> I want the possibility to dual boot or share drives with other operating systems, I don't need a new proprietary filesystem.
Then you're in luck. APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification when Apple File System is released for macOS in 2017." So there will be nothing preventing drivers from being written for other operating systems, though of course it will require someone to actually do the work. In return you get a FS that improves on HFS+ in reliability, performance, and features (volumes). If there is enough interest I imagine it might even compete with btrfs for use as a root volume for Linux installations… though there probably won't be.
You may criticize Apple for not open sourcing their implementation of APFS, though I'm holding out hope they will do so eventually. An open source implementation would definitely be useful as a starting point for drivers for other operating systems, but to be fair, it would still require someone to spend the time to port it. Apple's HFS+ driver is open source as part of xnu, but Linux hfsplus doesn't support journaling which was added in 2002. That's not Apple's fault.
>Great. ... anyone else still waiting for the open FaceTime API announced in public on stage by Steve Jobs?
Only people who missed the part that some other company took them to court over a BS patent on it and won, so they couldn't finally do it.
Meanwhile, they HAVE opensourced other stuff, including Swift, in the meanwhile, so it's not like they have some big history of backtracking on open sourcing promises...
The rumor is that Apple changed its mind due to the VirnetX patent lawsuit, which forced it to switch FaceTime from P2P to relaying all calls through a central server. But who knows if that's the whole story. I'd still like to see an open FaceTime.
I haven't heard any statements suggesting that APFS is patented or that Apple wants to charge for licensing it, but it's possible. We'll see what happens when 10.13 is released...
Then you're in luck. APFS isn't proprietary, as Apple's website claims that "Apple plans to document and publish the APFS volume format specification when Apple File System is released for macOS in 2017." So there will be nothing preventing drivers from being written for other operating systems, though of course it will require someone to actually do the work. In return you get a FS that improves on HFS+ in reliability, performance, and features (volumes). If there is enough interest I imagine it might even compete with btrfs for use as a root volume for Linux installations… though there probably won't be.
You may criticize Apple for not open sourcing their implementation of APFS, though I'm holding out hope they will do so eventually. An open source implementation would definitely be useful as a starting point for drivers for other operating systems, but to be fair, it would still require someone to spend the time to port it. Apple's HFS+ driver is open source as part of xnu, but Linux hfsplus doesn't support journaling which was added in 2002. That's not Apple's fault.