Apple releases first iOS 10.3 with 'Find my AirPods,' tvOS 10.2, macOS 10.12.4 betas for developers

One day after the last updates of iOS and macOS, Apple has released three new betas, bringing "Find my AirPods" and APFS to iOS, a new Night Shift mode to macOS, and fast scrolling to tvOS 10.2.

The iOS update will update the file structure on a device to Apple's new APFS, that was first revealed at the 2016 WWDC. Other changes include a new "Find My AirPods" ability, additions to Siri, CarPlay improvements, and some changes to Maps.

Other than the Night Shift addition for macOS, it is not known what new features, if any, are included with the 10.12.4 beta.

The tvOS 10.2 beta is also available to developers, bringing an accelerated scrolling feature to the Siri remote to allow users to run through lists of content much faster.

Monday's updates spanned Apple's entire product line, with fixes implemented for GPU issues with the 2016 MacBook Pro, the first watchOS update since December's problematic release, and minor fixes to iOS and tvOS.

APFS, the Apple File System, is "optimized for Flash/SSD storage, and engineered with encryption as a primary feature," according to an entry in the WWDC 2016 schedule. In official documentation, Apple adds that it uses a "unique copy-on-write design" with I/O coalescing, meant to optimize performance while staying reliable.

15 Comments

blastdoor 3568 comments · 15 Years

About 7 years ago

Perhaps it was previously reported that APFS would come to iDevices first, but if so I missed it.

In any event I think that's actually a great idea. Given that the file system on iDevices is invisible to users and much more tightly controlled than on the Mac, it makes sense to bring it there first.

I'm very much looking forward to it on the Mac, though. I look forward to a big reduction in beach balls when external drives spin up for time machine backups!

_rick_v_ 142 comments · 15 Years

blastdoor said:

Perhaps it was previously reported that APFS would come to iDevices first, but if so I missed it.

In any event I think that's actually a great idea. Given that the file system on iDevices is invisible to users and much more tightly controlled than on the Mac, it makes sense to bring it there first.

I'm very much looking forward to it on the Mac, though. I look forward to a big reduction in beach balls when external drives spin up for time machine backups!

If you have a Mac with a spinning drive, you probably won't see much improvement. One of the primary features of APFS is optimized (and therefore faster) performance on SSD drives, by eliminating vast swaths of code that deals with, for example, latency delays due to waiting for the right sector to spin around on the platter.

As far as external drives, APFS isn't going to magically make a drive spin up faster. That's a function of the hardware itself (i.e. the physical external drive). The Mac can't do anything with that drive until it's spun up and reports it's online.

Eric_WVGG 969 comments · 8 Years

Dunno dude. Beachballs don't just happen on spin-up, they happen all the time for all sorts of reasons.

APFS also focuses on latency: Apple's number one goal is to avoid the beach ball of doom. APFS addresses this with I/O QoS (quality of service) to prioritize accesses that are immediately visible to the user over background activity that doesn't have the same time-constraints. This is inarguably a benefit to users and a sophisticated file system capability. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/06/a-zfs-developers-analysis-of-the-good-and-bad-in-apples-new-apfs-file-system/

I'm sure the big gains will be on SSDs, but this prioritization should be a big deal anywhere.

FWIW, I've been running my iTunes library off a high-speed USB key (a weird one that uses an SSD controller). I switched it from HFS+ to APFS on it about a month ago; beachballs are less frequent, no stability issues at all.

That change did require an erase and reformat. I have no idea how the installer is supposed to switch file systems on a live device, this is puzzling.

ireland 17435 comments · 18 Years

Eagerly awaiting the release of Night Shift since it arrived on iOS. F.lux is a distorter is terms of several bugs unfixed for several years.

tipoo 1121 comments · 14 Years

APFS for everyone so soon? I assumed that would be opt-in for a while. They said 2017, but I didn't expect it to go out to everyone so soon.

Does make sense to put it out first on iOS though, less chance of maybe a rogue Mac app maybe doing something APFS ends up not liking.