Apple Upgrades Millions of iOS Devices to New, Modern File System

Megalith

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Apple is currently rolling out iOS 10.3, and its most significant feature is under the skin: the adoption of a new file system, APFS. Apparently, the file system that iOS has been using all this time was optimized only for floppy or hard disks. In my experience, iOS usually feels smooth and slick, so I find that pretty interesting. APFS should make the OS feel even quicker.

Apple has been using its 31-year-old Hierarchical File System (HFS) for iOS devices so far. It was originally designed for Macs with floppy or hard disks, and not for modern mobile devices with solid state storage. Even its successor, HFS+, still doesn’t address the needs of these mobile devices enough. Apple’s new APFS is designed to scale across these new types of devices and take advantage of flash or SSD storage. It’s also engineered with encryption as a primary feature, and even supports features like snapshots so restoring files on a Mac or even an iOS device might get a lot easier in the future.
 
But will this fix the fact that their phones always run out of space over time, and require a reset to get it back? And yet another reason to get android instead... p.s. I support both, but yeah, I carry an android now...
 
But will this fix the fact that their phones always run out of space over time, and require a reset to get it back? And yet another reason to get android instead... p.s. I support both, but yeah, I carry an android now...

It solves a lot of file system issues sure.

MacOS and iOS did use a pretty old file system. HFS+ was still a solid file system with Unix roots it was lacking some features but it was still reliable and in many ways a very good choice. (it was one of the better file systems when it was first used in osx in 1998)

Android being Linux based has used Ext4 for some time which is a modern solid file system... and one point us Linux boosters like to rib the Windows people on. As NTFS is 20+ years old and now that Apple has upgraded no doubt the worst of all the commercial OS file systems.

I don't imagine we should all hold our breath now for MS to update Win10 file system to something better.
 
It solves a lot of file system issues sure.

MacOS and iOS did use a pretty old file system. HFS+ was still a solid file system with Unix roots it was lacking some features but it was still reliable and in many ways a very good choice. (it was one of the better file systems when it was first used in osx in 1998)

Android being Linux based has used Ext4 for some time which is a modern solid file system... and one point us Linux boosters like to rib the Windows people on. As NTFS is 20+ years old and now that Apple has upgraded no doubt the worst of all the commercial OS file systems.

I don't imagine we should all hold our breath now for MS to update Win10 file system to something better.

NTFS of Windows 10 /= to NTFS of NT 4.0. Microsoft has developed and improved NTFS over the years. For Enterprise use it could be easily argued that there are features in other file systems that are more attractive, but for the base of individual computer installs, it is not so easy to quantify the practical advantages they have. Keeping a common file system across product lines seems to have worked well.
 
Android being Linux based has used Ext4 for some time which is a modern solid file system... and one point us Linux boosters like to rib the Windows people on. As NTFS is 20+ years old and now that Apple has upgraded no doubt the worst of all the commercial OS file systems.

I don't imagine we should all hold our breath now for MS to update Win10 file system to something better.

ReFS was supposed to be Microsoft's replacement for NTFS, but I don't think it's made it outside of their server software.

*Edit* Just looked it up, it's in Windows 8 & 10, but they still default to NTFS. You can turn it on though.
 
I always get nervous when an update changes out the file system. I'd be nervous if I was on the team responsible for it. I've updated several devices with no issues - haven't seen any issues. So, I hope the dev team can enjoy a beer for what looks like a smooth roll-out.
 
I gained back 4gb with this update on my i6s+ so I'm happy. Now let's see if it bloats up over time.....

It feels s little snappier too.... But that may be placebo too.
 
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ReFS was supposed to be Microsoft's replacement for NTFS, but I don't think it's made it outside of their server software.

*Edit* Just looked it up, it's in Windows 8 & 10, but they still default to NTFS. You can turn it on though.

Well as I understand it you still can't boot from an ReFS file system even in Windows server. Its a half backed solution to a problem that was keeping MS out of most larger data centers. (and still does... cause ReFS isn't a great solution). MS talk of using ReFS to replace NTFS was pretty much all talk. ReFS ticks off a bunch of boxes when the MS sales team is pushing server solutions. In reality its buggy... and the way it writes data if a ReFS drive fails good luck ever recovering any data.

It made the MS sales teams lives easier as they could claim features like error repair without dismount. (even if MS implemented it as a attribute check that intros a ton of latency). Still in that market ReFS is still missing a ton of features offered by files systems like XFS and Btrfs. I would still feel bad for the poor MS sales man pitching their wares to data centers... still not as bad as I would have if they where still pitching their systems using NTFS.

My point is simply ReFS was a solution to issues MS has had in the server markets. It wasn't really designed to do much for everyday windows users. Right now EXT4 (everyday Linux / Android users) and APFS (everyday Apple users) are both much more reliable and more feature complete file systems for every day users.
 
NTFS of Windows 10 /= to NTFS of NT 4.0. Microsoft has developed and improved NTFS over the years. For Enterprise use it could be easily argued that there are features in other file systems that are more attractive, but for the base of individual computer installs, it is not so easy to quantify the practical advantages they have. Keeping a common file system across product lines seems to have worked well.

There are advantages to keeping a common base. For sure can't argue that. Still it isn't hard to give your OS the ability to read and right older FS.

Honestly I was pretty shocked MS didn't force ReFS on people with Windows 10... they could have made Win 10 drives unreadable by Win 7 machines and forced more people to migrate. (Win 10 reading old NTFS drives would have been no issue). However at this point even in Windows server you can't boot from an ReFS drive so I sort of question the thinking behind ReFS other then having features to tick on sales sheets.
 
But will this fix the fact that their phones always run out of space over time, and require a reset to get it back? And yet another reason to get android instead... p.s. I support both, but yeah, I carry an android now...

If you use iMessage a lot and send lots of pictures and videos it stores all those. All you have to do is delete the chat and memory is back.
 
definitely no back door on this one.. you know, because it is being released in 2017, and everyone knows how the corporations value our privacy. just like the newest version of windows. now nobody ever has to worry about anyone spying on you!
 
definitely no back door on this one.. you know, because it is being released in 2017, and everyone knows how the corporations value our privacy. just like the newest version of windows. now nobody ever has to worry about anyone spying on you!

I feel sorry for anyone that chooses iOS because they are not the best humanity has to offer!
 
I just upgraded, took about 10 minutes, got 1GB of total capacity increase.

iOS10.3.jpg
 
Trust me, deleting the stuff off of the phone doesn't work, it is a known bug and has hit a lot of the phones at our company. That one guy getting 4 g back gives me hope though. It just didn't mark the space as empty.
 
Reading up on the new APFS and I'm impressed with the improvements.

Multi key encryption for individual files, snapshots of file system, instant cloning (editable of course), write coalescing, fast directory sizing (doesn't sound like much, but no need to wait for 5-30 seconds to update used/available storage) and a near complete thin provisioning system.
TRIM support, SMB shares now default, and a few other notable changes also made it.

Kind of exciting to see this happening on iDevices. Who would've thunk it just a few years ago that "server level" features would make it to your hand...
 
I thought thin provisioning was used to overallocate storage to multiple users on the same network, how's it apply to mobile devices?
 
But will this fix the fact that their phones always run out of space over time, and require a reset to get it back? And yet another reason to get android instead... p.s. I support both, but yeah, I carry an android now...

Strange. This has never happened to any of the several iOS devices that I've owned.
 
Strange. This has never happened to any of the several iOS devices that I've owned.

I think there is an issue with apps that cache data, not releasing it ever. The only way round it is to delete the app, and re-install it.

Saying this, I've never had a problem, on any of my iPhones or iPads, or any of my friends or family's iPhone or iPads.
 
Megalith has an Apple device?

Fire him at once!!!!

Jk/ I use an iPhone too
 
To the uninitiated, Apple took a lot of stuff from ZFS and put it in APFS. Obviously not everything as phones don't have enough RAM for ARC lol, but lots of tasty stuff!

This is nothing but good.
 
Does anyone else flip flop between IOS and android like me? I had a iphone 6, now a Galaxy s7 edge... Thinking about getting the next iphone +... God the problems i have =[
 
I think there is an issue with apps that cache data, not releasing it ever. The only way round it is to delete the app, and re-install it.

Saying this, I've never had a problem, on any of my iPhones or iPads, or any of my friends or family's iPhone or iPads.

I see. I usually keep the number of apps installed in my devices down to the bare essentials since music, video and image files take up most of the available space.
 
How does this stack up against NTFS? NTFS is at least 20 years old and I ask because when Windows Longhorn was a thing, MS was supposedly working on a new filesystem. 10+ years later, we are still using NTFS and MS never brought that new FS to market.
 
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