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Wow, HN is so much strict to Apple. I'm already seeing 4 ~ 5 top level comments on how Apple "locks down" computers and they are "taking our freedom"... Apple

Wow, HN is so much strict to Apple. I'm already seeing 4 ~ 5 top level comments on how Apple "locks down" computers and they are "taking our freedom"... Apple have stated multiple times that they don't have any intention to lock down macOS more or less - I can't really think why anyone would think Apple would lock down macOS. There's... really no reason right? My gut feeling is that there are a lot of people that don't like Apple, mostly due to their proprietary nature, and they just... argue against Apple. Before the M1 appeared, the argument was that Apple's Macs are expensive for nothing, they have terrible hardware, Touch Bar is bad, software quality has declined, etc... and now it's all about the user's freedom. Seriously people. This article is about using dev tools on the M1 Mac. Let's not start arguing about how Apple is bad for freedom, etc.

breakfastduck 6y ago
Yeah it's unusual. Generally it's people who aren't even invested in the ecosystem anyway. They've said this stuff for years, I can't do anything less on Big Sur than I've been able to do on any mac.
_dibly 6y ago
I don't see how that's any different from Microsoft, Amazon, or any other major tech company that makes the front page of HN. In fact the only difference I can think of is that there's always some degree of reactionary discourse when Apple is mentioned by people who feel the need to defend the company personally. You never see this type of comment on a thread full of people complaining about Windows or AWS, but you almost always see it when there are a few comments critical of Apple.
- sgerenser 6y ago
  If you really want to see “reactionary discourse” check out any article critical of Tesla.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    Historically the attacks against Tesla have only been matched by the ferocity of political attack ads. So a lot of fans of Tesla get very defensive about them.
- rbrtl 6y ago
  I think the reactionaries in any of these conversations are the ones advocating that Apple not improve security, i.e. that they don't make progress in protecting their users. There are many reactive voices speaking out in support of Apple, but they are responding to those who complain (for the most part) from the outside, or on their way out of Apple's door.
  - _dibly 6y ago
    I specifically mean reacting to the criticism Apple is getting. You see the same level of criticism of any major tech company in the comments section of the front page but very rarely are those criticisms followed up by a bunch of users defending the tech company in the comment section. You're arguing a weird semantic that doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying.
    - rbrtl 6y ago
      Yeah that’s reactive, rather than reactionary. It’s a significant definition, particularly as reactionary tends to be used pejoratively to describe the proverbial “stick in the mud”. And my point was that the very fact that Apple is the one with defendants, among the technologists who tend to make up HN commenters, should make one wonder if they aren’t doing some of those things right, not that the supporting commenters are mouth-breathing dullards who just “don’t get it”. Apple are getting bad press right now over pushing for a bill in the US designed to eliminate slavery from supply chains, and I will join the voices calling on them to take responsibility for that. But in reference to how they control their hardware-software ecosystem for their customers, the reactionary point of view is that they shouldn’t be progressing towards a user-safe environment.
      - rbrtl 6y ago
        Well clearly I’m losing this debate to people who can’t even be bothered to use the words that actually mean what they’re trying to say. Snore
        6y ago
qppo 6y ago
The margins on the App Store for iOS is enough of a reason to lock down the OS as far as they can. The difference is they can't practically lock it down to the point that app developers aren't impeded. But all that said, given the quality of developer tools from Apple I don't have much faith that they won't impede everything but swift development in Xcode.
Hamuko 6y ago
>Apple have stated multiple times that they don't have any intention to lock down macOS more or less Didn't they also say that notarization was about security?
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  It is
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Then maybe they shouldn't try to prevent Epic Games from doing it.
fsociety 6y ago
Yep this is true of all big tech companies in general. It’s a bit like when punk rock became mainstream, but now it’s tech companies - or rather was ~10 years ago. People hate change. These new CPUs will represent a huge generational leap and dropping of old baggage. A laptop which has nearly 20h battery life, is small/portable, and is still fast? Wow. Anything Apple delivers on for the CPUs will find its way into Linux and Windows machine. This is good for everyone. Eventually you’ll see the next generation Lenovo’s X series or Dell’s XPS series with the same generational improvements.
amelius 6y ago
Apple dictating what tools we can and cannot use (e.g. Firefox not being allowed to use their own rendering engine on iOS, but forced to use Safari internally). This should be enough to make you look elsewhere. But then there is the locked bootloader, the Apple tax, etc. etc. By supporting Apple, things will only get worse.
- mlindner 6y ago
  All the things you state is only for their phones, not their computers. The bootloader isn't locked at all. And in terms of the "Apple tax". It's largely a myth. If you look at individual components used, they tend to be all top-end binned parts of everything. There is some Apple upmark, but it's not nearly as much as others say. You can't get a PC laptop with the same mix of low weight, high performance, and long longevity.
vbezhenar 6y ago
One example of Apple locking down macOS is how they're pushing out custom kernel extensions. For example firewalls used to be kernel extensions. Now they use explicit APIs and no longer run in kernel space. One could say that it allows for more stable operating system. But on the other hand macOS now by-passes firewalls for its own services and this feature was abused to by-pass firewall with ordinary programs.
politelemon 6y ago
It's quite the opposite actually. HN has a ridiculous Apple bias (the flood of blogspam mentioning M1 should be evidence of this), and any comments critical of it are shouted down. They can literally do nothing wrong in most eyes. NO company can, or should be above criticism. You will see comments critical of _all_ large companies in HN threads, but only comments defensive in these threads. Imagine a comment like yours on a thread about Amazon or Facebook. I have gut feeling of my own - that many people identify with their Apple products (identity politics) and are personally offended by any criticism that the organisation receives. -- Edit: To put it in a little perspective... I invite you to view the contemporary Amazon thread. What would happen if you posted that everyone should focus on AMZN creating jobs and hiring people rather than criticizing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237552
- ImaCake 6y ago
  Maybe HN just has a diversity of opinion on apple products? There is plenty of reason to critique apple and plenty of reason to praise their products. I come to HN for the insight, and it is hard to get more insight about a tech company than from a bunch of tech nerds who disagree about it!
  - totalZero 6y ago
    I actually wonder about that. M1 has been out for a short time, and Apple Stores are not accepting walk-in customers. People aren't seeing their friends much due to the pandemic, so it's unlikely that those who bought the new machines are broadly showing them off. Lots of forum praise about M1 seems like it's coming from people who have no hands-on experience with the new devices. I have no reason to believe that Apple pays people to stir up hype on the web, but I definitely sense that the vast majority of people hyping M1 haven't purchased an M1 device. My sense is that they just read some blogs, ogle some benchmarks, and regurgitate what they see. That's not exactly a diversity of opinion. I can tell you I've been voted down a couple of times just for suggesting that there's too much hype and not enough information.
    - 6y ago
saagarjha 6y ago
> I can't really think why anyone would think Apple would lock down macOS. Because they keep introducing new security features that get progressively more annoying to disable. Have you looked at how difficult it is to modify system files these days?
- rbrtl 6y ago
  Security is the antithesis of convenience. Would you rather they send every unit out with Frontier Law levels of user protections? Every graphics artist, musician, businessperson, student, and Joe Bloggs who buys a Mac needs to study the implications of owning a computer for themselves and mitigate all the threats on their own. Suddenly Apple computers are infected with malware like Windows was in the 2000s and we just burn all the research Apple did on the right compromise for their entire user base because a few power users want to turn on a machine and debug system processes before they even log in. I perceive a level of anti-Apple bias in HN threads, I don't think it's imagined, but more prevalent is the power user bias of people who have advanced knowledge of computer systems and want a superuser machine off the shelf. To me, the fact that you call them "security features" and not some pejorative euphemism is a bit of a capitulation.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Some of the things Apple makes are certainly "security features" and not security features, but to your main point: Apple designed their security model to be "trust us or trust nobody" and the security model most users want is "I trust me". It is eminently possible to do that without going back to the wild west of not having any security, actually, the issue is that Apple forces you to go there if you aren't happy with anything they add on macOS.
    - rbrtl 6y ago
      Most power users maybe. Most consumer users don’t think about the fact they have to trust at all. And you can’t say you don’t want the security features and then say that it’s bad you have to turn them off if you don’t want them. The goalposts are Apple’s customers, my guesstimate is that 80% of those paying customers would rather be secured by the vendor they already trusted to produce the hardware, firmware, software, and infrastructure they use on a daily basis. Do you know of any market research about the level of security most users want?
theSIRius 6y ago
> Apple have stated multiple times that they don't have any intention to lock down macOS more or less What Apple says and Apple does can or are two different things. And it applies to any company in the world. Blindly believing them is naive at best. > I can't really think why anyone would think Apple would lock down macOS I can think of one: iOS. Locking down the software and hardware can allow Apple to funnel people to their own stores and services. It is not rocket science to figure out that a company is trying to increase their revenue. Right now you have only MacOS as the operating system, Linux may never come and Windows support is anyones guess right now.
- xenadu02 6y ago
  The easy path on M1 would have been to lock everything down. Use the same iBoot phones use, the same kernel configuration, and call it a day. It takes a lot of engineering work to make more permissive security modes work. To re-architect booting. To make external drive booting work. To make developing kernel extensions on production systems work. To allow signing your own boot blob. Work that 99% of users don't even understand let alone care about. If that isn't enough evidence then nothing ever will be.

breakfastduck 6y ago

Yeah it's unusual. Generally it's people who aren't even invested in the ecosystem anyway. They've said this stuff for years, I can't do anything less on Big Sur than I've been able to do on any mac.

_dibly 6y ago

I don't see how that's any different from Microsoft, Amazon, or any other major tech company that makes the front page of HN. In fact the only difference I can think of is that there's always some degree of reactionary discourse when Apple is mentioned by people who feel the need to defend the company personally. You never see this type of comment on a thread full of people complaining about Windows or AWS, but you almost always see it when there are a few comments critical of Apple.

sgerenser 6y ago
If you really want to see “reactionary discourse” check out any article critical of Tesla.
- mlindner 6y ago
  Historically the attacks against Tesla have only been matched by the ferocity of political attack ads. So a lot of fans of Tesla get very defensive about them.
rbrtl 6y ago
I think the reactionaries in any of these conversations are the ones advocating that Apple not improve security, i.e. that they don't make progress in protecting their users. There are many reactive voices speaking out in support of Apple, but they are responding to those who complain (for the most part) from the outside, or on their way out of Apple's door.
- _dibly 6y ago
  I specifically mean reacting to the criticism Apple is getting. You see the same level of criticism of any major tech company in the comments section of the front page but very rarely are those criticisms followed up by a bunch of users defending the tech company in the comment section. You're arguing a weird semantic that doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm saying.
  - rbrtl 6y ago
    Yeah that’s reactive, rather than reactionary. It’s a significant definition, particularly as reactionary tends to be used pejoratively to describe the proverbial “stick in the mud”. And my point was that the very fact that Apple is the one with defendants, among the technologists who tend to make up HN commenters, should make one wonder if they aren’t doing some of those things right, not that the supporting commenters are mouth-breathing dullards who just “don’t get it”. Apple are getting bad press right now over pushing for a bill in the US designed to eliminate slavery from supply chains, and I will join the voices calling on them to take responsibility for that. But in reference to how they control their hardware-software ecosystem for their customers, the reactionary point of view is that they shouldn’t be progressing towards a user-safe environment.
    - rbrtl 6y ago
      Well clearly I’m losing this debate to people who can’t even be bothered to use the words that actually mean what they’re trying to say. Snore
      - 6y ago

qppo 6y ago

The margins on the App Store for iOS is enough of a reason to lock down the OS as far as they can. The difference is they can't practically lock it down to the point that app developers aren't impeded. But all that said, given the quality of developer tools from Apple I don't have much faith that they won't impede everything but swift development in Xcode.

Hamuko 6y ago

>Apple have stated multiple times that they don't have any intention to lock down macOS more or less Didn't they also say that notarization was about security?

tambourine_man 6y ago
It is
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Then maybe they shouldn't try to prevent Epic Games from doing it.

fsociety 6y ago

Yep this is true of all big tech companies in general. It’s a bit like when punk rock became mainstream, but now it’s tech companies - or rather was ~10 years ago. People hate change. These new CPUs will represent a huge generational leap and dropping of old baggage. A laptop which has nearly 20h battery life, is small/portable, and is still fast? Wow. Anything Apple delivers on for the CPUs will find its way into Linux and Windows machine. This is good for everyone. Eventually you’ll see the next generation Lenovo’s X series or Dell’s XPS series with the same generational improvements.

amelius 6y ago

Apple dictating what tools we can and cannot use (e.g. Firefox not being allowed to use their own rendering engine on iOS, but forced to use Safari internally). This should be enough to make you look elsewhere. But then there is the locked bootloader, the Apple tax, etc. etc. By supporting Apple, things will only get worse.

mlindner 6y ago
All the things you state is only for their phones, not their computers. The bootloader isn't locked at all. And in terms of the "Apple tax". It's largely a myth. If you look at individual components used, they tend to be all top-end binned parts of everything. There is some Apple upmark, but it's not nearly as much as others say. You can't get a PC laptop with the same mix of low weight, high performance, and long longevity.

vbezhenar 6y ago

One example of Apple locking down macOS is how they're pushing out custom kernel extensions. For example firewalls used to be kernel extensions. Now they use explicit APIs and no longer run in kernel space. One could say that it allows for more stable operating system. But on the other hand macOS now by-passes firewalls for its own services and this feature was abused to by-pass firewall with ordinary programs.

politelemon 6y ago

It's quite the opposite actually. HN has a ridiculous Apple bias (the flood of blogspam mentioning M1 should be evidence of this), and any comments critical of it are shouted down. They can literally do nothing wrong in most eyes. NO company can, or should be above criticism. You will see comments critical of _all_ large companies in HN threads, but only comments defensive in these threads. Imagine a comment like yours on a thread about Amazon or Facebook. I have gut feeling of my own - that many people identify with their Apple products (identity politics) and are personally offended by any criticism that the organisation receives. -- Edit: To put it in a little perspective... I invite you to view the contemporary Amazon thread. What would happen if you posted that everyone should focus on AMZN creating jobs and hiring people rather than criticizing them? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25237552

ImaCake 6y ago
Maybe HN just has a diversity of opinion on apple products? There is plenty of reason to critique apple and plenty of reason to praise their products. I come to HN for the insight, and it is hard to get more insight about a tech company than from a bunch of tech nerds who disagree about it!
- totalZero 6y ago
  I actually wonder about that. M1 has been out for a short time, and Apple Stores are not accepting walk-in customers. People aren't seeing their friends much due to the pandemic, so it's unlikely that those who bought the new machines are broadly showing them off. Lots of forum praise about M1 seems like it's coming from people who have no hands-on experience with the new devices. I have no reason to believe that Apple pays people to stir up hype on the web, but I definitely sense that the vast majority of people hyping M1 haven't purchased an M1 device. My sense is that they just read some blogs, ogle some benchmarks, and regurgitate what they see. That's not exactly a diversity of opinion. I can tell you I've been voted down a couple of times just for suggesting that there's too much hype and not enough information.
  - 6y ago

saagarjha 6y ago

> I can't really think why anyone would think Apple would lock down macOS. Because they keep introducing new security features that get progressively more annoying to disable. Have you looked at how difficult it is to modify system files these days?

rbrtl 6y ago
Security is the antithesis of convenience. Would you rather they send every unit out with Frontier Law levels of user protections? Every graphics artist, musician, businessperson, student, and Joe Bloggs who buys a Mac needs to study the implications of owning a computer for themselves and mitigate all the threats on their own. Suddenly Apple computers are infected with malware like Windows was in the 2000s and we just burn all the research Apple did on the right compromise for their entire user base because a few power users want to turn on a machine and debug system processes before they even log in. I perceive a level of anti-Apple bias in HN threads, I don't think it's imagined, but more prevalent is the power user bias of people who have advanced knowledge of computer systems and want a superuser machine off the shelf. To me, the fact that you call them "security features" and not some pejorative euphemism is a bit of a capitulation.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Some of the things Apple makes are certainly "security features" and not security features, but to your main point: Apple designed their security model to be "trust us or trust nobody" and the security model most users want is "I trust me". It is eminently possible to do that without going back to the wild west of not having any security, actually, the issue is that Apple forces you to go there if you aren't happy with anything they add on macOS.
  - rbrtl 6y ago
    Most power users maybe. Most consumer users don’t think about the fact they have to trust at all. And you can’t say you don’t want the security features and then say that it’s bad you have to turn them off if you don’t want them. The goalposts are Apple’s customers, my guesstimate is that 80% of those paying customers would rather be secured by the vendor they already trusted to produce the hardware, firmware, software, and infrastructure they use on a daily basis. Do you know of any market research about the level of security most users want?

theSIRius 6y ago

> Apple have stated multiple times that they don't have any intention to lock down macOS more or less What Apple says and Apple does can or are two different things. And it applies to any company in the world. Blindly believing them is naive at best. > I can't really think why anyone would think Apple would lock down macOS I can think of one: iOS. Locking down the software and hardware can allow Apple to funnel people to their own stores and services. It is not rocket science to figure out that a company is trying to increase their revenue. Right now you have only MacOS as the operating system, Linux may never come and Windows support is anyones guess right now.

xenadu02 6y ago
The easy path on M1 would have been to lock everything down. Use the same iBoot phones use, the same kernel configuration, and call it a day. It takes a lot of engineering work to make more permissive security modes work. To re-architect booting. To make external drive booting work. To make developing kernel extensions on production systems work. To allow signing your own boot blob. Work that 99% of users don't even understand let alone care about. If that isn't enough evidence then nothing ever will be.