Apple VP Craig Federighi Says APFS Boot Support For Fusion Drives Coming ‘Very Soon’

Apple will share news regarding APFS boot support for Mac Fusion Drives “very soon,” claims Apple’s software engineering VP, Craig Federighi.

A new report from MacRumors explains that a MacRumors reader named Jonathan received an email from Federighi yesterday after asking the executive whether or not APFS was still in the pipeline for Fusion Drives. Fusion Drives, used in iMacs and Mac mini devices, combine a hard drive with flash storage to provide the speed of a SSD alongside the affordability of a standard drive.

“We intend to address this question very soon,” Federighi said in the email. Federighi’s email is the first time that anyone inside Apple has addressed the issue.

Short for Apple File System, APFS was introduced with the arrival of macOS High Sierra. It’s optimized for modern Apple devices that increasingly rely on flash storage, but Apple’s Mac Fusion Drives weren’t supported beyond the first few beta versions. APFS was first launched in beta for storage drives only shortly after the 2016 WWDC, and Apple started the migration to APFS in devices with iOS 10.3.

Replacing Apple’s previous HFS+ file system, APFS brought a unified file system complete with the full disk encryption features found in the latest versions of macOS with the data protection feature that encrypts every file individually on iOS.

Federighi’s email could suggest that the Cupertino company potentially plans to add the feature in an upcoming software update, even as soon as the macOS 10.14 update expected to be announced at WWDC next month.

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.