I don’t actually. I back up locally with Crashplan and Carbon Copy Cloner.
One external drive is a RAID10 hardware RAID setup (12 Tb to 6 Tb). The other is a Lacie 6 Tb. Both converted to APFS with no issues. I have everything backed up in the cloud just in case of disaster.
I’m looking at backing up data and reverting to Sierra, too many issues with High Sierra - especially when it comes to VMWare Fusion and its inability to get a network connection. It may just be me as I’m not seeing any references to it with a few Google searches but in reality the (very minimal) new stuff in High Sierra really doesn’t outweigh the disadvantages so I’ll most likely wait till the first update and confirmation that I will no longer have issues with VMWare.
I took the plunge.
The MacBook Air (late 2010) that had been running the developer previews, I did a fresh install on as it is (finally) retiring.
The 13" MacBook Pro (Touch Bar) that is replacing the Air took the update well.
My Retina iMac on the other hand … stalled on the progress bar for about an hour. This may have been the conversion to APFS (1TB SSD)? Anyhow, I power cycled, and ended up in a kernel panic, reboot loop. I’ve done a network re-install and restored from time machine. All good. The time machine is on an external USB3 enclosure that has a bad habit of disconnecting uncleanly. At least I got the restore done before it corrupted completely.
Definitely looking at a format and install Sierra again - Apple have in their infinite “wisdom” removed both the telnet and ftp command from the OS - this is utter stupidity! These are core commands that I need to use quite often from the command line 
Telnet and FTP are insecure.
Telnet and FTP are insecure not encrypted.
Although, with Kerberos setup, they are nicely encrypted and single-sign on capable as well!
Still plenty of valid use cases for telnet and ftp, especially inside of closed environments.
Should be easy enough to acquire both tools using something like MacPorts though.
But they are also necessary tools for an IT professional (moreso Telnet than FTP) and Apple’s removol of them is pathetic, I should not need to resort to 3rd party options when they have always been a part of the standard install in the past - just more arrogance from Apple who think they know better than their users
Well, there are more companies than Apple out there who are being arrogant then.
It’s gone from Windows and the last install of RHEL7 I came across didn’t have telnet (client or server) installed by default. I do agree, it is a little easier to get telnet onto a RHEL box than compiling something on macOS.
netcat appears to be on High Sierra by default.
(edit: spelling)
It is not installed by default but is easily added by going in to Programs and Features/Turn Windows Features On and Off and ticking the Telnet Client box
Wish Apple would take this approach, allow features to be turned on and off rather than outright removed. Though that being said, it becomes a fine line between keeping legacy tech and becoming bloated like Windows, and keeping relevant tech around. That being said Windows 10 on a HDD will beat any version of Mac OS since 10.7 easily in terms of speed and responsiveness, so there goes my bloat theory.
…and (in my experience) reliability.
it’s a shame that Apple don’t seem to care about OS X and Macs any more - they’re all about the (overpriced) iPhone
.
I live in both camps. I have a Surface Pro 3 that lives at work and a MacBook Pro that lives at home. Both have run pretty flawlessly over the years with few if any issues.
Once upon a time I would have not even thought about upgrading to the newest Mac over the Windows alternative and while there are quite a few Mac apps I would miss, it’s pretty hard to justify a $4k price tag of the new machine just to maintain OSX. Windows 10 (and even 8.1 or 7) have been pretty stable for me. I never had the pleasure of vanilla 8 and 8.1 is only on the work desktop which is so locked down it’s impossible to do much of anything to break it.
I did sit next to someone on the train this week who was using a 15" touch bar MBP and it was very very sexy looking… anyone need a kidney??
@The_Hawk I do too, I have a Windows 10 desktop but I mainly use an old MacBook Pro. It won’t be long before I have to replace the laptop because it’s slowly dying with bits of hardware failing. Windows 10 is perfectly fine and I can’t fault it. But I like the seamlessness of the one ecosystem so much that I’m saving up to pay that ridiculous premium for a new MBP. Not the touch bar model though, that’s the dumbest answer to a touch screen I’ve ever seen!
I made the full switch because Vista kept dying in the middle of video editing projects. Now I haven’t used windows except for literally like three or four times for a couple of minutes to print something at work since 2008. I’ve never used 7 or 8, and I think everything is 10 now, but the extent of me using it was figuring out how to teach my union mates (I’m my union’s IT director, we have multiple macs and one PC) how to use the display prefs with the projector in the PC. In Japanese, no less! I have no context to consider “Mac vs Windows” anymore. But in 2008, there was no contest.
There is an NVIDIA web driver update now for the Mac Pro 3,1 and LiteIcon now works as well, which are the two bits I was waiting on. Every version I’ve used of 10.13 seems stable on my MacBook Pro 9,2. So that means it’s probably time go ahead and update the Mac Pro 3,1 to High Sierra.
UPDATE: The NVIDIA web driver doesn’t work. There’s no CUDA for it, and that seems to matter. Going to the OS X native driver has serious issues with things as simple as window drawing. It seems to play video okay, but this is probably utterly useless to me, and I’ll probably need to go back to the Sierra unless a new web driver and CUDA driver combination show up.
UPDATE II: Tried several different things. No joy. Even though the standard macOS drivers should cover my GTX 660, they don’t. I get all sorts of weird icon oddities and window drawing sometimes totally freaks out. There also occasional video delays. The Mac Pro is my video editing machine, and I can’t really have these kind of errors while I’m editing, so I’m shunting the High Sierra install over to a separate partition and restoring this morning’s clone of Sierra. The new bells and whistles just aren’t THAT important for this machine, because honestly, the differences between Sierra and High Sierra are so small in end user experience. If this issue is resolved in a future update, I’ll try again.
I just did my Wifes 2011 MBA from 10.11.x overnight after a full clone and bit of a clean up. She is still running Office 2011 (for the rare uses of Word and Excel) and it appears to launch without issues although the proof will come when she actually uses it… one day 
She hasn’t touched Sierra so it’s a two year jump for her so it will be interesting to see what she notices (if anything).
Currently backing up a few files then formatting and going back to Sierra, far too many issues with High Sierra which seem to be hardly at beta quality level on my machine.
My experience is that it is pathetically slow, necessary command line utilities are missing, disk utility only works occasionally, BootCamp crashes when trying to repartition to install Windows and APFS is an absolute joke for performance, reliability and stability - I’ve never had my MacBook perform worse or lock up more than with High Sierra - I think the only “High” about is is what the company were when they released this product.
This is my worst Apple experience ever and unfortunately I think it is a clear example of what Apple has become - I firmly believe that heads would have rolled if rubbish like this was released when Steve Jobs was still alive.
This all kind of reminds me of the feeling of rewatching on of your favorite TV shows from when you were a kid such as Knight Rider or ALF, having such fond memories and then when you watch it now you realise just how bad it actually is - that is the Apple of today for me, something that was special and holds dear memories for me has changed so much and no longer has that same appeal due to what is has become (for me at least)
What are/were you running it on?
My 2013 MBP hasn’t hit any issues as yet and my Wife has been doing stuff on her 2011 MBA half the day without issues, in fact, she commented on how much faster it seemed.
Mid 2012 15" MacBook Pro with a (non Apple supplied) 480GB SSD and 16GB of RAM, can’t even create a Sierra installer USB stick from within High Sierra so in the process of doing an Internet Recovery.
Recovery has to be done using Shift+Command+Option+R to go back to the oldest version the machine will support as a normal Internet Recovery would have just reinstalled the same OS version as is currently on it, this means that it is currently downloading and installing Lion - it’s going to be a long process to get it back up and running and up to a recent version.
** Edit / Update ** I now realise that I was running the Beta and did upgrade to the release version over the top of the beta so perhaps a clean install of High Sierra might help - I’ll gave that a go and see what happens. (off to eat home made ice cream and some chocolate now I think)
Sounds like a plan, haven’t got a lot to lose except time at this point… and ice cream makes everything better 