Updating to macOS High Sierra

I am usually an eager updater, but I’m holding off updating to macOS High Sierra as I am unsure whether apps I use will support the new file system. Specifically I use MegaSeg for Doing and radio stuff and I use Pro Tools for my podcast and audio production / voiceover work.

Though it’s interesting that we’re already seeing incompatibilities between iOS 11 and macOS Sierra - like if you scan an image with Notes it won’t display in Sierra and also you can’t unlock the iMac with an Apple Watch Series 3 if you’re not running High Sierra.

So have you updated and what are your experiences?

The beta is running fine for me, and I am in a huge hurry to get some stuff done, and since I can’t update directly to RAID 0, but only through cloning, I am going to hold off. Most annoying for me has been that LiteIcon doesn’t work yet for High Sierra (if it ever will), and I have my own icon set I vastly prefer to use.

Just updated - so far, looks exactly the same to me.

That’s pretty much the point of it. It’s predominantly stuff that the user won’t see. Just like Snow Leopard was to Leopard.

And Federighi has confirmed that APFS is coming back to spinning rust, or at very least Fusion drives. Sometime. Presumably when they’ve got it right.

I haven’t updated any of my eligible machines yet - still running Office 2011 on them all - but it seems pretty well sorted from the lack of “OMFG! Apple has destroyed the universe!” comments.

Worth remembering, I reckon, that the days of needing to wait for the 2nd or 3rd point release are fading into history like fax machines and handwriting. I’ve been using Macs since System 7.1 and I remember that anyone who cared about getting work done would always wait for the inevitable problems to be fixed. Apple have been claiming lower bug counts for some years. It’s certainly what I’m seeing.

I updated my MBA this afternoon upon arriving home from work. No problems here that I can see thus far. Sky hasn’t fallen. The sun will still rise in the morning.

Maybe from the OS point of view, but there’s a lot of third party software that needs to be updated and a lot of drivers to be written for peripherals that mean delaying the update is paramount in a lot of setups. I can’t see that changing any time soon :man_shrugging:

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Finding it quite smooth after an install (I was previously running the betas), seems stable and feels faster than the betas and more responsive in general than Sierra

Sure, but even that seems less of an issue than it used to be. Certainly is for me. Any vendor with a need has access to the software for long periods before it’s released and there seems to be a lot more 3rd party stuff ready at launch these days. I also tend to avoid stuff that needs drivers too, but I realise not everyone can.

I found a good article from Pro Tools Expert - a rather comprehensive list of pro audio stuff and compatibility information for macOS High Sierra.

Just in case anyone is interested…

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Note that High Sierra won’t install on soft RAID setups. I had to remove my RAID0 setup on my Mac mini before I upgraded. Took me a while to repartition everything.

Also Carbon Copy Cloner 4 can’t make bootable copies with High Sierra. They force you to upgrade to CCC 5.

Using CCC5, I am simply going to clone, install, clone back on my RAID0. That’s what I did for the Beta, so that’s what I am going to do here.

I’ve done something similar except that I’m keeping my 2 SSDs as separate drives now rather than recreate RAID0 - correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I can tell, High Sierra refuses to update if it sits on a soft RAID - I don’t want to have to keep cloning to update.

Well, that’s incredibly annoying. The speed gain is no trifling matter for my graphics and video work, so I’ll just have to deal, I guess. :expressionless:

Thanks, Apple.

Continuing the discussion from Who is beta testing High Sierra?:

I have no self control, I installed High Sierra :roll_eyes:

I’m using YakYak for Hangouts, which has actually turned out quite nice because it can hide in the menu bar, and I can drag and drop images into it.

NightShift and Continuity are working just fine.

Some awesome things I’ve noticed: Finder navigation is instantaneous for me now. Maybe that’s the new file system at play? And I can read ios 11 notes on my machine, which is good because I can use the grid paper for a background.

No self control.

HS 10.13.1 Beta just dropped, I’m getting it now. Let’s see how it goes…

UPDATE: No Joy. Didn’t install.

I installed it on my MBP and it appears ok so far. Photoshop CS3 is still running (mostly), everything else I use is far more modern so has no issues (although I’m two versions behind on parallels but am using it less and less often so will leave it for the moment).

I also installed it on my Mac Mini and grabbed MacOS Server before I realised that the main things I actually use are both standard is OS X now (caching server and Time Machine server). Given I run most things off the QNAP there is actually very little reason I need to run this machine anymore, although it is replacing an ‘09 vintage TimeCapsule and has a new 2TB drive so should be happy for a long while.

Took 4 tries, but success!

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I went ahead and converted both my external drives to APFS.

Now Photo is updating its library and it’s stuck at 5% - my photo library is large, so that may be the cause - will let people know how long it takes - I’ve had to leave it and go to work.

Did the clean install dance over the weekend, knowing that I’d have a long weekend to get back up and running if things went pear-shaped.

Luckily they didn’t… kind-of. Had a few weird issues where High Sierra would copy the installer files to my newly-erased and formatted APFS internal drive, but upon rebooting would just load Recovery mode and not actually complete the install. Holding option at startup didn’t give me the option to start up from my internal drive, either — eventually fixed it by installing High Sierra to a spare external hard drive, then installing from that onto my internal SSD.

Coming from Yosemite, High Sierra doesn’t feel all that much different. Maybe slightly smoother, but honestly I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Good job, Apple.

Brave. I guess if you back up with Time Capsule that’s OK, though.