... Sometimes programmers make assumptions when they code,
This is an essential point. Sometime programmers make assumptions, sometimes they take shortcuts, sometimes they use ‘hacks’ knowing full well it could break at any OS release.
I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised to find out that the Unity Engine developers did something unusual in order to get performance gains or simply implement a feature, and then came to rely on what they shouldn’t have ever relied upon and now it’s a lot of work to change and make it work correctly, and then they leverage the fact that Apple wants more games on Mac and say it’s Apple’s bug and not their own hoping Apple will ‘fix’ their own bug for them (i.e. make their hack work again).
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
You are aware of the fact, that your computer is not fault tolerant when it comes to storing data in volatile memory, right? You do realize that some random cosmic ray shooting through that memory chip MIGHT FLIP that one bit, and you won't even know that, until your OS crashes quite ungracefully.
Your computer is not a "critical operating system" and it was never designed to be that system. Period. And that is a good thing, because otherwise, we would be buying computers costing 40-50k instead of 1k. When consumer level PC fails, it fails and that is it. Sometimes computers can freeze because of the deadlock due to circular dependency issue and no one in the last 50 years decided to fix that. Why? Because it is f-ng cost prohibitive (both in terms of money and CPU cycles that would be wasted on that). So, instead of fixing it, the real solution is NOT TO FIX IT and rely instead on the fact that such events are extremely rare.
Critical defined by you? By who?
This is why computers should not be relied on, yet, most of humanity now does, as a matter of default, as a matter of habit, as a matter of peer pressure... and the industry has conditioned tech people to defend it with special pleading. It's nothing but constant excuses for bad design and quick profit. Computers are not as reliable as they should be and almost no one is willing to accept this fact and deal with it, because profit margins and "reasons".
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
For sure... even though my 2009 iMac upgraded just fine to High Sierra and been running it trouble free since it became official, it took a big dump when attempted to do a clean install last night on it. It was unable to create an APFS boot volume during the MacOS reinstall..
First time I've ever had a problem with an OS install by Apple. Ever. I didn't hear any problems (outside of beta) about doing clean-installs with High Sierra, but warning to others not to do it just yet. It could be a problem specific to my machine/configuration but those considering it should wait. Obviously, Apple missed the QC train here.
Attempting a work-around... crossing fingers.
So it might be your system or your configuration of it but, okay, blame Apple’s QC anyway. And by the way, just FYI, I haven’t performed a ‘clean install’ since 2008 and have used Migration Assistant to move between three iMacs. To me, anyway, ‘clean installs’ are just one of those unnecessary voodoo incantations like hard disk optimizing that have long since been retired by the modern operating system. Sure, you’re allowed to do whatever you want with your equipment, I get that, but really.
The only change I did to my iMac was replacing the factory hard drive with a Samsung SSD EVO drive and that was years ago.
I have two iMacs, with my 2009 also being used as a test machine when Apple introduces a new OS. I will upgrade, clean-install, rinse-and-repeat to make sure there are no surprises so when it comes time to assist with Macs owned by others, it can be done quickly and with no downtime. I've lost track of how many times something like a bad Java release (I have to use it) just ruined the system configuration.
If you haven't done a clean-install since 2008, well then good for you. Many times I've had to choose between taking hours to clean someone's messed up system vs. just doing a clean-install. I don't see how you can claim it's a "voodoo incantation" since you haven't done one in almost 10 years. In my 10 years of using Macs, repairing them, troubleshooting, etc... I can say without a doubt that starting with a fresh system is the best way to eliminate many problems related to the issues others have done to their systems over the years. I'm very much an MacOS person vs. Windows (my Macs run both) MacOS is not 100% free from its own issues. They are just far more rare compared to Windows.
All my data is stored offline, or in a cloud service. My Macs could fail right now and I'm only a login-away at most on a new Mac to be right back where I was.
There ARE problems right now with APFS if one reads the boards. My specific problem today is not unique, the difference being that those problems were from the beta release whereas mine was the official earlier in the week. It's definitely related to APFS and the errors mean that APFS is not fully-baked yet. Since it's a new file system for Apple, I'm giving Apple some leeway since it's the first time I've ever had an OS issue. Nonetheless, people need to know to tread carefully when resetting their Mac back to factory.
While writing this post, I got my iMac back up and running. For those interested in actually learning something... the problem was resolved by creating a USB boot drive with High Sierra on it, and re-installing the OS via USB. Reinstalling High Sierra using the recovery partition on a clean APFS-formatted drive may (as it did for me) cause an invalid boot volume and crash your machine.
And even then, the first USB attempt did install the OS, but resulted in the spacebar key constantly repeating (not a keyboard issue) with no way to answer certain panel prompts before actually using the OS. The 2nd attempt after re-erasing the system drive worked fine.
So LKrupp... if you ever decide to do a clean-install to start fresh, you can thank people like us for taking the time to spread the knowledge.
Don't take it so hard. Most tech people are conditioned to tell everyone that the user is at fault, until the product is proven to have flaws. Then they defend the presence of the flaws, moving the goal posts. It's typical. If you're in a state of healthy recognition that computers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're in the right place. Keep up the good work and keep telling people the facts.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
You are aware of the fact, that your computer is not fault tolerant when it comes to storing data in volatile memory, right? You do realize that some random cosmic ray shooting through that memory chip MIGHT FLIP that one bit, and you won't even know that, until your OS crashes quite ungracefully.
Your computer is not a "critical operating system" and it was never designed to be that system. Period. And that is a good thing, because otherwise, we would be buying computers costing 40-50k instead of 1k. When consumer level PC fails, it fails and that is it. Sometimes computers can freeze because of the deadlock due to circular dependency issue and no one in the last 50 years decided to fix that. Why? Because it is f-ng cost prohibitive (both in terms of money and CPU cycles that would be wasted on that). So, instead of fixing it, the real solution is NOT TO FIX IT and rely instead on the fact that such events are extremely rare.
Critical defined by you? By who?
This is why computers should not be relied on, yet, most of humanity now does, as a matter of default, as a matter of habit, as a matter of peer pressure... and the industry has conditioned tech people to defend it with special pleading. It's nothing but constant excuses for bad design and quick profit. Computers are not as reliable as they should be and almost no one is willing to accept this fact and deal with it, because profit margins and "reasons".
There are mission critical computers and there are non critical computers. How do you think that Cassini’s computers worked since 1997 in the harsh space conditions? Do you think that Cassini’s ones were your everyday PCs or servers with all familiar bugs and crashes? Please do some research before throwing uninformed opinions haphazardly.
The problems aren't just limited to APFS though. My system has never used APFS and I haven't had a glitch-free game with High Sierra at all. Even Steam itself was majorly glitchy (flashing graphics) in the earlier betas and often Cities: Skylines would bring my entire system down. My thinking is there is a greater issue with the graphics drivers in general.
As of right now, I can play Cities: Skylines but I get varying degrees of glitchy or missing graphics and eventually the game freezes.
Don't take it so hard. Most tech people are conditioned to tell everyone that the user is at fault, until the product is proven to have flaws. Then they defend the presence of the flaws, moving the goal posts. It's typical. If you're in a state of healthy recognition that computers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're in the right place. Keep up the good work and keep telling people the facts.
Didn't take it hard at all whatsoever. I just found it funny that someone who does not feel the need to clean-install MacOS for 10 years questions someone that does do it, and with benefits of it.
Either way... Considering how many units this affects, I think Apple did a really good job with APFS on MacOS. It's "almost" there and now that I determined what happened and how to fix it, it's better for everyone else.
Some people may not find the need for it, but there is something to say about having a clean system again even though it's not for everyone. I do it once a year when an OS comes and the kinks have worked out. APFS made a great improvement to my 2009 iMac with the SSD drive. I was happy with it before, so it's nice it gave it more longevity to my 8-year old system.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
You are jumping to an unsupported conclusion by assuming this is a bug or in any way an APFS reliability issue. There are a few fundamental differences with the way some things are being handled by design. Programs that use bad practices or that make unsafe assumptions are likely to be impacted by this. As an example, do a little research on Unicode normalization as an example of how HFS+ and APFS handle things differently by design.
I have been using APFS on all of my Macs and have fairly complex setups and have not seen any issues. Networking- yes. File system- no. System Prefs locks up on my desktop on networking. Probably just a corrupted pref file.
Did you upgrade your system, or did you start from scratch? Upgrading mine first had zero issues for the most part. It's only when performing a clean-install that issues come up.
So you actually believe there is a fundamental flaw in doing a clean install and nobody at Apple QC thought to try clean installs?
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
You are aware of the fact, that your computer is not fault tolerant when it comes to storing data in volatile memory, right? You do realize that some random cosmic ray shooting through that memory chip MIGHT FLIP that one bit, and you won't even know that, until your OS crashes quite ungracefully.
Your computer is not a "critical operating system" and it was never designed to be that system. Period. And that is a good thing, because otherwise, we would be buying computers costing 40-50k instead of 1k. When consumer level PC fails, it fails and that is it. Sometimes computers can freeze because of the deadlock due to circular dependency issue and no one in the last 50 years decided to fix that. Why? Because it is f-ng cost prohibitive (both in terms of money and CPU cycles that would be wasted on that). So, instead of fixing it, the real solution is NOT TO FIX IT and rely instead on the fact that such events are extremely rare.
Critical defined by you? By who?
This is why computers should not be relied on, yet, most of humanity now does, as a matter of default, as a matter of habit, as a matter of peer pressure... and the industry has conditioned tech people to defend it with special pleading. It's nothing but constant excuses for bad design and quick profit. Computers are not as reliable as they should be and almost no one is willing to accept this fact and deal with it, because profit margins and "reasons".
You’re asking the wrong poster, you should be asking dewme who claimed the consumer desktop is a “critical operating system”. Anton was replying to this with the obvious reminder that consumer desktop class computers are not that level nor expected to be that level of fault intolerance. These aren’t mission critical systems, they’re consumer desktop class.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
For sure... even though my 2009 iMac upgraded just fine to High Sierra and been running it trouble free since it became official, it took a big dump when attempted to do a clean install last night on it. It was unable to create an APFS boot volume during the MacOS reinstall..
First time I've ever had a problem with an OS install by Apple. Ever. I didn't hear any problems (outside of beta) about doing clean-installs with High Sierra, but warning to others not to do it just yet. It could be a problem specific to my machine/configuration but those considering it should wait. Obviously, Apple missed the QC train here.
Attempting a work-around... crossing fingers.
So it might be your system or your configuration of it but, okay, blame Apple’s QC anyway. And by the way, just FYI, I haven’t performed a ‘clean install’ since 2008 and have used Migration Assistant to move between three iMacs. To me, anyway, ‘clean installs’ are just one of those unnecessary voodoo incantations like hard disk optimizing that have long since been retired by the modern operating system. Sure, you’re allowed to do whatever you want with your equipment, I get that, but really.
The only change I did to my iMac was replacing the factory hard drive with a Samsung SSD EVO drive and that was years ago.
I have two iMacs, with my 2009 also being used as a test machine when Apple introduces a new OS. I will upgrade, clean-install, rinse-and-repeat to make sure there are no surprises so when it comes time to assist with Macs owned by others, it can be done quickly and with no downtime. I've lost track of how many times something like a bad Java release (I have to use it) just ruined the system configuration.
If you haven't done a clean-install since 2008, well then good for you. Many times I've had to choose between taking hours to clean someone's messed up system vs. just doing a clean-install. I don't see how you can claim it's a "voodoo incantation" since you haven't done one in almost 10 years. In my 10 years of using Macs, repairing them, troubleshooting, etc... I can say without a doubt that starting with a fresh system is the best way to eliminate many problems related to the issues others have done to their systems over the years. I'm very much an MacOS person vs. Windows (my Macs run both) MacOS is not 100% free from its own issues. They are just far more rare compared to Windows.
All my data is stored offline, or in a cloud service. My Macs could fail right now and I'm only a login-away at most on a new Mac to be right back where I was.
There ARE problems right now with APFS if one reads the boards. My specific problem today is not unique, the difference being that those problems were from the beta release whereas mine was the official earlier in the week. It's definitely related to APFS and the errors mean that APFS is not fully-baked yet. Since it's a new file system for Apple, I'm giving Apple some leeway since it's the first time I've ever had an OS issue. Nonetheless, people need to know to tread carefully when resetting their Mac back to factory.
While writing this post, I got my iMac back up and running. For those interested in actually learning something... the problem was resolved by creating a USB boot drive with High Sierra on it, and re-installing the OS via USB. Reinstalling High Sierra using the recovery partition on a clean APFS-formatted drive may (as it did for me) cause an invalid boot volume and crash your machine.
And even then, the first USB attempt did install the OS, but resulted in the spacebar key constantly repeating (not a keyboard issue) with no way to answer certain panel prompts before actually using the OS. The 2nd attempt after re-erasing the system drive worked fine.
So LKrupp... if you ever decide to do a clean-install to start fresh, you can thank people like us for taking the time to spread the knowledge.
Don't take it so hard. Most tech people are conditioned to tell everyone that the user is at fault, until the product is proven to have flaws. Then they defend the presence of the flaws, moving the goal posts. It's typical. If you're in a state of healthy recognition that computers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're in the right place. Keep up the good work and keep telling people the facts.
Dear lord you’re a sensitive one. Computers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be? Ok, then I guess you aren’t into safe airplanes, sky scrapers, medical scans, drud develoments, etc etc... All of modern life is dependent on computers. And since computers are built by humans, thru aren’t perfect. But, they are still crucial to modern life and our quality of life, medicine, safety, etc.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
You are aware of the fact, that your computer is not fault tolerant when it comes to storing data in volatile memory, right? You do realize that some random cosmic ray shooting through that memory chip MIGHT FLIP that one bit, and you won't even know that, until your OS crashes quite ungracefully.
Your computer is not a "critical operating system" and it was never designed to be that system. Period. And that is a good thing, because otherwise, we would be buying computers costing 40-50k instead of 1k. When consumer level PC fails, it fails and that is it. Sometimes computers can freeze because of the deadlock due to circular dependency issue and no one in the last 50 years decided to fix that. Why? Because it is f-ng cost prohibitive (both in terms of money and CPU cycles that would be wasted on that). So, instead of fixing it, the real solution is NOT TO FIX IT and rely instead on the fact that such events are extremely rare.
Critical defined by you? By who?
This is why computers should not be relied on, yet, most of humanity now does, as a matter of default, as a matter of habit, as a matter of peer pressure... and the industry has conditioned tech people to defend it with special pleading. It's nothing but constant excuses for bad design and quick profit. Computers are not as reliable as they should be and almost no one is willing to accept this fact and deal with it, because profit margins and "reasons".
This is complete nonsense. What does it even mean to say “computers are not as reliable as they should be”? Which computers, for what purpose? Billions of people have done amazing things over the past few decades using these “unreliable” computers. Companies are investing billions upon billions of dollars a year in making better computers (more reliable, faster, etc.). But somehow there is a moral lapse in you opinion because.... reasons.
What does it even mean to say “computers are not as reliable as they should be”? Which computers, for what purpose? Billions of people have done amazing things over the past few decades using these “unreliable” computers. Companies are investing billions upon billions of dollars a year in making better computers (more reliable, faster, etc.).
Without having read the rest of the conversation, I can answer this question out of context.
Think of the reliability and ease of use of Apple machines. Then think of the reliability and ease of use of machines running Windows. The disparity has been quantified by both IT departments and user-(meaning employee)-end studies in companies. Now imagine a world without Windows. How many TRILLIONS of dollars of lost productivity would have been regained?
If he's just speaking about individual components of computers, I could probably think of a few instances in which parts could be more reliable, but not on the whole. Anyway, this is out of context. Carry on.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
With respect to software development:
This is part of why Apple should only do update to macOS once every two year. Or scale yearly updates back to only one or two system components/applications at a time. As an example if they improve SIRI significantly in the next year they should also update it on the mac. macOS is the past. They need too put all their resources into the many flavors of iOS that they have now. Some years there should only be updates that are hardware related ... i.e. new chips in iMACS / MB/MBP/the new MacPro.
iOS is the future. Apple needs to add multiple user support to the iPadPro for families and schools. They will need to put a lot of resources into siriOS for the HOMEPOD for it to be competitive with the new Echos and Alexa. Hopefully we will be able to go totally remote free using a HomePod(s) with apple TV. iOS should be pushed into new products including an iOSAir (laptop for $250 for a child's PolyCarbonate version to compete with ChromeBooks and $999+ version based on the iPadPro ), iOSCamera (starting at $3,000), iPhonePro with Pencil support. iOS is the future in many different forms.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
For sure... even though my 2009 iMac upgraded just fine to High Sierra and been running it trouble free since it became official, it took a big dump when attempted to do a clean install last night on it. It was unable to create an APFS boot volume during the MacOS reinstall..
First time I've ever had a problem with an OS install by Apple. Ever. I didn't hear any problems (outside of beta) about doing clean-installs with High Sierra, but warning to others not to do it just yet. It could be a problem specific to my machine/configuration but those considering it should wait. Obviously, Apple missed the QC train here.
Attempting a work-around... crossing fingers.
Wish I had read this yesterday. My work iMac (5K) bit it hard when I tried to do the update after work last night. Guess me and the tech guy are going to have to figure it out Monday. Great, more fodder for my hipster co-workers “Apple is going downhill since Steve Jobs died” stance.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
Not really. The file system is most likely just fine. It’s the software that probably does things outside the MacOSX ‘standard’ way of doing things, e.g a tucked-on file versioning system that was hooking into the file system, used to synchronize between Unity clients. Most likely a Unity thing. It’s a special case because Unity basically has its own ‘file system’ for the assets and prefabs that synchronizes across clients, including a local or server based caching server.
Software should never cross the bridge between the application layer and the file system layer. Whether you use APFS, HFS or whatever file system, it shouldn’t really matter within the constraints of the application itself. It will be fixed in a new Unity version, not in a ‘APFS update’.
IMHO this is another red flag of concern about APFS reliability. The tolerance for bugs in such a critical operating system component should be as close to zero as humanly possible.
or its just a red flag for how well these developers managed to use the early access to the Mac OS software to update their software appropriately
I have been using APFS on all of my Macs and have fairly complex setups and have not seen any issues. Networking- yes. File system- no. System Prefs locks up on my desktop on networking. Probably just a corrupted pref file.
Did you upgrade your system, or did you start from scratch? Upgrading mine first had zero issues for the most part. It's only when performing a clean-install that issues come up.
So you actually believe there is a fundamental flaw in doing a clean install and nobody at Apple QC thought to try clean installs?
Yyyeahhh.....
Our problems we've been able to duplicate precisely each and every time.
You're more than welcome to try it on your system Captain Obvious if you're so confident.
I have been using APFS on all of my Macs and have fairly complex setups and have not seen any issues. Networking- yes. File system- no. System Prefs locks up on my desktop on networking. Probably just a corrupted pref file.
Did you upgrade your system, or did you start from scratch? Upgrading mine first had zero issues for the most part. It's only when performing a clean-install that issues come up.
Is your comment aimed at the Unity issue or just speaking generally? I am willing to try anything to fix this damn graphics mess in Unity games. I wondered about trying a fresh 10.13.1 installation on an SSD with APFS and installing Steam and nothing else and reverting to a single monitor instead of three. That's the only scenario I haven't tried. I've time to kill so I'll do that now but my money is on Unity being the ones needed to fix something, that said my three monitors do a double start up every time I boot 10.13 or 10.13.1 and they didn't on earlier developer releases. Just as I am about to sign in all three monitors go off and then come back on again. A graphics related issue causing that one would think.
I have been using APFS on all of my Macs and have fairly complex setups and have not seen any issues. Networking- yes. File system- no. System Prefs locks up on my desktop on networking. Probably just a corrupted pref file.
Did you upgrade your system, or did you start from scratch? Upgrading mine first had zero issues for the most part. It's only when performing a clean-install that issues come up.
So you actually believe there is a fundamental flaw in doing a clean install and nobody at Apple QC thought to try clean installs?
Yyyeahhh.....
Our problems we've been able to duplicate precisely each and every time.
You're more than welcome to try it on your system Captain Obvious if you're so confident.
Be careful with the Ad hominem attack, our resident PC policeman already scalded me for that on the GoPro HVEC post even though on that occasion is was a typo by me. Notice I italicized that just like he did, does that make me look clever too?
Comments
I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised to find out that the Unity Engine developers did something unusual in order to get performance gains or simply implement a feature, and then came to rely on what they shouldn’t have ever relied upon and now it’s a lot of work to change and make it work correctly, and then they leverage the fact that Apple wants more games on Mac and say it’s Apple’s bug and not their own hoping Apple will ‘fix’ their own bug for them (i.e. make their hack work again).
Or it could be Apple’s bug.
This is why computers should not be relied on, yet, most of humanity now does, as a matter of default, as a matter of habit, as a matter of peer pressure... and the industry has conditioned tech people to defend it with special pleading. It's nothing but constant excuses for bad design and quick profit. Computers are not as reliable as they should be and almost no one is willing to accept this fact and deal with it, because profit margins and "reasons".
As of right now, I can play Cities: Skylines but I get varying degrees of glitchy or missing graphics and eventually the game freezes.
Either way... Considering how many units this affects, I think Apple did a really good job with APFS on MacOS. It's "almost" there and now that I determined what happened and how to fix it, it's better for everyone else.
So you actually believe there is a fundamental flaw in doing a clean install and nobody at Apple QC thought to try clean installs?
Yyyeahhh.....
Dear lord you’re a sensitive one. Computers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be? Ok, then I guess you aren’t into safe airplanes, sky scrapers, medical scans, drud develoments, etc etc... All of modern life is dependent on computers. And since computers are built by humans, thru aren’t perfect. But, they are still crucial to modern life and our quality of life, medicine, safety, etc.
Whatever.
Think of the reliability and ease of use of Apple machines. Then think of the reliability and ease of use of machines running Windows. The disparity has been quantified by both IT departments and user-(meaning employee)-end studies in companies. Now imagine a world without Windows. How many TRILLIONS of dollars of lost productivity would have been regained?
If he's just speaking about individual components of computers, I could probably think of a few instances in which parts could be more reliable, but not on the whole. Anyway, this is out of context. Carry on.
This is part of why Apple should only do update to macOS once every two year. Or scale yearly updates back to only one or two system components/applications at a time. As an example if they improve SIRI significantly in the next year they should also update it on the mac. macOS is the past. They need too put all their resources into the many flavors of iOS that they have now. Some years there should only be updates that are hardware related ... i.e. new chips in iMACS / MB/MBP/the new MacPro.
iOS is the future. Apple needs to add multiple user support to the iPadPro for families and schools. They will need to put a lot of resources into siriOS for the HOMEPOD for it to be competitive with the new Echos and Alexa. Hopefully we will be able to go totally remote free using a HomePod(s) with apple TV. iOS should be pushed into new products including an iOSAir (laptop for $250 for a child's PolyCarbonate version to compete with ChromeBooks and $999+ version based on the iPadPro ), iOSCamera (starting at $3,000), iPhonePro with Pencil support. iOS is the future in many different forms.
Software should never cross the bridge between the application layer and the file system layer. Whether you use APFS, HFS or whatever file system, it shouldn’t really matter within the constraints of the application itself. It will be fixed in a new Unity version, not in a ‘APFS update’.
You're more than welcome to try it on your system Captain Obvious if you're so confident.