As long-time readers know, I got heavily involved in the online world beginning in October of 1989, when I received a sign-up floppy from America Online. Up till then, I tapped into a CompuServe membership at the office, but it was expensive, costing over $10 per hour during peak terms, and the boss strongly recommended that I only use it when necessary, which wasn’t very often. If you became an online junkie, you could quickly squander a hefty portion of your pay check navigating this text-based online service.

AOL’s ace-in-the-hole was a Mac-like graphical interface, and a $4 per hour price structure (the flat monthly rate came along some years later). Well, I still spent more time than I should, but when I began to hang out in the Mac user forums, one of the service’s in-house producers took pity on me and gave me batches of free time.

Eventually I became a forum helper with a free account. When I was elevated to the post of forum leader, I even received a paycheck. Add to that books on AOL and other topics, plus writing gigs with Macworld and other publications, and the 1990s were rather lucrative for me until the cutbacks began.

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A computer’s file system may not seem to be a terribly interesting topic of discussion, but it becomes interesting when there’s the potential for things to go bump.

So along with the release of the first developer beta of macOS Sierra in June of 2016, Apple included a prerelease version of the Apple File System (APFS), a major update to the previous file system, HFS+, which was released in 1998 as an update to HFS.

Now the file system governs how a computing device, be it a smartphone, a tablet, or a personal computer, reads, writes, catalogs and stores data. If things go wrong with the index or catalog file, you can lose files, or some might end up damaged. While HFS+ worked well enough for tens of millions of Mac users, and hundreds of miles of users of iPhones and iPads, something had to give, so Apple finally developed a modern solution.

So you have such goodies as 64-bit support, robust file encryption, improved performance and efficiency, superior protection from disk catalog damage, and, under some circumstances, near instantaneous duplication of a file.

Obviously Apple proceeded slowly to implement APFS. Last year’s developer version could be installed on Macs with SSDs, but it didn’t support traditional hard drives nor that combo of HDD and SSD, the Fusion drive.

I sort of expected it would be fully implemented with Sierra’s successor, but that’s still a work in progress, which I’ll get to shortly.

But for users of iOS gear, an en masse conversion to APFS occurred virtually without a hitch with the 10.3 update. Hundreds of millions of people had their devices converted in the space of a few days. It was hard to see much of a change. You may have found more free space on our iPhone or iPad, but performance was not significantly different one way or the other. I noticed on my wife’s iPhone 5c that the amount of free space on the 16GB device was little changed. I didn’t bother to compare the before or after on any other device in our household, mostly because I have plenty of free space on my iPhone, and Barbara had no complaints about her iPad.

I suppose you might call it a dry run ahead of the expected conversion on Macs, though I’m sure Apple did a lot of testing before releasing APFS into the wild on such a grand scale. It also made me feel more confident about what might happen on the Mac once High Sierra was released.

With the first macOS High Sierra betas, Apple did provide the choice of converting Fusion drives, but put that to a halt when people ran into troubles. Unfortunately switching back to HFS+ involves invoking some Terminal commands, provided by Apple in a support document to public beta testers, and a full backup, erase and restore.

With the final release of High Sierra, you didn’t have a choice on an SSD. It was automatically convered for better or worse. A regular hard drive can be converted manually in Disk Utility, and I did that on two external drives with mixed results. There is no support for Fusion drives, but that’s promised by Apple in a “future update.”

As I reported yesterday, however, Time Machine evidently doesn’t like APFS. The external drive formatted in APFS was reverted to HFS+ with the first backup. So that, as they say, is that.

Unfortunately, APFS may have other problems. They seem to be related to a few apps, but I’d think that software the follows Apple’s guidelines in reading and writing data ought to work properly with APFS, and if there are problems, they are Apple’s to fix.

On the other hand, if a developer is doing something funky in the way an app talks to the file system, all bets are off.

So far there have been reports that the Unity gaming engine has problems, and a more recent report from AppleInsider mentions APFS issues with AutoCAD 2017 and Adobe Acrobat and Illustrator CC. If it’s a publisher’s issue, there will be updates to recent versions. But if you use an older version of an app, it’s very possible it’ll never work correctly under APFS.

Indeed, I’m going to try my old Adobe CS apps on my 2010 MacBook Pro, whose SSD was converted APFS, to see if any issues arise before I allow my iMac to undergo this conversion.

These reports also raise the possibility that other apps are going to have compatibility issues, but it may again be something Apple can fix for everyone rather than inconvenience customers who, for one reason or another, stick with an older version of an app.

At this point, if you haven’t installed High Sierra yet on a Mac with an SSD, it may be a good idea to check the compatibility of your apps. If you consult our Comments section, you’ll see a post listing a way to hack the installer package to prevent the APFS conversion. It may be the perfect solution, but I won’t endorse something that hasn’t been thoroughly tested. It would be far easier just to hold off for a while. The advantages of High Sierra aren’t so significant that you can’t live without it for a while.

These early release issues may be massaged away with a few maintenance update. There’s already a “Supplemental Update” for High Sierra, which was released Thursday to fix a handful of problems.

I’m still perfectly happy with my decision to install High Sierra. But when or if there’s an update that adds APFS support for Fusion drives, I’ll be gun-shy about converting until I know that my vintage Adobe apps are going to work properly.  I want to avoid the need to subscribe to CS if I can.

Otherwise, I am not changing my qualified recommendation, just adding a few more cautions.

At one time, a new version of macOS might have been a huge deal. Apple would announce over 200 new features, and you could always depend on having lots of changes. Some visual, some under the hood. With OS X, Apple would deliver major changes in each release before adopting a tick-tock pattern.

So a recent example is OS X Snow Leopard, which refined OS X Leopard, and OS X Mountain Lion, which refined OS X Lion. You expect, then, that macOS High Sierra is the refinement of macOS Sierra.

What this means is that, on the surface, they really resemble each other so closely that you will be hard pressed to detect any difference at all, except in a few ways. It’s not that there are no changes, but it will convey a quick level of familiarity that will allow you to upgrade without much to be concerned about.

Well, with a few concerns since, as usual, some apps require updates to be compatible with High Sierra, and perhaps some, such as Microsoft Office 2011, will never be compatible. I can still use Adobe Photoshop 12.1, from Creative Suite 5.5, and it does most of what I want. But it freezes sometimes when I quit the application.

Overall, then, I’d probably recommend the move to High Sierra, although there may be issues with the new Apple File System (APFS). Now a file system is a big thing. It reflects how files are managed and stored on your machine’s drive and thus, if something untoward occurs, you may find yourself having problems. So the Unity gaming engine, which powers such “Civilization V” and other apps, is apparently not compatible with APFS.

Other apps, including Adobe CC, may also have issues with APFS, according to an AppleInsider article. Unless or until there’s an update, you’d be well advised to avoid APFS.

Except that the installation of High Sierra on a Mac with an SSD converts to APFS automatically. You can’t stop the process, although there was a checkbox that allowed you to skip the conversion during the beta process. So if there are any concerns at all, don’t do it. Or prepare to backup and reformat your drive as HFS+ after installation.

At the same time, regular hard drives and Fusion drives aren’t being converted during the installation. Apple promises that a “future update” will offer compatibility, particularly for the latter. The former can be converted successfully with a lone exception. Backup drives using Time Machine may be formatted as APFS, but end up as HFS+ when you actually begin to use them.

At least that’s what happened to me. After Time Machine did it’s thing, it reverted. So obviously Apple has some work to do. There’s no reason to be surprised, because the file system is a huge deal, and there are so many system variations on the Mac that APFS will have to be refined.

That isn’t true on iPhones and iPads. With the iOS 10.3 upgrade, they were seamlessly converted, and I haven’t heard of any widespread issues, or any issues for that matter. It just happened.

Safari for High Sierra gains a few things in the upgrade. Autoplay videos no longer autoplay, which makes certain sites, including Macworld, CNN and USA Today, much more tolerable. I would hope web developers will get the message and stop this dreadful practice. As with other browsers, you can also customize some other settings, including whether to activate Adobe Flash (just say no!).

Apple also claims that Safari is much faster now, faster than any other Mac browser. Those who might have preferred Chrome or Firefox ought to give Apple’s browser a try. I speak as someone who has used Safari for years, and hasn’t gone the other way. So the new features are quite helpful.

Another app with major changes is Photos. After arriving with fewer features than iPhoto, Photos has been fleshed out with neat sidebar and far more powerful tools with which to edit your photos. Some suggest that many people can thus avoid Photoshop and other apps as a result. But you can also pass photos onto such apps and bring them in with the mods intact.

Metal 2 provides better graphics performance with more recent Macs. There’s support for VR, which will expand opportunities for developers to build 3D and VR games and other apps. You won’t see anything until those apps appear, and then you’ll see the benefits.

As with all maOS upgrades since the late 1980s, I’ve almost always updated my Macs early on, often with access to betas (with ready backups). So High Sierra was no exception, although I was more careful than usual. So I upgraded my aging 17-inch MacBook Pro, from 2010, first. It has an SSD, so I got to see APFS in action. Once I was convinced High Serra was stable enough to deploy on my work iMac, near the end of the beta process, I went all the way with it.

With three full backups in fact.

Overall, I’ll give macOS High Sierra a qualified recommendation with the condition that you check your apps for compatibility first. The issue with Unity is a wakeup call, because APFS is forced upon you if your Mac has an SSD.

So let’s put this all together now: Apple allegedly sells higher-priced gear than the competition, yet puts significant restrictions on the use of these devices. You have to accept Apple’s ecosystem — make that walled garden — in order to buy Apple.

It may, to some degree, be akin to joining a cult where the leaders, managed by CEO (High Priest) Tim Cook, tell you what to do, what to buy, and what to install on your devices. Well, that’s the impression some might want to convey, but it makes a lot more sense to parse these claims and see if there is any factual basis to them.

Of course, on the surface, they do seem a bit much. But it’s worth putting the claims through a fact-check process anyway.

So the first complaint is about the price, that Apple deliberately charges high prices to gouge customers. They should be charging less, and in fact competing with mainstream gear.

Now obviously, Apple has the right to charge what it wants. It’s up to customers to decide if the prices are fair. If not, there are other choices. What’s more, Apple does cut prices from time to time. A key example is the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display. Prices dropped until they were the same as the older models with regular displays.

For months we heard endless complaints about the thousand dollar price for what became the iPhone X. But it was then known as the iPhone 8 until, of course, the iPhone 7s became the iPhone 8.

Take a deep breath please!

The price was real, well $999 for the 64GB version is close enough. But since the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 doesn’t cost a whole lot less, well $70 less, the argument that Apple is price gouging seems a tad lame. Sure, it’s more expensive than the Samsung, but the difference is very small if you up for one of those 24-month lease/purchase deals, less than $3 per month.

Is the iPhone X worth a little more money? That’s up to prospective customers to decide. If not, Apple might eventually cut the prices. That’s what was done with the original iPhone in 2007.

Apple is also attacked for alleged high prices on product upgrades. You want to buy a MacBook upgraded to 16GB RAM, it’s $200 extra. There’s no choice, since RAM is soldiered to the motherboard. On the other hand, when you compare the cost of RAM and storage upgrades at Apple with similar upgrades on gear from mainstream PC makers, such as Dell and HP, you’ll find the prices are in roughly in the same league.

The real complaint is that Apple only produces a few models where you can upgrade RAM yourself. Technically you can upgrade the storage on an iMac, but you really don’t want to make the attempt. And then there’s the Mac Pro, and the promise of a modular version, easy to upgrade, perhaps by next year.

What about being forced to tolerate Apple’s ecosystem?

Well, having products that integrate with one another, and allow you to switch from one to the other and continue your work ought to be a good thing. Similar apps and similar services mean that you can work more efficiently. No other platform can match it! Microsoft tried, but Windows Phone crashed and burned.

Isn’t reasonably smooth product integration supposed to be a good thing?

Now the walled garden means that you are limited to the App Store on all Apple gear except for the Mac. It means Apple curates the apps, and you may run up against some limits in what you can get. I have complained, for example, about not having the equivalent of Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack on an iPad. It’s an app that lets you capture audio from multiple sources and save them as a single audio file. It’s essential for my radio shows.

Since Apple clearly wants to make iPads more useful as productive tools, and the enhanced multitasking of iOS 11 demonstrates that commitment, perhaps some of the limits for app developers will be removed going forward.

But limiting you to one official app resource provides a much higher level of security, and at least a basic assurance that the app will run. There are few guarantees on the Android platform with Google Play. To use an outside app source on an iOS device, it has to be jailbroken, which creates serious security vulnerabilities. Android users can sideload apps from other sources if they want.

So Apple’s policy probably makes more sense for most people even if some of us chafe at a few restrictions.

On the Mac, nothing stops you from running the apps you want, good or bad. The Mac App Store is but one resource. And you can easily run Windows with Boot Camp, and loads of different operating systems via virtual machines. All official, all supported.

In that sense, the Mac is far more flexible than a Windows PC. While you can hack some PCs to run the macOS, it comes with lots of babysitting to induce even simple functions to work on a Hackintosh, such as messaging. Some things never quite work without jumping through hoops.

The long and short of it is that users of Apple gear have lots of freedom to do what they want, the way they want. I’ve only occasionally run across restrictions in doing what I want on the Apple mobile gadgets I’ve owned, and since Apple has expanded opportunities for iOS developers, some of those restrictions may eventually go away.

If Apple’s pricing and ecosystem are too stifling for you, rather than complain about the company’s well-known and highly successful policies, nothing stops you from buying something else. Apple obviously cannot tell you how to spend your money.