Comment by talldayo
1 month ago
> Just like baseband firmware is not that, and activation is not that, yet using them requires communication with Apple all the same.
I mean, this is just wrong. Baseband firmware and carrier activation can be managed entirely independently of Apple, they just choose to manage it themselves. The number of places where Apple chooses to insert their own services as arbitrary middlemen has been a perennially worrying topic among Apple enthusiasts. It's not just disrespectful to people that pay a premium for fewer service advertisements, it's downright unsafe and does not reflect the sort of forward-thinking security that people in the industry respect.
There was a time when Apple focused on real and innovative product differentiation, but I'll be damned if you can give me a post-Wozniak example that isn't under antitrust scrutiny. Apple relies on marketing and branding to make people feel unsafe in a fundamentally insecure system - I don't respect that as a proponent of innovation and competitive digital markets.
Baseband firmware and OS activation have nothing to do with the carrier, just like it didn't on RIM devices back in the day (which is probably the only somewhat comparable version of this).
Perhaps you are thinking about subscription activation (be it GSM or CDMA) and parameters for cell networks (which can indeed be consumed by the baseband, which will be running firmware supplied by the manufacturer, sometimes re-packaged in system images as done in OEM feature phones and many android phones).
Either way, macOS devices do the same thing (activation) as do iPads without cell networking. Same goes for radio firmware loading and updates. You'll find most wintel laptops doing the same for things like WiFi (regardless of softmac/halfmac/hardmac chips).