File:Apple’s new version of macOS is called High Sierra

Description
Apple announced a new version of the operating system for its computers today called macOS High Sierra. No, seriously! It will be available as a developer beta today, in public beta later this month, and it will roll out to the public for free this fall.

"We talked to the guys and they said ‘this might be misconstrued,’ but they assured us this name is fully baked,” Apple’s senior vice president of software Craig Federighi said on stage.

But the updated version of Apple’s macOS Sierra operating system promises to be faster, safer, and help applications use less space than ever. A big part of this will be Apple’s File System replacing the Hierarchical File System, which the company claims its own file system will be more safe and stable. It will also be much faster.

On the performance side, Safari’s JavaScript performance will be 80 percent faster than Chrome’s, according to Federighi. Safari on macOS High Sierra will also will also get some security upgrades. The browser will use machine learning to identify and block ad trackers as you navigate around the web, and will be capable of blocking autoplay videos. The Mail application, meanwhile, will take up 35 percent less space than it has in the past.

The Photos app is getting refreshed in High Sierra, too. Apple’s giving it an overhaul that takes what was mostly a photo management app with light editing tools and turns it into something that’s much closer to a Photoshop experience. The company promises it will be easier to search through your images now, too.

Everything’s also going to look better on High Sierra. Apple announced a new version of Metal, it’s graphics technology, called Metal 2. A big advantage of the upgrade to Metal is that macOS will now be able to support VR — something Apple showed off by bringing Lucasfilm’s ILMXLAB on stage to demo a new Star Wars VR experience featuring Darth Vader.