Apple has released macOS High Sierra.
macOS High Sierra is designed to improve on the previous macOS Sierra operating system with some major under-the-hood upgrades and a handful of outward-facing changes.
Apple File System (APFS), a file system designed for solid state drives, is the new default for these drives in macOS High Sierra. APFS is safe, secure, and optimized for modern storage systems. It features native encryption, safe document saves, stable snapshots, and crash protection, plus it brings performance improvements.
An interesting new feature in high Sierra that was only recently unveiled: the new version of macOS checks your Mac’s firmware against Apple’s own database once a week to see if it’s been tampered with.
after 15 years on macOS (and also running my own Linux distribution and occasional Windows) I must say Apple reached #peakbugs. The level of things not working or breaking left and right is astonishing. I could not believe they really gonna ship High Sierra with that many gpu sub-system bugs, that even the graphic goes black, flickers with artifacts during boot: https://rene.rebe.de/2017-09-25/macos-high-sierra/
Guess what happens when I render a movie and browse in safari (hint windowserver crash), or when I plug in a display and then wake the Mac (usually no signal), and the story goes on and on, …
PS: oh and this firmware thing (while nice in theory in post-Snowden times) would not surprise me if it is used against Hackintoshs, too just like System Integrity Protection. It would also be better if Apple would publish firmware hashes so third parties can verify it, as I’m sure attackers will find ways to hack this integrity check away, too, …
Edited 2017-09-26 09:02 UTC
I’ve been hearing about a lot of problems about the GPU, and some of my most die-hard Mac friends are skipping High Sierra.
Be advised with this release.
Second all that. Safari is really messed up.
And iOS 11 isn’t any better. Been in contact with Apple technical engineering team to discuss the pile of crap that SceneKit has turned into. The embedded 3D engine used to work reliably on iOS 8, 9 and 10. However in 11 lots of things broke. first the model conversion tool in XCode reports strange errors about missing bones on model that has been OK so far. Second SceneKit fails to animate models where bone names contain dot (.). Further more, the latest conversion tool creates model that SceneKit in iOS 9 fails to render properly. It all used to be working but now I have no idea what Apple is up to, but the quality is surprisingly terrible. If anything can explain the state of things, it is the little notification in “whats new in SceneKit” video where it has been mentioned, that the “skeleton evaluation logic has been considerable reworked”. I can see that!
Edited 2017-09-27 18:18 UTC
Have been using it for a few days now. Haven’t noticed any bugs so far.
I must agree about the graphics issues. It’s really odd, since the problems started around the Lion time, with the elusive disappearing pointer, to random laptop HDCP issues. The latter got fixed, the former happened up until 10.11, and I have not left my systems without a reboot for long since graphics issues started popping up.
It’s odd since they should have at least their graphical systems running solid for Intel GPUs, while I can understand them having issues with their constant swap between nVidia and AMD GPUs on their systems.
I have not yet used the latest and greatest gold master for a long time to be able to point any issues with graphics, but I will be giving it quite the look this quarter.
I wonder if this will affect those who build Hackintosh machines? There’s a lot of spoofing done surrounding firmware, SMC, and serial numbers to trick macOS into thinking it’s on a legitimate Mac.
I suspect that that’s the entire point of the “feature”.
I didn’t think there were nearly so many hackintoshes around these days. It was already a pain to keep running (worse than Linux imho) because of driver issues on non-Apple hardware. Are hackintoshes really that much of a threat to Apple that they’d bother with them at this late date? I’d bet it’s more about checking to make sure people aren’t trying to break through firmware-level encryption (e.g. Touch ID on the new Macbook Pro) by replacing the EFI with custom firmware.
Hmmm, my understanding is that it’s easier than ever to build and maintain a Hackintosh these days. The biggest obstacle is Continuity and Handoff, and there are workarounds[1].
I’m sure it really is about preventing firmware based attacks on real Macs, but a nice side effect for Apple is the potential to block Hackintosh installations in a future update.
[1] https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/september/2017/
Not in this release. If a non Apple firmware is found, it notifies you and lets you report it to Apple. Hackintoshes should just ignore it.
Are they still stuck in 2010 for 3d susbsystem?
Apple never moving beyond OpenGL 4.1 (july 2010) is concerning to say the least when considering the plattform for any kind of 3d rendering or as an end user of 3d applications.
Yes and no. They’ll probably keep the old OpenGL for posix and old GUI software compliance and porting, but they will use Metal to keep developers on their platform and their own control over low level high performing graphics.
You’re in for a shock if you ever open Terminal. That hasn’t changed in decades!