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Apple Announces macOS High Sierra
- empath75 9y agoThe pitch meeting for that must have been something else.
- apetresc 9y agoYeah, everyone's making a big deal out of the name. Is "Sierra" some sort of stoner reference I don't understand, or is it really just the fact that they put the word "High" in there? Is that really how grade-school we've all gotten?
- empath75 9y agoI think it's half funny because of the 'high' and half funny because it's just a really lazy naming scheme.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- biggc 9y agoHow is it any different from the large cat naming theme?
- curun1r 9y agoIt'd be fine if it were actually consistent and they picked different locations. But 'High Sierra' is a region, 'Yosemite' is a park in that region and 'El Capitan' is a large rock in that park (side note...a large rock that was climbed without ropes this weekend...Alex Honnold is both insane and a huge inspiration). They've essentially made the last three releases about the same place. It's lazy and inconsistent. And it's not like there's a shortage of exquisite places in California. Big Sur, Shasta, Lassen, Mendocino, Lost Coast, San Simeon, Joshua Tree, Catalina, Monterrey Bay...just off the top of my head, I've named 9 better California places that they could have used for their releases. It'd also be kinda funny for them to jab at Microsoft's advertising and have an OS X Mojave, since it would fit with their naming scheme.
- toyg 9y agoSome of those names I recognise from other IT-related products (Mendocino, Catalina, Monterey...). Generally speaking, naming products after CA landmarks has been done for 30+ years in this industry, it just feels very unoriginal. I think it's a desperate attempt from Apple to remind you (or themselves) that they "design in California", despite manufacturing in China, selling in Europe, and stashing profits in Bermuda; and to suggest the OS is "hard as a rock", as opposed to the wobbly and airy "windows". I very much preferred the big-cats theme. It humanised the OS in powerful ways, making it an extremely powerful and very intelligent animal that dominates through speed and elegance. Rocks are just dumb and static.
- palimpsests 9y agoAdvocate here; rocks are quite dynamic on geologic timescales. Also, I don't think it really makes sense to call them dumb, as that is a quality one would apply to something with a central nervous system and capacity to self-identify in conjunction with capacity for intelligence. We know that rocks don't have a CNS; if they can self-identify the mechanism for this and their experience is obviously quite alien to our own so it doesn't make much sense to project human qualities onto them without more information. It is true that the qualities of rocks are quite different than those of large felines.
- qqg3 9y agoPlace > Park > Region seems pretty consistent to me, shows a sense of relationship between the different versions and that they are closely linked together rather than being entirely different
- jballanc 9y agoIt's in keeping with their "Tick-Tock" naming since Snow Leopard: Leopard (Tick) -> SnowLeopard (Tock) Lion -> Mountain Lion Mavericks -> ...(uuhhh...whoops?) Yosemite -> El Capitan Sierra -> High Sierra
- toyg 9y agoMavericks was a work-in-progress shitshow of a release, that's probably why it never got a "tock". Apple was keen to let people forget.
- goatforce5 9y agoI think they missed a trick by not naming Mavericks as Los Gatos, which is a suburb quite close to Cupertino and has some connections to Apple. Los Gatos translates as "The Cats" so it seems like it would have been a nice way to end the big cat naming scheme.
- Razengan 9y agoMavericks was when OS X/macOS became free (as in no $$ to update to.)
- Apocryphon 9y agoIt's a dead horse of a running joke that C-Fed's been flogging for the past few WWDCs
- benologist 9y agohttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033717/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033717/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jordache 9y agoNo it's actually an entire region in E. California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology_of_the_Sierra_Nevada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecology_of_the_Sierra_Nevada I hate how Apple's utilization of these public domain names hijacks the search results for them... Now Sierra will forever be associated with a crappy OS. The background photo of Mac HighSierra I would reckon is probably somewhere along the 395 Corridor, probably June Lakes.
- tachion 9y agoTwo things if I may say: for one, Sierra being 'crappy OS' is extremely personal point of view, such as mine, when I think it's a best OS for desktop computers available to date. Second, I really think Sierra 'as in the mountains' is going to outlive Sierra 'as in the macOS iteration'. I've far more faith in the mountain being there long after humanity, not to mention some OS from 21st century ;)
- weaksauce 9y agoThere's a few... It's called High Sierra, the guy on stage made a joke about this OS being "fully baked" and this is the first major release of macos that recreational pot has been enacted in California.
- orbitur 9y agoPart of the joy (for some people) of the keynote is Hair Force One's Dad Jokes™. It's never been high-brow, nor is there any attempt at it.
- tapoxi 9y agoNo mention of Vulkan? Is Apple determined to avoid supporting it?
- T-zex 9y agoYes, they've announced Metal2 with VR support.
- pjmlp 9y agoVulkan might become the next OpenCL, with the focus being Android (7% devices as of today) and GNU/Linux thing. All major game engines already support Metal, DX 12, NVN (the actual Switch main GX API) and LibGCM. Middleware is what counts, switching the graphics API on a compilation switch. Apple just announced on the Keynote, Metal 2, Metal VR and updated Metal Compute, with the Window Manger being ported from OpenGL to Metal. Also how ILM is now using Metal on their production pipelines. It remains to be seen what will be shown later on the technical sessions.
- kllrnohj 9y agoExcept OpenCL was more like Metal - designed by Apple, pushed by Apple, used by nobody. The major game engines already support Vulkan, too, and Vulkan is getting far more game developer support than Metal is. A few of the major engines, like Source 2 & ID Tech 6, also chose to only support Vulkan and not DX12. Largely because DX12 requires Win10 which means out the gate you've eliminated half of your Windows gaming population compared to Vulkan. Currently all signs point towards Vulkan edging out DX12 in the Windows gaming market. That could change, of course, but Microsoft making DX12 win10-only as well as the closed access preview thing have so far put it at a pretty large disadvantage vs. Vulkan in these early days. Which matters as otherwise the APIs are pretty much the same, so why go with the Win10-exclusive when you can have the exact same thing but everywhere? Then for your content creation apps where unity/unreal middleware isn't really an option, that's going to be extra painful. Or they just ignore the problem and run OpenGL 4.1 on OSX and OpenGL 4.5+/Vulkan on Windows, and say "suck to all you pro consumers on mac, you should have bought a windows workstation instead"?
- tostitos1979 9y agoWoah Woah .. how does one get a VR headset to run on a Mac? Are they referring to a macbook pro and Oculus?
- chrismatheson 9y agoWill new APFS mean a beast of an upgrade as it changes my fs?
- Longhanks 9y agoConsidering it currently probably is HFS+, yes. Absolutely.
- deedubaya 9y agoIf you're on iOS 10.3, you've already been upgraded from HFS+ to APFS. I believe this was done for all iOS users without much notice. https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/ios-10-3-will-be-apple... So to answer your question, maybe not so beastly.
- 9y ago
- kogepathic 9y agoReally inspired OS names Apple's got these days... I mean if they're going for geographical places in California, why not "macOS Sierra Nevada" ?
- s73ver 9y agoAuto video-blocking and tracking blocking built in is huge.
- mixedCase 9y agoAnyone else able to pitch in on the JS performance claims? How honest is it?
- yusukesuzuki 9y agohttps://webkit.org/blog/7536/jsc-loves-es6/ https://webkit.org/blog/7536/jsc-loves-es6/ :)
- Cyph0n 9y agoImpressive results, and an even more impressive writeup. Thanks for linking.
- foobarbazetc 9y agoWould be nice if this translated into real world apps and Apple allowed embedding new WebKit into native apps. WKWebKit doesn't even support printing properly from 3rd party code.
- pier25 9y agoSadly Apple has no interest in helping developers make hybrid iOS apps. WKWebView and UIWebView will only give you headaches.
- jbergstroem 9y agoMozillas tracker: https://arewefastyet.com https://arewefastyet.com
- clumsysmurf 9y ago"Safari also now blocks auto-playing videos and will use machine learning to identify trackers and segregate the cross-site trackers so advertisers won’t be able to easily track you across sites." Finally, I feel a corporation is using ML to project me, rather than sell me.
- pdog 9y agoApple products are more expensive, but you know the saying: if you're not paying, you are the product.
- kristianc 9y agoSafari is free.
- azr79 9y agoReal, fully fledged Safari is only available on Apple Products
- mnx 9y agoNo, it is not. It's part of Mac OS, which is not free. There used to be a Windows version of Safari, but that was a long time ago.
- 7Z7 9y agoI mean, macOS is free, so long as you are putting it on Apple hardware.
- elif 9y agoin the same way that ferrari engines are free.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoIf they build a better engine, do you get the new motor in a crate, or do you have to go to the vendor? You don't get it at all? So not the same way then.
- IgorPartola 9y agoOff topic: can I just say how much I hate TechCrunch articles? Clearly poorly and hastily written, with grammar issues, calling HEVC a "container" format, and WTF is a "Thunderbolt 3 enclosure" when it comes to external graphics cards? Like I get it, first to market wins the ad clicks, but come on. Do we have to keep upvoting this crap on HN?
- zymhan 9y agoA Thunderbolt 3 enclosure for External GPUs is exactly what it sounds like: A GPU that sits external to your computer, and connects to it via Thunderbolt 3. It's hardly TC's fault you don't know what that is. Just Google it.
- IgorPartola 9y agoI know what an external GPU is. But the external graphics aren't powered by an external GPU "enclosure". They are powered by an external GPU.
- mbilker 9y agoThe external GPU is in an enclosure and that enclosure doesn't have to have a GPU in it. Most of the Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe enclosures support other PCIe devices.
- astrodust 9y agoExactly. You can put whatever you want in it, but the only thing that people would want to, generally speaking, is a GPU.
- hamstergene 9y agoThink of a small case with a power supply unit and a single PCEe slot inside. You plug any regular (internal) video card of your choice in it, and connect the case to the main computer via TB3, making the video card available as an external video card. That's a TB enclosure. These things has been for awhile, at least since TB came out. It's not called eGPU enclosure because technically it can contain any other PCIe card, though it is almost exclusively used for video cards as other devices usually can be powered by TB cable itself.
- throwaway-1209 9y agoLots for ML, and their Accelerate framework is already second to none on the CPU. Meanwhile, Microsoft doesn't even bundle BLAS with their OS.
- canuckintime 9y agoApple adding native support for eGPUs is huge. (Can't believe Microsoft missed a beat and didn't add an official eGPU dock to their Surface line. A couple people I know passed on the Surface Studio because it isn't powerful enough despite loving the hardware otherwise)
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoTechnically it does - the Surface Book's "Performance Base" has a beefy NVIDIA GPU inside of it, while the rest of the main system, with an Intel GPU, is in the display portion - though I don't know what interface is used between the display and the base - is it "real" hot-pluggable PCI-Express, something proprietary, or Thunderbolt?
- plttn 9y agoIt's a proprietary port, yes.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoBut what's the underlying electrical and signal interface?
- plttn 9y agoDocumentation is a bit vague on it, but from what I can tell the last references to it are just USB3, USB2, and DisplayPort. However I'm not sure how the GPU in my Surface Book fits into that, as on the surface according to Device Manager it's connected to a PCI bus. edit: according to a few news sources, the version of SurfaceConnect (at least on the Book) does contain PCIe lanes for the GPU.
- lewisl9029 9y ago> Can't believe Microsoft missed a beat and didn't add an official eGPU dock to their Surface line. This is also the only thing holding me back from getting a Surface Pro/Book/Laptop. Without Thunderbolt 3 + eGPU support, it's simply not possible to get decent graphics performance on these machines. It's such a shame because I love everything else about the Surface product line. I'm cautiously optimistic about the Eve V as an alternative: http://eve-tech.com/product/ http://eve-tech.com/product/ (I swear their site wasn't this obnoxious the last time I looked...)
- drinchev 9y agoSounds great. I think most of the Safari updates are as well in it's webkit js engine. Although I'm really still confused why does Apple bounds their Safari browser with it's OS updates. I will be very, very happy if I can receive up-to-date battery-savvy browser, without having to wait for a full-blown conference.
- weabot 9y agoApple are a bit old-school about releases, they seem to bundle all major updates together and only give security and minor updates to their previous releases, and they follow that for all of the software they provide. This is how it has historically been for 90's and early 00's unix-like operating systems like *BSD and Solaris. A lot of things come bundled with the base so everything in the operating system's base release is updated with a new release of the kernel that comes bundled with it.
- city41 9y agoIt's in Apple's interest to get everyone onto the latest macOS, so packaging app updates into the OS update helps accomplish that.
- rtpg 9y agoThe counterpoint is that doing these releases means having to roll out 100 changes at once instead of trickling them out continuously The reason people hate upgrading is half "losing features", half "everything breaks". Imagine if they rolled out changes continuously?
- netheril96 9y agoYeah, Win 10 and Arch Linux are poster children for "everything just works".
- rtpg 9y agowell... Chrome updates all the time (version 50 now, can you believe it?) I haven't used Win 10, but even Win 8 was pretty good for me (crashed less than Sierra + the new MBP).
- asciimo 9y agoI'm going to hold out for High Sierra Plus.
- Xeoncross 9y agoPlus
- likelynew 9y agoThere are only two hard things in Computer Science..
- kunthar 9y agoslightly off topic but we should have alternates lik puri.sm guys. if the privacy is quite important at this age, their slick linux hardware woth to look at it.
- FireBeyond 9y ago"It's all about deep technologies which are the foundation for new technologies". What an utterly pointless statement.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- diimdeep 9y agoAPFS don't support compression like HFS+ ?
- astrodust 9y agoDuring the 2016 talk on APFS they mentioned it was dropped for various reasons. SSD performance is so ridiculous now that the CPU can't decompress quickly enough, so it'd impair performance. The new notebooks and desktops do 3GB/s read/write, so that's a lot to crunch through in real-time. I'd suppose if compression is imporatant, do it in your application.
- diimdeep 9y agoTransparent compression on FS level is really usefull. HFS+ had that, and all modern FS have that. Be able to compress 1M text files of source code for example.
- astrodust 9y agoI'm not sure the compressibility of files is really a factor these days. The largest files on your disk are probably either application software and associated libraries or some kind of media files which are already compressed. Not many people have a meaningful amount of raw text files sitting around on their system, and those that do can always create a compressed volume if they're so adamant about them being transparently compressed.
- kartickv 9y agoCompression is worth it if it saves even a GB on a 128 SSD, or a few hundred MB on a 16GB iPhone. In an alternate universe where all Macs come with at least 512GB storage, things might be different. Footnote: Apple still sells 16GB devices: http://www.amazon.in/Apple-iPhone-5s-Space-Grey/dp/B00FXLC9V4/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1496727189&sr=1-1&keywords=iphone http://www.amazon.in/Apple-iPhone-5s-Space-Grey/dp/B00FXLC9V...
- ksherlock 9y agoI don't know about geography but High Sierra was also the name of the 1985-era CD ROM data specification. Apple was a participant. Named (if Wikipedia is to be believed) after the High Sierra Hotel and Casino that hosted the working group.
- astrodust 9y agoThat occurred to me too during the keynote. Memories of the days when installing a CD-ROM meant fiddling with a half dozen settings in CONFIG.SYS to ensure all the drivers loaded properly.
- rangibaby 9y agoIf you miss those days you can install a driver to get your camera working on a MacBook with Linux. It worked fine for me but took about an hour or so of fiddling: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie
- IBalic 9y ago...and XCode 9 beta seems to be available as well with refactoring support (finally). https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ https://developer.apple.com/xcode/
- Larrikin 9y agoCan anyone confirm that they finally fixed the bug prevents an ethernet connected computer from becoming a hotspot?
- CleanCut 9y agoI still maintain that even I can come up with a better naming scheme than "places in California you've never heard of." https://medium.com/@nathanstocks/dear-apple-your-naming-scheme-stinks-here-let-me-fix-it-for-you-d4dd697c51a8 https://medium.com/@nathanstocks/dear-apple-your-naming-sche...
- accountyaccount 9y agoWonder how Steve Jobs would feel about all these Dad jokes becoming a part of Apple's brand.
- Analemma_ 9y agoDidn't Jobs once say taking LSD was "one of the most important things that ever happened" to him? I'm sure he'd be just fine with the weed jokes ;)
- accountyaccount 9y agoSure, weed jokes — but the general "dadness" of the last few keynotes seems new and a bit weird.
- Analemma_ 9y agoI don't think it's every presenter though, just Federighi. He's been known as "the dad joke guy" for a while now. Personally, I kinda like it when each presenter has a distinct personality, it keeps it all from blurring together.
- wdb 9y agoHopefully it improves the Bluetooth support as on my 2013 rMBP it's really flaky. Unable to use my Magic Mouse and keyboard without getting annoyed by the constant disconnects.