During the WWDC Apple keynote address, they announced the next major version of macOS is to be called macOS High Sierra.

New File System

The original Mac file system has its roots in HFS for around 30 years but alot has changed in 30 years in the computer world with things getting a little faster and storage getting a little bigger and so Apple have decided its time fro a new file system There are launching the new Apple File System (APFS) in macOS High Sierra as their new default file system on Mac.

New Hardware And Software Acceleration

macOS High Sierra will also have improvements in hardware and software acceleration with H.265 encoding for video and HEVC hardware acceleration but only on 'newer' Macs.

Metal 2

In other news, Apple has announced Metal 2 with new optimisations and APIs and up to 10x better draw call throughput. There is also to be a Metal Developer Kit with a ThunderBolt 3 enclosure with an AMD Radeon RX 580 graphics card and a USB-C hub apparently available from today. Apple is also introducing Metal for VR in macOS High Sierra.

Mac Apps Developments

Moving onto other macOS apps, Safari now has autoplay blocking designed to detect sites that autoplay video and block playback. Safari will also have Intelligent Tracking Prevention using machine learning to identify trackers. Apple say it is not about blocking ads, the web behaves as it always has, but your privacy is protected.

The Mac email app, Mail will have full-screen Split View. The Photos app has new organisational and editing tools and a chronological order new imports view that apparently can be filtered.

macOS High Sierra Availability

macOS High Sierra is available as a developer beta today, with the public beta expected in late June and the free upgrade due to be available in the 'fall'.