storage: A ZFS developer’s analysis of the good and bad in Apple’s new APFS file system | Ars Technica

A ZFS developer’s analysis of the good and bad in Apple’s new APFS file system | Ars Technica: "I'm not sure Apple absolutely had to replace HFS+, but likely they had passed an inflection point where continuing to maintain and evolve the 30+ year old software was more expensive than building something new. APFS is a product born of that assessment.

Based on what Apple has shown I'd surmise that its core design goals were:

• satisfying all consumers (laptop, phone, watch, etc.) 
• encryption as a first-class citizen 
• snapshots for modernized backup 

Those are great goals that will benefit all Apple users, and based on the WWDC demos APFS seems to be on track (though the macOS Sierra beta isn't quite as far along).



 In the process of implementing a new file system the APFS team has added some expected features. HFS was built when 400KB floppies ruled the Earth (recognized now only as the ubiquitous and anachronistic save icon). Any file system started in 2014 should of course consider huge devices, and SSDs—check and check. Copy-on-write (COW) snapshots are the norm; making the Duplicate command in the Finder faster wasn't much of a detour. The use case is unclear—it's a classic garbage can theory solution in search of a problem—but it doesn't hurt and it makes for a fun demo. The beach ball of doom earned its nickname; APFS was naturally built to avoid it.



 There are some seemingly absent or ancillary design goals: performance, openness, and data integrity. Squeezing the most IOPS or throughput out of a device probably isn't critical on watchOS, and it's relevant only to a small percentage of macOS users. It will be interesting to see how APFS performs once it ships (measuring any earlier would only misinform the public and insult the APFS team)."



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