7 ms·

Yes, fairly limited impact, but still. Data loss is fucking important. We aren't talking about an occasional stutter when moving windows or a sound driver that

Yes, fairly limited impact, but still. Data loss is fucking important. We aren't talking about an occasional stutter when moving windows or a sound driver that sometimes needs a reboot to resume working. This is a major bug. I would really really like it if Apple would get their shit together so that people who actually rely on their computers to work correctly can upgrade at some point.

toasterlovin 9y ago
As a counterpoint, APFS was deployed to almost a billion devices over the span of several months when it was release and, IIRC, this is the first major issue.
- Gaelan 9y ago
  There was the password vs password hint thing.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
    Which was a bug in Disk Utility, not APFS.
    - Gaelan 9y ago
      Right, my bad.
- nnutter 9y ago
  Some of the upgrades to High Sierra in my company failed and left the laptop unbootable. Unfortunately, I wasn't involved in the repair so I only have been told it was due to the APFS conversion and that the solution was to wipe and install.
- StillBored 9y ago
  How do you know that? Filesystem corruption is frequently silent, and every-time it happens customers don't get on the phone and send the disks to apple so that they can root cause the problem. Its quite possible this bug has happened an untold number of times before it happened to someone who went through the effort to reproduce and isolate it.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    >How do you know that? Can you point to any other APFS issues that were reported before this one?
    - jandrese 9y ago
      My wife's laptop suddenly decided that the boot drive was corrupt a few weeks after she updated to APFS. None of the recovery tools were of any use. We had to reinstall the OS and pull the files from a backup. This story did not make it to Hacker News.
      - zbentley 9y ago
        Anecdata != filesystem issue. If you have more information about the problem you encountered and how it implicates/interacts with APFS, please do link to it. Otherwise, bug reports via circumstantial evidence are, while not inherently false, certainly suspect.
        stanmancan 9y ago
        I'm not sure they're implying that it -was- an APFS issue, just that in the majority of circumstances users won't go through the same level as effort to diagnose an issue as in the article. Instead of pulling drives and trying to reproduce the error, they just wiped the drive and started fresh. I could be wrong, but I believe the point is not that it did happen, but that this -could- have happened many times in the past and users just format/re-install without thinking about it.
- jarym 9y ago
  I'd point out it was deployed to iPhones - devices where the underlying physical disk won't get smaller so this bug would not have appeared. iOS devices are extremely constrained in a number of ways that MacOS isn't - who knows how many other bugs have failed to surface because Apple thought their iOS test was a 'job done' moment.
- gumby 9y ago
  Not contradicting you but this makes me wonder if writable disk images are used at all behind the scenes in iOS.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  As far as you know. File systems fall into the category of software where a bug can have disastrous consequences. Even if the probability of a bug is small, the magnitude of the consequence means that the overall risk is still high. And the current quality of software coming from Apple is so bad that the probability is not low. For myself, I'm not letting APFS near my systems for at least a couple more years.
- loeg 9y ago
  Yeah. Frankly, the APFS rollout was incredibly smooth for a new filesystem.
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  It irrecoverably destroyed my partition on upgrade to High Sierra.
- trynewideas 9y ago
  for a sufficiently narrow definition of "major issue" that excludes - the encryption password hint leak ("that was Disk Utility, not APFS") - APFS volume erasure issues ("also Disk Utility") - Adobe, Unity (editor and games built with it), Steam, Source Engine, and FCPX crash, performance, and asset loss issues on APFS volumes, all of which went away when moved to HFS+ volumes ("those teams should have adapted their software during beta") - performance and incompatibility issues with spinning-disk drives ("platters are bad, APFS is designed for SSDs") - RAID kernel panics, even on supported RAID 0 configurations ("that's corecrypto, not APFS")
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    There were multiple unicode issues on APFS reported here on HN, but I think those were before it went live.
- gruez 9y ago
  refs (microsoft's new filesystem)'s deployment went along much better. i haven't heard of any major issues since it came out in windows server 2012.
  - dpkonofa 9y ago
    ReFS was only ever made the default on new installs of Windows Server 2012. It never actually made it to production builds of Windows 8 or above so it's actually only installed on a fraction of the systems that are out there. That's not really a sufficient sampling size to say that this deployment went along much better. The APFS update was a much, much larger endeavor and, based only on public response, was nearly seamless. This is the first major issue I've heard about with regard to APFS.
    - sebazzz 9y ago
      ReFS was not the default FS on Windows Server 2012, for many reasons, but one being that you cannot boot from it [1]. [1]: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2012/refs-what-you-need-know-about-resilient-file-system-part1.html http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-...
    - minusf 9y ago
      yes, huge deploy but not that seamless. 1. i had a filevault related corruption issue, the disk was eating itself up thinking it was encrypting... don't have the apple discussion link at hand. 2. time machine hidden snapshot, "disk full" issues. it's a major pita for me that is not possible to turn off local snapshots.
      - PhantomGremlin 9y ago
        it's a major pita for me that is not possible to turn off local snapshots. Try this terminal command: sudo tmutil disablelocal Edit: I'm still on Sierra. Someone else mentioned that HS removed that. But also pointed to: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storage-back-from-system.2073174/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storag... Good luck!
orblivion 9y ago
It's rather obnoxious that they prod us to upgrade every other day while all this is in the news.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  I updated day one and had usual apple problems (finder broke so I had to use my terminal, sometimes it wouldn't wake up from sleep so I had to force it to reboot, my fans would spin up for seemingly no reason). Most of the issues were fixed a week later or so. Anyway, I recently switched to Arch on a 2018 LG Gram and I'm not really missing anything. Battery life is great (8-12 hours of Firefox) and it has a quad core x64 processor for non-browser things. Windows Ultrabooks are worth the purchase again.
  - hanklazard 9y ago
    Yeah, same. I couldn't stomach the port situation on the new macbooks (and the High Sierra issues) so ended up with a 4th gen Lenovo Carbon X1. Wiped Windows 10 and installed Mint. The whole process was dead-simple and I couldn't be happier with it.
  - appleiigs 9y ago
    Thanks for mentioning the LG Gram. I actually didn't know LG sold laptops (they're not available in Canada) before your comment. I just ordered one online now! I insta-purchased it when I noticed the 2018 model still has USB 3 Type-A and HDMI ports. Ctrl-key in the corner instead of Fn-key and equal sized arrow keys are a bonus. Fits my needs as a Macbook Pro replacement. Will be running linux desktop on it too. Probably elementary OS.
dcow 9y ago
Or just stop using macOS. I wish I could give you my Debian Thinkpad for a week. Granted I've put some time into tweaking it because the sock gnome3 rounded matte shit is shit, but I bet you'd convert. The only issue is the screen aspect ratio Apple still wins there.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  The first thing I do with a new PC laptop, after making sure Bluetooth and the other hardware all works in Windows, is to wipe it and start installing Linux. Lately I've just cloned my Gentoo install that I've maintained since 2012. I keep around one Win10 laptop for gaming, but I prefer Linux for any real development work.
- jrcii 9y ago
  I could never go without Notational Velocity. It's worth more than the whole OS.

toasterlovin 9y ago

As a counterpoint, APFS was deployed to almost a billion devices over the span of several months when it was release and, IIRC, this is the first major issue.

Gaelan 9y ago
There was the password vs password hint thing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
  Which was a bug in Disk Utility, not APFS.
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    Right, my bad.
nnutter 9y ago
Some of the upgrades to High Sierra in my company failed and left the laptop unbootable. Unfortunately, I wasn't involved in the repair so I only have been told it was due to the APFS conversion and that the solution was to wipe and install.
StillBored 9y ago
How do you know that? Filesystem corruption is frequently silent, and every-time it happens customers don't get on the phone and send the disks to apple so that they can root cause the problem. Its quite possible this bug has happened an untold number of times before it happened to someone who went through the effort to reproduce and isolate it.
- freehunter 9y ago
  >How do you know that? Can you point to any other APFS issues that were reported before this one?
  - jandrese 9y ago
    My wife's laptop suddenly decided that the boot drive was corrupt a few weeks after she updated to APFS. None of the recovery tools were of any use. We had to reinstall the OS and pull the files from a backup. This story did not make it to Hacker News.
    - zbentley 9y ago
      Anecdata != filesystem issue. If you have more information about the problem you encountered and how it implicates/interacts with APFS, please do link to it. Otherwise, bug reports via circumstantial evidence are, while not inherently false, certainly suspect.
      - stanmancan 9y ago
        I'm not sure they're implying that it -was- an APFS issue, just that in the majority of circumstances users won't go through the same level as effort to diagnose an issue as in the article. Instead of pulling drives and trying to reproduce the error, they just wiped the drive and started fresh. I could be wrong, but I believe the point is not that it did happen, but that this -could- have happened many times in the past and users just format/re-install without thinking about it.
jarym 9y ago
I'd point out it was deployed to iPhones - devices where the underlying physical disk won't get smaller so this bug would not have appeared. iOS devices are extremely constrained in a number of ways that MacOS isn't - who knows how many other bugs have failed to surface because Apple thought their iOS test was a 'job done' moment.
gumby 9y ago
Not contradicting you but this makes me wonder if writable disk images are used at all behind the scenes in iOS.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dreamcompiler 9y ago
As far as you know. File systems fall into the category of software where a bug can have disastrous consequences. Even if the probability of a bug is small, the magnitude of the consequence means that the overall risk is still high. And the current quality of software coming from Apple is so bad that the probability is not low. For myself, I'm not letting APFS near my systems for at least a couple more years.
loeg 9y ago
Yeah. Frankly, the APFS rollout was incredibly smooth for a new filesystem.
ghostcluster 9y ago
It irrecoverably destroyed my partition on upgrade to High Sierra.
trynewideas 9y ago
for a sufficiently narrow definition of "major issue" that excludes - the encryption password hint leak ("that was Disk Utility, not APFS") - APFS volume erasure issues ("also Disk Utility") - Adobe, Unity (editor and games built with it), Steam, Source Engine, and FCPX crash, performance, and asset loss issues on APFS volumes, all of which went away when moved to HFS+ volumes ("those teams should have adapted their software during beta") - performance and incompatibility issues with spinning-disk drives ("platters are bad, APFS is designed for SSDs") - RAID kernel panics, even on supported RAID 0 configurations ("that's corecrypto, not APFS")
- djsumdog 9y ago
  There were multiple unicode issues on APFS reported here on HN, but I think those were before it went live.
gruez 9y ago
refs (microsoft's new filesystem)'s deployment went along much better. i haven't heard of any major issues since it came out in windows server 2012.
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  ReFS was only ever made the default on new installs of Windows Server 2012. It never actually made it to production builds of Windows 8 or above so it's actually only installed on a fraction of the systems that are out there. That's not really a sufficient sampling size to say that this deployment went along much better. The APFS update was a much, much larger endeavor and, based only on public response, was nearly seamless. This is the first major issue I've heard about with regard to APFS.
  - sebazzz 9y ago
    ReFS was not the default FS on Windows Server 2012, for many reasons, but one being that you cannot boot from it [1]. [1]: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-server-2012/refs-what-you-need-know-about-resilient-file-system-part1.html http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles-tutorials/windows-...
  - minusf 9y ago
    yes, huge deploy but not that seamless. 1. i had a filevault related corruption issue, the disk was eating itself up thinking it was encrypting... don't have the apple discussion link at hand. 2. time machine hidden snapshot, "disk full" issues. it's a major pita for me that is not possible to turn off local snapshots.
    - PhantomGremlin 9y ago
      it's a major pita for me that is not possible to turn off local snapshots. Try this terminal command: sudo tmutil disablelocal Edit: I'm still on Sierra. Someone else mentioned that HS removed that. But also pointed to: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storage-back-from-system.2073174/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/solution-reclaim-storag... Good luck!

orblivion 9y ago

It's rather obnoxious that they prod us to upgrade every other day while all this is in the news.

ReverseCold 9y ago
I updated day one and had usual apple problems (finder broke so I had to use my terminal, sometimes it wouldn't wake up from sleep so I had to force it to reboot, my fans would spin up for seemingly no reason). Most of the issues were fixed a week later or so. Anyway, I recently switched to Arch on a 2018 LG Gram and I'm not really missing anything. Battery life is great (8-12 hours of Firefox) and it has a quad core x64 processor for non-browser things. Windows Ultrabooks are worth the purchase again.
- hanklazard 9y ago
  Yeah, same. I couldn't stomach the port situation on the new macbooks (and the High Sierra issues) so ended up with a 4th gen Lenovo Carbon X1. Wiped Windows 10 and installed Mint. The whole process was dead-simple and I couldn't be happier with it.
- appleiigs 9y ago
  Thanks for mentioning the LG Gram. I actually didn't know LG sold laptops (they're not available in Canada) before your comment. I just ordered one online now! I insta-purchased it when I noticed the 2018 model still has USB 3 Type-A and HDMI ports. Ctrl-key in the corner instead of Fn-key and equal sized arrow keys are a bonus. Fits my needs as a Macbook Pro replacement. Will be running linux desktop on it too. Probably elementary OS.

dcow 9y ago

Or just stop using macOS. I wish I could give you my Debian Thinkpad for a week. Granted I've put some time into tweaking it because the sock gnome3 rounded matte shit is shit, but I bet you'd convert. The only issue is the screen aspect ratio Apple still wins there.

djsumdog 9y ago
The first thing I do with a new PC laptop, after making sure Bluetooth and the other hardware all works in Windows, is to wipe it and start installing Linux. Lately I've just cloned my Gentoo install that I've maintained since 2012. I keep around one Win10 laptop for gaming, but I prefer Linux for any real development work.
jrcii 9y ago
I could never go without Notational Velocity. It's worth more than the whole OS.