8 ms·

PSA: however impressive the M1 hardware is, you're still going to be stuck using OSX, playing in Apple's walled garden and being subjected to their awful polici

PSA: however impressive the M1 hardware is, you're still going to be stuck using OSX, playing in Apple's walled garden and being subjected to their awful policies. I'll gladly join the groupie crowd once Linux runs stable on it.

EugeneOZ 6y ago
Same here. I took my decision to leave macOS after their release of BigSur. It's absolutely, 101% unacceptable to me when someone else controls what program I can run on my hardware, and I should hope that their server will not go down. I still congratulate the team of Apple Silicone. Hope it will force Intel to create something similar.
- hapticmonkey 6y ago
  They're adding an option to disable this in a future update. But I agree that it shouldn't have been forced to start with.
  - dingdingdang 6y ago
    That's fascinating/good-news, do you have a reference for that?
  - EugeneOZ 6y ago
    Hope so. Right now their "support" site says: "If you see this warning, it means that the app was not notarized, and Apple could not scan the app for known malicious software. You may want to look for an updated version of the app in the App Store or look for an alternative app."
oblio 6y ago
Does "Linux run stable" on existing Macs? Not that I know of, 15 years after the introduction of Intel Macs. You might have to wait forever.
- freetonik 6y ago
  Anecdata: KDE Neon and Kubuntu run flawlessly on a MBP 2015.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Do they run flawlessly on hardware you can buy today, not stuff from 5 years ago? :-)
- skohan 6y ago
  Isn't this mostly about driver support? I'm not a hardware guy, but it's hard to understand why it's so difficult to reverse engineer something like the touchpad driver. Isn't it just a matter of measuring the IO and reproducing it? I mean how has MS done this for bootcamp?
  - oblio 6y ago
    Well, it doesn't seem to happen in practice so it's either hard or there are no incentives to do it, or both. But that's the reality we live in.
    - skohan 6y ago
      Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a matter of one engineer taking a couple weekends to change the situation, that's surely worth interrogating.
      - oblio 6y ago
        I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.
        aseipp 6y ago
        Eh, Nvidia shares a lot of the blame on that one though, because the signed firmware they use post-Fermi can't be legally redistributed in any way, and is embedded in the proprietary graphics driver blobs, so it can't be extracted. That firmware is required to adjust GPU clocks, which start off very low. So the choice isn't "Good proprietary drivers" vs "Less featured open drivers", it's "proprietary drivers" vs "drivers that are legally forbidden from running above 0.5% their advertised clock speed, no matter if it's otherwise fully featured".[1] In contrast, AMD and Intel have open drivers in Mesa that work very well and fully supported and AMD allows its signed VBIOS to be redistributed, so it's clearly not just a matter of chip complexity, but the position of the vendor as well. In that vein I agree with your original point, though: I suspect we'll probably never see Linux on the M1 in anything but the most superficial form that lacks all the really good stuff. You might get the 8 core CPU, SSD/RAM, some peripherials. But no Neural Engine, no GPU, video decoders or image processors, power management, security features in the T2 like attested boot or encrypted key storage, etc. The only way that'll ever change is if Apple makes it happen. [1] For reference, the open source Nouveau driver for Fermi cards, nvc0, is the 4th most well supported Mesa driver in terms of features implemented (almost 90% of all features, surpassed only by radeonsi and i915). So it's not like there's no interest in FOSS Nvidia drivers... https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/
quantummkv 6y ago
Given that Linux desktop cannot properly utilize even the limited amounts of very common HW accelerators build into AMD and Intel chips (video decoders) and the existing GPU's (all of them suck in different ways), running Linux on M1 would be a waste of everything without giving Linux any noticeable improvement over existing x86 machines.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Accelerated video decode worked fine on my AMD card, actually. Some codecs weren't supported, but it was pretty much functional. On Nvidia, I literally just had to install one package and I never had to think about video decode acceleration again.
  - quantummkv 6y ago
    It still doesn't work in browsers correctly, which is the most common way to consume video on Linux desktops
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Apple's walled garden Apparently over the years the definition of "Walled Garden" has drifted a lot. The iPhone has a "Walled Garden", unless you jailbreak, it's very difficult to run anything outside the App Store. My Mac? Almost nothing I run is from the App Store. Nothing needs to be from the App Store. Most of what I run doesn't even go through Gatekeeper and it certainly never touches software I build or compile myself. If a "Walled Garden" can be disabled by bypassed by a single entry in your hosts file, by running from the command line, or any other number of ways, it's a damned short wall around that garden. Lots of valid criticisms of MacOS, but it's nowhere in the ballpark of a walled garden.
- mathnmusic 6y ago
  The parent was complaining about being forced to use OS X. So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware. I don't think that is what he was saying at all. Regardless. There is nothing preventing Linux (or Windows) from booting on Mac M1 hardware. People almost certainly will have Linux running on Mac hardware before too long. It's just a slog getting it working well. Not a walled garden in any traditional sense, just difficult to implement.
    - erk__ 6y ago
      I think they have been clear about boot camp not being supported, at least at present time. But they have also said that it is possible to run Windows, but that it will be up to Microsoft.
    - trollied 6y ago
      Linus has openly said he wants Linux running on one: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/24/2225209/linus-torvalds-would-like-to-use-an-m1-mac-for-linux-but https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/24/2225209/linus-t...
mcintyre1994 6y ago
I honestly can’t think of any Apple policy that restricts what I run on my Mac. I haven’t upgraded to Big Sur yet, and maybe I just don’t rely on anything yet that’s against their policies and will be mad when I hit that point. What concretely are the awful policies that are restrictive on Mac that you’re thinking of?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  When a new "App" is installed on Big Sur (and I think this was on Catalina too), there is a check to see if the developer ID has been tagged as providing malware. When Big Sur launched, there was a glitch and the servers hung, leaving a lot of users in a bit of a lurch. It's easy to disable the check and a lot of software never gets checked for other reasons.
deergomoo 6y ago
> you're still going to be stuck using OSX One folk's bug is another folk's feature
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > One folk's bug is another folk's feature Historically people bought Macs because they run MacOS instead of Windows. It's funny how quickly the debate changes once the bang-for-the-buck went completely upside-down.
- jason0597 6y ago
  By that logic, whenever I recommend a Thinkpad and I'm met with responses of "it doesn't have as good of a trackpad!", am I not allowed to say "use the keyboard shortcuts on Linux, they are better"? I mean, one folk's bug is another folk's feature, right? Relevant exchange: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25164195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25164195 If I were to rearrange your response to fit the above exchange, it would be in the form of: "Learn to use MacOS instead. It's faster than using Linux and makes it much less important.". Couldn't I reply with "Why do you not want people to use MacOS?"
Findeton 6y ago
I'm gladly waiting for Ryzen 4800u to actually be available in good quality laptops, or otherwise the next iteration of Intel Mobile CPUs, but like you I won't use Apple's walled gardens (except for work, as I'm forced to).
Liskni_si 6y ago
> I'll gladly join the groupie crowd once Linux runs stable on it. There's still the issue with the keyboard having 7 fewer keys than a modern ThinkPad, and compared to the classic 7-row ThinkPad keyboard, 15 physical keys are missing. That's a considerable disadvantage. Mac laptops have superior displays, but we're using keyboard just as often.
- qz2 6y ago
  I'm not the original author but I use a mini as a desktop with one of these: https://www.chriscollins.me/notes/durgod-taurus-k320-mechanical-keyboard-for-mac-os/ https://www.chriscollins.me/notes/durgod-taurus-k320-mechani... That has a correct keyboard.
  - Liskni_si 6y ago
    You've got a point that the keyboard problem only affects laptops.
mlindner 6y ago
I'm not in a walled garden on the Mac... I can run anything I want on it, and I do.
seszett 6y ago
> I'll gladly join the groupie crowd once Linux runs stable on it. Is there any hope that this will happen in a reasonable timeframe? I'm very happy running Linux on my (rather old) MacBook Air, which is hardware-wise the best (not in performance but in comfort, durability, design) laptop I've used yet. I want to change because it's starting to show its limits now, but I haven't found yet something to replace it.
ubermonkey 6y ago
MacOS is not in any sense a walled garden. You can run any code you like on it. It's a general purpose computing environment. I really wish Apple-detractors would find something true to complain about instead of spreading this misinformation.
- noobermin 6y ago
  Misinformation? Literally in the last week was this not a story[0]? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
  - ubermonkey 6y ago
    The headline there is literally misinformation, because it left out an important detail: Macs not connected to the Internet didn't have the problem. So yeah, misinformation.
motoboi 6y ago
> "stuck using OSX" Oh, god. Stuck is not even close to define the joy of OSX. I've been "stuck" with OSX for 10 years and every time I tried the waters of windows or ubuntu again I came home crying. Not perfect since Sierra? Yes. Windows and Ubuntu not even close? Yes. Personal opinion? Yes. Hardware was crap for last 2 years and make me consider moving back to windows? F* yes! But now with those M1 chips I'm already saving money for an Air (very very expensive in Brazil).

EugeneOZ 6y ago

Same here. I took my decision to leave macOS after their release of BigSur. It's absolutely, 101% unacceptable to me when someone else controls what program I can run on my hardware, and I should hope that their server will not go down. I still congratulate the team of Apple Silicone. Hope it will force Intel to create something similar.

hapticmonkey 6y ago
They're adding an option to disable this in a future update. But I agree that it shouldn't have been forced to start with.
- dingdingdang 6y ago
  That's fascinating/good-news, do you have a reference for that?
- EugeneOZ 6y ago
  Hope so. Right now their "support" site says: "If you see this warning, it means that the app was not notarized, and Apple could not scan the app for known malicious software. You may want to look for an updated version of the app in the App Store or look for an alternative app."

oblio 6y ago

Does "Linux run stable" on existing Macs? Not that I know of, 15 years after the introduction of Intel Macs. You might have to wait forever.

freetonik 6y ago
Anecdata: KDE Neon and Kubuntu run flawlessly on a MBP 2015.
- oblio 6y ago
  Do they run flawlessly on hardware you can buy today, not stuff from 5 years ago? :-)
skohan 6y ago
Isn't this mostly about driver support? I'm not a hardware guy, but it's hard to understand why it's so difficult to reverse engineer something like the touchpad driver. Isn't it just a matter of measuring the IO and reproducing it? I mean how has MS done this for bootcamp?
- oblio 6y ago
  Well, it doesn't seem to happen in practice so it's either hard or there are no incentives to do it, or both. But that's the reality we live in.
  - skohan 6y ago
    Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a matter of one engineer taking a couple weekends to change the situation, that's surely worth interrogating.
    - oblio 6y ago
      I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.
      - aseipp 6y ago
        Eh, Nvidia shares a lot of the blame on that one though, because the signed firmware they use post-Fermi can't be legally redistributed in any way, and is embedded in the proprietary graphics driver blobs, so it can't be extracted. That firmware is required to adjust GPU clocks, which start off very low. So the choice isn't "Good proprietary drivers" vs "Less featured open drivers", it's "proprietary drivers" vs "drivers that are legally forbidden from running above 0.5% their advertised clock speed, no matter if it's otherwise fully featured".[1] In contrast, AMD and Intel have open drivers in Mesa that work very well and fully supported and AMD allows its signed VBIOS to be redistributed, so it's clearly not just a matter of chip complexity, but the position of the vendor as well. In that vein I agree with your original point, though: I suspect we'll probably never see Linux on the M1 in anything but the most superficial form that lacks all the really good stuff. You might get the 8 core CPU, SSD/RAM, some peripherials. But no Neural Engine, no GPU, video decoders or image processors, power management, security features in the T2 like attested boot or encrypted key storage, etc. The only way that'll ever change is if Apple makes it happen. [1] For reference, the open source Nouveau driver for Fermi cards, nvc0, is the 4th most well supported Mesa driver in terms of features implemented (almost 90% of all features, surpassed only by radeonsi and i915). So it's not like there's no interest in FOSS Nvidia drivers... https://mesamatrix.net/ https://mesamatrix.net/

quantummkv 6y ago

Given that Linux desktop cannot properly utilize even the limited amounts of very common HW accelerators build into AMD and Intel chips (video decoders) and the existing GPU's (all of them suck in different ways), running Linux on M1 would be a waste of everything without giving Linux any noticeable improvement over existing x86 machines.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Accelerated video decode worked fine on my AMD card, actually. Some codecs weren't supported, but it was pretty much functional. On Nvidia, I literally just had to install one package and I never had to think about video decode acceleration again.
- quantummkv 6y ago
  It still doesn't work in browsers correctly, which is the most common way to consume video on Linux desktops

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Apple's walled garden Apparently over the years the definition of "Walled Garden" has drifted a lot. The iPhone has a "Walled Garden", unless you jailbreak, it's very difficult to run anything outside the App Store. My Mac? Almost nothing I run is from the App Store. Nothing needs to be from the App Store. Most of what I run doesn't even go through Gatekeeper and it certainly never touches software I build or compile myself. If a "Walled Garden" can be disabled by bypassed by a single entry in your hosts file, by running from the command line, or any other number of ways, it's a damned short wall around that garden. Lots of valid criticisms of MacOS, but it's nowhere in the ballpark of a walled garden.

mathnmusic 6y ago
The parent was complaining about being forced to use OS X. So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware. I don't think that is what he was saying at all. Regardless. There is nothing preventing Linux (or Windows) from booting on Mac M1 hardware. People almost certainly will have Linux running on Mac hardware before too long. It's just a slog getting it working well. Not a walled garden in any traditional sense, just difficult to implement.
  - erk__ 6y ago
    I think they have been clear about boot camp not being supported, at least at present time. But they have also said that it is possible to run Windows, but that it will be up to Microsoft.
  - trollied 6y ago
    Linus has openly said he wants Linux running on one: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/24/2225209/linus-torvalds-would-like-to-use-an-m1-mac-for-linux-but https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/11/24/2225209/linus-t...

mcintyre1994 6y ago

I honestly can’t think of any Apple policy that restricts what I run on my Mac. I haven’t upgraded to Big Sur yet, and maybe I just don’t rely on anything yet that’s against their policies and will be mad when I hit that point. What concretely are the awful policies that are restrictive on Mac that you’re thinking of?

ogre_codes 6y ago
When a new "App" is installed on Big Sur (and I think this was on Catalina too), there is a check to see if the developer ID has been tagged as providing malware. When Big Sur launched, there was a glitch and the servers hung, leaving a lot of users in a bit of a lurch. It's easy to disable the check and a lot of software never gets checked for other reasons.

deergomoo 6y ago

> you're still going to be stuck using OSX One folk's bug is another folk's feature

ogre_codes 6y ago
> One folk's bug is another folk's feature Historically people bought Macs because they run MacOS instead of Windows. It's funny how quickly the debate changes once the bang-for-the-buck went completely upside-down.
jason0597 6y ago
By that logic, whenever I recommend a Thinkpad and I'm met with responses of "it doesn't have as good of a trackpad!", am I not allowed to say "use the keyboard shortcuts on Linux, they are better"? I mean, one folk's bug is another folk's feature, right? Relevant exchange: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25164195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25164195 If I were to rearrange your response to fit the above exchange, it would be in the form of: "Learn to use MacOS instead. It's faster than using Linux and makes it much less important.". Couldn't I reply with "Why do you not want people to use MacOS?"

Findeton 6y ago

I'm gladly waiting for Ryzen 4800u to actually be available in good quality laptops, or otherwise the next iteration of Intel Mobile CPUs, but like you I won't use Apple's walled gardens (except for work, as I'm forced to).

Liskni_si 6y ago

> I'll gladly join the groupie crowd once Linux runs stable on it. There's still the issue with the keyboard having 7 fewer keys than a modern ThinkPad, and compared to the classic 7-row ThinkPad keyboard, 15 physical keys are missing. That's a considerable disadvantage. Mac laptops have superior displays, but we're using keyboard just as often.

qz2 6y ago
I'm not the original author but I use a mini as a desktop with one of these: https://www.chriscollins.me/notes/durgod-taurus-k320-mechanical-keyboard-for-mac-os/ https://www.chriscollins.me/notes/durgod-taurus-k320-mechani... That has a correct keyboard.
- Liskni_si 6y ago
  You've got a point that the keyboard problem only affects laptops.

mlindner 6y ago

I'm not in a walled garden on the Mac... I can run anything I want on it, and I do.

seszett 6y ago

> I'll gladly join the groupie crowd once Linux runs stable on it. Is there any hope that this will happen in a reasonable timeframe? I'm very happy running Linux on my (rather old) MacBook Air, which is hardware-wise the best (not in performance but in comfort, durability, design) laptop I've used yet. I want to change because it's starting to show its limits now, but I haven't found yet something to replace it.

ubermonkey 6y ago

MacOS is not in any sense a walled garden. You can run any code you like on it. It's a general purpose computing environment. I really wish Apple-detractors would find something true to complain about instead of spreading this misinformation.

noobermin 6y ago
Misinformation? Literally in the last week was this not a story[0]? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  The headline there is literally misinformation, because it left out an important detail: Macs not connected to the Internet didn't have the problem. So yeah, misinformation.

motoboi 6y ago

> "stuck using OSX" Oh, god. Stuck is not even close to define the joy of OSX. I've been "stuck" with OSX for 10 years and every time I tried the waters of windows or ubuntu again I came home crying. Not perfect since Sierra? Yes. Windows and Ubuntu not even close? Yes. Personal opinion? Yes. Hardware was crap for last 2 years and make me consider moving back to windows? F* yes! But now with those M1 chips I'm already saving money for an Air (very very expensive in Brazil).