marcan addressed this early on in the project, arguing that Intel platforms including some of those advocated for by the FSF are less open and more at risk of upstream abuse in some very significant ways.
> For example intel systems (and Android) run resident supervisor code you can't get rid of, and that can do remotely initiated updates you have no control over. That's not so on Apple silicon.
The Oxide Computer folks wrote their own AMD boot loader and have an entire chain of trust and apparently (?) basically got rid of the supervisor code (Ring -2 and -3). They also have custom motherboards with third-party BMCs.
What good does that bring if Apple shuts down the project?
Also, I don't believe Apple has no backdoors and such. They basically made it impossible to be root on your iPhone, so you don't think they have a almighty-super-superuser mode on their laptops that only they can use? Wishful thinking if you ask me.
What good would it do Apple to shut down the project?
There’s no IP misuse and the ability to boot an arbitrary OS is an intentional part of the design of M-series Macs. The built in lag time of the current situation ensures that macOS will never have its position as the dominant OS for Mac hardware challenged. Further, doing this would stoke the flames of the already red-hot internet Apple haters and unnecessarily burn goodwill. It’d be a loss across the board.
If they did, I still have macOS, an OS I can easily disable all runtime protections and security on, rig up into a kernel debugger, arbitrarily dump memory of other processes and so on. If Apple takes away our ability to easily boot alternative kernels, the tools are readily available to find...alternative ways around iBoot security, which is not ideal for Apple since iOS iBoot is mostly the same as it is on macOS.
I find it hard to believe that Apple would purposefully shoot themselves in their own feet, unless you also believe that they would lock down the Mac as much as an iPad, ever.
>What good does that bring if Apple shuts down the project?
How could they do that? They could cease providing the facilities the project relies on in newer chips, but the existing chips, er, exist. They could stop making chips all together and go back to intel. It's not a useful hypothetical.
>Also, I don't believe Apple has no backdoors and such. They basically made it impossible to be root on your iPhone, so you don't think they have a almighty-super-superuser mode on their laptops that only they can use?
It's possible such a thing exists, of course, it's possible on intel, or AMD, or any ARM chips, or any chip at all. However such a back door, if discovered, would not be accessible only to them. It would have the same problem that all such backdoors have, in that if Apple can exploit it, others can exploit it. Apple very heavily relies on the claim that they have no such back door, and they have relied on this as a legal defence, and frankly it's hard to see how they would benefit from having such a back door. A chunk of their business model and legal liability protection depends on not having such a back door.
>Wishful thinking if you ask me.
If you say so, this is all about relative risk. However what reason might anyone have for thinking that any other platform, such as Intel with it's proprietary supervisor code with remote updatability, is more under the control of the user? There may be platforms that have a better security architecture that's more under the control of the user, but I can't think of any of the major ones that does. Which would you suggest?
Apple could also support open standards like UEFI/dt/acpi. Asahi uses lots of workarounds (including pretending to be MacOS) to be even able to boot the linux kernel. This would projects such as Asahi a lot easier and more reliable.
UEFI or its predecessor ACPI are complicated and support a long list of legacy stuff that has absolutely no value to Apple at all so why should they do the development?
It's like asking Tesla for a fuel tank so it would be easier to install a gasoline engine.
> Asahi uses lots of workarounds (including pretending to be MacOS) to be even able to boot the linux kernel.
In the x86 sphere it isn't that much better either, most ACPI tables are thoroughly broken if Linux announces itself as Linux and not as Windows. In fact, a lot of machines' ACPI tables barely work on Windows.
These people are singlehandedly saving _millions_ of laptops from going to the landfill one day. That's a valiant effort and they're doing it wonderfully. Regardless, one of the points of Linux is to install it on as much hardware as possible. Do you think people that managed to get it installed on iPods, PS5s, Wiis, Chromebooks, routers, Nintendo Switches, etc. should all stop just because they're doing something unsupported? Most of those cases were met with friction by the original OEM. If anything, Apple has been pretty laissez faire about the whole thing compared to Nintendo and Sony who will ban your console if you hack it.
Those laptops don't need to go to any landfill. They are much too precious to not recycle the metals and other materials and will be taken care of if you return them to the manufacturer. (by law, at least in the EU)
Yeah should they design their own computer chips? And do literally everything need for such a platform. That is literally 10000x the effort. There is no change the same group of people could create such an open solution. Hardware is just much harder in so many ways and no comparable OpenPlatform exists.
marcan addressed this early on in the project, arguing that Intel platforms including some of those advocated for by the FSF are less open and more at risk of upstream abuse in some very significant ways.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29307377
> For example intel systems (and Android) run resident supervisor code you can't get rid of, and that can do remotely initiated updates you have no control over. That's not so on Apple silicon.
The Oxide Computer folks wrote their own AMD boot loader and have an entire chain of trust and apparently (?) basically got rid of the supervisor code (Ring -2 and -3). They also have custom motherboards with third-party BMCs.
Could something similar be done on Intel?
I suppose it's possible, after all if the thing can phone home and update itself, that could be spoofed so it updates itself with your code.
However if that phone home feature is read only, it could always just re-root itself.
> Could something similar be done on Intel?
Yes: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%253Asite+phoronix.com+'Dasharo'
What good does that bring if Apple shuts down the project?
Also, I don't believe Apple has no backdoors and such. They basically made it impossible to be root on your iPhone, so you don't think they have a almighty-super-superuser mode on their laptops that only they can use? Wishful thinking if you ask me.
What good would it do Apple to shut down the project?
There’s no IP misuse and the ability to boot an arbitrary OS is an intentional part of the design of M-series Macs. The built in lag time of the current situation ensures that macOS will never have its position as the dominant OS for Mac hardware challenged. Further, doing this would stoke the flames of the already red-hot internet Apple haters and unnecessarily burn goodwill. It’d be a loss across the board.
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Why would Apple do that?
If they did, I still have macOS, an OS I can easily disable all runtime protections and security on, rig up into a kernel debugger, arbitrarily dump memory of other processes and so on. If Apple takes away our ability to easily boot alternative kernels, the tools are readily available to find...alternative ways around iBoot security, which is not ideal for Apple since iOS iBoot is mostly the same as it is on macOS.
I find it hard to believe that Apple would purposefully shoot themselves in their own feet, unless you also believe that they would lock down the Mac as much as an iPad, ever.
1 reply →
>What good does that bring if Apple shuts down the project?
How could they do that? They could cease providing the facilities the project relies on in newer chips, but the existing chips, er, exist. They could stop making chips all together and go back to intel. It's not a useful hypothetical.
>Also, I don't believe Apple has no backdoors and such. They basically made it impossible to be root on your iPhone, so you don't think they have a almighty-super-superuser mode on their laptops that only they can use?
It's possible such a thing exists, of course, it's possible on intel, or AMD, or any ARM chips, or any chip at all. However such a back door, if discovered, would not be accessible only to them. It would have the same problem that all such backdoors have, in that if Apple can exploit it, others can exploit it. Apple very heavily relies on the claim that they have no such back door, and they have relied on this as a legal defence, and frankly it's hard to see how they would benefit from having such a back door. A chunk of their business model and legal liability protection depends on not having such a back door.
>Wishful thinking if you ask me.
If you say so, this is all about relative risk. However what reason might anyone have for thinking that any other platform, such as Intel with it's proprietary supervisor code with remote updatability, is more under the control of the user? There may be platforms that have a better security architecture that's more under the control of the user, but I can't think of any of the major ones that does. Which would you suggest?
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> last time I looked at the schematics for one of those
When was the last time they looked at the schematics for one of the Apple machines? Oh, wait.
These efforts will also save a lot of old macbooks from the landfill in the future.
What do you mean? You mean not on Apple hardware? That exists, that's basically every other Linux distro in existence.
Apple could also support open standards like UEFI/dt/acpi. Asahi uses lots of workarounds (including pretending to be MacOS) to be even able to boot the linux kernel. This would projects such as Asahi a lot easier and more reliable.
And I'm not even talking about drivers
UEFI or its predecessor ACPI are complicated and support a long list of legacy stuff that has absolutely no value to Apple at all so why should they do the development? It's like asking Tesla for a fuel tank so it would be easier to install a gasoline engine.
5 replies →
> Asahi uses lots of workarounds (including pretending to be MacOS) to be even able to boot the linux kernel.
In the x86 sphere it isn't that much better either, most ACPI tables are thoroughly broken if Linux announces itself as Linux and not as Windows. In fact, a lot of machines' ACPI tables barely work on Windows.
These people are singlehandedly saving _millions_ of laptops from going to the landfill one day. That's a valiant effort and they're doing it wonderfully. Regardless, one of the points of Linux is to install it on as much hardware as possible. Do you think people that managed to get it installed on iPods, PS5s, Wiis, Chromebooks, routers, Nintendo Switches, etc. should all stop just because they're doing something unsupported? Most of those cases were met with friction by the original OEM. If anything, Apple has been pretty laissez faire about the whole thing compared to Nintendo and Sony who will ban your console if you hack it.
Those laptops don't need to go to any landfill. They are much too precious to not recycle the metals and other materials and will be taken care of if you return them to the manufacturer. (by law, at least in the EU)
Still, reuse > recycling
Recycling the metals is obviously far less useful than being able to still operate them even if Apple stops macOS updates for them!
Yeah should they design their own computer chips? And do literally everything need for such a platform. That is literally 10000x the effort. There is no change the same group of people could create such an open solution. Hardware is just much harder in so many ways and no comparable OpenPlatform exists.