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No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap. I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform, rather to a technically

No, I wouldn't, not even if I could print billions in a snap. I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform, rather to a technically superior but proprietary close one whose owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields. No thanks, I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness, no strings attached, which is neither the case with Apple as it is not with Google or Microsoft. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-apple-uses-its-app-store-copy-best-ideas/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_10 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-app...

freehunter 6y ago
>owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? A company who custom-developed drivers specifically to be compatible with a competitor's OS on their own hardware? You're talking about that Apple? The one who said they would be open to allowing Windows to run on M1 if Microsoft developed a compatible version of Windows? I just want to make sure we're talking about the same company, because you seem to think we're talking about a company who runs in the face of competition, where the Apple I know confronts it head-on and goes out of their way to be compatible with the competitors.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  And they did all of that in response to community solutions that weren’t as solid as their first party support. They went out of their way to support and extend the viability of their users clear desire for dual booting, at that time of a much more formidable competitor than MS is today.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    It wasn't altruism, they did it because it would help sell more hardware and bring more people into the Apple ecosystem. If they see a similar use for Linux support, they'll do the same. If they think it will hurt them in some way, they won't. But I think it's fair to at least consider the "undermine" possibility considering that on iPhones they've consistently blocked attempts to jailbreak or open that platform in the way an alternate OS does on their Macs. We've already seen incremental moves to make MacOS app distribution more centrally controlled. So I honestly don't know where Apple believes their long-term interested to be on the topic of facilitating, or at least not actively blocking Linux.
    - eyelidlessness 6y ago
      > It wasn't altruism, they did it because it would help sell more hardware and bring more people into the Apple ecosystem. > > If they see a similar use for Linux support, they'll do the same. If they think it will hurt them in some way, they won't. I agree and said... pretty much the same thing. I just don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell Apple will see Linux as a threat. > But I think it's fair to at least consider the "undermine" possibility considering that on iPhones they've consistently blocked attempts to jailbreak or open that platform in the way an alternate OS does on their Macs. We've already seen incremental moves to make MacOS app distribution more centrally controlled. So I honestly don't know where Apple believes their long-term interested to be on the topic of facilitating, or at least not actively blocking Linux. Nope. Not likely, unless the mechanism for getting Linux on the M-series is software exploits of the macOS platform. They don’t do anything to undermine booting entirely other OSes on their hardware, even iDevices. But they do patch up their own stack.
      - ineedasername 6y ago
        You can't "nope" your way around Apple putting up a few walls around the MacOS garden just because they've left a door in one of them. If they go no further, then it's fine. But "not likely" is a bit too soon to say until they've gone a while without further limitations. That is, unless you consider something like the Mac equivalent of Project Sandcastle running on outdated hardware to be an acceptable situation, which appears to require a jailbreak of their stack anyway. There's simply nothing stopping Apple from going that route, and some years of incremental changes to MacOS that have inched it closer. Again, I'll believe they won't do that when they stop taking those incremental steps. Until then, "nope" really just means "not yet".
- nightski 6y ago
  Bootcamp is dead on M1. In addition they have taken steps towards further locking down which apps can run on OSX. So he's probably talking about that Apple.
  - internet2000 6y ago
    Bootcamp isn't available as Microsoft doesn't have a version of Windows compatible with the new platform. The parent comment even says that. And Gatekeeper has been around for 8+ years, always with ways to run whatever you want, but I'm sure the "locking down" is coming any day now. It's just business: Apple won't intentionally remove features that makes their hardware more attractive. It's where they make most of their money.
    - nightski 6y ago
      I didn't mean to imply it was Apple's fault Windows did not run on M1 (in fact it has been shown that Windows ARM64 does run natively on M1 albeit through a patched QEMU due to lack of driver support), but by designing a custom SoC they have abandoned the approach which would afford them the most compatibility (staying with x86). This may have been the right direction for them, but it's not the same approach as before and definitely abandons compatibility in favor of better performance. Second while Gatekeeper has been around for 8+ years, the default of contacting an Apple server on every program launch was new (or so I thought) with Big Sur. It's a step towards that direction. People could not launch apps when this server was down.
      - spacedcowboy 6y ago
        Nah, gatekeeper has been doing the remote check thing for years (just, 2 of them, I think). It only became noticeable because there was an oversight in the "fail-fast" algorithm. If Apple was available, it was assumed it would be fast, and it wasn't when there was an iCloud outage.
        mjcohen 6y ago
        I followed the instructions on how to use Little Snitch to skip Apple's app start stuff.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  The company that forced me to buy a mac to develop for them?
  - msie 6y ago
    How about Windows? Did someone force you to buy a computer to develop for it?
    - netsharc 6y ago
      In theory one could do Windows dev on hard mode (on Linux/Mac): get one of the Windows virtual machines that Microsoft provides to test for old IE compatibility (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...), install the freely available compilers (or even the open source Cygwin one), and code away!
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        Microsoft distributes free Windows VMs with developer tools installed for the explicit purpose of developing on Windows, there's no need to use their IE images.
    - aruggirello 6y ago
      You can pretty much develop software for Windows on other platforms too. Cross compilation is supported in several languages, and when you can't - you can usually compile stuff under Wine, or even ReactOS. So while obviously you need a computer, you don't strictly need Windows.
      - aspyct 6y ago
        Yes you do need Windows. Wine is great, but there's no way I'll publicly release a windows application that hasn't been tested on an actual windows install.
        6y ago
- thayne 6y ago
  > The one who said they would be open to allowing Windows to run on M1 if Microsoft developed a compatible version of Windows? How generous of them. And will they provide microsoft with the specs needed to do so?
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  Yes, we are talking about that Apple which integrated soft fuses that can be triggered remotely, and will brick your device physically. We are talking about that Apple which sued a recycling vendor in Canada because they recycled devices instead of trashing them. We are talking about that Apple which bribed judges in the US to deny its endusers the right to repair. We are talking about that Apple which removed even the audio port of a device to prevent its competition to breakout of the locked hardware with their "upgrades" like better cameras, or even payment systems that wont be supported by Apple. We are talking about that Apple which even changed their goddamn shell from the BSD fork because they didnt want to "open source" (Apple thinks this is zip file dumping) their own bash, which was the only reason bash was outdated for decades. Yes, we are talking about that Apple. Once anything is a competition, it will be extinguished by Apple. They only care about profits, and nothing else.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > bribed judges ... Say more...?
  - sbuk 6y ago
    >Yes, we are talking about that Apple which integrated soft fuses that can be triggered remotely, and will brick your device physically. Care to expand on that? > We are talking about that Apple which sued a recycling vendor in Canada because they recycled devices instead of trashing them. That's incorrect. They sued the company because they were supposed to take the devices apart and recycle/recover the parts. Not resell them as manufacturer refurbished. > We are talking about that Apple which bribed judges in the US to deny its endusers the right to repair. Again, please expand on that. > We are talking about that Apple which removed even the audio port of a device to prevent its competition to breakout of the locked hardware with their "upgrades" like better cameras, or even payment systems that wont be supported by Apple. Arguably, for the 2 things you have mentioned, the Lightening port would be much better suited. They took out the headphone jack because wires are a pain in the ass and the state of the art for wireless headsets is good enough for the majority. > We are talking about that Apple which even changed their goddamn shell from the BSD fork because they didnt want to "open source" (Apple thinks this is zip file dumping) their own bash, which was the only reason bash was outdated for decades. So brief history of the defaults shells in macOS. First 3 releases it was tcsh (BSD - inherited from NeXTStep), then for a while, it was the GPLv2 version of bash (last version to be released under GPLv2 was 3.2), more recently they moved to zsh (MIT). The critical part to get here is licensing. The GPLv3, like it or not, is a controversial license. Apple have an issue with GPLv3, so they avoid software that uses it. Frankly, when bash transitioned to GPLv3 is when Apple should've made the change, but that is a different discussion.
- josteink 6y ago
  > We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? Let's rephrase that: The company that made a generic X86 computer and intentionally created a non-standard way to boot operating systems on their run-of-the-mill X86 hardware, so that other X86-compatible operating-systems running on the same hardware would have issues and make OSX look better by comparison. Yeah, that company. I don't expect them to do jack shit for compatibility.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
Lol they highlighted running Linux in the first announcement of the ISA switch, they see no threat in Linux at all. Their business model would need to change dramatically for that to happen. They’re a hardware company that makes the hardware more attractive with software, service and device integration. Their software restrictions are part of the value proposition, but anyone fully ejecting from that would be on their own. Linux becoming attractive on their hardware would almost certainly be unsupported, but I seriously doubt it would be undermined.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  +1. The real problem is not software incompatibilities or restrictions, but simply the lack of any vendor support and documentation. For a Linux port to "fail" (in the sense of very low usability), Apple doesn't even have to do anything actively, staying unresponsive and unsupporting is sufficient. Without comprehensive documentation, the development will be a long struggle. - First, having good hardware support even on x86_64, a known platform with vendor support, can be problematic. Even on a standard laptop where Linux works just fine, it's still a struggle for the community to get all the peripherals working after a new laptop has been released. Usually new computers can take a year or two before everything is sorted out. For example, on my Lenovo tablet, it took a whole year before every driver has stabilized, yet the integrated audio still didn't work (even when two company employees were actively supporting it on Linux), and I had to take an USB soundcard on-the-go, a really frustrating experience. Eventually I found the problem in the source code, fixed it, and submitted it to LKML - happy end. But it's not the only problem I had, and not everyone is lucky to have an easy problem - the more non-standard the platform is, the more problematic it is, just ask Microsoft Surface Book users for confirmation. - Second, power management is already a somewhat unsolvable problem on x86_64, again, it's a known platform, and often with vendor support. It's increasingly difficult to do power saving in modern laptops with highly integrated SoC - a single component can prevent the entire system from entering a deeper power saving state. In the old days, CPU and graphics were basically everything, but nowadays there can be an endless number of traps - a SATA driver or an audio driver can be the culprit. And even when developers have gone through the trouble of supporting power saving in a device driver based on the existing documentation, it's often plagued with mysterious bugs that baffles everyone (the Window driver often includes nonstandard workarounds that is difficult to be discovered without familiarity with the hardware and systematic testing). And not to mention that many subsystems are poorly documented that prevents the implementation of power management. On many machines, it's already safe to say that nobody knows how power management really works, and nobody knows how to fix it. - Third, reverse engineering the GPU driver is hard, GPU driver is still a disaster on Nvidia x86_64 and ARM SoCs. In the past decade, it's well known that Nvidia had done a successful job to destroy Nouveau, the free and open source driver for Nvidia graphics, by simply not providing documentation and tech support. It took years of reverse engineering to get basic 3D rendering, and another few years for reclocking support. And the introduction of signed firmware for hardware initialization and control essentially rendered Nouveau unusable on the last few generations. The problem is GPU is not limited to complex hardware like Nvidia graphics, even the graphics on relatively simple ARM SoCs have this problem, documentation is nonexistent and reverse engineering is slow. The Mali GPU commonly found on ARM single board computers is still having problem on performance, stability and hardware support. Even on an extremely popular platform, with known documentation (after requests from the community) and strong community support - the Raspberry Pi, it still takes 3 years or so before the 3D graphics driver, VC4, is developed into a usable state. --- Porting Linux to Apple Silicon is a challenge that requires developers to accomplish a similar task, but under the conditions of (1) to a brand new platform, (2) with unknown, new and non-standard peripherals, including the GPU, (3) without adequate documentation. It's easy to make the kernel boot, but making it usable is the sum of all nightmares. You'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and will forever be broken. Graphics acceleration will be nonexistent or just borderline usable. And only Apple knows the technical details, nobody can fix it. Unless the circumstances change and indicate otherwise, I think the Apple Silicon port will be a serious waste of community time, talents, and resources. It's better to spend time on a platform where vendor support and documentation exists... However, the conclusion assumes that a serious competitor of Apple Silicon will eventually emerge and more supportive to the community, but it won't necessarily happen. I'm somewhat afraid that biting the bullet and reverse engineering the Apple Silicon could be the only way to have a high-performance Linux desktop on ARM - I hope not.
kepler1 6y ago
Now here, children, is an example of someone you should never get married to. Someone who would inconvenience you for his mistaken beliefs, and would rather spend money to make sure you get less, than give in and let it be shown he might be wrong. Your mother warned you!
- solraph 6y ago
  An more charitable explanation is the parent poster is someone who puts their principles and a long term view above short term convenience. Seems like good marriage material to me.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  Wtf? Should they rather marry you, someone who goes ahead and makes them look like somehow less of a worthy human, just because they would opt to spend their money in a way you disagree with?
- imtringued 6y ago
  Yes, having no will power and giving up after being forced to is a strength...
ddingus 6y ago
As spiffy as Apple mobile devices are, I never found the locked down environment worth it. Nice hardware, too bad about the OS/App model... This new hardware is awesome! I could care less overall though. Frankly, open computing can be done fast enough to not be a worry. I will stick with all that and see where this new path leads. And my mind is open. Who knows? Maybe it all ends up in a good place. I am quite happy to run FOSS on the many devices that will do that reasonably for the foreseeable future.
- mch82 6y ago
  I don’t understand why people complain instead of taking FOSS they like, packaging it as an app, distributing it on the App Store & publishing the source. Does Apple prohibit that? I remember the days of very little Apple compatible software on the shelf at retailers, and no games. I was probably one of the first students to use a MacBook with OSX for CSCI 101 because many classes required Windows. That was lack of freedom. The App Store has more software than any other distribution channel at any point in my life. Edit: I also love freedom from malware, which I understand is probably a temporary situation. But it’s been a good run so far.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > I don’t understand why people complain instead of taking FOSS they like, packaging it as an app, distributing it on the App Store & publishing the source. Does Apple prohibit that? Apple does not, but the GPL does.
    - mch82 6y ago
      If the source of the app is released by the author, what about GPL prohibits this? Edit: I ask because I’m curious to learn and because many systems run apps that are GPL without the whole system being GPL. For example, I love using GIMP on Windows.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        Section 6 of the GPLv2 states: > You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. This conflicts with the App Store's Terms of Service, particularly it's "Usage Rules". https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store... This is of course different from merely running GPL software on a proprietary OS. In fact, iOS ships with GPL software on board.
rowanG077 6y ago
Well I wouldn't pay for it if I could print billions in a snap because then I would start my own company that creates open RISC-V laptops and pcs. But in the current market I will because there's simply no alternative.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  X86 based PCs are no alternative?
  - rowanG077 6y ago
    Unfortunately not. There are no 13 inch x86 devices on the market that don't throttle afaik.
    - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
      You've been mislead if you think the 13" Macbooks run at full boost clock all the time.
      - wmf 6y ago
        It looks like the M1 does run all out all the time (maybe because it never turbos that much to begin with).
        macintux 6y ago
        When plugged in, perhaps, but when on battery those slower cores are going to get used more.
        dev_tty01 6y ago
        No, if you run a heavy computational load on a battery powered Macbook Pro it runs all out on all cores. Lots of reviewers looking at this. Battery life is worse of course under heavy load but still incredible relative to x86 for identical tasks. Faster and less battery usage.
voodootrucker 6y ago
> I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness That would be these guys then: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  I think you misspelled that link. ;) https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-personal-computer.html https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... Edit: and here I was, thinking a smiley would clarify things. For the record, I'm of course not arguing against supporting sifive. I just think that in the context of this thread, what MNT are doing is much more directly comparable to porting Linux to M1
dorfsmay 6y ago
Will Apple sell M1s to other laptop manufacturers? I already pay for closed source Intel and AMD, I wouldn't mind being able to use M1s, but, I just don't like Apple laptop hardware.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  That’s not how they roll
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Apple did not have a good experience the last time they rolled out licensing of that sort. Watered down the brand especially given some very crappy PowerPC clones.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    And the ones that weren’t crappy were better than Apple’s
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      Maybe those good ones were few and far between. I had the misfortune of supporting some of the clones, and finding myself in front of one was always a much more unpleasant experience than a PowerMac G3.
dwighttk 6y ago
> they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields I don’t think you or Apple or anyone else has to worry about that
ashneo76 6y ago
No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model, privacy intrusions, lip service to OSS, bullying right to repair in courts, tax evasions doesn't deserve any free work from the skilled people in the community. All of this, just so that they can make more billions when people around the world are suffering just to give their restrictive supply chain their blood, lives and tears. You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Hardware manufacturers want the Apple cash, so they wait for the Apple contract and when they get that, any other contracts that you might have will get delayed and sidelined with lower quality stuff. Essentially, a monopoly in the supply chain
- flyinglizard 6y ago
  > As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Apple is not even in contention over the same stuff. Nothing open sourced can fund the development process of a 5nm IC, as the tooling alone would be tens of millions if not more. The total cost of an IC would be in the hundreds of millions (making something of the M1 class is billions). Open source is lower quality unless there is a commercial sponsor. This is almost universally true for software and hardware. This is because people, naturally, have less resources to invest in something with zero to no financial return.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? I mean, Olimex isn't exactly poor. https://www.olimex.com/ https://www.olimex.com/
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform This is an idealism vs. pragmatism debate. Ideally, we’d have a solid hardware stack for Linux. Pragmatically, we have top-of-the-line metal for which there will or will not be Linux. I know which one I would fight for if I still believed in consumer-grade Linux.
- Zee2 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm in the same boat on this one. I am just as in favor of fully open source hardware, software, the whole stack (heck, I'm a huge RISC-V nut), but I won't stick my head under the sand and pretend that I'd rather have a 10x slower, but FOS, machine. I applaud Purism and other companies that strive to make a fully open source full stack, but I won't always have the financial freedom to purchase products that are either slower or less ergonomic than a closed alternative. It's sad, but it's pragmatism.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rimliu 6y ago
> a 10 times slower but open platform With the mindset like this they will never smell any competition from Linux.

freehunter 6y ago

>owner would make it incompatible two seconds after they would smell competition We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? A company who custom-developed drivers specifically to be compatible with a competitor's OS on their own hardware? You're talking about that Apple? The one who said they would be open to allowing Windows to run on M1 if Microsoft developed a compatible version of Windows? I just want to make sure we're talking about the same company, because you seem to think we're talking about a company who runs in the face of competition, where the Apple I know confronts it head-on and goes out of their way to be compatible with the competitors.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
And they did all of that in response to community solutions that weren’t as solid as their first party support. They went out of their way to support and extend the viability of their users clear desire for dual booting, at that time of a much more formidable competitor than MS is today.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 6y ago
  It wasn't altruism, they did it because it would help sell more hardware and bring more people into the Apple ecosystem. If they see a similar use for Linux support, they'll do the same. If they think it will hurt them in some way, they won't. But I think it's fair to at least consider the "undermine" possibility considering that on iPhones they've consistently blocked attempts to jailbreak or open that platform in the way an alternate OS does on their Macs. We've already seen incremental moves to make MacOS app distribution more centrally controlled. So I honestly don't know where Apple believes their long-term interested to be on the topic of facilitating, or at least not actively blocking Linux.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    > It wasn't altruism, they did it because it would help sell more hardware and bring more people into the Apple ecosystem. > > If they see a similar use for Linux support, they'll do the same. If they think it will hurt them in some way, they won't. I agree and said... pretty much the same thing. I just don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell Apple will see Linux as a threat. > But I think it's fair to at least consider the "undermine" possibility considering that on iPhones they've consistently blocked attempts to jailbreak or open that platform in the way an alternate OS does on their Macs. We've already seen incremental moves to make MacOS app distribution more centrally controlled. So I honestly don't know where Apple believes their long-term interested to be on the topic of facilitating, or at least not actively blocking Linux. Nope. Not likely, unless the mechanism for getting Linux on the M-series is software exploits of the macOS platform. They don’t do anything to undermine booting entirely other OSes on their hardware, even iDevices. But they do patch up their own stack.
    - ineedasername 6y ago
      You can't "nope" your way around Apple putting up a few walls around the MacOS garden just because they've left a door in one of them. If they go no further, then it's fine. But "not likely" is a bit too soon to say until they've gone a while without further limitations. That is, unless you consider something like the Mac equivalent of Project Sandcastle running on outdated hardware to be an acceptable situation, which appears to require a jailbreak of their stack anyway. There's simply nothing stopping Apple from going that route, and some years of incremental changes to MacOS that have inched it closer. Again, I'll believe they won't do that when they stop taking those incremental steps. Until then, "nope" really just means "not yet".
nightski 6y ago
Bootcamp is dead on M1. In addition they have taken steps towards further locking down which apps can run on OSX. So he's probably talking about that Apple.
- internet2000 6y ago
  Bootcamp isn't available as Microsoft doesn't have a version of Windows compatible with the new platform. The parent comment even says that. And Gatekeeper has been around for 8+ years, always with ways to run whatever you want, but I'm sure the "locking down" is coming any day now. It's just business: Apple won't intentionally remove features that makes their hardware more attractive. It's where they make most of their money.
  - nightski 6y ago
    I didn't mean to imply it was Apple's fault Windows did not run on M1 (in fact it has been shown that Windows ARM64 does run natively on M1 albeit through a patched QEMU due to lack of driver support), but by designing a custom SoC they have abandoned the approach which would afford them the most compatibility (staying with x86). This may have been the right direction for them, but it's not the same approach as before and definitely abandons compatibility in favor of better performance. Second while Gatekeeper has been around for 8+ years, the default of contacting an Apple server on every program launch was new (or so I thought) with Big Sur. It's a step towards that direction. People could not launch apps when this server was down.
    - spacedcowboy 6y ago
      Nah, gatekeeper has been doing the remote check thing for years (just, 2 of them, I think). It only became noticeable because there was an oversight in the "fail-fast" algorithm. If Apple was available, it was assumed it would be fast, and it wasn't when there was an iCloud outage.
      - mjcohen 6y ago
        I followed the instructions on how to use Little Snitch to skip Apple's app start stuff.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
The company that forced me to buy a mac to develop for them?
- msie 6y ago
  How about Windows? Did someone force you to buy a computer to develop for it?
  - netsharc 6y ago
    In theory one could do Windows dev on hard mode (on Linux/Mac): get one of the Windows virtual machines that Microsoft provides to test for old IE compatibility (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...), install the freely available compilers (or even the open source Cygwin one), and code away!
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Microsoft distributes free Windows VMs with developer tools installed for the explicit purpose of developing on Windows, there's no need to use their IE images.
  - aruggirello 6y ago
    You can pretty much develop software for Windows on other platforms too. Cross compilation is supported in several languages, and when you can't - you can usually compile stuff under Wine, or even ReactOS. So while obviously you need a computer, you don't strictly need Windows.
    - aspyct 6y ago
      Yes you do need Windows. Wine is great, but there's no way I'll publicly release a windows application that hasn't been tested on an actual windows install.
      - 6y ago
thayne 6y ago
> The one who said they would be open to allowing Windows to run on M1 if Microsoft developed a compatible version of Windows? How generous of them. And will they provide microsoft with the specs needed to do so?
cookiengineer 6y ago
Yes, we are talking about that Apple which integrated soft fuses that can be triggered remotely, and will brick your device physically. We are talking about that Apple which sued a recycling vendor in Canada because they recycled devices instead of trashing them. We are talking about that Apple which bribed judges in the US to deny its endusers the right to repair. We are talking about that Apple which removed even the audio port of a device to prevent its competition to breakout of the locked hardware with their "upgrades" like better cameras, or even payment systems that wont be supported by Apple. We are talking about that Apple which even changed their goddamn shell from the BSD fork because they didnt want to "open source" (Apple thinks this is zip file dumping) their own bash, which was the only reason bash was outdated for decades. Yes, we are talking about that Apple. Once anything is a competition, it will be extinguished by Apple. They only care about profits, and nothing else.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > bribed judges ... Say more...?
- sbuk 6y ago
  >Yes, we are talking about that Apple which integrated soft fuses that can be triggered remotely, and will brick your device physically. Care to expand on that? > We are talking about that Apple which sued a recycling vendor in Canada because they recycled devices instead of trashing them. That's incorrect. They sued the company because they were supposed to take the devices apart and recycle/recover the parts. Not resell them as manufacturer refurbished. > We are talking about that Apple which bribed judges in the US to deny its endusers the right to repair. Again, please expand on that. > We are talking about that Apple which removed even the audio port of a device to prevent its competition to breakout of the locked hardware with their "upgrades" like better cameras, or even payment systems that wont be supported by Apple. Arguably, for the 2 things you have mentioned, the Lightening port would be much better suited. They took out the headphone jack because wires are a pain in the ass and the state of the art for wireless headsets is good enough for the majority. > We are talking about that Apple which even changed their goddamn shell from the BSD fork because they didnt want to "open source" (Apple thinks this is zip file dumping) their own bash, which was the only reason bash was outdated for decades. So brief history of the defaults shells in macOS. First 3 releases it was tcsh (BSD - inherited from NeXTStep), then for a while, it was the GPLv2 version of bash (last version to be released under GPLv2 was 3.2), more recently they moved to zsh (MIT). The critical part to get here is licensing. The GPLv3, like it or not, is a controversial license. Apple have an issue with GPLv3, so they avoid software that uses it. Frankly, when bash transitioned to GPLv3 is when Apple should've made the change, but that is a different discussion.
josteink 6y ago
> We're talking about Apple, right? The company that made an entire software platform called Bootcamp, specifically to enable a competitor's OS to run on their hardware? Let's rephrase that: The company that made a generic X86 computer and intentionally created a non-standard way to boot operating systems on their run-of-the-mill X86 hardware, so that other X86-compatible operating-systems running on the same hardware would have issues and make OSX look better by comparison. Yeah, that company. I don't expect them to do jack shit for compatibility.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

Lol they highlighted running Linux in the first announcement of the ISA switch, they see no threat in Linux at all. Their business model would need to change dramatically for that to happen. They’re a hardware company that makes the hardware more attractive with software, service and device integration. Their software restrictions are part of the value proposition, but anyone fully ejecting from that would be on their own. Linux becoming attractive on their hardware would almost certainly be unsupported, but I seriously doubt it would be undermined.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
+1. The real problem is not software incompatibilities or restrictions, but simply the lack of any vendor support and documentation. For a Linux port to "fail" (in the sense of very low usability), Apple doesn't even have to do anything actively, staying unresponsive and unsupporting is sufficient. Without comprehensive documentation, the development will be a long struggle. - First, having good hardware support even on x86_64, a known platform with vendor support, can be problematic. Even on a standard laptop where Linux works just fine, it's still a struggle for the community to get all the peripherals working after a new laptop has been released. Usually new computers can take a year or two before everything is sorted out. For example, on my Lenovo tablet, it took a whole year before every driver has stabilized, yet the integrated audio still didn't work (even when two company employees were actively supporting it on Linux), and I had to take an USB soundcard on-the-go, a really frustrating experience. Eventually I found the problem in the source code, fixed it, and submitted it to LKML - happy end. But it's not the only problem I had, and not everyone is lucky to have an easy problem - the more non-standard the platform is, the more problematic it is, just ask Microsoft Surface Book users for confirmation. - Second, power management is already a somewhat unsolvable problem on x86_64, again, it's a known platform, and often with vendor support. It's increasingly difficult to do power saving in modern laptops with highly integrated SoC - a single component can prevent the entire system from entering a deeper power saving state. In the old days, CPU and graphics were basically everything, but nowadays there can be an endless number of traps - a SATA driver or an audio driver can be the culprit. And even when developers have gone through the trouble of supporting power saving in a device driver based on the existing documentation, it's often plagued with mysterious bugs that baffles everyone (the Window driver often includes nonstandard workarounds that is difficult to be discovered without familiarity with the hardware and systematic testing). And not to mention that many subsystems are poorly documented that prevents the implementation of power management. On many machines, it's already safe to say that nobody knows how power management really works, and nobody knows how to fix it. - Third, reverse engineering the GPU driver is hard, GPU driver is still a disaster on Nvidia x86_64 and ARM SoCs. In the past decade, it's well known that Nvidia had done a successful job to destroy Nouveau, the free and open source driver for Nvidia graphics, by simply not providing documentation and tech support. It took years of reverse engineering to get basic 3D rendering, and another few years for reclocking support. And the introduction of signed firmware for hardware initialization and control essentially rendered Nouveau unusable on the last few generations. The problem is GPU is not limited to complex hardware like Nvidia graphics, even the graphics on relatively simple ARM SoCs have this problem, documentation is nonexistent and reverse engineering is slow. The Mali GPU commonly found on ARM single board computers is still having problem on performance, stability and hardware support. Even on an extremely popular platform, with known documentation (after requests from the community) and strong community support - the Raspberry Pi, it still takes 3 years or so before the 3D graphics driver, VC4, is developed into a usable state. --- Porting Linux to Apple Silicon is a challenge that requires developers to accomplish a similar task, but under the conditions of (1) to a brand new platform, (2) with unknown, new and non-standard peripherals, including the GPU, (3) without adequate documentation. It's easy to make the kernel boot, but making it usable is the sum of all nightmares. You'll find none of the peripherals works, and the community reverse engineering efforts will take years before getting basic functionality, and even then, the battery will only last for 2 hours and will forever be broken. Graphics acceleration will be nonexistent or just borderline usable. And only Apple knows the technical details, nobody can fix it. Unless the circumstances change and indicate otherwise, I think the Apple Silicon port will be a serious waste of community time, talents, and resources. It's better to spend time on a platform where vendor support and documentation exists... However, the conclusion assumes that a serious competitor of Apple Silicon will eventually emerge and more supportive to the community, but it won't necessarily happen. I'm somewhat afraid that biting the bullet and reverse engineering the Apple Silicon could be the only way to have a high-performance Linux desktop on ARM - I hope not.

kepler1 6y ago

Now here, children, is an example of someone you should never get married to. Someone who would inconvenience you for his mistaken beliefs, and would rather spend money to make sure you get less, than give in and let it be shown he might be wrong. Your mother warned you!

solraph 6y ago
An more charitable explanation is the parent poster is someone who puts their principles and a long term view above short term convenience. Seems like good marriage material to me.
black_puppydog 6y ago
Wtf? Should they rather marry you, someone who goes ahead and makes them look like somehow less of a worthy human, just because they would opt to spend their money in a way you disagree with?
imtringued 6y ago
Yes, having no will power and giving up after being forced to is a strength...

ddingus 6y ago

As spiffy as Apple mobile devices are, I never found the locked down environment worth it. Nice hardware, too bad about the OS/App model... This new hardware is awesome! I could care less overall though. Frankly, open computing can be done fast enough to not be a worry. I will stick with all that and see where this new path leads. And my mind is open. Who knows? Maybe it all ends up in a good place. I am quite happy to run FOSS on the many devices that will do that reasonably for the foreseeable future.

mch82 6y ago
I don’t understand why people complain instead of taking FOSS they like, packaging it as an app, distributing it on the App Store & publishing the source. Does Apple prohibit that? I remember the days of very little Apple compatible software on the shelf at retailers, and no games. I was probably one of the first students to use a MacBook with OSX for CSCI 101 because many classes required Windows. That was lack of freedom. The App Store has more software than any other distribution channel at any point in my life. Edit: I also love freedom from malware, which I understand is probably a temporary situation. But it’s been a good run so far.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > I don’t understand why people complain instead of taking FOSS they like, packaging it as an app, distributing it on the App Store & publishing the source. Does Apple prohibit that? Apple does not, but the GPL does.
  - mch82 6y ago
    If the source of the app is released by the author, what about GPL prohibits this? Edit: I ask because I’m curious to learn and because many systems run apps that are GPL without the whole system being GPL. For example, I love using GIMP on Windows.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Section 6 of the GPLv2 states: > You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. This conflicts with the App Store's Terms of Service, particularly it's "Usage Rules". https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store... This is of course different from merely running GPL software on a proprietary OS. In fact, iOS ships with GPL software on board.

rowanG077 6y ago

Well I wouldn't pay for it if I could print billions in a snap because then I would start my own company that creates open RISC-V laptops and pcs. But in the current market I will because there's simply no alternative.

ekianjo 6y ago
X86 based PCs are no alternative?
- rowanG077 6y ago
  Unfortunately not. There are no 13 inch x86 devices on the market that don't throttle afaik.
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    You've been mislead if you think the 13" Macbooks run at full boost clock all the time.
    - wmf 6y ago
      It looks like the M1 does run all out all the time (maybe because it never turbos that much to begin with).
      - macintux 6y ago
        When plugged in, perhaps, but when on battery those slower cores are going to get used more.
        dev_tty01 6y ago
        No, if you run a heavy computational load on a battery powered Macbook Pro it runs all out on all cores. Lots of reviewers looking at this. Battery life is worse of course under heavy load but still incredible relative to x86 for identical tasks. Faster and less battery usage.

voodootrucker 6y ago

> I'll send my small quid to whomever appears to be really in favor of openness That would be these guys then: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive-unmatched

black_puppydog 6y ago
I think you misspelled that link. ;) https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-personal-computer.html https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-05-08-the-much-more-p... Edit: and here I was, thinking a smiley would clarify things. For the record, I'm of course not arguing against supporting sifive. I just think that in the context of this thread, what MNT are doing is much more directly comparable to porting Linux to M1

dorfsmay 6y ago

Will Apple sell M1s to other laptop manufacturers? I already pay for closed source Intel and AMD, I wouldn't mind being able to use M1s, but, I just don't like Apple laptop hardware.

tambourine_man 6y ago
That’s not how they roll
ineedasername 6y ago
Apple did not have a good experience the last time they rolled out licensing of that sort. Watered down the brand especially given some very crappy PowerPC clones.
- dwighttk 6y ago
  And the ones that weren’t crappy were better than Apple’s
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    Maybe those good ones were few and far between. I had the misfortune of supporting some of the clones, and finding myself in front of one was always a much more unpleasant experience than a PowerMac G3.

dwighttk 6y ago

> they would smell competition from Linux in any of their core business fields I don’t think you or Apple or anyone else has to worry about that

ashneo76 6y ago

No.No.no.no.no.no.no.no. A million thousand times no. As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. A company that doesn't purposefully force manufactured obsolescence as a business model, privacy intrusions, lip service to OSS, bullying right to repair in courts, tax evasions doesn't deserve any free work from the skilled people in the community. All of this, just so that they can make more billions when people around the world are suffering just to give their restrictive supply chain their blood, lives and tears. You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Hardware manufacturers want the Apple cash, so they wait for the Apple contract and when they get that, any other contracts that you might have will get delayed and sidelined with lower quality stuff. Essentially, a monopoly in the supply chain

flyinglizard 6y ago
> As some one else said, every spare dollar I have is going to fund a company that values open source hardware, open source software, right to repair and own. What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? > You know why open source hardware is expensive for lower quality? Because Apple pays the premium on the premium quality stuff. But I'm that process they also drive up the prices. Apple is not even in contention over the same stuff. Nothing open sourced can fund the development process of a 5nm IC, as the tooling alone would be tens of millions if not more. The total cost of an IC would be in the hundreds of millions (making something of the M1 class is billions). Open source is lower quality unless there is a commercial sponsor. This is almost universally true for software and hardware. This is because people, naturally, have less resources to invest in something with zero to no financial return.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > What is this whimsical company, and how exactly does it make money? I mean, Olimex isn't exactly poor. https://www.olimex.com/ https://www.olimex.com/

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> I'd rather help funding the port to a 10 times slower but open platform This is an idealism vs. pragmatism debate. Ideally, we’d have a solid hardware stack for Linux. Pragmatically, we have top-of-the-line metal for which there will or will not be Linux. I know which one I would fight for if I still believed in consumer-grade Linux.

Zee2 6y ago
Yeah, I'm in the same boat on this one. I am just as in favor of fully open source hardware, software, the whole stack (heck, I'm a huge RISC-V nut), but I won't stick my head under the sand and pretend that I'd rather have a 10x slower, but FOS, machine. I applaud Purism and other companies that strive to make a fully open source full stack, but I won't always have the financial freedom to purchase products that are either slower or less ergonomic than a closed alternative. It's sad, but it's pragmatism.

deleted 6y ago

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rimliu 6y ago

> a 10 times slower but open platform With the mindset like this they will never smell any competition from Linux.