So...AFS for the rest of us??

[ThatGuyInLa]

My brand new 27” iMac with 2TB Fusion Drive still awaits its new file system.

Has this gone to vaperware? Apple failing to test its functionality fully on their own touted tech Fusion Drives before release makes me think they should offer free SSD swaps if it won’t be able to work.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

You just bought an iMac, knowing that AFS is not (yet) supported for Fusion, and you want Apple to give you an SSD?????? Would you have purchased a Dell if Apple had announced AFS would never be available for Fusion? If AFS was so important to you, at the least you should have purchased an all-Flash iMac. If it wasn't that important... just another case of "magical thinking" - wishing that fabulously wealthy Apple will just shower its largesse on any customer who can come up with a marginally plausible excuse.

I don't know where you got the idea that Apple failed to test AFS on Fusion. Why do you think it hasn't been released??? I'm among those who did test AFS on a Fusion Drive (Late 2013 27" iMac, 3 TB Fusion). I had to go through the trouble of rolling my Mac back to HFS+ at the end of the beta, because Apple decided AFS-on-Fusion was not ready for public usage. If Apple owes something to anyone, it should be the betas who helped uncover whatever problems were discovered. Yet I doubt you'll see a single thread from a beta tester demanding recompense.

Maybe all the Fusion Drive owners who didn't test AFS-on-Fusion should pass the hat and buy SSDs for those who did. After all, we may have saved you from data loss and/or major system downtime.

You're welcome!

 

[stooovie]

Don't do APFS on spinning drive, ever. That includes Fusion drives. It would slow it down even further.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

They did test it - which is why they didn't release it publicly, because it was found to have issues that need to be fixed.

They have said that it would be enabled in a point-release later. They didn't specify how much later.

But I can confirm from running the early betas on a Fusion Drive that AFS didn't cause a noticeable performance increase.

AFS, even on an SSD, isn't some magic thing that enables amazing new features, or gives a performance boost that is like buying a new top-end drive. It is mostly about making back-end changes to future-proof the system, to allow new features in the future. You're not missing out on anything.

I have AFS on my MacBook Pro, and HFS+ on my iMac with Fusion Drive (now that it's on the public release, I had to roll back to HFS+, too.) Functionally, they are essentially identical.

 

[ThatGuyInLa]

I bought my iMac 34 Days before they made the AFS issue announcement. They gave us no warning before then. Remember AFS was launched in beta for those drives then pulled literally last minute with a promise of it coming later. By then it was too late for me to return my iMac.

 

[Pine Man]

'By then it was too late for me to return my iMac.'

Why would you want to return it?

What do you think will be different if you have AFS?

AFS was pulled at the last minute because there was an issue with it. Would you want them to release it in that state?

'I bought my iMac 34 Days before they made the AFS issue announcement.'

So you didn't even know it was coming when you bought your machine!!

 

[Strelok]

Who cares? It makes almost zero difference in regular usage, I haven’t even noticed it since I swapped to it in the first beta. Sometimes I wonder if people are just looking to checkmark something just to checkmark it.

 

[Starfia]

Hmm – yeah, that seems like an edge case to have bought an iMac during the brief period during which they'd given the impression Fusion Drives would support AFS at High Sierra's launch. I'm using an iMac with a Fusion Drive too, and I admit it never occurred to be to be bothered that much by the delay; I agree it was a cool-sounding thing I was looking forward to, but I agree with Freak that the apparent difference is doesn't seem dramatic and I can only think Apple would have delayed it for a good reason.

Presumably the implementation of AFS on Fusion Drives would focus on its SSD component, and it sounds like a challenge at best to integrate that usefully with the spinning drive – I'm not sure how that would even work.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Be happy that the fusion drive that you bought DOES NOT have APFS.
APFS -- at least so far (in my opinion) -- seems to be "not worth the trouble".
HFS+ is a mature, working file system.
APFS seems to be a rushed-out-the-door "work in progress". The kind of thing that Apple, as of late, seems to be giving us too much of.

Let others fool with it.
Not me...

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I bought my iMac 34 Days before they made the AFS issue announcement. They gave us no warning before then. Remember AFS was launched in beta for those drives then pulled literally last minute with a promise of it coming later. By then it was too late for me to return my iMac.

So, which "announcement" are you talking about? There were two, essentially.

1) They stopped converting Fusion Drives and physical HDDs to APFS after the second or third public beta release, IIRC. Any testers who entered the program after that did not have their Fusion Drives/HDDs converted. This was known and discussed here at MR. Meanwhile, those who had already converted their drives to APFS continued to use them throughout the beta.

2) Before the GM release, Apple announced that testers who did have APFS-formatted drives would have to roll back to HFS+ because APFS would not be supported in the public release (but would come in a later release).

So, when did you buy that Mac, 34 days before #1, or 34 days before #2?

Further, when you purchased your Mac, it came loaded with Sierra. All of Apple's product descriptions would have referred to the the features of Sierra, not High Sierra. (Yeah, there was the "coming attractions" page for High Sierra on the Apple web site.)

Here's the thing; if you purchased your Mac 34 days before the GM release, this was already a known issue. If APFS was such a crucial factor in your decision to buy your Mac, you didn't do your homework.

However, I fail to see why APFS was such a crucial factor to you. Though many of us have asked, you've yet to make a case for what you would have done differently. Would you have delayed your purchase until APFS was available (seems using a nice, new Mac has benefits, regardless)? Would you have purchased an all-Flash model instead? A Windows PC?

Did you think that APFS would so improve a Fusion Drive that you didn't need to buy an all-Flash configuration? Fusion is still Fusion, with or without APFS. The fundamental pros and cons of Fusion Drives are unchanged.

So??