Apple releases first iOS 10.3 with 'Find my AirPods,' tvOS 10.2, macOS 10.12.4 betas for d...
One day after the last updates of iOS and macOS, Apple has released three new betas, bringing "Find my AirPods" and APFS to iOS, a new Night Shift mode to macOS, and fast scrolling to tvOS 10.2.
The iOS update will update the file structure on a device to Apple's new APFS, that was first revealed at the 2016 WWDC. Other changes include a new "Find My AirPods" ability, additions to Siri, CarPlay improvements, and some changes to Maps.
Other than the Night Shift addition for macOS, it is not known what new features, if any, are included with the 10.12.4 beta.
The tvOS 10.2 beta is also available to developers, bringing an accelerated scrolling feature to the Siri remote to allow users to run through lists of content much faster.
Monday's updates spanned Apple's entire product line, with fixes implemented for GPU issues with the 2016 MacBook Pro, the first watchOS update since December's problematic release, and minor fixes to iOS and tvOS.
APFS, the Apple File System, is "optimized for Flash/SSD storage, and engineered with encryption as a primary feature," according to an entry in the WWDC 2016 schedule. In official documentation, Apple adds that it uses a "unique copy-on-write design" with I/O coalescing, meant to optimize performance while staying reliable.
The iOS update will update the file structure on a device to Apple's new APFS, that was first revealed at the 2016 WWDC. Other changes include a new "Find My AirPods" ability, additions to Siri, CarPlay improvements, and some changes to Maps.
Other than the Night Shift addition for macOS, it is not known what new features, if any, are included with the 10.12.4 beta.
The tvOS 10.2 beta is also available to developers, bringing an accelerated scrolling feature to the Siri remote to allow users to run through lists of content much faster.
Monday's updates spanned Apple's entire product line, with fixes implemented for GPU issues with the 2016 MacBook Pro, the first watchOS update since December's problematic release, and minor fixes to iOS and tvOS.
APFS, the Apple File System, is "optimized for Flash/SSD storage, and engineered with encryption as a primary feature," according to an entry in the WWDC 2016 schedule. In official documentation, Apple adds that it uses a "unique copy-on-write design" with I/O coalescing, meant to optimize performance while staying reliable.
Comments
In any event I think that's actually a great idea. Given that the file system on iDevices is invisible to users and much more tightly controlled than on the Mac, it makes sense to bring it there first.
I'm very much looking forward to it on the Mac, though. I look forward to a big reduction in beach balls when external drives spin up for time machine backups!
If you have a Mac with a spinning drive, you probably won't see much improvement. One of the primary features of APFS is optimized (and therefore faster) performance on SSD drives, by eliminating vast swaths of code that deals with, for example, latency delays due to waiting for the right sector to spin around on the platter.
As far as external drives, APFS isn't going to magically make a drive spin up faster. That's a function of the hardware itself (i.e. the physical external drive). The Mac can't do anything with that drive until it's spun up and reports it's online.
I'm sure the big gains will be on SSDs, but this prioritization should be a big deal anywhere.
FWIW, I've been running my iTunes library off a high-speed USB key (a weird one that uses an SSD controller). I switched it from HFS+ to APFS on it about a month ago; beachballs are less frequent, no stability issues at all.
That change did require an erase and reformat. I have no idea how the installer is supposed to switch file systems on a live device, this is puzzling.
Does make sense to put it out first on iOS though, less chance of maybe a rogue Mac app maybe doing something APFS ends up not liking.
Was this why they yanked the finder for AirPods app under the excuse that they 'just didn't like the concept' of an app to find your AirPods? pretty slimy of them.
Right now if I'm typing an e-mail and my external drive spins up for a time machine backup, I get a beachball and can't continue typing until the drive spins up. But my typing an e-mail has nothing to do with the spin up of that drive --- the two tasks should be able to happen simultaneously; they aren't dependent. HFS+ doesn't "know" that, though. With AFPS, though, the system will be smarter -- it will recognize that my typing an e-mail is not dependent on the external hard drive spinning up.
It's not slimy of apple to disallow an app when it's a function of the OS. They surely had it on the roadmap before a month ago. As a developer, you have a good idea what sort of functionality is going to get "sherlocked" by Apple. this was clearly one of them.
Besides, users who had the app said it didn't work very well -- it directed you to *any* BT device nearby, not your Airpods specifically. Fail.
When they pulled the app, it wasn't a function of the OS, and if that was the reason, they could have stated so directly. Either way, there are plenty of apps that duplicate iOS functions, so if that is the reason, Apple is being incredibly inconsistent in its application. Either way, why not let consumers decide?
Looking at reviews, it appears that Apple's find function also uses bluetooth, so it's not necessarily any more accurate. It does play a tone, which is helpful in a quiet environment, but it otherwise lacks the locating functionality that the 3rd party app has. In the end, why not let consumers decide?