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Wwdc intros APfs File system beta
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Hi Erik-
We are looking into it!
Jeff Jorgensen
Mediafour -
[Michael Gissing] “I don’t understand why pre existing formats like ext4 weren’t adopted so a tiny bit of compatibility to the real world wasn’t attempted … but Apple???”
I am sure Apple has a plan here. They’ve designed a filesystem that includes the capabilities they need for future user-facing features across their ecosystem.
Why would compatibility be one of the things they need? Most users will be sharing files via iCloud — if they think about an outdated concept like “files” at all. They will not be plugging in hard drives to PCs.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
I think it’s two sided but primarily Apple wants control. Be it they make things better or not. But with the control comes options. A goal, as I understand it, with APFS is to make it scalable from the get-go instead of the “add-hoc” solutions Apple has been forced to use with HFS+. This would in the future mean super feature X might come 2025 but in theory the APFS from that point should work fine to at least read from ANY APFS-compatible device.
It’s also the whole scalable thing from the 512MB ARM-based Watch to the multi-terrabyte, super powerful Xeon machine they want to bake into “one modell that fits all”. I could imagine most filesystems today aren’t really built for that.
Encryption is also quite unique to APFS that it can be container, volume or file based – on the file system level. Things like “FileVault” in OSX are simply “add-ons” to HFS+, it’s not actually part of the filesystem. You will also get things like a true “sparse” filesystem and a true atomic filesystem.
If it’s better than something like ZFS it’s hard to say. I also hope Apple is open in terms of letting others work with the filesystem so Apple devices don’t become even more islands than they tend to be already.
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[Walter Soyka] “Why would compatibility be one of the things they need? Most users will be sharing files via iCloud — if they think about an outdated concept like “files” at all. They will not be plugging in hard drives to PCs.”
Perhaps in my archaic world where jobs are transfered by hard drive almost every day because no cloud based system is and can be fast enough to allow me to transfer and play 4k files full res in real time to grade and finish.
File transfer via hard drives is absolutely the only way any hi res work flow for me and many others can operate. Cloud and fast internet access will not in the conceivable future keep up with required bandwidth for me. I sometimes wish it was but even for audio it doesn’t have that ability. Drive compatability across platforms cannot be dismissed for many years. the big question is why in this day and age do we not have a cross platform drive format that works?
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“We are looking into it!
Jeff Jorgensen
Mediafour”thank goodness. There will be a lot of facilities like mine that run Mac, WIN and Linux for specific software that will need to read “island” formats like Apple and Microsoft specifics.
On that I should point out that even my gigabit network is slower at setting up shares and running fat files over ethernet than simply plugging the drive into a different machine. What hope has cloud and internet?
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[Michael Gissing] “File transfer via hard drives is absolutely the only way any hi res work flow for me and many others can operate.”
I get that. That’s me, too. I spoke above in hyperbole, but I do believe that our use case is not high on the APFS priority list.
[Michael Gissing] “Drive compatability across platforms cannot be dismissed for many years. the big question is why in this day and age do we not have a cross platform drive format that works?”
Does exFAT not work for you?
I probably do the same thing you do — MacDrive on my PCs (thanks, Jeff!) and Tuxera-NTFS on my Macs.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Does exFAT not work for you?”
I’ve found ExFAT to be a bit unreliable. It works well until it doesn’t. I was on a job recently were one brand of drives worked cross-platform and another only on the PCs (editors had Macs, client had PCs). All were ExFAT.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I’ve found ExFAT to be a bit unreliable. “
My understanding is that format was to make flash drives and cards cross platform compatible, that it wasn’t meant to be used on hard drives.
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[Darren Roark] “My understanding is that format was to make flash drives and cards cross platform compatible, that it wasn’t meant to be used on hard drives.”
Hmm… Well, if that’s the case, I don’t think anyone is aware of it.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] ” I don’t think anyone is aware of it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT True. Also MS has a bunch of Patents on it.
On a related subject (why not just standardize on NTFS?) We have this… “Like NTFS and HFS+, exFAT is a proprietary file system. Microsoft asserts that exFAT is covered by US Patent 8583708,[6] awarded on November 27, 2013”
Maybe Apple will follow through and open up APfs?
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