8 ms·

> Apple has gone in the direction of net appliances I agree that, with "Apple Silicon", they have left behind anything that could reasonably be traced back to

> Apple has gone in the direction of net appliances I agree that, with "Apple Silicon", they have left behind anything that could reasonably be traced back to the "openness" of old desktop computers. New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. As the Star Wars quote goes, "Pray I do not alter [the deal] further". Sure, some people have managed to boot Linux on the ARM cores of the M1, but it's about as useful as pitching a tent in a corner of a stadium and declaring it useable housing. There is so much on the SoC that's closed and out of reach that I can only see the effort as misguided.

AceJohnny2 6y ago
Unfortunately, the consumer industry trend will be to follow Apple. I see little hope for competitive open computing devices. Ever since the Nokia N900, openness has consistently lost in the market against faster, slicker, more integrated competitors. Only in those markets where computing is a fungible commodity, i.e. servers, is the flexibility of openness any benefit, and even there it loses some autonomy to black-box "management engines". While these are still the most plausible vehicle for open computing, I only see them as appealing to a niche of amateurs buying cheaper refurbished machines. Some may tout stuff like the RasPi as a viable alternative. Sure, but with the understanding that the RasPi is a CPU riding along a beefy VideoCodec/GPU, which has taken years of (ongoing) effort to implement open drivers for, and the RasPi4 still remains 2x slower than my 15 year old laptop. In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing.
- est31 6y ago
  I don't think much is changing when it comes to gaming PCs. They have been extremely modular and I see no trend for them to change. But when it comes to anything of mobile form factors, like laptops, I agree with you. Less and less ability to change and replace parts.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    But then again the gaming PCs are full of malware -- most game launchers can be very easily called that. Not to mention that part of them have been caught to install rootkits, or the more modest ones just don't allow the game to be started if you have Process Explorer running (they claim it's for preventing game cheats -- which doesn't work anyway). So while I have a gaming PC myself, I have long ago removed anything personally sensitive from it. I can't view it as a platform for open computing by any means.
    - est31 6y ago
      I agree with you about the software part, but I mostly meant the hardware. What I meant by gaming PCs was that there is a market of modular computers, mainly but not exclusively serving gamers. You can still build your own computer from parts you ordered on the internet. You don't have to put Win 10 with a bunch of games on it. You can install GNU/Linux. I have done precisely that.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        Agreed on that. The PC platform allows us to build any specialized computer that we like and that's awesome. But I am worried. Non-free firmware is everywhere. The Intel Management Engine showed a very dark side of the hardware vendors. How long until a remotely activated censorship or spying is brought to light? I likely sound like a cheap doomsayer and a tinfoil hat but I firmly believe that the time for completely open general purpose computing is now. And I don't mean the SBC ARM toys like the RPi. I mean actual strong computers like the Ryzen 5000s or Intel 10000s / 11000s. It's time. But who will work on it? We're all so busy surviving and insuring our olden ages. Sigh.
        webmaven 6y ago
        > I likely sound like a cheap doomsayer and a tinfoil hat but I firmly believe that the time for completely open general purpose computing is now. And I don't mean the SBC ARM toys like the RPi. I mean actual strong computers like the Ryzen 5000s or Intel 10000s / 11000s. > It's time. But who will work on it? We're all so busy surviving and insuring our olden ages. Sigh. So, buy from vendors that are working toward similar goals, like System76.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  The consumer industry. And I think it is to be expected, and frankly, not a bad thing. For example, I am not a car guy, so I just want my car to get me where I want to. I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. And I understand that people feel the same with computers. But Macbook Pros are not supposed to be consumer products! It is called "pro", that should be for a reason. People work on these machines, there are developers, sysadmins, etc... You can almost consider it a dev kit for the entire Apple ecosystem. That's why I am a bit concerned. The "consumer product" trend is starting to overstep its borders.
  - greedo 6y ago
    Pro has been and is just a marketing term for Apple.
    - munk-a 6y ago
      I believe it has become just a marketing term - but the original macbook pros were very much geared towards lots of computing power to get serious business done. It has shifted over time.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    > I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. Sure, but the right comparison is between an engine that you can access and might sometimes require work on your part (or you can hire someone else to do it) and an engine you can't access, and in fact is so locked down that no one not approved by the manufacturer can access it, so when you encounter any problem you have to take it back to the manufacturer, who (it turns out) almost always says the only solution is a total replacement of the engine.
    - bzzzt 6y ago
      You're forgetting one factor in this slide to locked-down engines: as a customer I prefer an integrated engine with a significant lower chance of failing so I will not have to work on it or pay someone to fix it.
- lxgr 6y ago
  > In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. The hardware hacker/maker and gamer communities would probably strongly disagree.
- musicale 6y ago
  > In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. But, as you note, there is a huge benefit for open server and embedded computing, and there may be trickle-up and trickle-down effects to desktop computing. Moreover, programmable hardware is becoming more price and performance competitive, and open source support software is becoming more functional and usable, so we may be in an interesting era where at least some hardware becomes more "open" and it's viable to run a full stack of open source software, starting with your own custom RISC-V CPU on an FPGA.
- sifar 6y ago
  >> In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. This is a chicken and an egg problem. Corporations don't have an incentive to create open consumer devices (lock-in,planned obsolescence). Consumers don't have an option of a consumer (not maker/hobbyist) level open computing device (TINA). Hence the appearance of a non-viable consumer market.
federona 6y ago
The meta problem is that hackers love to contribute to stuff just for the challenge. They don't have a consolidated philosophy to make things and a mega corporation that put out products that the public buys. You basically need a Linux foundation that competes and fights with Microsoft and Apple but instead you have Google co-opting open source stuff to make a viable competitor and closing things down even further, where pretty much everything happens on their servers. It seems that democracy and openness in that sense always creates value that it can't capture but is instead captured by Capitalists with deep pockets. The value created by open source can't be used to forward the open source or user centric philosophy. How could it? Well you need the same level of zealotry and fundamentalism that Steve Jobs inspired in Mac users and then deliver products that capture that Zeal. Where you could not pry me away from a Mac for a decade until Windows created WSL 2 so is now bareable as a daily driver. Before that it was a decade of Linux, which was as good and useful as a Mac... just never bundled, marketed, all the quirks worked out, so it could be sold properly. What made Macs replacement for Linux was the community which made tools like Brew which would make it possible to install all the goodies you need for development. It seems all the software still gets developed by open source, and all the value is captured by Capitalists. As Theil pointed out you need a monopoly, competition distributes which is not good for someone looking to maximize capital. But at the same time necessary for society, for what good is society without distribution. It seems he's basically advocating for working against society and everyone with money is like yes we need more of that.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  To some extent this is handled via GPL/AGPL, which gets in the way of companies building a fence around your work and locking you outside. If you use them. But the general idea that you need a monopoly is wrong. You don't need a monopoly, only scarcity. Monopoly is extreme scarcity but you don't actually need that. Just enough to turn a profit and stay in business. Redhat makes plenty of money and has a monopoly on nothing. They're just not in the consumer products business. Somebody needs to be the Redhat to Apple's Microsoft. Realistically Google's business model isn't completely useless here, i.e. make free software to sell services to the users. Or make free software to sell hardware to the users. The problem with Google is that they became too much of a publicly-traded conglomerate and then they get bad incentives to betray the community -- having a monopoly actually makes it worse because it enables abusive behavior.
ttt0 6y ago
What Apple is doing with their hardware trumps anything that Microsoft or Google does with the software, in my opinion. With software at least it's more or less possible to hack it to your liking or replace it with something else. Thankfully I never had the displeasure of owning any of Apple products and hopefully I never will.
hugi 6y ago
I find this attitude a bit misguided. There's never been as much availability in open computing as there is today. These are good times. A Raspberry pi running linux is miles and planets above what I could have imagined when I was a kid. And people somehow still pick an appliance explicitly designed to be closed (for a good reason) as an example of something. I don't get it.
- lxgr 6y ago
  100% agreed. I had a Palm OS PDA back when I was young, and while there was a healthy community of app developers, most of that was shareware, and the OS was pretty closed down. The IDE to develop for it was prohibitively expensive for me as a high school student. Today, I can run full Linux distributions on both iOS and Android, interface with USB and Bluetooth devices via open APIs on Android, get a Raspberry Pi for less than the price of a full-price video game... I'm certain that there are high school students out there doing just that and much more that I'm not even aware is possible. Many of them are sharing their progress on YouTube. There's many things I worry about – the accessibility of computing and hacking is definitely not one of them.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    For that day, I'll offer WinMo 5 & 6 as healthy ecosystems. Lots of home brewed apps and plenty of handsets ran it. Then Phone 7 flushed it all away because Microsoft couldn't see an inch past it's own Apple envy.
- jrm4 6y ago
  There is a universe of difference between "availability" and "acceptability," and to presume that you can just pick open over closed for day-to-day tasks is oversimplifying things greatly. To perhaps put it somewhat dramatically, the world outside of geekdom increasingly does not consider open computing to be acceptable; It is growing downright hostile. I use Linux as my main operating system and it consistently gets harder to do over time as I interact with others in work and life; and there is no good technical reason (e.g. proprietary superiority) for this to be the case.
lxgr 6y ago
That's what I've heard about UEFI, TPM and Windows Vista too, yet people are happily building their own PCs and merrily running all kinds of software and operating systems on them. Others are buying heavily locked down iDevices [1] and are happy with them too. ´ People that want openness and the freedom to tinker with their own devices will always find a way to do so, moving away from systems that inhibit their efforts (or just breaking them open, getting people interested in reverse engineering, an invaluable skill even as an open source developer). Others that don't care will continue to not care and buy the system that best fits their needs. I think it's almost an egocentric worldview to demand that everybody use an open system even if they have no desire to make use of that openness whatsoever at best, and see it as a security/complexity risk at worst. [1] By the way, both iOS and Android can run a full Linux userspace today!
- federona 6y ago
  The only problem is that from a political perspective you have given away all of your power for convenience which is not a problem in say a country like the US until someone comes into power who does not like you or the people you associate with. So yes as long as things are going well security is better taken care of, etc. but when things are not going well for you then all your bases belong to them... like imagine China for instance. So if you had the foresight to build you own bases and your political system goes to shit, you still have the right to carry on with your life whereas in other cases you could be sent off to some place you rather not be sent off to and your life destroyed because the political system and/or company does not like you. And such change is swift, damaging, and isolating as the majority will usually fall in line or not have done anything enough to warrant any attention -- i.e. like as in your average Chinese citizen... but a minority will have and then will be persecuted and have their lives destroyed as a result. Say Hong Kong opposition.
  - unix_fan 6y ago
    I don’t see what a political perspective provides here. It’s not like you don’t have a choice in consumer tech, unless there are strong networking affects play.
rektide 6y ago
apple didn't put up huge insurmountable barriers on m1. microsoft's secure boot mandates certain keys be shipped on devices but also requires users be able to add their own keys. thus far it's been phones where users have no rights to their devices g no access to bootloaders. if you do jailbreak or root, on Android SafetyNet comes & slaps you in the face, disables a bunch of apps. I think apple has some similar restraint? I think you'll be shocked how much use folks make of these systems, with reverse engineering, even with no support. if the door is left open people do amazing things. the gpu should be working very well. some problems spots may remain. but running a system, watching it tick, carefully, reveals so many secrets. it's only when humanity is locked out, when the process of human discovery & collective advancement are blocked, that our great human potential is squandered, wasted.
rgovostes 6y ago
> New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. This easily-debunked claim is repeated daily on HN. Obviously, macOS is a less malleable platform than some others. But the introduction of Apple Silicon did not radically change the extent to which the platform is "locked down." You can still boot alternative operating systems, disable system protections, and compile and run your own code (even the kernel!).
- turminal 6y ago
  Can we be confident things are going to remain like that in the future with newer hardware?
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    How is this question not moving the goal posts? The top comment claims that Apple Silicon is more locked down than previous Mac iterations. It is not. Does that say anything about future hardware? No. But we are in the same boat with the raspberry pi. If broadcom decides to fuck over hackers who want to use alternative is software for newer hardware iterations, they can. Anything can happen in the future. When purchasing hardware, look at what you can do with the device that is in front of you.
  - rgovostes 6y ago
    Of course you cannot have absolute guarantees about the future but it doesn't mean there's an excuse for so much misinformation about the products on the market today. Apple's head of software engineering has repeatedly publicly dismissed the idea that macOS will become as locked down as iOS. In each of the past several years of releases they've expended a great deal of engineering effort to improve macOS security for the average user while giving advanced users control (for instance, they simultaneously developed secure boot on new Macs, and made it possible to boot alternate operating systems). They continue to release source to several OS components such as the kernel, the cryptographic frameworks, etc. They've never expended any real effort in developing DRM to prevent Hackintosh users from running the OS. Criticism of system internals being poorly documented, and complaints against security features obstructing tinkering are valid, but nothing they've done is signaling that they intend to abruptly change course and create a truly locked-down Mac.
glial 6y ago
I don't understand the vitriol towards Apple. They are selling a closed (eco)system, definitely. But many people have lived through the virus-ridden 90s and early 2000s and want the confidence that comes with pre-approved software. Who over the age of 30 doesn't remember doing tech support on crappy Windows computers for family for years? Is that still needed for those family members with Apple computers? Not in my experience. I also want the ability to choose and use an open computer - and I can still do so. I have both Apple and non-Apple devices. Apple hasn't destroyed my ability to build a Linux box. Chill.
- ttt0 6y ago
  I wonder, how exactly are practices like this helping with viruses? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-samsung-fined-for-slowing-down-phones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-sam... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541250/update--apple-plays-hardball--upgrade--bricks--unlocked-iphones.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541250/update--apple-... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple...
- munk-a 6y ago
  > Is that still needed for those family members with Apple computers? Honestly though, it's not nearly as needed on Windows machines either. The common maintenance needed for software issues has strongly decreased as good security features have become more advanced and feasible. One of those advancements is windows realizing "Hey, that unix permission stuff, that seems like an up-and-coming idea" and actually implementing proper ACLs to protect most of the sensitive files on your machine.
ubermonkey 6y ago
>New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. This is not true. iOS is certainly locked down but you can still build from source on MacOS, and many folks do; far more use tools like Homebrew to skip the build part and still get access to arbitrary tools. And while the Mac App Store exists, there is no requirement that all software be distributed that way.

AceJohnny2 6y ago

Unfortunately, the consumer industry trend will be to follow Apple. I see little hope for competitive open computing devices. Ever since the Nokia N900, openness has consistently lost in the market against faster, slicker, more integrated competitors. Only in those markets where computing is a fungible commodity, i.e. servers, is the flexibility of openness any benefit, and even there it loses some autonomy to black-box "management engines". While these are still the most plausible vehicle for open computing, I only see them as appealing to a niche of amateurs buying cheaper refurbished machines. Some may tout stuff like the RasPi as a viable alternative. Sure, but with the understanding that the RasPi is a CPU riding along a beefy VideoCodec/GPU, which has taken years of (ongoing) effort to implement open drivers for, and the RasPi4 still remains 2x slower than my 15 year old laptop. In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing.

est31 6y ago
I don't think much is changing when it comes to gaming PCs. They have been extremely modular and I see no trend for them to change. But when it comes to anything of mobile form factors, like laptops, I agree with you. Less and less ability to change and replace parts.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  But then again the gaming PCs are full of malware -- most game launchers can be very easily called that. Not to mention that part of them have been caught to install rootkits, or the more modest ones just don't allow the game to be started if you have Process Explorer running (they claim it's for preventing game cheats -- which doesn't work anyway). So while I have a gaming PC myself, I have long ago removed anything personally sensitive from it. I can't view it as a platform for open computing by any means.
  - est31 6y ago
    I agree with you about the software part, but I mostly meant the hardware. What I meant by gaming PCs was that there is a market of modular computers, mainly but not exclusively serving gamers. You can still build your own computer from parts you ordered on the internet. You don't have to put Win 10 with a bunch of games on it. You can install GNU/Linux. I have done precisely that.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      Agreed on that. The PC platform allows us to build any specialized computer that we like and that's awesome. But I am worried. Non-free firmware is everywhere. The Intel Management Engine showed a very dark side of the hardware vendors. How long until a remotely activated censorship or spying is brought to light? I likely sound like a cheap doomsayer and a tinfoil hat but I firmly believe that the time for completely open general purpose computing is now. And I don't mean the SBC ARM toys like the RPi. I mean actual strong computers like the Ryzen 5000s or Intel 10000s / 11000s. It's time. But who will work on it? We're all so busy surviving and insuring our olden ages. Sigh.
      - webmaven 6y ago
        > I likely sound like a cheap doomsayer and a tinfoil hat but I firmly believe that the time for completely open general purpose computing is now. And I don't mean the SBC ARM toys like the RPi. I mean actual strong computers like the Ryzen 5000s or Intel 10000s / 11000s. > It's time. But who will work on it? We're all so busy surviving and insuring our olden ages. Sigh. So, buy from vendors that are working toward similar goals, like System76.
GuB-42 6y ago
The consumer industry. And I think it is to be expected, and frankly, not a bad thing. For example, I am not a car guy, so I just want my car to get me where I want to. I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. And I understand that people feel the same with computers. But Macbook Pros are not supposed to be consumer products! It is called "pro", that should be for a reason. People work on these machines, there are developers, sysadmins, etc... You can almost consider it a dev kit for the entire Apple ecosystem. That's why I am a bit concerned. The "consumer product" trend is starting to overstep its borders.
- greedo 6y ago
  Pro has been and is just a marketing term for Apple.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I believe it has become just a marketing term - but the original macbook pros were very much geared towards lots of computing power to get serious business done. It has shifted over time.
- bscphil 6y ago
  > I much prefer an engine I can't access that fits my needs over an engine that I can access but requires maintenance on my part. Sure, but the right comparison is between an engine that you can access and might sometimes require work on your part (or you can hire someone else to do it) and an engine you can't access, and in fact is so locked down that no one not approved by the manufacturer can access it, so when you encounter any problem you have to take it back to the manufacturer, who (it turns out) almost always says the only solution is a total replacement of the engine.
  - bzzzt 6y ago
    You're forgetting one factor in this slide to locked-down engines: as a customer I prefer an integrated engine with a significant lower chance of failing so I will not have to work on it or pay someone to fix it.
lxgr 6y ago
> In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. The hardware hacker/maker and gamer communities would probably strongly disagree.
musicale 6y ago
> In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. But, as you note, there is a huge benefit for open server and embedded computing, and there may be trickle-up and trickle-down effects to desktop computing. Moreover, programmable hardware is becoming more price and performance competitive, and open source support software is becoming more functional and usable, so we may be in an interesting era where at least some hardware becomes more "open" and it's viable to run a full stack of open source software, starting with your own custom RISC-V CPU on an FPGA.
sifar 6y ago
>> In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing. This is a chicken and an egg problem. Corporations don't have an incentive to create open consumer devices (lock-in,planned obsolescence). Consumers don't have an option of a consumer (not maker/hobbyist) level open computing device (TINA). Hence the appearance of a non-viable consumer market.

federona 6y ago

The meta problem is that hackers love to contribute to stuff just for the challenge. They don't have a consolidated philosophy to make things and a mega corporation that put out products that the public buys. You basically need a Linux foundation that competes and fights with Microsoft and Apple but instead you have Google co-opting open source stuff to make a viable competitor and closing things down even further, where pretty much everything happens on their servers. It seems that democracy and openness in that sense always creates value that it can't capture but is instead captured by Capitalists with deep pockets. The value created by open source can't be used to forward the open source or user centric philosophy. How could it? Well you need the same level of zealotry and fundamentalism that Steve Jobs inspired in Mac users and then deliver products that capture that Zeal. Where you could not pry me away from a Mac for a decade until Windows created WSL 2 so is now bareable as a daily driver. Before that it was a decade of Linux, which was as good and useful as a Mac... just never bundled, marketed, all the quirks worked out, so it could be sold properly. What made Macs replacement for Linux was the community which made tools like Brew which would make it possible to install all the goodies you need for development. It seems all the software still gets developed by open source, and all the value is captured by Capitalists. As Theil pointed out you need a monopoly, competition distributes which is not good for someone looking to maximize capital. But at the same time necessary for society, for what good is society without distribution. It seems he's basically advocating for working against society and everyone with money is like yes we need more of that.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
To some extent this is handled via GPL/AGPL, which gets in the way of companies building a fence around your work and locking you outside. If you use them. But the general idea that you need a monopoly is wrong. You don't need a monopoly, only scarcity. Monopoly is extreme scarcity but you don't actually need that. Just enough to turn a profit and stay in business. Redhat makes plenty of money and has a monopoly on nothing. They're just not in the consumer products business. Somebody needs to be the Redhat to Apple's Microsoft. Realistically Google's business model isn't completely useless here, i.e. make free software to sell services to the users. Or make free software to sell hardware to the users. The problem with Google is that they became too much of a publicly-traded conglomerate and then they get bad incentives to betray the community -- having a monopoly actually makes it worse because it enables abusive behavior.

ttt0 6y ago

What Apple is doing with their hardware trumps anything that Microsoft or Google does with the software, in my opinion. With software at least it's more or less possible to hack it to your liking or replace it with something else. Thankfully I never had the displeasure of owning any of Apple products and hopefully I never will.

hugi 6y ago

I find this attitude a bit misguided. There's never been as much availability in open computing as there is today. These are good times. A Raspberry pi running linux is miles and planets above what I could have imagined when I was a kid. And people somehow still pick an appliance explicitly designed to be closed (for a good reason) as an example of something. I don't get it.

lxgr 6y ago
100% agreed. I had a Palm OS PDA back when I was young, and while there was a healthy community of app developers, most of that was shareware, and the OS was pretty closed down. The IDE to develop for it was prohibitively expensive for me as a high school student. Today, I can run full Linux distributions on both iOS and Android, interface with USB and Bluetooth devices via open APIs on Android, get a Raspberry Pi for less than the price of a full-price video game... I'm certain that there are high school students out there doing just that and much more that I'm not even aware is possible. Many of them are sharing their progress on YouTube. There's many things I worry about – the accessibility of computing and hacking is definitely not one of them.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  For that day, I'll offer WinMo 5 & 6 as healthy ecosystems. Lots of home brewed apps and plenty of handsets ran it. Then Phone 7 flushed it all away because Microsoft couldn't see an inch past it's own Apple envy.
jrm4 6y ago
There is a universe of difference between "availability" and "acceptability," and to presume that you can just pick open over closed for day-to-day tasks is oversimplifying things greatly. To perhaps put it somewhat dramatically, the world outside of geekdom increasingly does not consider open computing to be acceptable; It is growing downright hostile. I use Linux as my main operating system and it consistently gets harder to do over time as I interact with others in work and life; and there is no good technical reason (e.g. proprietary superiority) for this to be the case.

lxgr 6y ago

That's what I've heard about UEFI, TPM and Windows Vista too, yet people are happily building their own PCs and merrily running all kinds of software and operating systems on them. Others are buying heavily locked down iDevices [1] and are happy with them too. ´ People that want openness and the freedom to tinker with their own devices will always find a way to do so, moving away from systems that inhibit their efforts (or just breaking them open, getting people interested in reverse engineering, an invaluable skill even as an open source developer). Others that don't care will continue to not care and buy the system that best fits their needs. I think it's almost an egocentric worldview to demand that everybody use an open system even if they have no desire to make use of that openness whatsoever at best, and see it as a security/complexity risk at worst. [1] By the way, both iOS and Android can run a full Linux userspace today!

federona 6y ago
The only problem is that from a political perspective you have given away all of your power for convenience which is not a problem in say a country like the US until someone comes into power who does not like you or the people you associate with. So yes as long as things are going well security is better taken care of, etc. but when things are not going well for you then all your bases belong to them... like imagine China for instance. So if you had the foresight to build you own bases and your political system goes to shit, you still have the right to carry on with your life whereas in other cases you could be sent off to some place you rather not be sent off to and your life destroyed because the political system and/or company does not like you. And such change is swift, damaging, and isolating as the majority will usually fall in line or not have done anything enough to warrant any attention -- i.e. like as in your average Chinese citizen... but a minority will have and then will be persecuted and have their lives destroyed as a result. Say Hong Kong opposition.
- unix_fan 6y ago
  I don’t see what a political perspective provides here. It’s not like you don’t have a choice in consumer tech, unless there are strong networking affects play.

rektide 6y ago

apple didn't put up huge insurmountable barriers on m1. microsoft's secure boot mandates certain keys be shipped on devices but also requires users be able to add their own keys. thus far it's been phones where users have no rights to their devices g no access to bootloaders. if you do jailbreak or root, on Android SafetyNet comes & slaps you in the face, disables a bunch of apps. I think apple has some similar restraint? I think you'll be shocked how much use folks make of these systems, with reverse engineering, even with no support. if the door is left open people do amazing things. the gpu should be working very well. some problems spots may remain. but running a system, watching it tick, carefully, reveals so many secrets. it's only when humanity is locked out, when the process of human discovery & collective advancement are blocked, that our great human potential is squandered, wasted.

rgovostes 6y ago

> New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. This easily-debunked claim is repeated daily on HN. Obviously, macOS is a less malleable platform than some others. But the introduction of Apple Silicon did not radically change the extent to which the platform is "locked down." You can still boot alternative operating systems, disable system protections, and compile and run your own code (even the kernel!).

turminal 6y ago
Can we be confident things are going to remain like that in the future with newer hardware?
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  How is this question not moving the goal posts? The top comment claims that Apple Silicon is more locked down than previous Mac iterations. It is not. Does that say anything about future hardware? No. But we are in the same boat with the raspberry pi. If broadcom decides to fuck over hackers who want to use alternative is software for newer hardware iterations, they can. Anything can happen in the future. When purchasing hardware, look at what you can do with the device that is in front of you.
- rgovostes 6y ago
  Of course you cannot have absolute guarantees about the future but it doesn't mean there's an excuse for so much misinformation about the products on the market today. Apple's head of software engineering has repeatedly publicly dismissed the idea that macOS will become as locked down as iOS. In each of the past several years of releases they've expended a great deal of engineering effort to improve macOS security for the average user while giving advanced users control (for instance, they simultaneously developed secure boot on new Macs, and made it possible to boot alternate operating systems). They continue to release source to several OS components such as the kernel, the cryptographic frameworks, etc. They've never expended any real effort in developing DRM to prevent Hackintosh users from running the OS. Criticism of system internals being poorly documented, and complaints against security features obstructing tinkering are valid, but nothing they've done is signaling that they intend to abruptly change course and create a truly locked-down Mac.

glial 6y ago

I don't understand the vitriol towards Apple. They are selling a closed (eco)system, definitely. But many people have lived through the virus-ridden 90s and early 2000s and want the confidence that comes with pre-approved software. Who over the age of 30 doesn't remember doing tech support on crappy Windows computers for family for years? Is that still needed for those family members with Apple computers? Not in my experience. I also want the ability to choose and use an open computer - and I can still do so. I have both Apple and non-Apple devices. Apple hasn't destroyed my ability to build a Linux box. Chill.

ttt0 6y ago
I wonder, how exactly are practices like this helping with viruses? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-samsung-fined-for-slowing-down-phones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-sam... https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541250/update--apple-plays-hardball--upgrade--bricks--unlocked-iphones.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541250/update--apple-... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple...
munk-a 6y ago
> Is that still needed for those family members with Apple computers? Honestly though, it's not nearly as needed on Windows machines either. The common maintenance needed for software issues has strongly decreased as good security features have become more advanced and feasible. One of those advancements is windows realizing "Hey, that unix permission stuff, that seems like an up-and-coming idea" and actually implementing proper ACLs to protect most of the sensitive files on your machine.

ubermonkey 6y ago

>New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. This is not true. iOS is certainly locked down but you can still build from source on MacOS, and many folks do; far more use tools like Homebrew to skip the build part and still get access to arbitrary tools. And while the Mac App Store exists, there is no requirement that all software be distributed that way.