
MacOS High Sierra - rbanffy
https://www.apple.com/macos/high-sierra/
======
tomp
> 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).

~~~
raesene6
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.

~~~
roblabla
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.

~~~
pwdisswordfish
> And yet, microsoft started incorporating ads inside of windows 10.

Using daily, only thing I've seen - notification about Edge (which came with
the OS). what?

~~~
falcolas
Before disabling the ads, I saw ads for Halo, Cloud Drive, and prompts to
install Office 365 on screensavers and interstitials.

If you don't see them, you've likely disabled them.

~~~
nwah1
They also have suggested apps in the Store live tile, and on the top of the
programs menu. Some of those are not directly from MS, but again at least half
are at the moment (Minecraft, etc).

Easy to turn off the live tiles and the suggested apps, and you can very
quickly type to find any app so many people probably don't even look at the
programs menu.

------
feelin_googley
"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...](https://www.synack.com/2017/09/08/high-sierras-secure-kernel-
extension-loading-is-broken/)

~~~
eridius
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.

~~~
e40
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.

~~~
reggieband
When this first came out I had some troubles with it. I guess since then
homebrew and others have caught up to the changes. It hasn't been a problem
for many months.

------
mvdwoord
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](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](https://player.vimeo.com/video/235313957)
#smh

~~~
altitudinous
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?

~~~
thefreeman
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.

~~~
eugeniub
When I go to Facebook.com, my login credentials are instantly filled in by
Safari. What prompt are you talking about?

~~~
jakobegger
You either gave Safari permission before, or Safari was the app that added the
password to the keychain in the first place.

------
oschrenk
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?

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

~~~
godzillabrennus
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.

~~~
robin_reala
I’m guessing that’s a spinning rust array? If so it won’t be converted: APFS
only gets applied to pure flash setups.

~~~
godzillabrennus
It’s an all Intel ssd array. Not supported by Apple in any way though. I guess
it’ll be skipped.

~~~
AsyncAwait
Yeah, my sense is that only Apple SSDs and later on Fusion Drives will get
converted to APFS.

------
aneidon
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.

~~~
petercooper
_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.

~~~
gradstudent
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.

~~~
nsomaru
Remap single tap CAPS to ESC and when used in combination with another key or
long-pressed - CTRL. This has changed the way I use my keyboard in vim and
tmux.

I'm doing this on Ubuntu, but there are ways to get it done on OSX too.

~~~
narkee
Do you have any hints on how one might implement this on mac OS? I'd love to
have my keyboard configured like this...

~~~
AlphaSite
It’s in keyboard modifier keys.

~~~
dilap
that'll get you caps-as-control, but not caps-as-control-AND-escape (unless
they've added that in high sierra, but I don't think so).

------
mrmondo
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
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.

~~~
lloeki
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.

~~~
manmal
Look at the iPhone for planned obsolescence.

~~~
jclardy
The iPhone 5s is still supported on the latest OS released last week. I guess
4-5 years of software support isn't enough?

~~~
epicide
To add to this: the Nexus 5 was released a month after the 5S. That phone got
its last official update last year, I believe. It was also discontinued a full
year before the 5S.

Granted, the 5S started at 4GB for 500 USD and the Nexus 5 started at 16GB for
350 USD.

Still, it's hard to support the "planned obsolescence" argument.

Edit: grammar.

~~~
manmal
How does your argument about Android vs iPhone affect my Mac vs iPhone
argument? Macs have taken a performance hit with Yosemite, but have improved
ever since, while old iPhones become more sluggish with every release.

~~~
epicide
I would generally expect new features designed for newer hardware to run worse
on older phones. However, I'll agree that some releases are less about
features and more about stability and performance.

Admittedly, I can't really speak to how older phones feel after some of the
updates. The oldest iPhone I have is the original iPhone 6 and I haven't tried
it on iOS 11 yet (currently using the iPhone SE, which _seems_ to run better
on iOS 11).

I don't see how you can really say that sluggish is _worse_ than N/A. Worst
case scenario, you just don't update, which is no worse than not getting the
update in the first place.

Edit: clarity.

Edit2:

I realized I'm not really addressing your point.

I think there are some pretty big differences that make it hard to compare
phone OS releases to computer OS releases.

Mobile devices have a much smaller margin for performance. They don't handle
multitasking terribly well. These two things mean that the OS doesn't end up
affecting the performance of a phone as much as apps and websites do.

One poorly developed app can destroy the performance of the entire phone (even
without the app running in the foreground). None of this is true for a non-
mobile device.

I definitely wish we would see more performance-focused iOS releases, but I
don't think it has gotten to the "planned" obsolescence point as much as just
"regular" obsolescence. Hard to say.

------
feelix
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.

~~~
JamesFM
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.

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

What's the benefit?

~~~
karmajunkie
While I’ve not felt any particular pain from updating, other than perhaps some
binaries from homebrew that needed to be recompiled, i've got an enormous
~/Library folder along with a few hundred GBs of other cruft accumulated
through several upgrades of OS X over the last four or five years. Most of it
is applications not related to the OS, so not blaming Apple here, but the
opportunity to rebuild from a clean slate is welcome for sure.

------
goblin89
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.

------
pantulis
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?

~~~
Cthulhu_
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
Not for 2010 models: [https://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/#hardware-
require...](https://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/#hardware-requirements)

___> ' 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) '

~~~
stiGGG
So my good old quad core i7 Mac mini is still cutting-edge, nice!

------
ditn
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...](https://gpgtools.tenderapp.com/discussions/beta/2348-macos-
high-sierra-compatability)

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

~~~
vetinari
Except for those, who upgraded their machine and the old OS release doesn't
run on it. Or myriad other reasons.

~~~
synthmeat
IIRC (but stand to be corrected), they had their hands full before that with
GPG major version bump.

It's just too slow a beast, all of that. GPG (and especially email
integration) is dying. Let's hope it gets a new life one day in the future.

~~~
vetinari
Sure, reverse-engineering changes Apple does to Mail.app every year sounds
like no fun. I'm actually surprised that they are ready at the launch day.

------
amckinlay
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.

------
kbd
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
I had the same issue, but I switched from Karabiner to
[https://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/](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.

~~~
karmajunkie
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.

------
SkyMarshal
*>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
By publishing on the public web?

------
baby
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?

~~~
wlesieutre
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...](https://developer.apple.com/development-kit/external-graphics/)

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

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

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

------
feelin_googley
[https://eclecticlight.co/2017/09/24/high-sierra-
automaticall...](https://eclecticlight.co/2017/09/24/high-sierra-
automatically-checks-efi-firmware-each-week/)

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](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...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170924180858/https://twitter.com/xenokovah/status/912011064304267264)

"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
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?

~~~
burnte
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.

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

~~~
feketegy
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.

~~~
twobyfour
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.

~~~
danieldk
_if you rely on Homebrew it may be several months before the packages you need
are all updated._

A large part of software in Homebrew is already pre-compiled (bottled) for
High Sierra:

    
    
        % find Formula -name '*.rb' | wc -l
        4363
        % find Formula -name '*.rb' -exec grep "sha.*:high_sierra" {} \; | wc -l
        3634
    

Most of the stuff that I have been installing the last one or two weeks was
installed as bottles.

~~~
twobyfour
Good to know!

------
glitchedmob
So, while going through this page, I decided to check out the Safari product
page, and saw this
[http://i.imgur.com/GXQAQVK.png](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
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).

~~~
glitchedmob
Oh ok. That makes a lot more sense, thanks

------
poulsbohemian
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.

------
fairview14
> 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?

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

~~~
raindev
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).

~~~
kiliankoe
Adobe apps are another known candidate for breakage on case-sensitive
filesystems.

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

~~~
hugo19941994
Metal 2 is their new low level graphics API

No OpenGL 4.6 support (still at 4.1)

No Vulkan support

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

~~~
scarlac
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.

------
therealdrag0
I wish the Finder didn't suck so badly. Maybe they'll update that someday...

~~~
grzm
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/#/](https://cocoatech.com/#/)

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

~~~
therealdrag0
Some things that came to mind:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15334905](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.

~~~
grzm
Thanks for enumerating. Having used Macs since System 5, I'm definitely more
accustomed to ⌘O for Open across applications, including the Finder, but I can
understand how muscle memory can be hard to rewire. And while I'm sympathetic
to the frustrations of learning the idiosyncrasies of a new system, I'm sure
you recognize memorizing (new) shortcuts for applications independent of
platform is something is par for the course.

If these are true sticking points for you, I'd suggest taking a look at the
Finder alternatives again. I wouldn't be surprised if the Show in Finder
feature isn't overridden in these environments. I can't imagine that the
points you've listed are likely to be changed in Finder: they're behaviors
that have existed across many, many versions.

------
normanzb
> 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.

------
m6w6
Will Aperture still run on High Sierra, or is Photos already a viable
replacement?

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
4ad
> 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.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
I was an big Aperture user too, and put off the move a long time. I installed
and edited the same photos in everything.

You either take the feature-set hit and switch to Apple Photos ( which does a
great job with basic tweaks ), or you switch to Lightroom. Everything else is
way below par. Your photos just won't anywhere near as good.

~~~
coldtea
Which presents an opportunity for someone like Pixelmator or Affinity to make
a photo management app + their photo editing tools.

~~~
4ad
Personally, I don't want a "photo management" app, I want an app that is very
good at batch processing, works over NFS drives, and doesn't use "projects"
and "libraries".

Basically I want a GUI version of ImageMagick.

~~~
coldtea
Usually after one uses non-destructive editing (a la Aperture and Lightroom)
everything else is like medieval times.

~~~
4ad
Not me.

Plus non-destructive editing does not preclude a non-IDE, non-library based
workflow.

------
rphlx
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
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.

------
seanwilson
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.

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

~~~
extra88
And Safari 11 is available not just on High Sierra but also Sierra and El
Capitan.

~~~
johanj
Unfortunately only High Sierra gets Intelligent Tracking Prevention:
[https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/911066050556436482](https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/911066050556436482)

Still a good release though.

------
miles
Download link is live now: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-
sierra/id12462847...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macos-high-
sierra/id1246284741?mt=12)

------
markdog12
Shame that APFS will not be available for fusion drives, :(

Many millions of those devices out there.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208018)

~~~
moduspol
At least not on release of High Sierra.

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

~~~
markdog12
Looks like it is: [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/apfs-fusion-drive-
high-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/apfs-fusion-drive-high-sierra-
update/)

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

~~~
gt2
Noone I know does this.

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
tushar-r
Any chance you have this script on GitHub/somewhere public?

~~~
coldtea
I don't have it polished enough for that, but the gist (no pun intended) is:

I keep all my documents in a single folder called ~/AAA (so it lists on top)
with subfolders like /WORK, /PHOTOS /CODE (e.g. /CODE/GO), /MUSIC etc, so I
can just rsync that and be totally backuped.

Inside ~/AAA I also have a folder called SYSTEM_FILES, where I keep stuff like
bashrc, vim directory etc. My ~/.bashrc etc are just symlinks to
~/AAA/SYSTEM_FILES/bashrc.

So I start with a script that rsyncs the AAA folder from the backup disk to ~
on the Mac, and then creates the appropriate symlinks for .bashrc, .vimrc etc.

Now all my documents are on my Mac and I have a working shell.

Then the script does:

    
    
      # install brew
      /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
    
      # a number of brew related installs
      brew install rsync
      brew install mercurial
      brew install watchman
      brew install binutils
      ..
    
      # some brew-driven font installs
      brew tap caskroom/fonts 
      brew cask install font-roboto-mono
      ..
    
      # install various linter-related stuff for my ST3
      brew install -g node
      sudo npm install -g eslint
      sudo npm install -g eslint-plugin-import
      sudo npm install -g eslint-plugin-react
      sudo npm install -g babel-eslint
      pip install flake8
      pip install requests
      ..
    
      # install various big packages from casks
      brew cask install vagrant
    
      # install mas -- a mac app store cli client
      brew install mas
    
      # use a wrapper script that extracts mas ids from the apps I want
      ~/mas_install.py Pixelmator
      ~/mas_install.py Skitch
      ~/mas_install.py Evernote
      ...
    
      # use a shell script to copy .bashrc and co
      # create symbolic links etc
      ~/prepare_environment.sh
    
      # configure the Mac with various "defaults" options
      defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllExtensions -bool false
      ...
    
      # finally the script sets up Mail.app, copies my Sublime Text packages to the ~/Library/Application Support etc.

~~~
mikemcquaid
You may want to check out [https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-
bundle](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle) which will allow you to
do a bunch of that in a single file.
[https://github.com/mikemcquaid/strap](https://github.com/mikemcquaid/strap)
and
[https://github.com/benbalter/plister](https://github.com/benbalter/plister)
may be of interest too.

------
memco
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.

------
ksec
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.

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

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

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

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

------
intended
The web page has some duplicated and dithered text.

------
mullsork
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.

~~~
nu11p01n73R
Took some time to realise that "Available 9.25" meant 25th September. The box
looked more like a disabled button.

~~~
smcleod
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.

~~~
petercooper
I hope we'd all standardize on the opposite: 2017-09-25.. it sorts properly
when used in file and document names :-)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
and there is no ambiguity, does 6/7/2017 mean 6th July or 7th June?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
There definitely still is ambiguity if you're unfamiliar with the format. Show
someone "2017-07-06" and they still might be unsure whether that's June or
July.

~~~
kbart
I have never seen YYYY-DD-MM format, on the other hand, both DD/MM/YY and
MM/DD/YY are equally common, that's why I always prefer YYYY-MM-DD format as
it is the least ambiguous and most useful (sorting files etc., as other
comments have mentioned). Feel free to prove me wrong though.

~~~
robin_reala
Have you ever been to any of Kazakhstan, Latvia, Nepal or Turkmenistan?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date#Gregorian.2C_yea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date#Gregorian.2C_year-
day-month_.28YDM.29)

~~~
E-M
I can assure you that Latvia does not use YYYY-DD-MM. Officially Latvia is
using ISO 8601.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Usage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Usage)

~~~
robin_reala
I’d update the Wikipedia article but don’t have time to go digging for
official sources. Something you (or someone else with domain knowledge) could
do?

------
ue_
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.

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

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

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

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

~~~
Tehnix
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).

~~~
thomasdd
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 :)

~~~
shrumm
I own an iphone 6+ too, this could also be a hardware issue. It started for me
with the touchscreen going unresponsive for a few seconds and then suddenly
'catching up', it got progressively worse so I got it repaired. Hopefully it's
purely a software issue in your case but just in case :
[https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6plus-
multitouch/](https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6plus-multitouch/)

