Watch: First macOS High Sierra public beta delivers new features, enhancements

Posted:
in macOS edited July 2017
Apple recently released the first public beta of the latest Mac operating system, macOS High Sierra, giving customers the chance to preview the next-generation OS prior to its launch this fall. Like any major OS update, High Sierra focuses on resolving pain points from previous versions while adding a few new features to keep things fresh.





This year, the biggest change is the new 64-bit Apple File System, which delivers increased performance, native encryption and increased crash protection.

Apple's graphics API has been updated to Metal 2, offering 10x better draw call throughput than the original Metal, leading to increased graphics performance, smoother animations and enhanced machine learning capabilities.

Metal 2 also allows for external GPU support via thunderbolt 3 connections, as well as optimized support for virtual reality content, like Steam VR and content creation apps like Final Cut Pro 10.

macOS is now using the new h.265 video codec, which boasts 40% better compression performance than the previous h.264. Apple is building support for the new codec into apps like Final cut, motion and compressor. Newer macs get built-in h.265 hardware acceleration, while older Macs rely on software encoding.

The Photos app has been improved with new organization tools including a persistent side bar, with updated filters. Face detection has been improved, and when users add names to faces, the tags are now synced between all logged in iCloud devices.

Photos will also benefit from new Live Photo editing features due to arrive with iOS 11, like loop and bounce effects. These tools can be used to create animated GIFs.

Editing in the Photos app gets easier, with all your tools conveniently placed on the right hand side of the screen. New tools include selective color modification and Curves. Photos also automatically syncs with other photo editing apps like Pixelmator and Photoshop.




Safari gets a few new features in High Sierra, the most talked about being auto-play ad blocking, which automatically blocks annoying ads from running while you're surfing the web. Intelligent tracking prevention blocks sites from tracking your browsing history, and Safari reader mode blocks everything but article content.

Mail improvements include a new split-view for composing emails, a refined search tool and better compression that uses 35% less storage space than previous versions.

iCloud benefits from a few tweaks like the ability to share any file in iCloud drive without creating copies or sending attachments. Users will also be able to share iCloud storage plans with their entire family.

High Sierra packs in hardware-specific improvements, with the MacBook Pro Touch Bar adding new buttons for night shift and airplay, as well as the ability to adjust volume and brightness with a quick flick to either side of the Touch Bar icon.

New features coming to both macOS High Sierra and iOS 11 include synced iCloud messages, an updated Siri with natural voice assets, and the new personal DJ feature.

The macOS High Sierra public beta is currently available through Apple's website, with the full version set to arrive as a free download this fall.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 29
    sekatorsekator Posts: 7member
    Anyone knows how to set up
    sharing iCloud storage  with the family?
  • Reply 2 of 29
    appexappex Posts: 687member
    APFS with self-healing as ZFS has? Is it required to reformat (with data loss) the previous Mac Sierra drive for High Sierra APFS?
  • Reply 3 of 29
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    appex said:
    APFS with self-healing as ZFS has? Is it required to reformat (with data loss) the previous Mac Sierra drive for High Sierra APFS?
    I installed the first beta with no problem with APFS.   aPFS has been running for a while now on iOS so that part of the beta is stable.  
    chiabrian greenwatto_cobramacxpress
  • Reply 4 of 29
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    wizard69 said:
    appex said:
    APFS with self-healing as ZFS has? Is it required to reformat (with data loss) the previous Mac Sierra drive for High Sierra APFS?
    I installed the first beta with no problem with APFS.   aPFS has been running for a while now on iOS so that part of the beta is stable.  
    @appex, no data is not lost in a conversion on either a boot or data disk (even a RAID 0 worked although not using SoftRAID, I had to convert to Apple RAID but that's not a shock, I am sure SoftRAID are hard at it making a 10.13 APFS compatible version).  

    @wizard69 APFS may be stable on Macs too but lots of tools we (well many of us) use regularly have to catch up.  Carbon Copy Cloner and Little Snitch thankfully have but many haven't. I wonder if Disk Warrior will soon, or if indeed it can? Also in my experiments Parallels and VMWare didn't like running on a boot drive with APFS although they works on an HFS+ High Sierra boot. Has anyone had success there?  It maybe my set up as I have the actual VMS on a RAID externally and the applications in the Applications folder.  I also have had other  issues with RAIDs converted and used with APFS but that's to be expected.

    How are you testers finding reusing a boot SSD again after it's been made into a bootable APFS disk?  I have had a hell of a time formatting and making them bootable in HFS+ again.  I had to resort to using Windows tools to erase partitions APFS created as nothing on the Mac side seemed able to as of yet.
    edited July 2017 Rayz2016pscooter63
  • Reply 5 of 29
    bloggerblogbloggerblog Posts: 2,462member
    Can you finally drag and drop from Photos to Photoshop?
    cpelham
  • Reply 6 of 29
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Can you finally drag and drop from Photos to Photoshop?
    Nope that's one of my biggest frustrations too!  I still use Aperture for work for that reason and quite a few others.  Photos is still just for holiday snaps for me, it is impossible to use the way I use Aperture for professional work, which by the way still works great and is fully supported in High Sierra.  Why oh why can't Apple create Aperture Pro X?  I know all the programmers have left the team to go elsewhere ... it was a rhetorical question.
    davencpelhamSpamSandwich
  • Reply 7 of 29
    boboliciousbobolicious Posts: 1,139member
    ...the auto-propagation of face recognition across the cloud seems notable to me...

    This app may be of interest to some: https://macdaddy.io/CleanDisk/

    "It also shows you every file you have ever downloaded – even in private browsing mode – and allows you to delete this list that your OS keeps"

    edited July 2017
  • Reply 8 of 29
    MacPro said:
    Can you finally drag and drop from Photos to Photoshop?
    Nope that's one of my biggest frustrations too!  I still use Aperture for work for that reason and quite a few others.  Photos is still just for holiday snaps for me, it is impossible to use the way I use Aperture for professional work, which by the way still works great and is fully supported in High Sierra.  Why oh why can't Apple create Aperture Pro X?  I know all the programmers have left the team to go elsewhere ... it was a rhetorical question.
    I thought a feature shown on screen during the keynote related to editing Photos photos in an external editor and keeping it in track with Photos copy of the original etc. iPhoto used to have this in an earlier version (edit in external editor in preferences.) and anyone confirm? 

    I’m waiting for my 650GB Photos library to finish uploading to iCloud before I play with High Sierra Public Beta, and I have Australian internet. :(
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 9 of 29
    dtidmoredtidmore Posts: 145member
    MacPro said:
    How are you testers finding reusing a boot SSD again after it's been made into a bootable APFS disk?  I have had a hell of a time formatting and making them bootable in HFS+ again.  I had to resort to using Windows tools to erase partitions APFS created as nothing on the Mac side seemed able to as of yet.
    Have you tried booting to the HS recovery partition and then using terminal to issue the following

    diskutil apfs deleteContainer

    as a way to clear the APFS ghost so that you can more easily return to HFS+?  I have not tried it, but I am about to find out if it works.

    APFS on my test machine has become very unstable after a week of more or less no problems, so the concept that since it worked in iOS and watchOS all should be well on macOS, is questionable.  The performance of APFS has been doggy from the beginning.  In doing some testing I found that I could boot and run from a Sierra clone on an external drive over USB3 MUCH faster than HS with AFPS was delivering from an internal Fusion Drive.  

    I am doing a CC clone at the moment  As TM is out, SuperDuper has yet to step up to the plate and CrashPlan has been unable to complete a backup since the HS/AFPS installation, I was relieved that the CC beta was up to speed on reading APFS and creating an HFS+ bootable clone.

    I have decided to throw in the towel on APFS and see if I can get my machine back to HFS+.  Worst case I will blow away the Fusion config, wipe the respective partitions totally, then reconfigure my Fusion setup.  I may try restoring my HS HFS+ clone and get a flavor of HS minus APFS.

    I am inclined to agree with CC as they are recommending NOT to adopt APFS even come the fall GM as there are too many issues and too little time to get it to a productional state.  I had hopes that APFS would inherit the lessons that made the iOS, watchOS and tvOS implementation stable but again, what I and others are seeing is NOT encouraging! 


  • Reply 10 of 29
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    If you're going to use High Sierra for your primary machine or machine in which you need to have Time Machine backups, you may want to forego the conversation to APFS until more of the OS bugs are works out. As of the 2nd developer beta you can't back up to Time Machine. That's not the Time Machine disk with APFS, but your Mac running macOS 10.13b2.

    As mentioned in replies to Appex, it's non-destctructive to convert to APFS; but what I didn't see mentioned is that you can't convert back to HFS+ without formatting your drive. And since Time Machine isn't functioning with 10.13b2 for the dev install, this could be problematic. I'm hoping that gets resolves this coming Tuesday, when I expect to see beta 3.


    PS: Those that claim that having an open OS or easily being able to swap HW with 3rd-party vendors add little to no effort for Apple need to look at APFS. Apple distributed it to upwards of a billion closed devices months ago with a point update without incident, and yet there's still issues with the betas of an upcoming version of macOS with various situations. I think this one example clearly shows that potential issue rise exponentially when you allow 3rd-party HW and 3rd-party apps that don't have to abide by App Store policies to interact with an OS and file system.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 11 of 29
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member

    MacPro said:
    How are you testers finding reusing a boot SSD again after it's been made into a bootable APFS disk?  I have had a hell of a time formatting and making them bootable in HFS+ again.  I had to resort to using Windows tools to erase partitions APFS created as nothing on the Mac side seemed able to as of yet.
    You'll have to be more specific.

    For example (these are actual issues I've faced), I  been conducting speed tests on a Mac mini I use for a specific purpose to see how much time I can save on file transfers via various scenarios, but progress was halted because my conversation of the HDD boot drive from HFS+ to APFS caused the OS to not boot. I was going to try to do the conversation to APFS and try again after beta 2, but since Time Machine isn't currently functioning with that beta and APFS enabled, I'm going to hold off until beta 3 to continue my testing.

    On my MBP with Apple's PCIe SSD I do have APFS enabled and it runs fine, but I'm having trouble with Disk Utility. This is an issue with the Disk Utility app during a normal login to macOS, in the Recovery option (⌘-R)'s Disk Utility app, and even Terminal's diskutil command. It freezes the system permanentaly—or long enough that I force a restart—when even trying to check the disk in First Aid.
  • Reply 12 of 29
    christopher126christopher126 Posts: 4,366member
    These videos are just excellent! I watch everyone. Just got a new Rose Gold 2017 MacBook to replace my aging 2009 MBP and love it. I got it mainly because the older MBP would not be able to run High Sierra. I'm so glad I did. It is truly a modern marvel of engineering and the usual Apple elegance! It's so light and I love the battery life. Not only does it last pretty much all day but it's an extremely quick charge. Great job, Max :)
    Soliwatto_cobrapscooter63
  • Reply 13 of 29
    mwhitemwhite Posts: 287member
    I have problems with High Serra with mail the graphics in mail sometimes takes a long time to load or won't load at all, anyone else have this problem?
    edited July 2017
  • Reply 14 of 29
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    These videos are just excellent! I watch everyone.
    He does a great job. AI did well by hiring him.
    pscooter63
  • Reply 15 of 29
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    mwhite said:
    I have problems with High Serra with mail the graphics in mail sometimes takes a long time to load or won't load at all, anyone else have this problem?
    I haven't had that, but my Mail's Tool Bar setup keeps resetting. I do have plenty of graphics issues, but they're relegated to the Safari browser window (not Safari app), and the Slack app (which I'm told is just a re-skinned browser window). It has the appearance of how a bad GPU or GPU driver can affect the display. Killing the app resolves it for a time. Lots of minor things and more freezes and system restarts that expected. In some ways these first two betas are better and worse than previous early betas of macOS.
  • Reply 16 of 29
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Soli said:

    MacPro said:
    How are you testers finding reusing a boot SSD again after it's been made into a bootable APFS disk?  I have had a hell of a time formatting and making them bootable in HFS+ again.  I had to resort to using Windows tools to erase partitions APFS created as nothing on the Mac side seemed able to as of yet.
    You'll have to be more specific.

    For example (these are actual issues I've faced), I  been conducting speed tests on a Mac mini I use for a specific purpose to see how much time I can save on file transfers via various scenarios, but progress was halted because my conversation of the HDD boot drive from HFS+ to APFS caused the OS to not boot. I was going to try to do the conversation to APFS and try again after beta 2, but since Time Machine isn't currently functioning with that beta and APFS enabled, I'm going to hold off until beta 3 to continue my testing.

    On my MBP with Apple's PCIe SSD I do have APFS enabled and it runs fine, but I'm having trouble with Disk Utility. This is an issue with the Disk Utility app during a normal login to macOS, in the Recovery option (⌘-R)'s Disk Utility app, and even Terminal's diskutil command. It freezes the system permanentaly—or long enough that I force a restart—when even trying to check the disk in First Aid.
    Sorry if I wasn't specific enough.    I'll try a different way ...  has anyone else had as much 'fun' as I have had trying to put an SSD that was set up as a bootable 10.3 APFS volume back into use as a plain old HFS+ bootable drive.   I did it, but was taken by surprise that Disk Utilities cannot erase a drive back to a state that can then be formatted as HFS+ and boot yet.  That's I was getting at I guess.  This on the developer release.

     I had several apparent successes, e.g. in one test I used Disk Utilities in 10.3 to erase and format as regular macOS extended journaled on another occasion I tried Disk Utils in 10.12 and then use the both the release version and the beta CCC to clone back a previous HFS+ bootable 10.12 and all seemed fine on every occasion, only for them to fail to boot.  I used some other apps such as iPartition and no luck, then I saw extra ghost partitions were still there (I honestly can't remember how now or what with) I didn't try Terminal but I found a very quick way to get rid of the ghost partitions by using Windows utilities and then re-initializing the SSD with 10.12 Disk Utils.  After that all was OK again.  

    This is all using external SSDs by the way over USB3 from a 6 core new Mac Pro, I have not gone near any internals with beta 10.3. I lie, I did on a 2010 i7 15" 2010 MBP that I simply swap out the internal SSD when I want to try various macOS version as it doesn't have USB3 only FireWire 800.   As I said earlier, I am sure Disk Utilities will be upgraded to wipe all partitions APFS conversion creates soon.  I cannot imagine the potential mess some public beta users may get into if they convert their internal boot drives to APFS, have issues and try to revert to 10.12.

    By the way First Aid in the recovery boot partition in 10.3 did state it could not repair an apparently successfully initialized SSDs Disk Utils had just erased from said recovery  partition!  It simply said something like, 'Back up your Files and erase the disk". irony!
    edited July 2017
  • Reply 17 of 29
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    dtidmore said:
    MacPro said:
    How are you testers finding reusing a boot SSD again after it's been made into a bootable APFS disk?  I have had a hell of a time formatting and making them bootable in HFS+ again.  I had to resort to using Windows tools to erase partitions APFS created as nothing on the Mac side seemed able to as of yet.
    Have you tried booting to the HS recovery partition and then using terminal to issue the following

    diskutil apfs deleteContainer

    as a way to clear the APFS ghost so that you can more easily return to HFS+?  I have not tried it, but I am about to find out if it works.

    APFS on my test machine has become very unstable after a week of more or less no problems, so the concept that since it worked in iOS and watchOS all should be well on macOS, is questionable.  The performance of APFS has been doggy from the beginning.  In doing some testing I found that I could boot and run from a Sierra clone on an external drive over USB3 MUCH faster than HS with AFPS was delivering from an internal Fusion Drive.  

    I am doing a CC clone at the moment  As TM is out, SuperDuper has yet to step up to the plate and CrashPlan has been unable to complete a backup since the HS/AFPS installation, I was relieved that the CC beta was up to speed on reading APFS and creating an HFS+ bootable clone.

    I have decided to throw in the towel on APFS and see if I can get my machine back to HFS+.  Worst case I will blow away the Fusion config, wipe the respective partitions totally, then reconfigure my Fusion setup.  I may try restoring my HS HFS+ clone and get a flavor of HS minus APFS.

    I am inclined to agree with CC as they are recommending NOT to adopt APFS even come the fall GM as there are too many issues and too little time to get it to a productional state.  I had hopes that APFS would inherit the lessons that made the iOS, watchOS and tvOS implementation stable but again, what I and others are seeing is NOT encouraging! 


    No but running Terminal from the 10.3 partition you'd  still be left with the 10.13 recovery partition and in the particular situation I was trying to explore that would surely be problematic wouldn't it as I was wanting to have a virgin SSD to initialize for 10.12 and ..... oh heck I don't know lol.  Let me know how it went.

    As to CCC being up to speed, it can as of my last reading still not make a bootable clone off of a 10.3/APFS disk on an HFS+, but I may have read that incorrectly.  I'll have to go back and re read the notes.  I haven't even tried so perhaps I should.  My entertainment was deleting the damn boot APFS SSD and re using the same SSD as HFS+.
    edited July 2017
  • Reply 18 of 29
    dtidmoredtidmore Posts: 145member
    MacPro said:

    No but running Terminal from the 10.3 partition you'd  still be left with the 10.13 recovery partition and in the particular situation I was trying to explore that would surely be problematic wouldn't it as I was wanting to have a virgin SSD to initialize for 10.12 and ..... oh heck I don't know lol.  Let me know how it went.

    As to CCC being up to speed, it can as of my last reading still not make a bootable clone off of a 10.3/APFS disk on an HFS+, but I may have read that incorrectly.  I'll have to go back and re read the notes.  I haven't even tried so perhaps I should.  My entertainment was deleting the damn boot APFS SSD and re using the same SSD as HFS+.
    Ok, first off, CCC's latest beta CAN read APFS and create a bootable clone of an APFS volume to an external HFS+ volume (I just did IT!)

    Second, the terminal command diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk# works perfectly.  You have to use diskutil apfs list to determine the disk# assigned to the APFS container.  It leaves you with an HFS+ formatted volume (or two if you start with a Fusion Drive).  Yes, EVERYTHING on the APFS volume is GONE, so a clone becomes essential unless you want to just start with nothing more than a vanilla macOS install.

    I am now running my High Sierra environment that was on an AFPS Fusion volume on a HFS+ Fusion Volume.  Took most of the day to compete the steps.

    So, I started with a so-so working APFS 10.13 PB2 environment.
    After loading up the 30 day trial of CCC (latest beta), I was able to make a clone to an external FW drive.  Presently while CCC beta can READ APFS, it can ONLY write HFS+, so the clone IS HFS+ but this is what I wanted anyway.

    Then I rebooted into the clone and verified that while slow (FW800) it was fully operational.

    Then I opened up terminal mode (remember I am in 10.13 at this point) and issued the diskutil apfs deleteContainer command, which removed the APFS container as well as the Fusion drive linkages

    Then I recreated my Fusion drive (4 additional terminal commands) formatted as HFS+

    Then I downloaded a fresh copy of the HS PB2 and had it install to the newly reconsitituted Fusion Drive.

    Then I did a migration of the CCC cloned data over to the Fusion drive

    After I allowed the kernel extensions to load (SIP has been tightened up in HS), everything came up.

    Of course the majority of time was spent in making the CCC clone (about 2.3 hours) and then the migration back of my data once I had a clean HS install.  The actual APFS container deletion and Fusion Drive recreation took maybe 15 minutes total.  

    I could have just as easily restored my 10.12.5 clone rather than installing a fresh copy of 10.13 and migrating my 10.13 data.  I wanted to give 10.13 a chance as the issues I was starting to see were all APFS related.  

    Yes, the key to this is to start with a clone or clean install of 10.13 so that you can boot into it and then remove the APFS mess on your normal boot drive.


    edited July 2017 Soli
  • Reply 19 of 29
    palegolaspalegolas Posts: 1,361member
    Super excited for HEVC. Is there any way to test compression performance and playback in the beta? Beta versions of Compressor or something? Or perhaps Quciktime has new share functionality with HEVC output?

    Sharing iCloud files is a huge addition for me! YES!! Thanks for the report, Max!
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 20 of 29
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    palegolas said:
    Super excited for HEVC. Is there any way to test compression performance and playback in the beta? Beta versions of Compressor or something? Or perhaps Quciktime has new share functionality with HEVC output?

    Sharing iCloud files is a huge addition for me! YES!! Thanks for the report, Max!
    I've tested HEVC with QuickTime X on 2013 and 2015 Macs on both High Sierra betas. Neither will play back the titles properly, Both show "Converting…", which is common enough for videos that won't play, but this actually loads a white window and let's you play the audio properly. I'm not sure if this simply isn't included as of yet or the Macs are too old. I've tested the media with VLC Player without issue, so I know the source is fine. It was encoded from H.264/MP4 to H.265/MP4 using Handbrake.
    palegolas
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