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Was it just a gaffe when Federighi mentioned you couldn't install alternative operating systems in his recent Daring Fireball interview, then? I admit I could h

by kick 6y ago

Was it just a gaffe when Federighi mentioned you couldn't install alternative operating systems in his recent Daring Fireball interview, then? I admit I could have misunderstood him, but it seemed like that was what he was saying.

neilalexander 6y ago
Did he say you couldn’t install them or that they wouldn’t be “supported”? Those are two different things.
- kick 6y ago
  I'm aware they're two different things. Believe it or not, the rest of Hacker News is not five years old.
  - opan 6y ago
    It's very easy to misunderstand things due to phrasing. I wouldn't take it personally, nor would it surprise me if a 30 year old friend of mine got confused.
saagarjha 6y ago
Haven’t gotten to that part yet! Maybe I will on my next walk. But I would guess that he was talking about Linux virtualization being good enough that you wouldn’t need to do this and/or no Bootcamp support?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Follow up: I got to that point, I think the words were “we’re not direct booting an alternate operating system” in reference to not running Windows in Bootcamp on x86 and to reaffirm that Bootcamp was not a thing, not that there would be no support for booting other things.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
derefr 6y ago
An important thing to recognize is that every version of macOS (and iOS!) so far has retained some official way to boot a custom/unsigned/"unclean" kernel, specifically for kernel (or kernel extension) development. When SIP (rootless v1) was introduced, macOS came with a way to disable it, for the sake of kernel developers. When APFS was introduced by default, macOS retained two workarounds for kernel developers: both the ability to boot from alternate APFS volumes within the APFS container; and also the ability to install to/boot from HFS+. And when the system volume became truly read-only in Catalina (rootless v2)—that's right, even that restriction could be overridden via csrutil, specifically to facilitate kernel development. Apple is never going to lock themselves out of booting custom OSes that are almost, but not quite, macOS; because that's how new macOS gets made. And, of course, as long as you can boot something that's not literally macOS; then that same mechanism can always be abused to boot something that is much less macOS, or in fact not macOS at all (but may still seem to be macOS, from the bootloader's perspective.)
- comex 6y ago
  Nitpick: SIP and rootless are the same thing.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Followup nit: the read only system partition is named as such and pronounced as an acronym.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Couldn't they retain 100% of the capability and lock everyone else out of it via signed software? For others that need to cooperate could they not hand out the capability to dozens of manufacturers without also providing that capability to millions of customers.
  - saagarjha 6y ago

by kick 6y ago

neilalexander 6y ago

Did he say you couldn’t install them or that they wouldn’t be “supported”? Those are two different things.

kick 6y ago
I'm aware they're two different things. Believe it or not, the rest of Hacker News is not five years old.
- opan 6y ago
  It's very easy to misunderstand things due to phrasing. I wouldn't take it personally, nor would it surprise me if a 30 year old friend of mine got confused.

saagarjha 6y ago

Haven’t gotten to that part yet! Maybe I will on my next walk. But I would guess that he was talking about Linux virtualization being good enough that you wouldn’t need to do this and/or no Bootcamp support?

saagarjha 6y ago
Follow up: I got to that point, I think the words were “we’re not direct booting an alternate operating system” in reference to not running Windows in Bootcamp on x86 and to reaffirm that Bootcamp was not a thing, not that there would be no support for booting other things.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

derefr 6y ago

An important thing to recognize is that every version of macOS (and iOS!) so far has retained some official way to boot a custom/unsigned/"unclean" kernel, specifically for kernel (or kernel extension) development. When SIP (rootless v1) was introduced, macOS came with a way to disable it, for the sake of kernel developers. When APFS was introduced by default, macOS retained two workarounds for kernel developers: both the ability to boot from alternate APFS volumes within the APFS container; and also the ability to install to/boot from HFS+. And when the system volume became truly read-only in Catalina (rootless v2)—that's right, even that restriction could be overridden via csrutil, specifically to facilitate kernel development. Apple is never going to lock themselves out of booting custom OSes that are almost, but not quite, macOS; because that's how new macOS gets made. And, of course, as long as you can boot something that's not literally macOS; then that same mechanism can always be abused to boot something that is much less macOS, or in fact not macOS at all (but may still seem to be macOS, from the bootloader's perspective.)

comex 6y ago
Nitpick: SIP and rootless are the same thing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Followup nit: the read only system partition is named as such and pronounced as an acronym.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Couldn't they retain 100% of the capability and lock everyone else out of it via signed software? For others that need to cooperate could they not hand out the capability to dozens of manufacturers without also providing that capability to millions of customers.
- saagarjha 6y ago