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> Apple has effectively made it easier for OSs like Linux to have good support for the hardware Wow, that's a tall stretch of a conclusion, bordering on ignora

> Apple has effectively made it easier for OSs like Linux to have good support for the hardware Wow, that's a tall stretch of a conclusion, bordering on ignorance, when the reality is that the M1 only supports macOS! Apple fans shouldn't be blind to the fact that developers are trying to reverse engineer the M1 to run Linux on it. (And they have a long way to go before they succeed). Apple has not even published any literature that can help system developers create and run alternative OSes on it. And this is by design - the M1 (and all Arm processor based macs) are designed to be a a closed box like their other iDevices. (Honestly, except for an academic interest, I believe open source developers are wasting their time trying to support such a useless "closed" piece of hardware, and instead should be boycotting it - or we'll end up losing control over our desktop computers too as other manufacturers move towards this model too). > On most mobile SoCs, the display controller is just a piece of hardware with simple registers. While this is true on the M1 as well, Apple decided to give it a twist. They added a coprocessor to the display engine (called DCP), which runs its own firmware (initialized by the system bootloader), and moved most of the display driver into the coprocessor. But instead of doing it at a natural driver boundary… they took half of their macOS C++ driver, moved it into the DCP, and created a remote procedure call interface so that each half can call methods on C++ objects on the other CPU! Talk about overcomplicating things… Reverse engineering this is a huge challenge ....

scrollaway 5y ago
Oh boy if we didn't even try to reverse engineer things to bring closed systems to the open world ... Where would we even be? I don't think we'd have gotten past UNIX.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  That's a fair point. I am thinking from the other end - if these efforts were instead redirected at supporting open hardware systems, how much more beneficial it would be for the open movement? By reverse engineering closed systems, you are adding value to it but not changing its nature - you are not really making it "open" (the next iteration will just "close" it again). Meanwhile, Apple just uses these reverse engineering effort cleverly for PR for the M1 through social media marketing. In effect, you are just helping a trillion dollar company design better closed systems while helping them make more money (by attracting naive Linux users to spend money on their hardware). There are open systems that are struggling because they don't have talented developers working on their projects. Wish these developers would instead work on these projects - Sailfish OS, PineOS, Librem - Purism etc. For example, there are a lot of Intel / Arm tablets that either run only Windows or Android. It would be nice to run one of these Linux based mobile OS distros on it, and create a genuine alternate to the Android / ios duopoly on Tablets, right?
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I don't think (and experimentally, I know I'm correct) it's as zero sum as you think it is. These efforts you think better spent on open hardware are actually adding value to the open systems by making transitions from closed systems easier. M1 is a beast and needs no further PR to attract buyers. You can ignore its advantages and yell out "our system sucks but at least it's open!", or, you can work on bringing the advantages of the product of a trillion dollar company's RND to the open world.
    - webmobdev 5y ago
      I can understand an academic interest in reverse engineering such devices. But yes, I really don't see any advantages in owning a closed and limiting system like the Apple M1, when better and more open alternates already exist. The limitations of such hyped-up closed system negate any short-term temporary benefits it offers. And regardless of what you think, the M1 does need constant marketing as its limitations becomes obvious. Apple is betting their future on such closed systems and desperately needs it to be a success. That is why Apple marketing is desperate to spread PR fluffs about it to its Apple fans that ignorantly parrot them on the social media on threads like these: - Apple has effectively made it easier for OSs like Linux to have good support for the hardware - Ok, but they’ve done the opposite- helping linux projects get linux on M1 macs.. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27943196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27943196 ) ... and similar statements like these that try to convey that Apple is actually helping developers port Linux to their platform. Obviously, any posts (like mine) that point out the obvious lie in these statements are downvoted / vote-brigaded because it is in Apple's interest to do so.
      - scrollaway 5y ago
        > Obviously, any posts (like mine) that point out the obvious lie in these statements are downvoted / vote-brigaded because it is in Apple's interest to do so. No, quit the Dunning-Kruger, you're being downvoted because most people here disagree with you. Myself included: I don't particularly like Apple, I'm not paid by Apple, I'm a life-long proponent of FOSS and open systems, and I downvoted you because your posts are uninformed and either you haven't thought this through, or you don't have enough context to know what you're talking about. Insinuations of shilling/astroturfing are against the guidelines, FYI.
- indigodaddy 5y ago
  Absolutely. I’m currently reading “Open” by Rod Canion, the story about how Compaq reverse engineered the IBM PC’s BIOS. Great read so far. Think about where we might be if that never happened.. no clones? No open hardware standards? I mean, I guess if Compaq didn’t do it, somebody else would have (maybe?), but yes, thank god for the brilliant engineers of the world who have the focus, diligence, and skill, to be able to do these sorts of things.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    When studying history though, we shouldn't lose track of the fact that it needs to be analysed based on the period it happened. From fighting a closed and patented *Nix systems, Linux has emerged as the current torch bearer of open systems in our era. It has made so much stride, that we are even thinking in terms of open hardware today (and it is a reality too, even if not yet successful). Today's computing world is no longer like the past. Open source is an accepted reality in both the corporate world and among the general population. You are right that in the past, reverse engineering helped clone hardware and make it more open. It was necessary then. Perhaps I am ignorant here, and I would like insights on this, but I don't understand the practicality of trying to reverse-engineer Apple's custom GPU when it is not even freely available or can even be used in any custom hardware configuration. Especially when alternative GPUs with open source drivers already exist (and need work). And Apple can anytime thwart such efforts very easily with a firmware update. My main concern is that the BigTech are again closing ranks together to fight against the open movement - today, we are at the cusp of losing our computing freedom again with the aggressive push towards cloud computing, and locked down systems like the Apple M1. Apple is in the forefront here as it has build its business with closed-box systems and resisting against right-to-repair legislation. Fighting and avoiding open systems is in their DNA. That is why I believe porting Linux to the M1 is not only unnecessary but also a waste of resource and talent. Supporting existing and new open systems (if necessary by reverse engineering it) is more practical in the long run.
  - huxley 5y ago
    It's ancient history but Compaq only reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS for their own use. Some other clone companies directly copied the IBM BIOS and got sued, so it was Phoenix that provided the first 3rd party PC-compatible provably clean-room BIOS implementation.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  And Science is just reverse engineering reality.
alien_ 5y ago
I have an M1 Macbook Pro and it beats any other laptop I've seen/had when it comes to performance and battery life. I'd love to also have Linux run on it and apparently enough people do as well. Yes, the hardware is peculiar in many ways and Apple didn't bother to document it (it would have costed them some resources for no clear benefit to their business model) but they also didn't bother to completely lock it down, like they did with the iPhone and iPad. This is what allows other OSes to be ported to it if they are able/willing to reverse engineer and develop support for it. This reverse engineering work was done so far by just a handful of people who would also like to have Linux run on it, partly sponsored by a few hundreds that share this desire, or just doing it voluntarily as a challenge/interesting project. The m1n1 bootloader/hypervisor built by the team allows running macOS and logging all the hardware access. Once the reverse engineering is done for a given component, all the other OSes can implement support for it. The fact that a lot of the functionality is implemented in firmware blobs makes it easier to support at the OS level, essentially each OS driver only needs to give high level instructions to the firmware, without having to implement all the minutiae done in the firmware.

scrollaway 5y ago

Oh boy if we didn't even try to reverse engineer things to bring closed systems to the open world ... Where would we even be? I don't think we'd have gotten past UNIX.

webmobdev 5y ago
That's a fair point. I am thinking from the other end - if these efforts were instead redirected at supporting open hardware systems, how much more beneficial it would be for the open movement? By reverse engineering closed systems, you are adding value to it but not changing its nature - you are not really making it "open" (the next iteration will just "close" it again). Meanwhile, Apple just uses these reverse engineering effort cleverly for PR for the M1 through social media marketing. In effect, you are just helping a trillion dollar company design better closed systems while helping them make more money (by attracting naive Linux users to spend money on their hardware). There are open systems that are struggling because they don't have talented developers working on their projects. Wish these developers would instead work on these projects - Sailfish OS, PineOS, Librem - Purism etc. For example, there are a lot of Intel / Arm tablets that either run only Windows or Android. It would be nice to run one of these Linux based mobile OS distros on it, and create a genuine alternate to the Android / ios duopoly on Tablets, right?
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I don't think (and experimentally, I know I'm correct) it's as zero sum as you think it is. These efforts you think better spent on open hardware are actually adding value to the open systems by making transitions from closed systems easier. M1 is a beast and needs no further PR to attract buyers. You can ignore its advantages and yell out "our system sucks but at least it's open!", or, you can work on bringing the advantages of the product of a trillion dollar company's RND to the open world.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    I can understand an academic interest in reverse engineering such devices. But yes, I really don't see any advantages in owning a closed and limiting system like the Apple M1, when better and more open alternates already exist. The limitations of such hyped-up closed system negate any short-term temporary benefits it offers. And regardless of what you think, the M1 does need constant marketing as its limitations becomes obvious. Apple is betting their future on such closed systems and desperately needs it to be a success. That is why Apple marketing is desperate to spread PR fluffs about it to its Apple fans that ignorantly parrot them on the social media on threads like these: - Apple has effectively made it easier for OSs like Linux to have good support for the hardware - Ok, but they’ve done the opposite- helping linux projects get linux on M1 macs.. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27943196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27943196 ) ... and similar statements like these that try to convey that Apple is actually helping developers port Linux to their platform. Obviously, any posts (like mine) that point out the obvious lie in these statements are downvoted / vote-brigaded because it is in Apple's interest to do so.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      > Obviously, any posts (like mine) that point out the obvious lie in these statements are downvoted / vote-brigaded because it is in Apple's interest to do so. No, quit the Dunning-Kruger, you're being downvoted because most people here disagree with you. Myself included: I don't particularly like Apple, I'm not paid by Apple, I'm a life-long proponent of FOSS and open systems, and I downvoted you because your posts are uninformed and either you haven't thought this through, or you don't have enough context to know what you're talking about. Insinuations of shilling/astroturfing are against the guidelines, FYI.
indigodaddy 5y ago
Absolutely. I’m currently reading “Open” by Rod Canion, the story about how Compaq reverse engineered the IBM PC’s BIOS. Great read so far. Think about where we might be if that never happened.. no clones? No open hardware standards? I mean, I guess if Compaq didn’t do it, somebody else would have (maybe?), but yes, thank god for the brilliant engineers of the world who have the focus, diligence, and skill, to be able to do these sorts of things.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  When studying history though, we shouldn't lose track of the fact that it needs to be analysed based on the period it happened. From fighting a closed and patented *Nix systems, Linux has emerged as the current torch bearer of open systems in our era. It has made so much stride, that we are even thinking in terms of open hardware today (and it is a reality too, even if not yet successful). Today's computing world is no longer like the past. Open source is an accepted reality in both the corporate world and among the general population. You are right that in the past, reverse engineering helped clone hardware and make it more open. It was necessary then. Perhaps I am ignorant here, and I would like insights on this, but I don't understand the practicality of trying to reverse-engineer Apple's custom GPU when it is not even freely available or can even be used in any custom hardware configuration. Especially when alternative GPUs with open source drivers already exist (and need work). And Apple can anytime thwart such efforts very easily with a firmware update. My main concern is that the BigTech are again closing ranks together to fight against the open movement - today, we are at the cusp of losing our computing freedom again with the aggressive push towards cloud computing, and locked down systems like the Apple M1. Apple is in the forefront here as it has build its business with closed-box systems and resisting against right-to-repair legislation. Fighting and avoiding open systems is in their DNA. That is why I believe porting Linux to the M1 is not only unnecessary but also a waste of resource and talent. Supporting existing and new open systems (if necessary by reverse engineering it) is more practical in the long run.
- huxley 5y ago
  It's ancient history but Compaq only reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS for their own use. Some other clone companies directly copied the IBM BIOS and got sued, so it was Phoenix that provided the first 3rd party PC-compatible provably clean-room BIOS implementation.
raffraffraff 5y ago
And Science is just reverse engineering reality.

alien_ 5y ago

I have an M1 Macbook Pro and it beats any other laptop I've seen/had when it comes to performance and battery life. I'd love to also have Linux run on it and apparently enough people do as well. Yes, the hardware is peculiar in many ways and Apple didn't bother to document it (it would have costed them some resources for no clear benefit to their business model) but they also didn't bother to completely lock it down, like they did with the iPhone and iPad. This is what allows other OSes to be ported to it if they are able/willing to reverse engineer and develop support for it. This reverse engineering work was done so far by just a handful of people who would also like to have Linux run on it, partly sponsored by a few hundreds that share this desire, or just doing it voluntarily as a challenge/interesting project. The m1n1 bootloader/hypervisor built by the team allows running macOS and logging all the hardware access. Once the reverse engineering is done for a given component, all the other OSes can implement support for it. The fact that a lot of the functionality is implemented in firmware blobs makes it easier to support at the OS level, essentially each OS driver only needs to give high level instructions to the firmware, without having to implement all the minutiae done in the firmware.