Has anyone else noticed that the newest version of Install macOS High Sierra.app for 10.13.6 that is downloaded from the App Store is only 22.7MB and is missing the OS disk image? I make it a habit of creating an external bootable installer for each new OS version following the instructions Apple has documented here. Even though the installer is missing the OS image and since it does still have the createinstallmedia binary, I figured I would give it a shot, but it fails and gives the following error: /Applications/Install macOS High Sierra.app does not appear to be a valid OS installer application. However, this installer does work properly and upgrades the Sierra VM that was used to download it in the first place.
I am guessing that this may be just one more step towards Apple getting rid of imaging. Because if we cannot download an installer with the OS image built-in, we cannot use AutoDMG with ASR scripts and external bootable installers anymore.