a very stable point where
users are happy. But the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay
relevant and generally makes things worse. I think it's why people were stuck
on Windows XP for so long, and now Windows 7 will be the one people hold onto
as long as possible (if they weren't automatically upgraded). The most recent
versions of iOS and macOS are in the same boat: the feature list is
uninteresting to most people, but the update is pushed on them, and there's a
good change it will break your install/slow things down/break some apps. I
haven't bothered updating to High Sierra, since after installing Sierra I was
left wondering what I had gained. I disabled Siri after the first week of
never using it.

Side note, it's annoying that Apple ties app updates to OS updates. One of the
big selling points this time seems to be the new photo app stuff, like you
can't just release that for everyone?

/rant

~~~
scoot
> the company needs to keep pushing updates to stay relevant and generally
> makes things worse

It isn't the company that feels the need to stay relevant, it's the UI
designers & developers. They have to keep changing thins to justify their
existence.

~~~
obmelvin
Well considering corporations aren't sentient beings and are made up of these
employees it's the same thing.

~~~
scoot
No, it's the difference between the company being relevant to the market, and
the employees being relevant to the company. That isn't the same thing.

~~~
mygo
but corporations _are_ people.

It's still about people being relevant to people. Just internally instead of
externally.

------
GeekyBear
If you do not want your Mac to automatically download updates:

uncheck "Download newly available updates in the background" in the App Store
section of your computer's Control Panel.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207251](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT207251)

~~~
gammarator
I found this too late--I was traveling overseas and purchased metered internet
--woke up to find 5/12 GB gone...

------
blunte
I regret upgrading. My Mac was wonderfully stable before the upgrade. Now it
periodically crashes, as in full hard crash/reboot.

Sometimes it fails to recognize one of my two external monitors, and when I
wake it from screen saver or screen off (energy saver, but with laptop still
running), it flashes the three displays a while and fumbles around trying to
decide what goes where before _finally_ allowing me to unlock. And after I
unlock, all my windows have been rearranged and shoved onto one display.

I find no improvement or redeeming value in High Sierra. It's almost as bad as
my new Windows 10 laptop next to it... in fact with the crashes it's now even
worse.

Apple has been on the path of self destruction, dare I say, since Jobs died.
He may have had some goofy ideas, but apparently his dictator like control and
obsession with details was worth more than I realized. Sadly for us users,
especially developers, we'll soon have no OS that works great all the time.

~~~
fvargas
I experienced a similar disappointment after installing one of the Sierra
security updates. It introduced some external display issues [1] which to this
day have gone unfixed. I've spent hours with Apple support, both in chat and
over the phone, explaining the issue and providing them with debug data. They
told me multiple times it was being looked into by engineering and would
continue to update me. But time and time again they would schedule a follow-up
phone call that never came or tell me I'd receive an email follow-up that
would never arrive.

I also echo the sentiment that it's difficult finding a practical alternative.

[1] [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/277967/major-
issue...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/277967/major-issues-with-
multiple-external-displays-after-upgrading-from-macos-10-12-3)

------
mailslot
I've been a satisfied Mac user and developer for nearly two decades.

Perhaps I'm lucky, but I never had a single OS update problem during this
time. Not a one. Not until High Sierra.

This update is so bad, I'm actually abandoning the platform entirely. I've
been shopping for new PC hardware since I installed this disease.

~~~
chmaynard
Agreed. After using macOS High Sierra for a few days, I was in shock and
decided to downgrade to Sierra immediately. Downgrading macOS can be
difficult, and in this case it was also necessary to restore the HFS+ file
system. Fortunately, I had a good backup and enough spare time to do it
correctly.

------
donatj
Given how much worse High Sierra has been for me performance and stability
wise I’d be quite upset if I’d been tricked/forced into installing it.

For instance activating accessibility zoom freezes the entire system for 5-10
seconds before it kicks in. It’s horrible.

I am also regularly frustrated with file system changes taking up to 30
seconds to show up in Finder. I presume this is a side effect of APFS.

~~~
matt4077
If we lay all these complaints of "the update is worse" end-to-end, from the
first OS X to today, we'd get some sort of eternally crashing MC Escher OS :)

------
nayuki
This is not unlike Microsoft's aggressive push to automatically install
Windows 10 a few years ago.

~~~
laurent123456
This has became the new normal it seems. Just like it's acceptable to reboot a
computer without a user's permission, losing all their work (or to start it in
the middle of the night and not switch it back off).

This is purely something that these companies do for their own good without
any regard for the user. They probably think "What are you going to do about
it? Install Ubuntu?"

~~~
collectively
Do for their own good? I see this as for the collective good, as most of the
people hurt by unpatched software are NOT microsoft but people, small
businesses, and the victims of the resulting botnets.

Obviously if you know what this is you can turn it off.

~~~
marksomnian
The issue with having an off switch is that non-tech-savvy people will blindly
follow some instructions to disable it and will get caught by a major security
vuln.

Case in point: when Chrome throws a TLS error, you could type "danger" to
bypass it, but they had to change it because businesses started _teaching
users_ to bypass errors blindly.

Not exactly apples to apples, but similar enough in my mind. If users blindly
disable updates, they won't be updated when there's a major security patch.

~~~
Trav5
A good reminder that if a software company is given enough trust to auto
update, keeping that trust us important. Seems the big boys have been
breaching that trust a lot lately.

------
spruce-bruce
This article complains that clicking a button that says "install" starts
installing.

~~~
slobotron
Complaint is more about unprompted 5.3GB download.

~~~
Waterluvian
I'm not upset with any one device because I'm sure they all have an option to
disable auto download. But there is now so much auto downloading that goes on
in my house (I can think of 15 devices top of my head) that my wifi often
can't reliably stream Twitch or YouTube.

I think I'm at the point in the tech story of my home that I would love a UI
that shows total and per-device usage history. With knobs to throttle each
device on a temporary or permanent basis.

~~~
manyxcxi
I’ve got a Ubiquiti Edge Router Lite as The Router for my house. Not sure if
it does exactly per-device but if you enable it, it can show traffic per
host/ip, site ‘category’, etc. It’s quite a nice little piece of kit.

Speed-wise,it’s also very good. It’s plugged in directly to my FiOS and I’m
maxing out my 150/150.

~~~
nerdponx
How is it possible to tell what category a piece of traffic is?

~~~
wereHamster
Depends on which categories you want to have.

You can use the TCP port (http vs bittorrent vs email, or individual games
which often use a well-known port for communication), deep packet inspection
(eg. to distinguish between normal web and HTTP video streaming), reverse IP
lookups to detect location of the remote endpoint or what company it's
assigned to (through AS number for example).

------
eref
The upgrade to 10.13.1 has effectively locked my SSD in read-only mode because
reading from it would always cause an APFS kernel panic (both under 10.13 and
10.13.1) also making it impossible to boot from it. It took me several hours
to figure that out and to restore my data. I now downgraded to 10.12.6 and I
am not missing anything. I think I am going to switch to Ubuntu as soon there
is a comparable laptop to MacBooks from ~2015 (perhaps in 1-2 years?). This
kind of nonsense is just not worth my time and money when I just need Firefox,
ZSH and Emacs anyway.

~~~
nicksergeant
Try out a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

------
jerkstate
I also don't like how much they are pushing for me to install IOS 11 on my 5S.
I know it's going to be unbearably slow but I intend to keep this phone for
another year, so I want to stay on IOS 10

~~~
Niten
You intend to use your phone for a year without installing any security
updates?

Some people like living dangerously, I guess. For the rest, it's a good thing
iOS strongly encourages people to keep up to date.

~~~
krisdol
I have a 6s and regret upgrading to 11. Slow and unstable. Frankly I don’t do
enough sketchy crap on the phone to care about security updates as much as I’m
supposed to.

~~~
0xffff2
It always amazes me how subjective adjectives like "slow" and "unstable" are
when referring to software. I too have a 6s (plus), and iOS 11 has been just
as fast and stable as iOS 10 in my experience.

This kind of disparity makes a lot of sense in the PC world, where everyone
has slightly different hardware. I can't quite figure out why it's still
common on a platform where there is relatively no hardware variation.

~~~
krisdol
I mean if I had devices side by side of different OSes, I’m confident I could
measure it. Time to open applications, like the phone dialer and messages, is
noticeably slower than ever before for me. Another issue is that now when I
open my recent calls, it shows a cached image of its last state for a few
seconds before it refreshes with the most recent state. Unfortunately, in
those few seconds, I usually already clicked the contact I wanted to call
back, only to see the screen refresh after my click and find out I’m calling
someone I did not mean to call. This is the same annoying way that Safari
treats the back button, but I’m sad to see that pattern creep into other apps.
I’d rather see a loading screen than a false view.

------
godzillabrennus
__* WARNING __*

I upgraded at launch on my Mac Pro with an OEM Apple RAID card.

The installer will update your firmware then install. After install it won’t
boot.

Turns out they forgot to put the drivers in for the Apple OEM raid card. High
Sierra cannot see any drives attached through the card.

Apple claims to support these older Mac Pro computers for this upgrade but
can’t give me an eta for when they will add support back in.

If you have an older Mac Pro your system will be bricked by this upgrade.

------
alfonsodev
The entry model of MacBook Pro comes with just 250GB, I personally struggle to
keep 30GB free (I need to have Android SDK and iOS SDK installed)

When having less than 20GB the OS gets slow, so I usually run DaisyDisk to
find what can I delete, I didn't like to find the high sierra installer there.

On the side note, I didn't update to High Sierra because it seems that there
are issues with XCode 9 (slow simulator) so I can't risk.

~~~
wereHamster
The mistake here is to use an entry-level model for development ;)

~~~
bluedino
My Xcode install alone is 75GB

Apple still sells a machine with a 128GB drive

~~~
userbinator
I don't use Apple software much but I understand that Xcode is Apple's
equivalent to something like Visual Studio --- which takes several GB, but
what exactly in Xcode needs 75GB? Does it somehow include all versions of iOS
and macOS ever released?

~~~
wingerlang
I'd assume runtimes for various iOS systems (think 3gb for iOS 11, 3gb for iOS
11.1, 11.1.1 etc) from many many versions ago. Same with simulators. It is
very very likely that he could just delete unused ones and cut it down to 20gb

Xcode itself is ~5gb I think. Or 10.

~~~
gurkendoktor
My Xcode.app is 15 GB, and depending on how many different devices you
connect, the iOS Device Support folder will balloon rather quickly. 75 GB
sounds pretty high, though.

------
dreen
Our IT dept just sent us an email NOT to upgrade if OS asks. Wonder if the
holdout is the new filesystem or something else?

~~~
masklinn
I have not seen anything bad about the new FS, I _have_ heard everything bad
from the OS itself. I had held off of Sierra because it felt half-baked and
hoped High Sierra to be a Snow Leopard/Mountain Lion/Cap, but it's really not
looking good.

It does not help that I have one of the "dead dGPU" 2010 series, and with
every new release I dread more and more that gfx won't be able to lock the
system in "integrated only" mode.

~~~
StephenMelon
Never had random reboots or graphical artifacts on screen before on OSX but my
iMac has been very unstable since the High Sierra update. I’m lucky I’m not
using that machine for work or I would be raging on a daily basis.

I’m not an “Apple are doomed”-er but this is the poorest Apple OS release
since the black screen of death that plagued iOS8.

You seem to generally get about 3 years of use from an iOS device before the
CPU can’t really keep up with the OS updates. I couldn’t recommend upgrading
an iPhone 6 to iOS 11 as my wife’s 6 Plus has basically become unusable.

Maybe part of the problem is that no-one in Cupertino will be using a 3-4 year
old iPhone or a 2012 Mac on a daily basis?

------
mistercow
A tip if you do upgrade, especially from an older macOS and you're using
Apple's Mail app: back up your filters. I procrastinated and ended up
upgrading from Yosemite (presumably a less well thought out upgrade for
obvious reasons), and Mail helpfully deleted all of my filters. Fun times.

------
jmull
This seems reasonable to me.

An automatic download that size can be an issue in certain circumstances, but
why is this blogger just assuming Apple hasn’t done anything to address that?
E.g., perhaps it doesn’t automatically download if you’re low on disk space.
Perhaps they’ve even done something clever to determine when it might cost you
download tolls and avoid it then too. I mean, if you use the internet much at
all you are very likely involuntarily downloading a lot more than that in the
form of ads and their associated video/audio, images, and tracking code.

At least (as the blogger mentions) it’s generally good for people to be up-to-
date. It’s just reality that there are so many people who simply won’t unless
it’s easy and without a little prodding.

I think people manufacture outrage at Apple for the attention it get them.

~~~
sago
They haven't.

I moved house three weeks ago, and was using a short-term cellular internet
connection to stay in touch with emails, update version control, etc.

The automatic download blew through all my bandwidth, and I needed to top up.

I was able to control other downloads, no ads no video, etc. But I had no clue
what had used all my bandwidth until it was done.

~~~
tedmiston
This isn't really a problem with Apple's approach here as much as using a
limited cellular data plan on macOS which opens a whole can of worms since you
can't easily restrict which apps, especially daemons, have network access like
you (mostly) can on iOS. You also can't really restrict whether loading a
simple web article these days is a 5 KB download or a 5 MB download. The
desktop web is just not mindful of bandwidth costs today since most cable
connections have been unlimited historically. Hopefully this is a change we
see a similar simple control over in the future.

You might try something like Little Snitch if you really want to lockdown
network traffic not initiated by yourself, however, there are also just so
many background system services trying to use network that this can be a bit
time-consuming to setup.

~~~
sago
:D - My fault, of course!

It has worked fine before. Most background stuff checks for updates, downloads
small stuff, I figure < 500Mb a day for gmail, my git repos, checking news,
messaging apps: 5.6 Gb is an obnoxious amount. Not only size, but bandwidth.

If you're really saying we should all be fine with and expect multigigabyte
downloads happening at arbitrary times, without our consent, then I think we
have a very different model of computing ethics.

~~~
tedmiston
I didn't say it was your fault — I only clarified why the expectations you
have don't align with the reality of OS X, and moreover any desktop operating
system, today and over the past decade.

It may be worth re-reading my comment as I'm not arguing the interpretation
you described: I didn't mention ethics and only described the reality of the
situation we have today and one approach for addressing it.

------
kanishkdudeja
Gone are the days when Apple products used to work flawlessly.

Struggling to understand how a company nearing a trillion dollar valuation
can't push out stable updates for it's platforms. Even iOS (Apple's cash now)
11 is buggy as hell.

------
intellix
Also regret upgrading. Loads of graphical glitches, volume controls randomly
stop working, mouse slows down when taking screenshot and my laptop is
absolutely crawling performance wise since updating. Worst release ever

------
krallja
Seems too early. My laptop wouldn’t reboot until I unplugged my external
miniDP monitor.

~~~
pentae
If the rollouts anything like the utter debacle that was iOS 11, they
shouldn't be forcing major OS updates down peoples throats.

------
jgowdy
Yeah, let’s break everyone’s Thunderbolt external monitor support, not just a
few people. Enjoy the video corruption on external monitors my friends.

------
hownottowrite
The upgrade process itself is a little hit or miss with OSX.

I had my own personal experience with that today. In my case, the automatic
installer didn't like FileVault, which rendered my mbpro a shiny brick. In
relative terms, it was easy to work around in recovery mode but I can imagine
the pleasure a non-technical user would feel at waking to find their beloved
mac turned into a shiny brick.

------
j_mes
Still waiting for Dark Mode on Mac OS. My eyes bleed with the white interface
and Notifications bar being white!

------
protomyth
Have they fixed RAID1 on the Mac mini server? Last time I looked it wouldn’t
install.

~~~
lloydde
I came to ask a similar question, can macOS High Sierra now be installed on a
AppleRAID set? (Not sure why it is called “AppleRAID”, guess that is they
brand software RAID0)

Looks like not based on recent comments on
[https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/78908](https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/78908)

------
atomicnumber1
I see lots of complaints about High Sierra being buggy and pain in the butt.
But I've had no such issues. Infact I've found it to be really polished and
breeze(as was too be expected). So much so that I upgraded my file system to
apfs. And mind you, I'm running Hackintosh. And, I seemlesly upgraded it from
Sierra.

P.S. I'm sure now that I've mentioned it, something's about to go horribly
wrong.

------
exabrial
Unfortunately my mom fell for this and the upgrade did not succeed destroying
her operating system install. Hopefully her documents are still there; she
really enjoys looking at pictures of her kids and grandkids.

Apple seriously needs to take heart of this message:
[https://youtu.be/e_hnG7kuam8](https://youtu.be/e_hnG7kuam8)

~~~
majewsky
> the upgrade did not succeed destroying her operating system install.

You should use a comma there. You probably meant "the upgrade did not succeed,
[thus] destroying her OS install". But without the command, it means "the
upgrade did not succeed [in] destroying her OS install", which is the exact
opposite.

~~~
majewsky
s/command/comma/

------
sidcool
Since I updated to High Sierra, my Java plugins in Safari have stopped
working. Now those are required for VPN connection. Apple support says to re-
install macOS, but I am not convinced. Also there are some weird bugs popping
up.

What really rocks is the copy/paste. It's blazing fast.

~~~
mrsteveman1
> my Java plugins in Safari have stopped working. Now those are required for
> VPN connection.

Is it common for VPN access to be handled this way?

What's the advantage over issuing a certificate or just using a
username+password?

~~~
sidcool
Yep, there needs to be a client side program to route all the traffic through
VPN, isn't it? And while there may be better programs, Java is pretty much I
know of as being used in many companies.

------
ralphc
I'm confused, does the switch from HFS+ to APFS happen when the upgrade
happens, or is it a separate step you do or not do later? My macs are on
rotating HDs, sounds like some of the problems are with this.

~~~
scarlac
It happens automatically as a part of the upgrade.

~~~
ralphc
[http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/17/how-skip-apfs-macos-high-
sier...](http://osxdaily.com/2017/10/17/how-skip-apfs-macos-high-sierra/)
According to this, SSDs are converted automatically, HDDs are left at HFS+,
and with some command line magic you can get the installer to not convert
SSDs.

------
bitL
Apple seems to suffer from cloning envy even if it makes very very little
sense. It first started with iOS copying Windows Phone's look (ugh!), even if
their original design was considered the golden standard and everybody was
copying it. Then they adopted weird 16:9, which Google promptly used and
jumped on Apple's original format. Now they took "black magic" tricks from
Microsoft that had massive backslash from their userbase and MS still didn't
recover from them.

This tells me that Apple's originality is now gutted, the ship is rudderless,
the company went beyond "bozo horizon" and MBAs with no vision took over. Sad,
but expected.

------
therealmarv
still having graphic errors on 10.13.1 with Intel HD 5000 graphic cards in
fullscreen quicktime videos on external monitors:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/70jaci/this_has_star...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/70jaci/this_has_started_happening_after_getting_the_gm/)

------
lokedhs
My MBA is still on 10.10 with no intention of upgrading. It has an almost full
64 GB SSD, so I hope that will stop an automatic update.

------
Overtonwindow
I have a Macbook that still runs Mavericks and I'm quite happy with it. I know
it sounds conspiratorial but I've never been able to shake the forced
obsolescence tag when it comes to Apple. I have a laptop. It works very well.
I don't feel the need to upgrade or update the software, because I don't want
to lose functionality that works really well for me.

~~~
abritinthebay
Then you are missing years of security patches. Your call there but... seems
like a risk

~~~
mring33621
Which is better: vulnerable and usable or less vulnerable and less usable?

~~~
Overtonwindow
There's one element there that might be missing: Vigilance. Vulnerable, sure,
but with great care it can be managed.

------
iambateman
On High Sierra, is anyone else having TextEdit freeze-crash every time you try
to save?

------
JustSomeNobody
This kinda <del>pisses me off</del> makes me a little angry. I've a 2014 rMBP
and, given the issues I've heard talked about, have no desire yet to upgrade
to HS. Them pulling a Microsoft and auto downloading the OS for me is consumer
unfriendly seeing as how HD space on Macs cost a premium!

------
twic
Joke's on them! I'm still using Mountain Lion!

------
znpy
If Microsoft had done the same (downloading 5.21 gigabytes of software without
asking the user) everybody would have lost their mind. Just saying.

------
drivingmenuts
I can live with automatic IOS upgrades, because at the end of the day, my
phone will still function, even if I lose all the apps.

However, I lose my laptop ... I am screwed (I can't afford backups right now).

I also have software that I paid rather a large amount of money for (back when
I could afford it) that is incompatible with High Sierra and I cannot afford
to upgrade the software.

So, I'm kinda stuck between a rock and hard place here.

