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Edit: I point out Apple failing to write drivers FOR THEIR OWN LAPTOPS and I get downvotes? :/ Apple just doesn't seem to care about build quality beyond the c

Edit: I point out Apple failing to write drivers FOR THEIR OWN LAPTOPS and I get downvotes? :/ Apple just doesn't seem to care about build quality beyond the cosmetics of their Mac lineup. A great example of this is how they have dual connections from the keyboard & trackpad to the mainboard (USB and SPI), while the UEFI and Linux have drivers to support the keyboard fully, macOS has no driver for the built-in USB connection. What this means is when your coffee spills on your Mac, the keyboard won't work in macOS. Louis Rossman did a video demonstrating Apple's lack of drivers for their own hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geGmC1xI4zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geGmC1xI4zo

new299 9y ago
Because it seems fair enough as en engineering decision? Apple also provide firmware updates far longer than most manufacturers (there was a recent-ish CCC? talk highlighting this).
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  > Because it seems fair enough as en engineering decision? Huh? Supporting hardware with drivers is purely a software decision, its not as though software adds noteworthy weight to a device. > Apple also provide firmware updates far longer than most manufacturers Only for iPhones, on Mac they leave your iCloud email in in plaintext on the UEFI after the computer is wiped. For computers, expect 6 to 7 years of macOS updates at most, meanwhile Windows & Linux offer support to ancient i386 systems still.
  - azdle 9y ago
    > Supporting hardware with drivers is purely a software decision, its not as though software adds noteworthy weight to a device. But writing drivers still takes engineering time and costs money. Why bother writing two different drivers for two different interfaces when they do the same thing?
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      > Why bother writing two different drivers for two different interfaces when they do the same thing? Reliability and quality, the hardware is already there, why would you hamstring the product's reliability?
      - azdle 9y ago
        Because a failure that causes one interface to fail, but not the other seems really unlikely. Plus it wouldn't just be another driver to write, you also have to come up with some logic that determines if one has failed and use the other instead. This isn't linux where you can reasonably tell users "oh just blacklist this kernel driver and it'll use the other instead."
        StudentStuff 9y ago
        > a failure that causes one interface to fail, but not the other seems really unlikely. Go follow that link in my original post. Its a fairly common water damage issue for Macbooks where the SPI bus will be damaged, but the USB connection will be fine. > come up with some logic that determines if one has failed and use the other instead. Once again, go follow that link. Apple already built the logic, just instead of switching to USB, it begs you to pair a bluetooth keyboard!
        azdle 9y ago
        Ah, sorry, I wasn't somewhere I could watch the video. If that's the case, I take back what I said, it could probably make sense to include both drivers then.
        StudentStuff 9y ago
        No worries, I avoid linked videos like the plague myself. This one is decently short (for these types of repair videos) at 11 minutes, and is pretty easy to jump through if your pressed for time.
  - mattl 9y ago
    How much of your email are they storing in UEFI? And why?
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      The full email address is stored, there are a couple videos where Louis Rossman nabs the email address (occasionally with an SPI programmer) and contacts the original owner, finds out the laptop is stolen and returns it.
      - mattl 9y ago
        Oh the email address. That makes more sense. I thought perhaps they were storing iCloud email in the chip for your account.
  - sniglom 9y ago
    This is not really true, the difference is much smaller and you will not boot windows 10 with the i386 feature set. Since Windows 8 the NX bit is required, making it require relatively modern CPU's, mostly x86_64, allthough a few x86 has it as well. So for example, you can run the 32bit version of win 10 on the 32bit Core Duo (it has nx), while OSX with its 64bit requirement needs a Core 2 Duo. Newer OSX require a graphics card of DX10 level, Windows 10 require DX9 level.
  - lvillani 9y ago
    > on Mac they leave your iCloud email in in plaintext on the UEFI after the computer is wiped. You are probably referring to the "Find My Mac" token that's stored in the NVRAM. It's fairly easy to wipe it with one of these commands/procedures: - sudo nvram -d fmm-mobileme-token-FMM - sudo nvram -c # this one will wipe the entire NVRAM, use with care! - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063 > For computers, expect 6 to 7 years of macOS updates at most High Sierra can be installed on "Late 2009 iMacs", that right there is 8 years of security and feature updates. Those models will get security and point updates, at the very least, until the next version of macOS, for a total of 9 years (if not more, we'll see).
    - pfranz 9y ago
      Last year's macOS Sierra won't install on my wife's 2010 Macbook Pro. Apple doesn't seem to always roll off support every year. I'm guessing some version adds new tech and they drop support for 3-4 years worth of hardware all at once (that hardware is usually at minimum 5 years old).
fish_fan 9y ago
Thankfully I have no expectation my keyboard will work after spilling water on it.
Dunedan 9y ago
> Apple just doesn't seem to care about build quality beyond the cosmetics of their Mac lineup. A great example of this is how they have dual connections from the keyboard & trackpad to the mainboard (USB and SPI), while the UEFI and Linux have drivers to support the keyboard fully, macOS has no driver for the built-in USB connection. Well, it's complicated. In the past mobile Macs used USB to connect the input devices like most other notebooks do. At a certain point Apple decided that it would be a good idea to switch to SPI for power consumption reasons. Following that decision there were certain models which had wired both, e.g. the MacBook Pro 2015. While Apple switched already to use SPI there, Linux still used USB, as there was simply no driver support. The Retina MacBook in 2015 was the first mobile Mac which didn't support USB for input devices anymore. The MacBook Pro followed in late 2016. That left Linux without a working driver for the input devices. A year ago somebody started to reverse engineer the SPI protocol to get a working driver: https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/ https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/ The release of the SPI-only MacBook Pros end of last year sparked the further development of this driver, so it's slowly reaching a state were everything is just working (maybe except for advanced Touchpad features). That driver is still not included in any major Linux distribution, as it's still pretty experimental and also required patching the Linux kernel for quite some time, because Apple does some ACPI-related stuff different than the PC-world. Thankfully support for Apples way will land in the upcoming Linux 4.14 (https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/53ac64aac9af8cd0e5456c8a9bb68c47b571b0a9 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/53ac64aac9af8cd0e54...) making some code in the driver redundant (https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/pull/46 https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/pull/46). So I would say that whole topic isn't about not to care about build quality, but about to care about power consumption. Still having USB on some generations of Macs in addition to SPI was probably simply to ease the migration by unbundling the hardware changes from the software changes.

new299 9y ago

Because it seems fair enough as en engineering decision? Apple also provide firmware updates far longer than most manufacturers (there was a recent-ish CCC? talk highlighting this).

StudentStuff 9y ago
> Because it seems fair enough as en engineering decision? Huh? Supporting hardware with drivers is purely a software decision, its not as though software adds noteworthy weight to a device. > Apple also provide firmware updates far longer than most manufacturers Only for iPhones, on Mac they leave your iCloud email in in plaintext on the UEFI after the computer is wiped. For computers, expect 6 to 7 years of macOS updates at most, meanwhile Windows & Linux offer support to ancient i386 systems still.
- azdle 9y ago
  > Supporting hardware with drivers is purely a software decision, its not as though software adds noteworthy weight to a device. But writing drivers still takes engineering time and costs money. Why bother writing two different drivers for two different interfaces when they do the same thing?
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    > Why bother writing two different drivers for two different interfaces when they do the same thing? Reliability and quality, the hardware is already there, why would you hamstring the product's reliability?
    - azdle 9y ago
      Because a failure that causes one interface to fail, but not the other seems really unlikely. Plus it wouldn't just be another driver to write, you also have to come up with some logic that determines if one has failed and use the other instead. This isn't linux where you can reasonably tell users "oh just blacklist this kernel driver and it'll use the other instead."
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        > a failure that causes one interface to fail, but not the other seems really unlikely. Go follow that link in my original post. Its a fairly common water damage issue for Macbooks where the SPI bus will be damaged, but the USB connection will be fine. > come up with some logic that determines if one has failed and use the other instead. Once again, go follow that link. Apple already built the logic, just instead of switching to USB, it begs you to pair a bluetooth keyboard!
        azdle 9y ago
        Ah, sorry, I wasn't somewhere I could watch the video. If that's the case, I take back what I said, it could probably make sense to include both drivers then.
        StudentStuff 9y ago
        No worries, I avoid linked videos like the plague myself. This one is decently short (for these types of repair videos) at 11 minutes, and is pretty easy to jump through if your pressed for time.
- mattl 9y ago
  How much of your email are they storing in UEFI? And why?
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    The full email address is stored, there are a couple videos where Louis Rossman nabs the email address (occasionally with an SPI programmer) and contacts the original owner, finds out the laptop is stolen and returns it.
    - mattl 9y ago
      Oh the email address. That makes more sense. I thought perhaps they were storing iCloud email in the chip for your account.
- sniglom 9y ago
  This is not really true, the difference is much smaller and you will not boot windows 10 with the i386 feature set. Since Windows 8 the NX bit is required, making it require relatively modern CPU's, mostly x86_64, allthough a few x86 has it as well. So for example, you can run the 32bit version of win 10 on the 32bit Core Duo (it has nx), while OSX with its 64bit requirement needs a Core 2 Duo. Newer OSX require a graphics card of DX10 level, Windows 10 require DX9 level.
- lvillani 9y ago
  > on Mac they leave your iCloud email in in plaintext on the UEFI after the computer is wiped. You are probably referring to the "Find My Mac" token that's stored in the NVRAM. It's fairly easy to wipe it with one of these commands/procedures: - sudo nvram -d fmm-mobileme-token-FMM - sudo nvram -c # this one will wipe the entire NVRAM, use with care! - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063 > For computers, expect 6 to 7 years of macOS updates at most High Sierra can be installed on "Late 2009 iMacs", that right there is 8 years of security and feature updates. Those models will get security and point updates, at the very least, until the next version of macOS, for a total of 9 years (if not more, we'll see).
  - pfranz 9y ago
    Last year's macOS Sierra won't install on my wife's 2010 Macbook Pro. Apple doesn't seem to always roll off support every year. I'm guessing some version adds new tech and they drop support for 3-4 years worth of hardware all at once (that hardware is usually at minimum 5 years old).

fish_fan 9y ago

Thankfully I have no expectation my keyboard will work after spilling water on it.

Dunedan 9y ago

> Apple just doesn't seem to care about build quality beyond the cosmetics of their Mac lineup. A great example of this is how they have dual connections from the keyboard & trackpad to the mainboard (USB and SPI), while the UEFI and Linux have drivers to support the keyboard fully, macOS has no driver for the built-in USB connection. Well, it's complicated. In the past mobile Macs used USB to connect the input devices like most other notebooks do. At a certain point Apple decided that it would be a good idea to switch to SPI for power consumption reasons. Following that decision there were certain models which had wired both, e.g. the MacBook Pro 2015. While Apple switched already to use SPI there, Linux still used USB, as there was simply no driver support. The Retina MacBook in 2015 was the first mobile Mac which didn't support USB for input devices anymore. The MacBook Pro followed in late 2016. That left Linux without a working driver for the input devices. A year ago somebody started to reverse engineer the SPI protocol to get a working driver: https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/ https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/ The release of the SPI-only MacBook Pros end of last year sparked the further development of this driver, so it's slowly reaching a state were everything is just working (maybe except for advanced Touchpad features). That driver is still not included in any major Linux distribution, as it's still pretty experimental and also required patching the Linux kernel for quite some time, because Apple does some ACPI-related stuff different than the PC-world. Thankfully support for Apples way will land in the upcoming Linux 4.14 (https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/53ac64aac9af8cd0e5456c8a9bb68c47b571b0a9 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/53ac64aac9af8cd0e54...) making some code in the driver redundant (https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/pull/46 https://github.com/cb22/macbook12-spi-driver/pull/46). So I would say that whole topic isn't about not to care about build quality, but about to care about power consumption. Still having USB on some generations of Macs in addition to SPI was probably simply to ease the migration by unbundling the hardware changes from the software changes.