7 ms·

Changing filesystem for billions of phones in a point release? That doesn't sound fun.

thecosas 10y ago
Did it on the Beta without even realizing it and it went fine. A little longer of a reboot, but otherwise very smooth. As always, YMMV.
- nickgrosvenor 10y ago
  what does ymmv stand for?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - russjr08 10y ago
    "Your mileage may vary" is what I've always associated it with.
  - thecosas 10y ago
    "Your mileage may vary". Basically, here's what I've seen but it may be different for others.
draw_down 10y ago
Yeah, I think I'll let them work out the kinks there for a good long time before going anywhere near this.
pflats 10y ago
Initially, I was thinking the same thing. Given how fast the average Apple consumer updates to major iOS releases, I imagine that rolling it out over a point release is actually part of the plan. Presumably, if something does go wrong on the individual level, the support burden on the genius bars will be lower (since major iOS releases have traditionally come alongside hardware releases), and if a major bug is found, the number of devices affected will also likely be smaller. It stills feels wrong on a gut level, and semver folks might not be happy with it, but it seems to make some real sense. edit: Also, if it went out with 11.0, coordinating all the bug fixes for a 11.0.1 would almost definitely take longer than whatever will be in 10.3.1 release, letting any APFS issues get tweaked faster.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Rolling it out first on iOS at all doesn't seem like the right approach. If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it optional). It's really weird to me that Apple is rolling it out to hundreds of millions of devices all at once, when it's not even a bootable filesystem on any of their platforms yet. Seems like the kind of thing where you'd want to take a more gradual approach. I get that HFS+ is super old and I see why Apple wants to switch to APFS. But I don't get why they're in such a hurry. Here's hoping their approach works well, in any case!
  - MBCook 10y ago
    The iOS filesystem environment is WAY more controlled than OS X. Updating OS X first would be fewer machines but is the much more difficult task. This would also be one hell of a production test. They obviously think they're ready.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it optional The plan doesn't make much sense. For one, the Mac has way more edge cases than iOS (in that people do more, and in more low- and -high level ways) with the filesystem, including running all kinds of unix userlands, exchanging files with other filesystems, etc. In iOS all fs APIs and access are tightly controlled, and there's no mounting of disks, no touching outside the sandbox, no disk management apps, etc. So iOS is a much better target for first launch than OS X. Second, with this plan it would take 3-5 years to ever arrive. Why so late? Apple has been developing it for a while, and probably have thousands of tests it has to pass. And they have been running it on 1 million or more devs on the 10.3 beta program on actual devices for feedback for 2 months.
warcher 10y ago
Yeah this is kind of causing a full on panic in the office today. If Apple fucks something up, and your app don't run no more, it's your fault and it's now your problem.
- warcher 10y ago
  You literally can't leave a review saying "This version of iOS is shitty and it breaks all my apps." But you can absolutely throw a brick through my front window.
  - jonathannorris 10y ago
    Actually with 10.3 you can: https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/24/apple-will-let-developers-reply-to-reviews-in-the-app-store-soon-for-ios-and-mac-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/24/apple-will-let-developers-rep...
    - sixstringtheory 10y ago
      That deals with responding to reviews of your app, not an ability to leave a review for iOS itself. Either way, I don't think the average consumer will understand that they've lost data because of a bug in a new filesystem. And if you are an app with appreciable market share and something goes wrong, I doubt one would be able to mitigate a crush of negative reviews.
      - thecosas 10y ago
        If you're an app with a large marketshare, the responsible thing would be to do testing with the betas to search out potential bugs. Doesn't cover all instances, but should help with any MAJOR bugs that would come up.
        warcher 10y ago
        You only get the level of engineering investment that somebody is willing to pay for.
revertts 10y ago
I've been running the beta for quite some time and didn't even notice that it had changed. Honestly, I think it's the best possible way that they can roll this out - iOS is much more restricted and has fewer devices to worry about, so is worlds easier than macOS, and internal dogfooding/the beta program gives them good coverage before hitting the whole population. Doing it in a dot release or major version doesn't seem particularly interesting one way or the other.
najati83 10y ago
I can say this update took longer than usual. But everything went okay, from what I can tell.
simonh 10y ago
Why would doing it at the same time as major changes to every other part of the software be better? Seriously, for a major change in the underlying system, surely it's better to do that along with as few other fundamental changes as possible?
umanwizard 10y ago
Lol. New to Apple?

Did it on the Beta without even realizing it and it went fine. A little longer of a reboot, but otherwise very smooth. As always, YMMV.

nickgrosvenor 10y ago
what does ymmv stand for?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- russjr08 10y ago
  "Your mileage may vary" is what I've always associated it with.
- thecosas 10y ago
  "Your mileage may vary". Basically, here's what I've seen but it may be different for others.

draw_down 10y ago

Yeah, I think I'll let them work out the kinks there for a good long time before going anywhere near this.

pflats 10y ago

Initially, I was thinking the same thing. Given how fast the average Apple consumer updates to major iOS releases, I imagine that rolling it out over a point release is actually part of the plan. Presumably, if something does go wrong on the individual level, the support burden on the genius bars will be lower (since major iOS releases have traditionally come alongside hardware releases), and if a major bug is found, the number of devices affected will also likely be smaller. It stills feels wrong on a gut level, and semver folks might not be happy with it, but it seems to make some real sense. edit: Also, if it went out with 11.0, coordinating all the bug fixes for a 11.0.1 would almost definitely take longer than whatever will be in 10.3.1 release, letting any APFS issues get tweaked faster.

mikeash 10y ago
Rolling it out first on iOS at all doesn't seem like the right approach. If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it optional). It's really weird to me that Apple is rolling it out to hundreds of millions of devices all at once, when it's not even a bootable filesystem on any of their platforms yet. Seems like the kind of thing where you'd want to take a more gradual approach. I get that HFS+ is super old and I see why Apple wants to switch to APFS. But I don't get why they're in such a hurry. Here's hoping their approach works well, in any case!
- MBCook 10y ago
  The iOS filesystem environment is WAY more controlled than OS X. Updating OS X first would be fewer machines but is the much more difficult task. This would also be one hell of a production test. They obviously think they're ready.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it optional The plan doesn't make much sense. For one, the Mac has way more edge cases than iOS (in that people do more, and in more low- and -high level ways) with the filesystem, including running all kinds of unix userlands, exchanging files with other filesystems, etc. In iOS all fs APIs and access are tightly controlled, and there's no mounting of disks, no touching outside the sandbox, no disk management apps, etc. So iOS is a much better target for first launch than OS X. Second, with this plan it would take 3-5 years to ever arrive. Why so late? Apple has been developing it for a while, and probably have thousands of tests it has to pass. And they have been running it on 1 million or more devs on the 10.3 beta program on actual devices for feedback for 2 months.

warcher 10y ago

Yeah this is kind of causing a full on panic in the office today. If Apple fucks something up, and your app don't run no more, it's your fault and it's now your problem.

warcher 10y ago
You literally can't leave a review saying "This version of iOS is shitty and it breaks all my apps." But you can absolutely throw a brick through my front window.
- jonathannorris 10y ago
  Actually with 10.3 you can: https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/24/apple-will-let-developers-reply-to-reviews-in-the-app-store-soon-for-ios-and-mac-apps/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/24/apple-will-let-developers-rep...
  - sixstringtheory 10y ago
    That deals with responding to reviews of your app, not an ability to leave a review for iOS itself. Either way, I don't think the average consumer will understand that they've lost data because of a bug in a new filesystem. And if you are an app with appreciable market share and something goes wrong, I doubt one would be able to mitigate a crush of negative reviews.
    - thecosas 10y ago
      If you're an app with a large marketshare, the responsible thing would be to do testing with the betas to search out potential bugs. Doesn't cover all instances, but should help with any MAJOR bugs that would come up.
      - warcher 10y ago
        You only get the level of engineering investment that somebody is willing to pay for.

revertts 10y ago

I've been running the beta for quite some time and didn't even notice that it had changed. Honestly, I think it's the best possible way that they can roll this out - iOS is much more restricted and has fewer devices to worry about, so is worlds easier than macOS, and internal dogfooding/the beta program gives them good coverage before hitting the whole population. Doing it in a dot release or major version doesn't seem particularly interesting one way or the other.

najati83 10y ago

I can say this update took longer than usual. But everything went okay, from what I can tell.

simonh 10y ago

Why would doing it at the same time as major changes to every other part of the software be better? Seriously, for a major change in the underlying system, surely it's better to do that along with as few other fundamental changes as possible?

umanwizard 10y ago

Lol. New to Apple?