10 ms·

Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk

118 points by alwillis 6y ago

coldtea 6y ago
>I therefore recommend that you don’t waste your time discovering which USB-C SSDs might be compatible: go straight for a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Why would one "waste time"? This information is, or will soon be, all around various forums. And if its indeed a bug, it will be fixed in an upcoming update, so it doesn't make sense to forke for a (more expensive) TB3 enclosure if a USB-C will do.
willvarfar 6y ago
Back a couple of years ago I messed up my MBP by partitioning it to dual-boot Linux. At the time Linux desktops didn't cope with retina screens very well (and probably still don't?), but it was worth it for my code-heavy days. But I still went back into OSX for Skype-for-Business calls (shudder). For ages I was very happy Linux-on-MBP user. And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. So I'm kinda wary of ever doing any stunt like partitioning the internal ssd again in the future. But reading about dual-boot from external SSD makes me think "when I get my M1, perhaps I can boot Linux from an external SSD". That way I can still use OSX for the MS Office Suite when the web-version isn't cutting it, kinda thing. But is there any signing requirement for the external ssd boot-up?
- jhanschoo 6y ago
  I've been booting Linux regularly from an external SSD since ~2016. This was after I encountered the same bs you did with it installed in an internal drive: I think I lost data when OS X upgrades first introduced logical partition containers in anticipation of APFS, and again when APFS was introduced. Starting this year I no longer use Apple devices, since everything work-related I do in Linux.
  - simonh 6y ago
    I was using boot camp through that whole period and don’t think I lost a byte. I had time machine backups anyway. Maybe I used time machine restores as part of the migration though, I can’t remember.
    - jhanschoo 6y ago
      Boot camp is different, though, since the installars are aware of that partitioning case.
- pault 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure most Linux desktop environments these days have decent support for UI scaling. Last time I tried it worked well if your dpi was close to an integer multiple of 96. And if external boot works well with the M1 Macs, a thunderbolt enclosure with an m.2 drive would be pretty darn fast.
- sneak 6y ago
  You can disable the signing requirement, but it is unlikely that there will be Linux drivers for the M1's GPU any time soon. I imagine the first person getting Linux booting at all (even without graphical acceleration) on the M1 will be at the top of HN.
  - sa1 6y ago
    Might be this person: https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts
  - alwillis 6y ago
    Apple support document on turning off secure boot: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198
    - jackjeff 6y ago
      Does it work the same for M1 Macs? Because the documentation only mention Intel CPUs with T2 chips.
      - lstamour 6y ago
        Okay I just went and took a look... Indeed it doesn't show the same options. This is what I saw when I went to Startup Security Utility: (*) Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time. ( ) Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run. [ ] Allow user management of kernel extensions from identified developers [ ] Allow remote management of kernel extensions and automatic software updates There's no option to turn on or off a firmware password, instead I had to login with a local administrator account first before I could access anything under recovery options. There doesn't appear to be a way to set "No Security" as an option either. At least from the GUI. Maybe it's possible from Terminal somewhere. But it seems unlikely or undocumented for now. Edit: Here's the Apple documentation on this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/mac https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/... Regarding kernel extensions, there's also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211860 Regarding macOS Recovery, there's https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/mac https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/...
- rangibaby 6y ago
  When was that? I dual booted my MBP from 2015 or 16. UI scaling worked fine with a few exceptions using Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. > And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. IIRC with some MacOS update it got confused when it rebooted while installing, holding alt and choosing the correct partition while rebooting got it back on track.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Just so you know, you can always recover this kind of thing by booting while holding cmd + r and then formatting the drive and reinstalling.
- adrian_b 6y ago
  If you had problems with retina screens a couple of years ago, that was probably due to the drivers for the MBP GPU, not due to monitor resolution or due to Linux. There are more than 5 years since I do not use monitors with less than 4k resolution with Linux and I never had any problems with correct scaling or with anything else. While the NVIDIA drivers are not open-source, nevertheless they usually have the best Linux support and they have no problems with multiple high-resolution monitors. However, Apple does not use NVIDIA, so that increases the chances for problems on Linux. For the smaller MBPs, with Intel Iris GPUs, the GPU drivers should also have been OK, even a couple of years ago. The greatest chances of problems would have been on MBPs with AMD GPUs. Nevertheless, the AMD drivers have been improving during the last years, so today there should be better chances that they would work OK.
- foldr 6y ago
  >And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. Apple pretty clearly don't mind you partitioning the SSD because you need to do that for bootcamp, which is supported (for Intel Macs at least). I'm not sure exactly what issue you had, but it's not a case of Apple saying "no, you can't do that".
- gattr 6y ago
  Regarding display scaling: it's been working well for me in Fedora (X-Window + KDE) for a few years now, on a 13.3" FullHD laptop (scale set to 118%) and a workstation with 4K 24" monitor (scale 175%). Just had to manually increase mouse cursor size and set the "Force font DPI" value higher.
2349898ff 6y ago
So a really expensive, premium computer supports a feature nearly all budget computer brands do. ("Why did we remove the headphone jack? Courage.")
m463 6y ago
Target disk mode and it's cousin, target display mode are two things I believe are 100% good. They have made macs completely easy to install, upgrade, and repair over my years of experience. If these kinds of things are disappearing in the iosification of things it will be a real shame.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm personally skeptical that the recovery-mode SMB disk sharing is a practical replacement for target disk mode. The last time I had to use target disk mode was when the macOS Mojave installer corrupted my fusion drive, in such a way that the host would panic on boot. I was able to save it with target disk mode and a second mac. That machine was not able to enter its own recovery mode, so I don't see how it could have been repaired with this new SMB scheme.
sneak 6y ago
It is not, however, possible to wipe the disk completely and boot from external media on M1/T2 and reinstall without internet access and obtaining an activation signature from Apple: https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware/ https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Ridiculous - especially considering how expensive they are. It needs regulation, even ignoring the consumers, all these verification/ always-online designs create unusable software or e-waste as the years pass by.
  - lock-free 6y ago
    Buy from a competitor then
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      1. I do 2. Most consumers have no next to no information that wasn't given to them by the marketing departments of the companies, so that isn't an argument against basic regulation on things like consumer freedom.
      - lock-free 6y ago
        Consumers are free to buy other things, like yourself. It doesn't sound like regulation was necessary, as the free market provided products that fit your needs. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that government should have a say in design decisions for consumer products past safety and environmental concerns. I don't design things to support every consumer use case, I don't document it so those use cases can be supported, and I don't take it personally if a consumer chooses a competing product because it fits their use cases better. If enough consumers do that, I support those cases. There is plenty of consumer freedom in consumer electronics. We don't need the government telling us what they think our customers want.
cosmotic 6y ago
I know it's off topic but oh my does big sur look terrible; Those dialog boxes look appalling. Stacked buttons? centered text? 5-word-wide columns?
- lisper 6y ago
  Apple's new design philosophy seems to be: if it's good enough for your phone, it's good enough for your laptop.
- dannyw 6y ago
  It’s not designed for you and me. It’s designed for the growing population whose first and only computer has been an iPhone.
  - Technically 6y ago
    That still doesn't explain bad UI.
  - cosmotic 6y ago
    It's looked bad on iPhones since the first iPhone.
  - alwillis 6y ago
    It’s designed this way because we can’t have nice things. It’s been too easy to mess things up by repartitioning the hard drive and installing a different OS. The M1 is blazing fast; I imagine by the time the pro versions ship with 32 or 64 Gb of RAM and more high performance cores, running Linux in a VM on Apple Silicon Macs should be a solved problem.
    - josephg 6y ago
      In Apple's defence, linux still isn't fit for purpose from an every day user security standpoint. On linux I can't install and run a program without giving it access to my network and write access to all of my data. For the average person, the whole point of a computer is to be able to run software that usually interacts with things (data on disks) and people (over the network). My mum doesn't want to be able to brick her computer by pressing the wrong sequence of keys / buttons in the control panel. And she doesn't want a malicious program to be able to use her credentials to encrypt and ransom all her company's data. Removing features from my mum's computer makes it a better device for her. And sometimes a better device for me - I trust my iphone to safely run 3rd party software more than I trust my linux desktop. Apple's philosophy - while very different from what I want in a computer - is absolutely oriented toward a sensible, well thought out vision of computing. I think us hackers do a disservice by dismissing the use case.
byecomputer 6y ago
far in the future, distant peoples sifting through sand to find the one with the key to plenty: the Apple cryptographic signature
perryizgr8 6y ago
Why should a computer care if you are booting from an internal or an external disk? Both a just disks, as long as the data is how the bootloader/OS expects, why wouldn't it boot?
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  Welcome to the real world where real companies have very real desires of making you fight for every inch of freedom.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Because this is something that apple would have had to specifically develop and test and it’s a feature that almost no one uses so it’s quite realistic that they would have not bothered. Under the same line of logic we should be able to boot an iPhone off an external drive since it’s technically just as capable.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    > Under the same line of logic we should be able to boot an iPhone off an external drive since it’s technically just as capable. True, I would expect that.
dehrmann 6y ago
Imagine seeing an article on how to boot a modern Dell/Lenovo/HP laptop off an external disk.
- hans1729 6y ago
  From someone who uses a newest gen xps for work (and an mba privately): that's just comparing apples and oranges at this point. Apple is not in the "Laptop" game, Apple is playing their own game. And good on them, because a lot of the amazing advantages that come with macbooks wouldn't be possible otherwise. This may seem frustrating from a hackers perspective, but it is what it is.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Apple does like to hide things very well, I remember a long time ago (but after they had switched to x86, and all the news about Hackintoshing had me believe they were just branded PCs) I was asked to do some basic troubleshooting on a Macbook and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the key to enter the BIOS setup utility, only to find out later that there was none. Meanwhile, my no-name Chinese mobo exclaims "Press F10 for BOOT MENU!!" (the uppercase and exclamation marks are verbatim) on its BIOS post screen, and nearly all the other PCs I've used have similar if less exciting messages. But with Apple, all you get is an Apple logo, and if you need to do anything other than normal boot, you had better have looked it up because it won't tell you.
  - chrizel 6y ago
    Apple just didn't adapt the old IBM PC legacy BIOS after switching to Intel in 2005. [1] Instead, they adapted Intel's EFI [2] which is meant to replace the legacy BIOS. Now you could argue why Apple didn't provide legacy BIOS support like other motherboard manufacturers do today. [3] But I think it conforms to Apple's thinking to not adapt old or unnecessary technology in the first place, and fairly quickly dropping support for older technology. This can be seen in Apple's hardware decisions by being one of the first companies to use USB in the first iMac in the late 90s, dropping disk drives and other ports, etc. and in their software decisions by dropping old APIs or 32-bit fairly quickly. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In... 3: Well, they added BIOS compatibility later, to allow booting OSes like Windows, but what's missing is some fancy GUI around it - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture#The_EFI_and_GUID_Partition_Table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu...
supernova87a 6y ago
Would anyone mind explaining the benefit of doing this (or is it a vulnerability)?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  You have a big external SSD and you want to put macOS on it. Now you can and your M1 Mac will run off of that.
  - zachberger 6y ago
    right, but why?
    - bluedino 6y ago
      Because you bought the 128GB model and want more disk space?
      - zachberger 6y ago
        I'm not sure we're talking about the same things. This article is about booting an operating system from an external disk. How is that going to save anything on the internal hard drive unless you remove the OS from the internal drive and are constantly tethered to that external USB boot disk?
      - supernova87a 6y ago
        Wouldn't the speed losses negate the attractiveness of the M1's performance? I guess if you feel the Apple pricing of the larger hard drive is extortionate, then ok, sure.
        Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        With USB4? I don't think it would necessarily have to be slower.
fartcannon 6y ago
I don't understand: is this a computer or a game console/cell phone? Why is it news that it can be installed on a disk? That is a fundamental aspect of an OS.
- oblio 6y ago
  > I don't understand: is this a computer or a game console/cell phone? It's both. Macs started as quite closed systems, were opened up a bit near the brink of bankruptcy and now are slowly being turned into appliances a la iPhone but with a small sandbox for app developers.
- uniqueid 6y ago
  It's a web browser, a media player, and a vehicle to sell iCloud subscriptions.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Don't forget "an iOS development kit". But yeah, that's about it.
jbirer 6y ago
I love MacOS but I have decided to boycott Apple for the time being. I want full control over my device.
- mjhagen 6y ago
  I'm afraid "for the time being" is going to be "for ever" then.
- peteretep 6y ago
  > I want full control over my device That’s a noble goal, but I thought virtually all computers these days had some form of TEE?
haunter 6y ago
I wonder how far away is the consolification of Macs - The unified hardware is already there - One single OS (which pretty much can be invisible) - The only thing left is the software space. You can still install unverified apps but how long? Just require the App Store for everything and it's pretty much done. And I bet most people would love this (more safe!) or doesn't really care.
- legulere 6y ago
  There’s still a lot of vertical integration possible in hardware. The cpu and gpu is now Apple‘s design, but a lot of components like the screen are just bought from suppliers.
  - haunter 6y ago
    I mean Sony and Microsoft also buying the components from CPU to GPU, that's not even the point
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

118 points by alwillis 6y ago

>I therefore recommend that you don’t waste your time discovering which USB-C SSDs might be compatible: go straight for a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Why would one "waste time"? This information is, or will soon be, all around various forums. And if its indeed a bug, it will be fixed in an upcoming update, so it doesn't make sense to forke for a (more expensive) TB3 enclosure if a USB-C will do.

willvarfar 6y ago

Back a couple of years ago I messed up my MBP by partitioning it to dual-boot Linux. At the time Linux desktops didn't cope with retina screens very well (and probably still don't?), but it was worth it for my code-heavy days. But I still went back into OSX for Skype-for-Business calls (shudder). For ages I was very happy Linux-on-MBP user. And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. So I'm kinda wary of ever doing any stunt like partitioning the internal ssd again in the future. But reading about dual-boot from external SSD makes me think "when I get my M1, perhaps I can boot Linux from an external SSD". That way I can still use OSX for the MS Office Suite when the web-version isn't cutting it, kinda thing. But is there any signing requirement for the external ssd boot-up?

jhanschoo 6y ago
I've been booting Linux regularly from an external SSD since ~2016. This was after I encountered the same bs you did with it installed in an internal drive: I think I lost data when OS X upgrades first introduced logical partition containers in anticipation of APFS, and again when APFS was introduced. Starting this year I no longer use Apple devices, since everything work-related I do in Linux.
- simonh 6y ago
  I was using boot camp through that whole period and don’t think I lost a byte. I had time machine backups anyway. Maybe I used time machine restores as part of the migration though, I can’t remember.
  - jhanschoo 6y ago
    Boot camp is different, though, since the installars are aware of that partitioning case.
pault 6y ago
I'm pretty sure most Linux desktop environments these days have decent support for UI scaling. Last time I tried it worked well if your dpi was close to an integer multiple of 96. And if external boot works well with the M1 Macs, a thunderbolt enclosure with an m.2 drive would be pretty darn fast.
sneak 6y ago
You can disable the signing requirement, but it is unlikely that there will be Linux drivers for the M1's GPU any time soon. I imagine the first person getting Linux booting at all (even without graphical acceleration) on the M1 will be at the top of HN.
- sa1 6y ago
  Might be this person: https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts https://www.patreon.com/marcan/posts
- alwillis 6y ago
  Apple support document on turning off secure boot: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198
  - jackjeff 6y ago
    Does it work the same for M1 Macs? Because the documentation only mention Intel CPUs with T2 chips.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      Okay I just went and took a look... Indeed it doesn't show the same options. This is what I saw when I went to Startup Security Utility: (*) Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time. ( ) Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run. [ ] Allow user management of kernel extensions from identified developers [ ] Allow remote management of kernel extensions and automatic software updates There's no option to turn on or off a firmware password, instead I had to login with a local administrator account first before I could access anything under recovery options. There doesn't appear to be a way to set "No Security" as an option either. At least from the GUI. Maybe it's possible from Terminal somewhere. But it seems unlikely or undocumented for now. Edit: Here's the Apple documentation on this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/mac https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/... Regarding kernel extensions, there's also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211860 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211860 Regarding macOS Recovery, there's https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/mac https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/...
rangibaby 6y ago
When was that? I dual booted my MBP from 2015 or 16. UI scaling worked fine with a few exceptions using Ubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME. > And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. IIRC with some MacOS update it got confused when it rebooted while installing, holding alt and choosing the correct partition while rebooting got it back on track.
PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Just so you know, you can always recover this kind of thing by booting while holding cmd + r and then formatting the drive and reinstalling.
adrian_b 6y ago
If you had problems with retina screens a couple of years ago, that was probably due to the drivers for the MBP GPU, not due to monitor resolution or due to Linux. There are more than 5 years since I do not use monitors with less than 4k resolution with Linux and I never had any problems with correct scaling or with anything else. While the NVIDIA drivers are not open-source, nevertheless they usually have the best Linux support and they have no problems with multiple high-resolution monitors. However, Apple does not use NVIDIA, so that increases the chances for problems on Linux. For the smaller MBPs, with Intel Iris GPUs, the GPU drivers should also have been OK, even a couple of years ago. The greatest chances of problems would have been on MBPs with AMD GPUs. Nevertheless, the AMD drivers have been improving during the last years, so today there should be better chances that they would work OK.
foldr 6y ago
>And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned. Apple pretty clearly don't mind you partitioning the SSD because you need to do that for bootcamp, which is supported (for Intel Macs at least). I'm not sure exactly what issue you had, but it's not a case of Apple saying "no, you can't do that".
gattr 6y ago
Regarding display scaling: it's been working well for me in Fedora (X-Window + KDE) for a few years now, on a 13.3" FullHD laptop (scale set to 118%) and a workstation with 4K 24" monitor (scale 175%). Just had to manually increase mouse cursor size and set the "Force font DPI" value higher.

2349898ff 6y ago

So a really expensive, premium computer supports a feature nearly all budget computer brands do. ("Why did we remove the headphone jack? Courage.")

m463 6y ago

Target disk mode and it's cousin, target display mode are two things I believe are 100% good. They have made macs completely easy to install, upgrade, and repair over my years of experience. If these kinds of things are disappearing in the iosification of things it will be a real shame.

jeffbee 6y ago
Yeah, I'm personally skeptical that the recovery-mode SMB disk sharing is a practical replacement for target disk mode. The last time I had to use target disk mode was when the macOS Mojave installer corrupted my fusion drive, in such a way that the host would panic on boot. I was able to save it with target disk mode and a second mac. That machine was not able to enter its own recovery mode, so I don't see how it could have been repaired with this new SMB scheme.

sneak 6y ago

It is not, however, possible to wipe the disk completely and boot from external media on M1/T2 and reinstall without internet access and obtaining an activation signature from Apple: https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware/ https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...

mhh__ 6y ago
Ridiculous - especially considering how expensive they are. It needs regulation, even ignoring the consumers, all these verification/ always-online designs create unusable software or e-waste as the years pass by.
- lock-free 6y ago
  Buy from a competitor then
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    1. I do 2. Most consumers have no next to no information that wasn't given to them by the marketing departments of the companies, so that isn't an argument against basic regulation on things like consumer freedom.
    - lock-free 6y ago
      Consumers are free to buy other things, like yourself. It doesn't sound like regulation was necessary, as the free market provided products that fit your needs. I fundamentally disagree with the notion that government should have a say in design decisions for consumer products past safety and environmental concerns. I don't design things to support every consumer use case, I don't document it so those use cases can be supported, and I don't take it personally if a consumer chooses a competing product because it fits their use cases better. If enough consumers do that, I support those cases. There is plenty of consumer freedom in consumer electronics. We don't need the government telling us what they think our customers want.

cosmotic 6y ago

I know it's off topic but oh my does big sur look terrible; Those dialog boxes look appalling. Stacked buttons? centered text? 5-word-wide columns?

lisper 6y ago
Apple's new design philosophy seems to be: if it's good enough for your phone, it's good enough for your laptop.
dannyw 6y ago
It’s not designed for you and me. It’s designed for the growing population whose first and only computer has been an iPhone.
- Technically 6y ago
  That still doesn't explain bad UI.
- cosmotic 6y ago
  It's looked bad on iPhones since the first iPhone.
- alwillis 6y ago
  It’s designed this way because we can’t have nice things. It’s been too easy to mess things up by repartitioning the hard drive and installing a different OS. The M1 is blazing fast; I imagine by the time the pro versions ship with 32 or 64 Gb of RAM and more high performance cores, running Linux in a VM on Apple Silicon Macs should be a solved problem.
  - josephg 6y ago
    In Apple's defence, linux still isn't fit for purpose from an every day user security standpoint. On linux I can't install and run a program without giving it access to my network and write access to all of my data. For the average person, the whole point of a computer is to be able to run software that usually interacts with things (data on disks) and people (over the network). My mum doesn't want to be able to brick her computer by pressing the wrong sequence of keys / buttons in the control panel. And she doesn't want a malicious program to be able to use her credentials to encrypt and ransom all her company's data. Removing features from my mum's computer makes it a better device for her. And sometimes a better device for me - I trust my iphone to safely run 3rd party software more than I trust my linux desktop. Apple's philosophy - while very different from what I want in a computer - is absolutely oriented toward a sensible, well thought out vision of computing. I think us hackers do a disservice by dismissing the use case.

byecomputer 6y ago

far in the future, distant peoples sifting through sand to find the one with the key to plenty: the Apple cryptographic signature

perryizgr8 6y ago

Why should a computer care if you are booting from an internal or an external disk? Both a just disks, as long as the data is how the bootloader/OS expects, why wouldn't it boot?

monsieurbanana 6y ago
Welcome to the real world where real companies have very real desires of making you fight for every inch of freedom.
PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Because this is something that apple would have had to specifically develop and test and it’s a feature that almost no one uses so it’s quite realistic that they would have not bothered. Under the same line of logic we should be able to boot an iPhone off an external drive since it’s technically just as capable.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  > Under the same line of logic we should be able to boot an iPhone off an external drive since it’s technically just as capable. True, I would expect that.

dehrmann 6y ago

Imagine seeing an article on how to boot a modern Dell/Lenovo/HP laptop off an external disk.

hans1729 6y ago
From someone who uses a newest gen xps for work (and an mba privately): that's just comparing apples and oranges at this point. Apple is not in the "Laptop" game, Apple is playing their own game. And good on them, because a lot of the amazing advantages that come with macbooks wouldn't be possible otherwise. This may seem frustrating from a hackers perspective, but it is what it is.
userbinator 6y ago
Apple does like to hide things very well, I remember a long time ago (but after they had switched to x86, and all the news about Hackintoshing had me believe they were just branded PCs) I was asked to do some basic troubleshooting on a Macbook and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out the key to enter the BIOS setup utility, only to find out later that there was none. Meanwhile, my no-name Chinese mobo exclaims "Press F10 for BOOT MENU!!" (the uppercase and exclamation marks are verbatim) on its BIOS post screen, and nearly all the other PCs I've used have similar if less exciting messages. But with Apple, all you get is an Apple logo, and if you need to do anything other than normal boot, you had better have looked it up because it won't tell you.
- chrizel 6y ago
  Apple just didn't adapt the old IBM PC legacy BIOS after switching to Intel in 2005. [1] Instead, they adapted Intel's EFI [2] which is meant to replace the legacy BIOS. Now you could argue why Apple didn't provide legacy BIOS support like other motherboard manufacturers do today. [3] But I think it conforms to Apple's thinking to not adapt old or unnecessary technology in the first place, and fairly quickly dropping support for older technology. This can be seen in Apple's hardware decisions by being one of the first companies to use USB in the first iMac in the late 90s, dropping disk drives and other ports, etc. and in their software decisions by dropping old APIs or 32-bit fairly quickly. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In... 3: Well, they added BIOS compatibility later, to allow booting OSes like Windows, but what's missing is some fancy GUI around it - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture#The_EFI_and_GUID_Partition_Table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu...

supernova87a 6y ago

Would anyone mind explaining the benefit of doing this (or is it a vulnerability)?

saagarjha 6y ago
You have a big external SSD and you want to put macOS on it. Now you can and your M1 Mac will run off of that.
- zachberger 6y ago
  right, but why?
  - bluedino 6y ago
    Because you bought the 128GB model and want more disk space?
    - zachberger 6y ago
      I'm not sure we're talking about the same things. This article is about booting an operating system from an external disk. How is that going to save anything on the internal hard drive unless you remove the OS from the internal drive and are constantly tethered to that external USB boot disk?
    - supernova87a 6y ago
      Wouldn't the speed losses negate the attractiveness of the M1's performance? I guess if you feel the Apple pricing of the larger hard drive is extortionate, then ok, sure.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        With USB4? I don't think it would necessarily have to be slower.

fartcannon 6y ago

I don't understand: is this a computer or a game console/cell phone? Why is it news that it can be installed on a disk? That is a fundamental aspect of an OS.

oblio 6y ago
> I don't understand: is this a computer or a game console/cell phone? It's both. Macs started as quite closed systems, were opened up a bit near the brink of bankruptcy and now are slowly being turned into appliances a la iPhone but with a small sandbox for app developers.
uniqueid 6y ago
It's a web browser, a media player, and a vehicle to sell iCloud subscriptions.
- toyg 6y ago
  Don't forget "an iOS development kit". But yeah, that's about it.

jbirer 6y ago

I love MacOS but I have decided to boycott Apple for the time being. I want full control over my device.

mjhagen 6y ago
I'm afraid "for the time being" is going to be "for ever" then.
peteretep 6y ago
> I want full control over my device That’s a noble goal, but I thought virtually all computers these days had some form of TEE?

haunter 6y ago

I wonder how far away is the consolification of Macs - The unified hardware is already there - One single OS (which pretty much can be invisible) - The only thing left is the software space. You can still install unverified apps but how long? Just require the App Store for everything and it's pretty much done. And I bet most people would love this (more safe!) or doesn't really care.

legulere 6y ago
There’s still a lot of vertical integration possible in hardware. The cpu and gpu is now Apple‘s design, but a lot of components like the screen are just bought from suppliers.
- haunter 6y ago
  I mean Sony and Microsoft also buying the components from CPU to GPU, that's not even the point

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