Mac OS High Sierra

Tl;Dr summary: Should you install High Sierra on your Mac and run Logos? NO! It's beta software! What's wrong with you? Actually, I did, and it's working fairly well, with some issues that to me are minor, but to you might be deal breakers.

After several hours of running Apple's new Mac OS, High Sierra (OSX 10.13 for those keeping score) on an external drive, especially with Logos, I've installed the OS on my MacBook Pro.

Should people do this? Of course not. Mac OS High Sierra is beta software, and only a silly person would install it on their working machine.

But I did it anyway, because I've learned that it's almost always possible to retrace your steps and get back into a stable release. That being said, your mileage, as they say, can and will vary. It's working fine for me (more below), but it might just cause your computer to melt, your hair to fall out, and your church bells to play The Liberty Bell march.

But, some of us are silly people, and even though we understand that beta software can do funny things, we are curious enough to install it just for kicks, and are prepared to go back to a stable release if necessary.

Thanks for your concern.

And so, for those of you who might be curious, or even want to install High Sierra on your computer, here is MY experience specifically regarding Logos.

There are occasional display glitches in Guide panels, where a largish portion disappears:

Floating the mouse back over the Guide panel causes the text to reappear. Expanded sections seem to be immune, and function as expected.

The default Logos font blanks out words in Bible and resource panels, but other fonts work just fine.

Logos' default font:

Times New Roman:

Logos' default Greek font also has "holes," but changing to Gentium solved it for me. As far as I can tell, Logos' default Hebrew font is fine.

Checkboxes don't check. For instance, clicking "One verse per line" doesn't change the checkmark. However, it does change the display to one verse per line . . .

and the checkbox is marked as such when you open the panel again.

As of this post, I haven't found any other glitches. I'm sure more exist, and I will post them here as I find them.

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Comments

Robert murray

Thanks for posting, I too have been thinking of being crazy enough to do the same. Unfortunately, I am in the states with only my MacBook Air and my iMac is in Bolivia (missionary). So I have not been brave enough to try it as I need said laptop.

I also want to test ios11 And the app. Any experience with this?

i must be able to use the app because I preach from my notes within the app.

Gregory Lawhorn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/910870#Comment_910870

Hi Robert,

As I mentioned, there are some graphics issues, such as tab names, but Logos has functioned just fine on my Macbook Pro (the late 2016 model). I found that installing High Sierra to an external drive, and installing Logos there, allowed me to see whether or not it would be reliable. Only after verifying it did I install High Sierra directly on my laptop.

I use my iPad to preach from. The most recent iOS 11 beta messes up text in the Logos sermon document on my iPad, unfortunately. However, I was able to export my mss to Word, then save it in iCloud as a PDF. I opened the PDF on my iPad, and it was complete, AND I was able to use my Apple Pencil to annotate my mss. It's a little bit of a runaround, but actually no worse than what I did for years.

Because of the nature of beta software, installations take a lot of time. It was a good day before my system had done all its indexing, and Logos had rebuilt its own index, and the speed of my laptop and Logos became reasonable. Logos is not speedy under any circumstances, so once it got itself worked out it wasn't much slower than before. But you'll need to leave it alone for a length of time, based on your system speed and the size of your Logos library.

The APFS file system seems to speed things up, BUT caused one program, Sonocent's Audio Note Taker, to stop working. Another reason to install on an external drive if you can before committing your Macbook Air.

Hope that helps – blessings with your ministry in Bolivia and time in the states!

Greg

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/910870#Comment_910870

i must be able to use the app because I preach from my notes within the app.

Since it is your only device, and you have a critical requirement, that would be a good reason to avoid the beta. Four months isn't that long to wait until (most of) the bugs get worked out, and the program is officially supported on macOS High Sierra.

Douglas Scott Meadows

Thank you, Gregory, for this post! Your one tip about changing the font from default to something else is a lifesaver!

D Scott Meadows

Gregory Lawhorn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/910974#Comment_910974

My pleasure - I'm glad it helped.

Gregory Lawhorn

An update regarding MacOS High Sierra Developer Beta 4 (more formally known as Version 10.13 Beta (17A315i) and Logos 7.8.0.0034

It appears that the issues I identified in the original post have been resolved.

Panels no longer have blanks in them
Default Logos fonts no longer have gaps in the text
Check boxes properly check and uncheck
The resource tabs no longer overlap

I don't quite have the gumption to run both the High Sierra beta AND the Logos beta, so I can't report on any issues there.

This has been your update. We now return you to your regularly scheduled day.

Mike Binks

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/914918#Comment_914918

The resource tabs no longer overlap

mmm... and some of them seem to have an X behind the label?

Gregory Lawhorn

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/914919#Comment_914919

I did see that before, but it's not happening on my system with the current versions:

Have you updated to the High Sierra beta 4?