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> 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. Obv

> 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.
- sodality2 6y ago
  Can you be confident that any future hardware, or linux even, will remain open to tinker with? If you're worried about tech being closed up, that's fine and well. I wholeheartedly agree with you. But future hardware being limited isn't the same as forcing an update on existing owners, locking services to new devices, etc.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    On Linux, it's easy. Because we have the source code and it's licensed under GPL.
    - unix_fan 6y ago
      Tell that to people who were caught by surprise when redhat decided CentOS was no longer viable. Sure you could find alternatives, but it was still a deeply undesirable disruption.
    - chongli 6y ago
      We’re talking about hardware here. There’s no guarantee that all future hardware will be able to boot an unsigned Linux kernel that the user compiled themselves.
Spooky23 6y ago
Remember the good old days when everyone was freaking out over Intel exposing the CPU serial number in an API, destroying the world as we know it?
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> You can still boot alternative operating systems, disable system protections, and compile and run your own code (even the kernel!). Except that the hardware is undocumented and complex, so there aren't any alternative operating systems that can actually use it. The people who have it "running" don't actually have working drivers for components required for ordinary usage.
- rgovostes 6y ago
  The claim I responded to is that suddenly Apple Silicon-based Macs are more locked down than the Intel-based ones, and that "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." It is false. Whether or not anyone has gotten other operating systems to run well on these machines is orthogonal to the claim. I have an Alienware laptop whose trackpad doesn't work on Ubuntu, which sucks, but I don't accuse Dell of plotting to take away my ability to run my own software because of it.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > The claim I responded to is that suddenly Apple Silicon-based Macs are more locked down than the Intel-based ones, and that "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." It is false. It is true for the reason I stated. You can run other, less locked-down operating systems on Intel systems, as well as older, less-locked down versions of macOS. On Apple Silicon-based Macs you in practice have to use the latest, more locked-down version of macOS.
    - rgovostes 6y ago
      > On Apple Silicon-based Macs you in practice have to use the latest, more locked-down version of macOS. Because Apple Silicon computers were not available on the market until 3 months ago. Of course you have to use the "latest, more locked-down version of macOS" considering they have never released any other version of macOS for this platform! It is absurd to expect that they would backport support for an _entirely new architecture_, a monumental engineering effort, to previous versions of macOS. If you are going to claim that Big Sur is more locked down than the previous release, I'd also like to see citations about that. The most significant change is that the OS-provided files are now on a read-only partition. You can still break the seal and modify it if you want. Whether or not they prevent you from downgrading to Big Sur from the next release remains to be seen. They do so on iOS, but this has never been the case on macOS, which has the `softwareupdate` command line tool that can download OS installers for past releases, plus Time Machine for rolling back to earlier snapshots.
StillBored 6y ago
Except the device doesn't conform to any standards, and apple hasn't bothered to document any of it. Given they tend to release new devices on a yearly cadence its quite possible that the "hackers" will never catch up. Sure in 4-5 years it might be possible to boot a linux distro on the M1, but by then apple will have the M5, with new GPUs, reworked interrupt, iommu, etc. So its great apple has this speedy device, but its likely that in the couple years it will take to open it up, it will be behind the curve. That is the problem with the rest of the "open" arm ecosystem, you looking at 5 year old SOCs designs. The "good" stuff might as well not exist at all. And then its there is almost always a perf/power difference between a reverse engineered device and the native drivers. Consider Nouvea as an example here.
- rgovostes 6y ago
  This again has nothing to do with whether "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." I'm not arguing the M1 is an open platform (as, say, PINE makes), only that it is not significantly more closed than the Intel-based Mac. Nothing has changed with regard to Apple's lack of documentation. Nothing has changed about the ability of the platform to execute open source code. The pace of hardware releases, and Linux's preparedness to deal with the changes to the hardware, are independent from the openness or non-openness of the platform. The fact that my router was hacked to run DD-WRT doesn't make it an open hardware platform. The fact that a newer model can't be hacked the same way doesn't make my router "more closed" in retrospect. I don't know what standards they should conform to but I doubt there is a vendor-agnostic GPU driver that Linux has that works with every non-M1 computer. It wasn't that long ago that Wi-Fi support on Linux all seemed to depend on reverse-engineered Atheros drivers. Hardware support has always been a problem on Linux, regardless of vendor. Day 1 availability of hardware support in Linux is not the indicator of openness.
  - StillBored 6y ago
    There is more to reverse engineer on the M1 than there is on a random Intel based mac. Intel has been a reasonably good opensource steward as evidenced by all the .intel.com contributors to the linux kernel, and a goodly amount of documentation. Yes the intel has plenty of closed source firmware/etc but a lot of it exists to provide standardized boot flow/etc. The M1 has none of that, so a random intel mac's reverse engineering is limited to only the parts Apple changed from what is mostly a set of platform standards that have been built up over decades. The core system IP (interrupts, iommu, virtualization, pci, memory controllers, USB, etc) already have linux drivers. The M1 OTOH isn't even fully compliant with the ARM instruction sets because they apparently have extended even that. So, yes the hardware may not technically be locked down, but for all intents it might as well be, since Apple could have picked up the ARM system specifications and conformed to them but they didn't. The whole thing is vaguely reminiscent of SGI's failed attempt to create a new "PC" standard by dumping all the legacy, designing their own chipset/etc and running their own firmware. Yes it was an x86, but it didn't run anything except their blessed version of windows NT (IIRC). It was a dead end, because it turned out it didn't really offer any advantages, over a boring old PC, cost twice as much and removed the ability to run a bunch of software. The M1 is much the same, it loses out in a lot of ways not only on the software front, but the hardware front as well. If it weren't for its fairly outrageous single threaded perf, which is at least partially enabled by being fully two process generations ahead of intel it wouldn't be noteworthy at all.

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.
sodality2 6y ago
Can you be confident that any future hardware, or linux even, will remain open to tinker with? If you're worried about tech being closed up, that's fine and well. I wholeheartedly agree with you. But future hardware being limited isn't the same as forcing an update on existing owners, locking services to new devices, etc.
- ttt0 6y ago
  On Linux, it's easy. Because we have the source code and it's licensed under GPL.
  - unix_fan 6y ago
    Tell that to people who were caught by surprise when redhat decided CentOS was no longer viable. Sure you could find alternatives, but it was still a deeply undesirable disruption.
  - chongli 6y ago
    We’re talking about hardware here. There’s no guarantee that all future hardware will be able to boot an unsigned Linux kernel that the user compiled themselves.

Spooky23 6y ago

Remember the good old days when everyone was freaking out over Intel exposing the CPU serial number in an API, destroying the world as we know it?

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> You can still boot alternative operating systems, disable system protections, and compile and run your own code (even the kernel!). Except that the hardware is undocumented and complex, so there aren't any alternative operating systems that can actually use it. The people who have it "running" don't actually have working drivers for components required for ordinary usage.

rgovostes 6y ago
The claim I responded to is that suddenly Apple Silicon-based Macs are more locked down than the Intel-based ones, and that "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." It is false. Whether or not anyone has gotten other operating systems to run well on these machines is orthogonal to the claim. I have an Alienware laptop whose trackpad doesn't work on Ubuntu, which sucks, but I don't accuse Dell of plotting to take away my ability to run my own software because of it.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > The claim I responded to is that suddenly Apple Silicon-based Macs are more locked down than the Intel-based ones, and that "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." It is false. It is true for the reason I stated. You can run other, less locked-down operating systems on Intel systems, as well as older, less-locked down versions of macOS. On Apple Silicon-based Macs you in practice have to use the latest, more locked-down version of macOS.
  - rgovostes 6y ago
    > On Apple Silicon-based Macs you in practice have to use the latest, more locked-down version of macOS. Because Apple Silicon computers were not available on the market until 3 months ago. Of course you have to use the "latest, more locked-down version of macOS" considering they have never released any other version of macOS for this platform! It is absurd to expect that they would backport support for an _entirely new architecture_, a monumental engineering effort, to previous versions of macOS. If you are going to claim that Big Sur is more locked down than the previous release, I'd also like to see citations about that. The most significant change is that the OS-provided files are now on a read-only partition. You can still break the seal and modify it if you want. Whether or not they prevent you from downgrading to Big Sur from the next release remains to be seen. They do so on iOS, but this has never been the case on macOS, which has the `softwareupdate` command line tool that can download OS installers for past releases, plus Time Machine for rolling back to earlier snapshots.

StillBored 6y ago

Except the device doesn't conform to any standards, and apple hasn't bothered to document any of it. Given they tend to release new devices on a yearly cadence its quite possible that the "hackers" will never catch up. Sure in 4-5 years it might be possible to boot a linux distro on the M1, but by then apple will have the M5, with new GPUs, reworked interrupt, iommu, etc. So its great apple has this speedy device, but its likely that in the couple years it will take to open it up, it will be behind the curve. That is the problem with the rest of the "open" arm ecosystem, you looking at 5 year old SOCs designs. The "good" stuff might as well not exist at all. And then its there is almost always a perf/power difference between a reverse engineered device and the native drivers. Consider Nouvea as an example here.

rgovostes 6y ago
This again has nothing to do with whether "you only get to do what Apple lets you do." I'm not arguing the M1 is an open platform (as, say, PINE makes), only that it is not significantly more closed than the Intel-based Mac. Nothing has changed with regard to Apple's lack of documentation. Nothing has changed about the ability of the platform to execute open source code. The pace of hardware releases, and Linux's preparedness to deal with the changes to the hardware, are independent from the openness or non-openness of the platform. The fact that my router was hacked to run DD-WRT doesn't make it an open hardware platform. The fact that a newer model can't be hacked the same way doesn't make my router "more closed" in retrospect. I don't know what standards they should conform to but I doubt there is a vendor-agnostic GPU driver that Linux has that works with every non-M1 computer. It wasn't that long ago that Wi-Fi support on Linux all seemed to depend on reverse-engineered Atheros drivers. Hardware support has always been a problem on Linux, regardless of vendor. Day 1 availability of hardware support in Linux is not the indicator of openness.
- StillBored 6y ago
  There is more to reverse engineer on the M1 than there is on a random Intel based mac. Intel has been a reasonably good opensource steward as evidenced by all the .intel.com contributors to the linux kernel, and a goodly amount of documentation. Yes the intel has plenty of closed source firmware/etc but a lot of it exists to provide standardized boot flow/etc. The M1 has none of that, so a random intel mac's reverse engineering is limited to only the parts Apple changed from what is mostly a set of platform standards that have been built up over decades. The core system IP (interrupts, iommu, virtualization, pci, memory controllers, USB, etc) already have linux drivers. The M1 OTOH isn't even fully compliant with the ARM instruction sets because they apparently have extended even that. So, yes the hardware may not technically be locked down, but for all intents it might as well be, since Apple could have picked up the ARM system specifications and conformed to them but they didn't. The whole thing is vaguely reminiscent of SGI's failed attempt to create a new "PC" standard by dumping all the legacy, designing their own chipset/etc and running their own firmware. Yes it was an x86, but it didn't run anything except their blessed version of windows NT (IIRC). It was a dead end, because it turned out it didn't really offer any advantages, over a boring old PC, cost twice as much and removed the ability to run a bunch of software. The M1 is much the same, it loses out in a lot of ways not only on the software front, but the hardware front as well. If it weren't for its fairly outrageous single threaded perf, which is at least partially enabled by being fully two process generations ahead of intel it wouldn't be noteworthy at all.