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There is a huge difference between not physically locking people out of running custom software and legitimately being able to claim you support other operating

There is a huge difference between not physically locking people out of running custom software and legitimately being able to claim you support other operating systems. Requiring that a community exist that is willing to spend many years of collective time reverse engineering your products when you could have just released documentation is still a massive middle finger to everyone. The problem with these 100% vertically integrated stacks is that every hardware release could be completely different and it'll take years to catch up with just that release. In the intervening time more hardware generations were released - It's been 18 months since the M1 release. Asahi doesn't have 3D acceleration, video encode/decode acceleration, or support for many of the things that make Apple Silicon any good (i.e. the fixed function / low power consumption hardware for the majority of user tasks). At this rate it's going to be years before it's "done" and we already have a successor generation of hardware. I'll leave you with a quote from the Asahi docs > Development for an undocumented platform is a treadmill of work. Every new feature requires reverse engineering the relevant hardware, writing drivers, testing those drivers, then getting them upstreamed. Even after a driver is upstreamed, maintenance and optimisation is sometimes required, for example if Apple introduce a breaking change to any firmware we are required to interface with. For developers the work is never really done It's the same reason we don't have third-party images for most Android phones that are anything beyond tweaks of existing Android images.

iseanstevens 4y ago
It’s been 18 months on an entirely new platform and a small team of (BRILLIANT) people did such a good job discovering and porting to undocumented hardware that it worked on the M2 hardware essentially before it started shipping. I don’t think Apple is trying to get in their way. Also… developing for documented hardware is also an endless treadmill of work as it evolves/new products are released. It just has much less uncertainty. I 100% agree it would be awesome if Apple released full documentation. Broadcom too. Probably others. (All IMHO)
- Teknoman117 4y ago
  > small team of (BRILLIANT) people I wasn't trying to take anything away from them at all. It's astounding what they're accomplishing but the fact that it's necessary for this situation to exist at all is what I'm mainly commenting about.
- whoisburbansky 4y ago
  Ah, does not releasing full documentation not count as Apple "trying to get in their way"? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely trying to figure out how folks draw the line, since in my head, keeping documentation private smells like obstructionism.
  - soneil 4y ago
    If it's obstructionism it's passively so. They've done nothing to actively obstruct. They've also done nothing to help. When they say they don't support it they're not kidding, they don't just mean capital-S support. If I had to put a label on their stance, it'd be "chaotic neutral".
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      Except they have helped, just not with the documentations side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        That's not helping Asahi. Apple never mentioned the reason behind the change (or even publicly acknowledged Asahi, as far as I'm aware), and non-Marcan sources have speculated that it was added to help Apple run hardware testing firmware. It's equally likely that Apple added this in as an alternate entrypoint for Bootcamp, which wouldn't work on Apple Silicon otherwise. In other words, people are applauding Apple for fixing the problem Apple created: a perfect allegory for developers in the 21st century, if you ask me.
        GeekyBear 4y ago
        Putting in all the effort to design a system that allows you to install an unsigned OS without it effecting the boot security of the MacOS partition is definitely helping Ashai, NetBSD and any other OS that would like to add support for the hardware going forward. Also, designing the boot menu so that unsigned OSes can show up as valid choices or be set as the default OS. As well as the EULA allowing the use of unsigned OSes.
- 95014_refugee 4y ago
  Speaking from experience, there is no "full documentation" to release.
iasay 4y ago
It's difficult to have an opinion here as I've seen both sides. While compatibility is nice, if you start kicking out reference hardware documentation you instantly open up several additional cans of worms from upstream IP licensing to crappy clone repair parts appearing on the market. But realistically with Apple you don't know what's going to happen. They could be silent forever. They could suddenly dump a whole pack of documentation out tomorrow. An official position would be nice. Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? That's their equivalent model of supporting the iPhone 5's market share for example.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? Fair enough. I think most toaster manufacturers will at least test what happens when you put a bagel inside, though. If said bagel causes an electrical fire or doesn't toast as well as the previous model did, it doesn't matter if ~1% of users will encounter it; it probably needs to get fixed before it ships. I think this fully extends to Apple Silicon as well. Apple's "contributions" to Asahi mostly amount to adding a feature that pre-existed on x86 machines, and probably intended for Bootcamp/Windows rather than Linux. Hell, there's compelling evidence that Apple simply uses that functionality to flash testing firmware onto Macbooks, and the Linux compatibility is just a nice side-effect. Much like you said though, with Apple you never know. Until they release an official statement on the matter, it can only be assumed it's a coincidence.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > Apple's "contributions" to Asahi mostly amount to adding a feature that pre-existed on x86 machines Nope. Apple tossed out the UEFI used by Intel Macs and replaced it with a system that allows you to control the security settings per partition, so you can have a single machine with full security enabled on your Mac partition while allowing for the installation of an unsigned OS on the same disk. It's a complete replacement of the boot system that preexisted on x86 machines.
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
Does Apple have less reason to lock things down now? Being fully vertically integrated, with possibly the best mobile hardware in town, do they care that people will buy their hardware just to run Linux? Help is good. But getting out of the way sounds like a good consolation prize.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Apple has never locked down a Mac. The EULA on the Apple Silicon Macs allows you to run another OS. Apple put in a large amount of work to design a system that applies security settings per partition instead of per machine, so that installing an unsigned custom OS doesn't require you to turn off "Secure Boot" for the whole machine.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    Wait what? Did Intel macs have EULAs that go into what OSes you're allowed to install on the hardware you "own"? It blows my mind that we'd need Apple's permission, unless you're just licensing/renting your mac
  - saghm 4y ago
    When I used to have a personal macbook that I got to keep after an old internship, I even was able to find instructions online that helped me split the SSD between Linux and MacOS, with filevault still working on the MacOS partition and full disk encryption through LUKS like normal on Linux. It did require temporarily turning off filevault and SIP while doing the partitioning (and when setting the linux partition to boot by default, although that's not required by any means), but once the setup is done, it works fine after turning it back on.
GeekyBear 4y ago
> The problem with these 100% vertically integrated stacks is that every hardware release could be completely different and it'll take years to catch up with just that release. In the intervening time more hardware generations were released >At this point, it's pretty likely that M2 will be at feature parity with M1 with <24h of actual work. https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376
- lostmsu 4y ago
  M2 is also basically the same chip.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    Which makes the scaremongering about it theoretically taking years to add support for a next generation chip sound especially silly.
    - blinkingled 4y ago
      Well keep in mind that even M1 2+ years since its release is not yet fully supported enough to make it a daily driver with Linux. And it is not exactly a given.
      - ace2358 4y ago
        Seems like it’s reaching that point for Linus >On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It's something I've been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it's finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We've had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0Xi0OEQ3H1uQgOdFvHgx0w@mail.gmail.com/T/#u https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...
        4y ago
tomcam 4y ago
> Requiring that a community exist that is willing to spend many years of collective time reverse engineering your products when you could have just released documentation is still a massive middle finger to everyone. If you were handling this situation for Apple, how would you handle customer support for non-apple OSes?
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  I mean I wouldn't, but documentation would be appreciated. I feel like this is a common error in reasoning (not accusing you, honestly not accusing Apple, mostly accusing the people who would move the goalposts if Apple really did release documentation) where you identify one action as clearly good, and another action as possibly bad, and then not do the former for fear that you'll then choose to do the latter. It's not quite slippery slope, because at least under slippery slope it's other people who are the concern. Apple could just choose to do the easy stuff and not the hard stuff! They could release documentation with no promise of support! You see the same argument with open sourcing things; "Oh well then I'd have to support it". Just literally choose to let people see the code and also choose not to give them support. Who exactly is gonna twist your arm?
aledalgrande 4y ago
Agree with the sentiment of siblings. Apple writing public documentation would have a cost (server maintenance, full time technical writers, support for devs etc), and how would they justify it? Their mantra has always been a single unit formed by their hardware AND software. They are nice enough to allow you to play with the hardware and keep the security features, I don't think you should expect much more.
- philistine 4y ago
  Apple has had lacking documentation for more than a decade now. They haven’t invested enough in that area, and I presume they are incapable of cleaning up their internal documents for external use.
kmeisthax 4y ago
M2 is already out and marcan got it up and running in, like, a few hours. Apple actually has a fair bit of engineering discipline and doesn't shuffle registers around on a whim. This isn't exactly Intel levels of "lol let me just run MS-DOS on my brand-new gaming rig" but it's way better than most ARM vendors. If Qualcomm or Nvidia had half the compatibility discipline Apple had, third-party images for Android hardware would absolutely be a thing.

iseanstevens 4y ago

It’s been 18 months on an entirely new platform and a small team of (BRILLIANT) people did such a good job discovering and porting to undocumented hardware that it worked on the M2 hardware essentially before it started shipping. I don’t think Apple is trying to get in their way. Also… developing for documented hardware is also an endless treadmill of work as it evolves/new products are released. It just has much less uncertainty. I 100% agree it would be awesome if Apple released full documentation. Broadcom too. Probably others. (All IMHO)

Teknoman117 4y ago
> small team of (BRILLIANT) people I wasn't trying to take anything away from them at all. It's astounding what they're accomplishing but the fact that it's necessary for this situation to exist at all is what I'm mainly commenting about.
whoisburbansky 4y ago
Ah, does not releasing full documentation not count as Apple "trying to get in their way"? Not trying to be snarky, genuinely trying to figure out how folks draw the line, since in my head, keeping documentation private smells like obstructionism.
- soneil 4y ago
  If it's obstructionism it's passively so. They've done nothing to actively obstruct. They've also done nothing to help. When they say they don't support it they're not kidding, they don't just mean capital-S support. If I had to put a label on their stance, it'd be "chaotic neutral".
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    Except they have helped, just not with the documentations side: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      That's not helping Asahi. Apple never mentioned the reason behind the change (or even publicly acknowledged Asahi, as far as I'm aware), and non-Marcan sources have speculated that it was added to help Apple run hardware testing firmware. It's equally likely that Apple added this in as an alternate entrypoint for Bootcamp, which wouldn't work on Apple Silicon otherwise. In other words, people are applauding Apple for fixing the problem Apple created: a perfect allegory for developers in the 21st century, if you ask me.
      - GeekyBear 4y ago
        Putting in all the effort to design a system that allows you to install an unsigned OS without it effecting the boot security of the MacOS partition is definitely helping Ashai, NetBSD and any other OS that would like to add support for the hardware going forward. Also, designing the boot menu so that unsigned OSes can show up as valid choices or be set as the default OS. As well as the EULA allowing the use of unsigned OSes.
95014_refugee 4y ago
Speaking from experience, there is no "full documentation" to release.

iasay 4y ago

It's difficult to have an opinion here as I've seen both sides. While compatibility is nice, if you start kicking out reference hardware documentation you instantly open up several additional cans of worms from upstream IP licensing to crappy clone repair parts appearing on the market. But realistically with Apple you don't know what's going to happen. They could be silent forever. They could suddenly dump a whole pack of documentation out tomorrow. An official position would be nice. Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? That's their equivalent model of supporting the iPhone 5's market share for example.

smoldesu 4y ago
> Switching it round though, 99.99% of customers are buying a toaster. I put bread in. It makes toast. I eat toast. Does it make commercial sense to support the 0.01% use case? Fair enough. I think most toaster manufacturers will at least test what happens when you put a bagel inside, though. If said bagel causes an electrical fire or doesn't toast as well as the previous model did, it doesn't matter if ~1% of users will encounter it; it probably needs to get fixed before it ships. I think this fully extends to Apple Silicon as well. Apple's "contributions" to Asahi mostly amount to adding a feature that pre-existed on x86 machines, and probably intended for Bootcamp/Windows rather than Linux. Hell, there's compelling evidence that Apple simply uses that functionality to flash testing firmware onto Macbooks, and the Linux compatibility is just a nice side-effect. Much like you said though, with Apple you never know. Until they release an official statement on the matter, it can only be assumed it's a coincidence.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > Apple's "contributions" to Asahi mostly amount to adding a feature that pre-existed on x86 machines Nope. Apple tossed out the UEFI used by Intel Macs and replaced it with a system that allows you to control the security settings per partition, so you can have a single machine with full security enabled on your Mac partition while allowing for the installation of an unsigned OS on the same disk. It's a complete replacement of the boot system that preexisted on x86 machines.

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago

Does Apple have less reason to lock things down now? Being fully vertically integrated, with possibly the best mobile hardware in town, do they care that people will buy their hardware just to run Linux? Help is good. But getting out of the way sounds like a good consolation prize.

GeekyBear 4y ago
Apple has never locked down a Mac. The EULA on the Apple Silicon Macs allows you to run another OS. Apple put in a large amount of work to design a system that applies security settings per partition instead of per machine, so that installing an unsigned custom OS doesn't require you to turn off "Secure Boot" for the whole machine.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Wait what? Did Intel macs have EULAs that go into what OSes you're allowed to install on the hardware you "own"? It blows my mind that we'd need Apple's permission, unless you're just licensing/renting your mac
- saghm 4y ago
  When I used to have a personal macbook that I got to keep after an old internship, I even was able to find instructions online that helped me split the SSD between Linux and MacOS, with filevault still working on the MacOS partition and full disk encryption through LUKS like normal on Linux. It did require temporarily turning off filevault and SIP while doing the partitioning (and when setting the linux partition to boot by default, although that's not required by any means), but once the setup is done, it works fine after turning it back on.

GeekyBear 4y ago

> The problem with these 100% vertically integrated stacks is that every hardware release could be completely different and it'll take years to catch up with just that release. In the intervening time more hardware generations were released >At this point, it's pretty likely that M2 will be at feature parity with M1 with <24h of actual work. https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542957901651685376

lostmsu 4y ago
M2 is also basically the same chip.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  Which makes the scaremongering about it theoretically taking years to add support for a next generation chip sound especially silly.
  - blinkingled 4y ago
    Well keep in mind that even M1 2+ years since its release is not yet fully supported enough to make it a daily driver with Linux. And it is not exactly a given.
    - ace2358 4y ago
      Seems like it’s reaching that point for Linus >On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It's something I've been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it's finally reality, thanks to the Asahi team. We've had arm64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0Xi0OEQ3H1uQgOdFvHgx0w@mail.gmail.com/T/#u https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0X...
      - 4y ago

tomcam 4y ago

> Requiring that a community exist that is willing to spend many years of collective time reverse engineering your products when you could have just released documentation is still a massive middle finger to everyone. If you were handling this situation for Apple, how would you handle customer support for non-apple OSes?

ravi-delia 4y ago
I mean I wouldn't, but documentation would be appreciated. I feel like this is a common error in reasoning (not accusing you, honestly not accusing Apple, mostly accusing the people who would move the goalposts if Apple really did release documentation) where you identify one action as clearly good, and another action as possibly bad, and then not do the former for fear that you'll then choose to do the latter. It's not quite slippery slope, because at least under slippery slope it's other people who are the concern. Apple could just choose to do the easy stuff and not the hard stuff! They could release documentation with no promise of support! You see the same argument with open sourcing things; "Oh well then I'd have to support it". Just literally choose to let people see the code and also choose not to give them support. Who exactly is gonna twist your arm?

aledalgrande 4y ago

Agree with the sentiment of siblings. Apple writing public documentation would have a cost (server maintenance, full time technical writers, support for devs etc), and how would they justify it? Their mantra has always been a single unit formed by their hardware AND software. They are nice enough to allow you to play with the hardware and keep the security features, I don't think you should expect much more.

philistine 4y ago
Apple has had lacking documentation for more than a decade now. They haven’t invested enough in that area, and I presume they are incapable of cleaning up their internal documents for external use.

kmeisthax 4y ago

M2 is already out and marcan got it up and running in, like, a few hours. Apple actually has a fair bit of engineering discipline and doesn't shuffle registers around on a whim. This isn't exactly Intel levels of "lol let me just run MS-DOS on my brand-new gaming rig" but it's way better than most ARM vendors. If Qualcomm or Nvidia had half the compatibility discipline Apple had, third-party images for Android hardware would absolutely be a thing.