Everyone knows that January, the first month of the New Year, is named after Janus the Roman god of transitions. There are a couple of problems with that, as neither the Romans nor the Greeks started the New Year in the middle of winter, not when they could help it. Although it’s true that the Romans named the first month of the year Ianuarius, according to some ancient almanacs that wasn’t in honour of Janus, but of Juno. The more modern assumption that January, now a winter month, was named after Janus, classically depicted as a duality, makes a more plausible story. Janus characteristically has two faces on a single head, one looking backwards to the old year, the other looking forwards to the new: Ianus Bifrons in Latin.
Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), The Triumph of History over Time (1772), fresco, dimensions not known, Camera dei Papiri, Vatican City. Wikimedia Commons.
So he appears in Anton Raphael Mengs’ wonderful fresco in the Vatican’s Camera dei Papiri, The Triumph of History over Time (1772). You’ll no doubt recognise Father Time with his long grey beard and scythe in the foreground, behind whom History is busy keeping records. She looks up to the fresh new face of Janus, as the old face looks away to the right.
This New Year I’d like to cast us back to September 2016, when macOS 10.12 Sierra had just been released, six years after Apple had released the iPhone 4, the first with its own A4 chip. Just four days before Sierra, Apple released the iPhone 7, with its two P and two E cores, making it the first Apple silicon design to adopt Arm’s big.LITTLE architecture. Maybe some engineers have been working on a prototype Mac using an A11 (to be released in the iPhone 8 the following year), and the specifications for the first generation of Arm-based Macs are being finalised.
To get from Sierra running on Intel 4-core Skylake processors to macOS 11 running on 4-core M1 chips, there’s a long list of changes to be made, including:
a modern file system to replace HFS+, designed for SSDs, with support for containers, volumes, sparse files, snapshots, and more;
running 64-bit code throughout;
macOS to run from a signed system volume on a mounted snapshot verified by a tree of hashes;
replacement macOS installers and updates to maintain macOS in the SSV;
a firmlinked Data volume to be writeable by the user, with FileVault implemented using hardware encryption;
a secure enclave;
a fully secure boot process in custom firmware without using EFI.
Engineers have already been working on those, and the first release of the new file system, APFS, is intended for the following year, when intermediate hardware based on the A10 in the iPhone 7 will be released as the T2 chip, providing a secure enclave, hardware encryption and a firmware development platform. The problem now is how to complete the rest of the transition, so enabling the first Apple silicon Macs to be released by the end of 2020.
Although four years might seem a long time, here’s a timeline for those changes:
2017: APFS release, first T2 Macs.
2018: completion of major APFS features, transition to 64-bit code.
2019: 64-bit only, intermediate boot volume group without SSV.
2020: SSV and boot volume group, replacement install and update, firmware for a full hardware release late in the year.
2021: improved efficiency in macOS updates, paired Recovery volume.
And that’s exactly what happened from macOS 10.13 High Sierra to 12.0 Monterey.
However and whenever those changes were to occur, it was going to be a demanding period for Apple’s engineers, third-party software developers, system administrators and users alike. Was there an alternative that could have completed the same transition at a slower and more comfortable pace?
Merging the changes for any adjacent years would have resulted in at least one upgrade that would have made impossible demands. For those who have wanted major versions of macOS to be released every two years, the consequence would have been that macOS 11.0 would have been released just a few months ago, and only now would we be trying out our new M1 Macs. The next time that someone wishes that macOS had been upgraded at a slower pace over those years, remind them how that would have delayed introduction of Apple silicon Macs by around four years.
With that, it’s time for Janus to swap faces, and look forward to the coming year.
我是 [伟途亦可思] 开发者，最近有不少人通过 App 反馈问我为什么加广告了，以及 V 站上也有几个相关的帖子，所以我说明一下。
1.为什么开发 [伟途亦可思]
App 是 19 年上线的，因为我之前属于 V 站重度用户（截止今天 V 站连续 1500 天），我个人又比较喜欢用 App 来浏览内容，所以我就开发了 [伟途亦可思] 这款 App ，然后上架到 AppStore 并且在 V 站做了一些推广。我的初心是打算一直免费并维护，做到最好的 V 站第三方 App 。从 19 年到最近，也确实是一直没收费，并且去年开发了 Android 版本，同样也是免费无广告的。
2.为什么最新版本要加广告?
去年我的开发者账号是 10 月份到期，我没有继续续费了，因为这些年除了 [伟途亦可思] 我基本也没有别的 App 长期上架，加上我最近逛 V 站频率很低了，所以不打算继续维护了，而且 Apple 每年 688 的账号费用也不想继续交了。下架了以后，一直有用户通过邮件或者在 V 站问我，怎么不上架了，下不到了。在犹豫了一段时间后，上周我还是又续费了 Apple 账号。但是我想的是这次我想把这个账号费用赚回来，不然我没有继续维护的动力了。所以重新上架后，我就开通了收费下载，但是开了一天以后，我就感觉我应该先加广告，然后后面再做一个无广告版本，然后我就改成免费的。没考虑到 App 变成限免这回事，导致那两天下载量飙增，V 站竟然有人说我是为了骗下载。。。(我看了一下数据，那天就一个付费下载用户，如果看到这个帖子，可以联系我，后面出了收费版我送给你。)
然后在最近的版本，我就加上广告了。我之前上架过不少 App ，这次是第一次加广告，可能广告展示的太大，然后就看到 V 站有几个帖子在说要卸载，广告太恶心，也有用户在 AppStore 评价号召大家一起卸载。。。
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