Apple Releases First Beta of macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 to Public Beta Testers

Current macOS .4 release works fine with iOS enabled messages in the cloud. There is literally no difference in the user experience. Messages appear across all devices exactly the same. When iMessage in the Cloud is enabled whenever .5 is released. It wil free up some space on your Mac. That’s it. It will still to all intents and purposes be the the same experience. You get a text. It appears on all devices.

Not sure what the hold up is on 10.13.5. Rumors are swirling they are holding it untill wwdc because it contains support for new hardware that will be announced on Monday. With that said, it's strange nobody has picked up new hardware references in the beta build so it's anybody's guess... :rolleyes:

I think it's clear Apple have held 10.13.5 due to a significant bug or as others have suggested, waiting till new Macs have been announced at WWDC next week.

According to another user, the documentation is here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

However, I see no reference to the Mac. Strange...

yet still no 10.13.5 release o_O

Cached copy of the site with the macOS documentation

https://web.archive.org/web/20180531013209/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

Just wondering, there's no reference/option for Messages in the iCloud settings of macOS 10.13.5 beta? Or was it just not shown in the documentation. If so, that is pretty strange.

I hope that hiding new Macs isn't the reason why it's delayed. That would be really stupid because Apple already has public documentation on how to use iMessages in iCloud on macOS. That would cause a lot of confusion among everyday users and I don't think Apple would risk that just to keep Macs under wraps.

But who knows...

I can confirm that the documentation on this link has been changed today by Apple. I looked at it yesterday and it then had instructions for macOS as well.

There’s something strange going on.

Could it be that Apple—in last minute—decided that the different settings between iOS and macOS for Messages in iCloud is confusing and needs to be changed in macOS before it can be released?

The confusion between the settings were obvoius in yesteday’s documentation and people might by default go the the iCloud settings in macOS to try to enable Messages in iCloud from there—just to find out that the settings are elsewhere.

Cached copy of the site with the macOS documentation

https://web.archive.org/web/20180531013209/https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

Just wondering, there's no reference/option for Messages in the iCloud settings of macOS 10.13.5 beta? Or was it just not shown in the documentation. If so, that is pretty strange.

I'd guess there's some challenging back-end stuff involved in Messages in the Cloud, given that it also got postponed for quite a while on the iOS side as well. I would imagine that its release would have a pretty big potential impact on iCloud infrastructure, with millions of users potentially uploading (possibly) upward of a few GB each in iMessage attachments.

Just anecdotally, I've got several years' worth of accumulated iMessages on my primary Mac, and it's going to be a very substantial sync process when it happens and my archive gets merged with what's been uploaded from my phone. I have to imagine there are others like me out there.