Can you believe that the gorgeous and heavily praised Macs still depend on an Apple File System that was developed at a time when spinning hard drives and floppy disks were the most innovative technology around? Well, surprise!
Apparently, Cupertino has plans to come in with a new Apple File System that will see the light in 2017, though. But before going into any other details here’s what you need to know about the upcoming Apple File System – a system that will be used on all Apple devices.
As pointed out earlier, the current Apple File System has more than three decades of age. Of course, there is no doubt any change would be a huge welcome among the many lovers of Apple devices. For starters, the new File System will bring unity as it will be used on all Apple devices -whether you are using iOS, macOS, watchOS or even tvOS – this system has the power to take over from the previous file system and keep running the show.
Another huge plus that the new Apple File System brings to the company’s products is enhanced optimization. The system has been made with the latest Apple devices in mind, for instance, flash and solid-state storages. It gets even better for mobile devices as the system was created with latency in mind.
With Apple’s recent case where the FBI easily decrypted an iPhone, the company has moved ahead to further encrypt its services, with the latest Apple File System among them. The system takes advantage of full disk encryption on newer versions of OS X as well as the data protection tool that encrypts all files on iOS. In short, this system is moving back to the days where Apple’s main focus was on security and privacy.
Since the current file system has been in place for more than 30 years, Apple has close to similar plans with the new Apple File System. The iPhone maker is adamant that this system is future-proof.
The new system also comes with support for 64-bit inode numbers that are aimed at improving the 32-bit file IDs that the current system supports. In addition, there is a new extensible block allocator where there is “more room” for storage on a single volume. This happens where the new Apple File System initializes data structures only when necessary, something the current system does for the entire storage.
As for now, the only known release date for this next generation Apple File System is 2017. As a result, don’t expect to this feature show up in any of the latest operating systems from Apple.