Talk:macOS High Sierra

Why remove the older betas?

I was just wondering, why remove the older betas? I think it should still be included. Itsquietuptown (talk) 13:45, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Precedents; look at macOS Sierra. None of the older betas are listed there. JTP ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:22, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

This one is going to get some negative reviews

Apple has made a blunder with this release, no ifs/ands/buts. Personally, I'm shocked at what has gone on at Cupertino since Jobs died. Editors will have to incorporate the problems that still resided on the 'golden master' release candidate into the article - if Apple actually does release it on the 25th. The reports on the various Mac sites all give the feeling of a product that was rushed. 50.111.54.136 (talk) 01:58, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

"is designed for flash technology"

How, exactly, is a file system "designed" for flash? I can see the driver being such, either by having better access patterns or supporting SSD features, but this statement seems to be touting it as an improvement over what is possible in HFS+, when such things could equally be added to that driver. The linked citation seems to just eat up what is essentially Apple marketing, too…

—Deathanatos (talk) 01:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I guess it could mean "designed around the assumption that most instances of the file system will reside on high-performance media where seeks are much cheaper than on hard disks", and possibly also "where writes eventually wear out the media", which means that copy-on-write not keeping a file as contiguous as possible isn't as big an issue, and may also result in more wear leveling at the file system level. But that's a bit weaker than "designed for flash", which I consider a claim that requires an explanation. Guy Harris (talk) 06:28, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

32-bit no support next update unsupport?

Shall we add about unsupport of 32-bit apps on Macs after High Sierra? This 9to5Mac link and this real Mac link mention stuff about 32-bit apps not being supporting on future Macs after High Sierra. Do you reckon this be relevant to this article? Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 02:19, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

What the Apple page says is

The last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without compromise is macOS High Sierra.

without ever saying what "without compromise" means. If they build all the dynamic shared libraries in macOS Big Sur or whatever 10.14 is called 64-bit only, and rip support for system calls from 32-bit code out of the kernel, and don't add anything to handle 32-bit binaries, High Sierra will be the last OS version to support 32-bit binaries at all, not just the last OS version to support them "without compromise" - not running them at all certainly "compromises" their functionality, but that's not usually what "compromise" means in "without compromise".

Given that they didn't just say "The last macOS release to support 32-bit apps is macOS High Sierra.", they probably plan to provide some sort of workaround, even if it means they'll run slowly, or that they'll take a long time to be binary-to-binary translated into 64-bit code (which could be a lot of work, possibly involving thunking all calls to system APIs; if it requires that, I don't imagine that they'll do it), or that they'll do something such as that but support only a limited number of system libraries, or that they'll build only a few system libraries 32-bit/64-bit fat and leave support for system calls from 32-bit code in for now, or....

Or, given that one reason for thinning system libraries to 32-bit only and eliminating support for 32-bit apps is to avoid having 32-bit and 64-bit versions of shared libraries competing for memory, perhaps all they'll do is penalize 32-bit processes ability to consume page frames in physical memory, limiting their resident set sizes or the sum of all their resident set sizes.

So we don't know what Apple will do other than provide "compromised" support for 32-bit apps, with "compromised" perhaps meaning something between "compromise their ability to actually run" and "compromise their performance somewhat". That's about all I'd say on this page for now, and wait until Apple give more details, perhaps at WWDC, for what macOS Inland Empire, or whatever, will do. Guy Harris (talk) 05:36, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@Guy Harris: If macOS High Sierra does indeed become the last 32-bit supporting operating system in Macintosh, and the next one doesn't support 32-bit at all, then would the 32-bit issues be relevant into this article? Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 23:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

If it runs them with lower performance, that's worth a note; if it runs some but not all, that's worth a bigger note; if it doesn't run them at all, that's worth an even bigger note.

I.e., if there's a notable change to support for 32-bit programs, it's relevant, regardless of whether the change is "they run slower" or "they don't run at all" or anything in between. For now, we don't know what "without compromise" means, so the article should just say it's the last release to run them "without compromise". Guy Harris (talk) 02:06, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

It's important to characterize this as "Apple has stated that", instead of simply delcaring it as factual. Apple is certainly entitled to change their minds about this at any time. — Warren. ‘ talk , 05:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

Update: 1) Mojave still supported 32-bit executables, with whatever "compromise" that required unknown, but Catalina dropped support, and 2) Apple finally gave us the Big Sur I'd been waiting for. :-) Guy Harris (talk) 07:06, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

Notes

Extended support dates?

The claim "Extended support ends in September 2020" does not have a citation. I cannot find anything on the net that supports the claimed date, excepts various "informed guesses", all of which arrive at other dates than "September 2020".

The same holds for "iTunes, in August 2021", i.e. no citation, but for iTunes is not clear to me that it really belongs here at all (why is iTunes special, why not Garage Band, Mail.app, ...?)

For now I will mark it with citation needed. I'm new to Wikipedia so please correct any mistakes I make.

Per Mildner (talk) 10:53, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• IMac Mid 2011 Running High Sierra.png

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 18:07, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Dispute, Re: Hiding high severity publicly known security vulnerabilities in MacOS High Sierra

Additional views sought: Hiding the existence of high severity publicly known security vulnerabilities in MacOS High Sierra like this isn't cool?

I modified support status to Partial Support

--50.201.195.170 (talk) 22:45, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

Literally nobody is hiding anything. You can literally add the info to the body of the article or Safari (web browser) or Safari version history. In fact, I'm going to add the info myself if you don't because I'm tired of arguing about this when I have no opposition to the inclusion of this information anyways. The issue with the support status is that the status refers to the OS, not Safari. Safari support is covered in a separate article. Also, adding a date to the status is needlessly specific and could inaccurately suggest that date as an end of life date without any guidance from Apple. My proposal is just to leave it at supported with a citation linked to the Security Updates page. Herbfur (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I have added the security issues to the Safari section. Herbfur (talk) 22:53, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

I support your recent edits here. FYI. Folks who seem to be edit warring and making accidental reverts, please chill. --50.201.195.170 (talk) 22:59, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

References

Does Apple even publish the support status for macOS releases?

I added a "citation needed" marker to claims that macOS High Sierra is currently unsupported, based on doing some web research to find a source. Not only could I not find a source, I found plenty of claims that Apple does not publish an end-of-life date or even an official supported / unsupported status for macOS versions. Instead, people suggest (hearsay) that the best you can do is to look at Apple's latest security update on Apple security updates, and infer the support status based on whether updates are still being released for an OS version.

I would like to add an authoritative source but I can't find one and I'm not sure one exists. It might actually be better to remove all references to the support status, if that is not a well-defined thing. Maybe instead Wikipedia could list "date of last update"?

Felipe Sherman (talk) 03:29, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Apple has no support policy for its OSes and doesn't officially announce the end of life of an OS. I started another discussion about this down the talk page and I invite you to comment there as well. Herbfur (talk) 05:06, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Support Status

Starting this discussion in the hope of starting a precedent for future versions of Apple OSes (and maybe Android). Recent edits have asserted that macOS High Sierra is unsupported. These edits have not been supported by references, or referenced unrelated sources (the one about January 2021 is about one specific University's software). Apple does not have a fixed support policy for its OSes but the precedent for macOS since around the early 2010s has been to support the latest 3 versions. However, inferred precedent is insufficient due to WP:CRYSTAL. As a remedy for this situation, given uncertainty and discussion over macOS High Sierra and Android 8 as they approached their inferred end of life in 2020, I propose that we use the information on updates provided from the software company to determine the support status of the product. I suggest that, if an older version of an operating system receives no updates while later versions of that operating system have received at least two updates since the older version was updated, based on the sources, the older version is unsupported. It's definitely not a perfect procedure, but I feel it could remedy the confusion and still comply with WP:CRYSTAL. Please let me know your thoughts. Herbfur (talk) 05:05, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Herbfur, I have removed the "unsupported" tag as the claim was not in the source given (WP:V). In my personal experience, a lot of stuff broke after High Sierra, not least the massive public spat between Apple and NVidia, which left a whole bunch of users up the creek without a paddle, and also support for AMD 5xxx and 6xxx GPUs was dropped, which makes it impossible for a whole bunch of older Macs which otherwise work perfectly fine for casual stuff. When combined with deprecating 32-bit support in Mojave then dropping it altogether in Catalina (can you imagine Windows doing that?), it's not too surprising people think High Sierra is a bit of a peak and want to stay on it. Obviously it depends on what Apple want to do, but I think there are far more users on High Sierra that can't or won't upgrade compared to earlier releases. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:02, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

To explain the rationale as to why I think we should leave the status as supported for now, if you look here: ([1]), it can take a few interceding updates to tell if a version is supported or not. It took maybe 3 updates to iOS 13 before iOS 12 got another update in late-2019. That's why I think we should leave it as supported for now, to make sure it's actually unsupported. There's no official Apple policy on this, so we can't immediately leap to say that it's unsupported. Herbfur (Eric, He/Him) (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Harris: I'm trying to find an official source from apple.com that says "Yes, High Sierra is most definitely unsupported, please upgrade your Mac". The context for this is I know someone with an old iMac (2011?) that doesn't support anything after High Sierra and is considering throwing it in the skip even though it does basic web browsing and word processing absolutely fine, which (AFAIK) is all they use it for. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:55, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

If you somehow manage to find something official from Apple about the life cycle of macOS (or iOS or iPadOS or...) releases, please let us all know, as I'm not sure they have a policy that they state publicly; that's why, as far as I'm concerned, little if anything would be lost if the support status parameters of the infoboxes of all releases of all of Apple's operating systems disappeared, as it turns into a place for people to edit-war and argue about the support status. If there were such a policy, there would finally be something fact-based that people could use in the discussion.

(In response to your friend's question, it depends on what kind of "support" they need. It won't get bug fixes, and may not even get critical security fixes, and newer versions of some software might not run on High Sierra, but if that's not a problem for them, then "most definitely unsupported" might not be a reason for them to replace the machine.) Guy Harris (talk) 19:15, 6 April 2021 (UTC)