5 ms·

> For security reasons, the T2 is the iMac Pro hardware’s “root of trust,” and it validates the entire boot process when the power comes on. The T2 starts up, c

by swozey 9y ago

> For security reasons, the T2 is the iMac Pro hardware’s “root of trust,” and it validates the entire boot process when the power comes on. The T2 starts up, checks things out, loads its bootloader, verifies that it’s legitimate and cryptographically signed by Apple, and then moves on to the next part of the boot process. If they start putting this in every machine going forward I wonder if this will be the end of the hackintosh

thinkythought 9y ago
Well, beginning of the end. It would be 3 years from whatever date they release a new version that locks it to a chip like this and drop support for old models without it. So lets say, 4-5 years. Actually, probably longer since they've been supporting old systems for as long as 8 years(2007 imac, others) with some macbook pros approaching 9-10 even. How long you think it would take for them to do this depends on whether you really think they'd just decide to cut off a ton of machines at once and reverse course on really long support windows. And long windows really seems to be a roadmap, if you look at how the ipad 2 was supported as well. I think they care more about "look at how we support our products!" than hackintoshes. What i could easily imagine though is way more features than just imessage and such being gate-kept into "only systems with our secure chip are allowed to run this"
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  I understand the security benefits but I can't help but just look at this as yet another piece of disposability on an already very "disposable" piece of 5K+ (starting) hardware. How many iPhones are now in landfills because you couldn't downgrade the OS to an old version that would be usable.
  - 1123581321 9y ago
    I agree with your main point about disposability. There shouldn’t be many iPhones in landfills, though. Apple recycles 100% of the materials, so as long as the old phone can be traded in or dropped off in an electronics bin, it won’t be wasted even though the owner will have been out the money by rebuying prematurely.
    - kalleboo 9y ago
      > Apple recycles 100% of the materials Do you have a source for that? It sounds hard to believe
      - Fezzik 9y ago
        If Apple gets its hands on the phone they have an impressive system for recycling: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-recycling-robot-photos-video-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-recycling-r... I could not find a reliable source for what portion of each phone is recycled, but Apple is certainly not slacking on the recycling front.
        kalleboo 9y ago
        As far as I can tell, Liam is just an R&D project - it's not something they've put into actual production. E.g. from the 2017 environmental report > For example, we’ve melted down iPhone 6 aluminum enclosures recovered from Liam to make Mac mini computers for use in our factories It's only recovered enough aluminum to build a couple of Mac minis for their own internal use
      - 1123581321 9y ago
        Thanks for asking - yes, I was wrong about that. The main document you should read is https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2017.pdf https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental... where there are some 100%s, but they don't make this particular promise. In that report, they list iPhone 6 disassembly recovery by kg/100k phones (search for Tungsten.) Cross-reference with the components by weight for the iPhone 6S (6 is not available; see https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/ https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/ for all reports.) Ignoring battery, screen and plastic leaves .063kg/phone, and according to that side bar, Liam recovers .033kg/phone or ~50%. Assuming Apple recycles most of the battery, screen and plastic, they are recovering ~75% of each 6S. That's pretty good, and it's good to know that the unrecoverable portions are staying out of the trash (and hopefully heat/vapor waste is mitigated), but it's years away from being close enough to 100% to round up.
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    You can still turn it off and downgrade.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - remir 9y ago
    Apple has probably the best recycling program in the industry. I bet there are far more Motorolas, Asus, and LG devices in landfils than iPhones.
  - thinkythought 9y ago
    Judging by Apples track record for supporting iMacs, i don't see this as an issue. I owned a 2007 imac until 2014 and it was still getting updates. It was running the latest version of OSX until 10.11 This machine launched with, as i remember, tiger. There's machines barely newer that are literally still supported. How is a 9-10 year support window bad? You can't even do that consistently with windows(look at how many atom machines that were only 2-3 years old were cut off from windows 10, or recent updates therein) And there's nothing stopping you from turning off the security controller and just installing linux, either. In 9 years almost all of the hardware will be well documented and old hat. This could have a full 3-4 year or even longer life as a "pro" machine, then a long life as a backup/secondary machine, get donated to a nonprofit, or even as your parents cool looking desktop and be completely obsolete in a lot of senses before it will stop getting updates. This has been a proven track record over the past decade for apple. And for clarification: i'm not shilling here or anything. I think they're screwing up a lot of stuff, and i refuse to buy one of the current macbook pros and am still riding along on the old style retina pro. But OS support is something they do a great job at. There's original-style silver keyboard macbook pros still supported on high sierra.
willstrafach 9y ago
You've got it backwards. A hackintosh would mean running macOS on non-Apple hardware, so any security checks could just be patched out. In fact, I'm pretty sure that is how hackintoshes work now.
- swozey 9y ago
  Not really. I've built Hackintoshes so I'm familiar with kext replacing and what not, my idea was more that Apple could do something to limit apps/OS from running on anything that didn't have a t2 chip and it might be difficult to get around, like OSX on exotic or AMD chips can be a bit of a pain. Haven't used one in a few years though. Also the chip stuff is out of my realm of expertise. Was just a thought I had.
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    There’s no way they can do this in the foreseeable future, since they need to continue to support current Macs without T2 as well.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      How long did it take them to drop support for PPC Macs in new OS versions? 6 years or something? Could be similar here.
      - saagarjha 9y ago
        The Intel transition was officially started with 10.4.4, IIRC, and the last version of Mac OS X that PowerPC Macs could run was Leopard. Mac OS X 10.7 dropped Rosetta, meaning all software had to be Intel-only. I know that by OS X all system binaries were Intel only, without a PowerPC slice.
  - derefr 9y ago
    True; it would be as simple as crucial parts of the kernel being targeted to ARM (to run on the T2.) Good luck patching around that without embedding an ARM VM kext to simulate the T2; and then good luck getting that to be at-all performant.
vbezhenar 9y ago
I think that hackintosh for Apple is like pirated Windows XP for Microsoft: it brings more profit than losses by tying people to ecosystem.
- whywhywhywhy 9y ago
  Wouldn't be so sure considering the sort of machines people are building would slot into the iMac Pro slot in their lineup in terms of power. Of course they wont care about $400 hackintoshes but if people are putting together $2K - $3.5 ones it starts to look more in the ballpark of a lost iMac or iMac Pro sale.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlphaSite 9y ago
    No one who was going to buy an iMac pro would likely to setup a hackintosh, it’s just not stable enough.

by swozey 9y ago

thinkythought 9y ago

Well, beginning of the end. It would be 3 years from whatever date they release a new version that locks it to a chip like this and drop support for old models without it. So lets say, 4-5 years. Actually, probably longer since they've been supporting old systems for as long as 8 years(2007 imac, others) with some macbook pros approaching 9-10 even. How long you think it would take for them to do this depends on whether you really think they'd just decide to cut off a ton of machines at once and reverse course on really long support windows. And long windows really seems to be a roadmap, if you look at how the ipad 2 was supported as well. I think they care more about "look at how we support our products!" than hackintoshes. What i could easily imagine though is way more features than just imessage and such being gate-kept into "only systems with our secure chip are allowed to run this"

whywhywhywhy 9y ago
I understand the security benefits but I can't help but just look at this as yet another piece of disposability on an already very "disposable" piece of 5K+ (starting) hardware. How many iPhones are now in landfills because you couldn't downgrade the OS to an old version that would be usable.
- 1123581321 9y ago
  I agree with your main point about disposability. There shouldn’t be many iPhones in landfills, though. Apple recycles 100% of the materials, so as long as the old phone can be traded in or dropped off in an electronics bin, it won’t be wasted even though the owner will have been out the money by rebuying prematurely.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    > Apple recycles 100% of the materials Do you have a source for that? It sounds hard to believe
    - Fezzik 9y ago
      If Apple gets its hands on the phone they have an impressive system for recycling: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-recycling-robot-photos-video-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-recycling-r... I could not find a reliable source for what portion of each phone is recycled, but Apple is certainly not slacking on the recycling front.
      - kalleboo 9y ago
        As far as I can tell, Liam is just an R&D project - it's not something they've put into actual production. E.g. from the 2017 environmental report > For example, we’ve melted down iPhone 6 aluminum enclosures recovered from Liam to make Mac mini computers for use in our factories It's only recovered enough aluminum to build a couple of Mac minis for their own internal use
    - 1123581321 9y ago
      Thanks for asking - yes, I was wrong about that. The main document you should read is https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Responsibility_Report_2017.pdf https://images.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental... where there are some 100%s, but they don't make this particular promise. In that report, they list iPhone 6 disassembly recovery by kg/100k phones (search for Tungsten.) Cross-reference with the components by weight for the iPhone 6S (6 is not available; see https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/ https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/ for all reports.) Ignoring battery, screen and plastic leaves .063kg/phone, and according to that side bar, Liam recovers .033kg/phone or ~50%. Assuming Apple recycles most of the battery, screen and plastic, they are recovering ~75% of each 6S. That's pretty good, and it's good to know that the unrecoverable portions are staying out of the trash (and hopefully heat/vapor waste is mitigated), but it's years away from being close enough to 100% to round up.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  You can still turn it off and downgrade.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- remir 9y ago
  Apple has probably the best recycling program in the industry. I bet there are far more Motorolas, Asus, and LG devices in landfils than iPhones.
- thinkythought 9y ago
  Judging by Apples track record for supporting iMacs, i don't see this as an issue. I owned a 2007 imac until 2014 and it was still getting updates. It was running the latest version of OSX until 10.11 This machine launched with, as i remember, tiger. There's machines barely newer that are literally still supported. How is a 9-10 year support window bad? You can't even do that consistently with windows(look at how many atom machines that were only 2-3 years old were cut off from windows 10, or recent updates therein) And there's nothing stopping you from turning off the security controller and just installing linux, either. In 9 years almost all of the hardware will be well documented and old hat. This could have a full 3-4 year or even longer life as a "pro" machine, then a long life as a backup/secondary machine, get donated to a nonprofit, or even as your parents cool looking desktop and be completely obsolete in a lot of senses before it will stop getting updates. This has been a proven track record over the past decade for apple. And for clarification: i'm not shilling here or anything. I think they're screwing up a lot of stuff, and i refuse to buy one of the current macbook pros and am still riding along on the old style retina pro. But OS support is something they do a great job at. There's original-style silver keyboard macbook pros still supported on high sierra.

willstrafach 9y ago

You've got it backwards. A hackintosh would mean running macOS on non-Apple hardware, so any security checks could just be patched out. In fact, I'm pretty sure that is how hackintoshes work now.

swozey 9y ago
Not really. I've built Hackintoshes so I'm familiar with kext replacing and what not, my idea was more that Apple could do something to limit apps/OS from running on anything that didn't have a t2 chip and it might be difficult to get around, like OSX on exotic or AMD chips can be a bit of a pain. Haven't used one in a few years though. Also the chip stuff is out of my realm of expertise. Was just a thought I had.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  There’s no way they can do this in the foreseeable future, since they need to continue to support current Macs without T2 as well.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    How long did it take them to drop support for PPC Macs in new OS versions? 6 years or something? Could be similar here.
    - saagarjha 9y ago
      The Intel transition was officially started with 10.4.4, IIRC, and the last version of Mac OS X that PowerPC Macs could run was Leopard. Mac OS X 10.7 dropped Rosetta, meaning all software had to be Intel-only. I know that by OS X all system binaries were Intel only, without a PowerPC slice.
- derefr 9y ago
  True; it would be as simple as crucial parts of the kernel being targeted to ARM (to run on the T2.) Good luck patching around that without embedding an ARM VM kext to simulate the T2; and then good luck getting that to be at-all performant.

vbezhenar 9y ago

I think that hackintosh for Apple is like pirated Windows XP for Microsoft: it brings more profit than losses by tying people to ecosystem.

whywhywhywhy 9y ago
Wouldn't be so sure considering the sort of machines people are building would slot into the iMac Pro slot in their lineup in terms of power. Of course they wont care about $400 hackintoshes but if people are putting together $2K - $3.5 ones it starts to look more in the ballpark of a lost iMac or iMac Pro sale.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- AlphaSite 9y ago
  No one who was going to buy an iMac pro would likely to setup a hackintosh, it’s just not stable enough.