For general usage with current versions of MacOS/SMB, should I just access my files (movies, videos, pics) across the SMB shares I have set up for the rest of my network, or should I also enable AFP?  Which is the 'better option' for Mac use at this point?

AFP is only needed for Time Machine. There are other Mac specific network applications that may rely on it but you'd know if you did.

Cool, thanks!  I'll stick w/ SMB unless I ever decide to Time Machine.

My experience is that AFP works better (meaning that it's overall slightly faster and less "lumpy") than SMB when writing general files from OS X to unRAID but SMB works much better for reading files. Reading from unRAID via AFP is terribly slow and very "lumpy", with long pauses when nothing seems to be happening. I don't know why this is the case as I would expect AFP to be the better choice for OS X. Other NAS devices, such as WD MyCloud and Drobo 5N work, as expected, better with AFP in both directions.

 

I'd be interested to read other Mac users' experience.

 

My experience is that AFP works better (meaning that it's overall slightly faster and less "lumpy") than SMB when writing general files from OS X to unRAID but SMB works much better for reading files. Reading from unRAID via AFP is terribly slow and very "lumpy", with long pauses when nothing seems to be happening. I don't know why this is the case as I would expect AFP to be the better choice for OS X. Other NAS devices, such as WD MyCloud and Drobo 5N work, as expected, better with AFP in both directions.

 

I'd be interested to read other Mac users' experience.

 

I've seen similar experience with my Macs. AFP for writing is usually noticeably faster then writing with SMB, though reading with SMB is usually faster. Unfortunately, Apple still has a screwy implementation of Samba in OS X 10.10 and 10.11.

My experience is that AFP works better (meaning that it's overall slightly faster and less "lumpy") than SMB when writing general files from OS X to unRAID but SMB works much better for reading files. Reading from unRAID via AFP is terribly slow and very "lumpy", with long pauses when nothing seems to be happening. I don't know why this is the case as I would expect AFP to be the better choice for OS X. Other NAS devices, such as WD MyCloud and Drobo 5N work, as expected, better with AFP in both directions.

 

I'd be interested to read other Mac users' experience.

 

I've seen similar experience with my Macs. AFP for writing is usually noticeably faster then writing with SMB, though reading with SMB is usually faster. Unfortunately, Apple still has a screwy implementation of Samba in OS X 10.10 and 10.11.

 

I second that - its impossible to browse my music share over SMB or AFP - only NFS works, unless I want to wait half an hour for a directory listing - though everything works great on a Windows. Tempted to jump back to MS....