> 20 years from now if the platform is still open ... I am quite willing to concede that Apple doesn't need to lock the bootloader on the Apple Silicon Macs, a

> 20 years from now if the platform is still open ... I am quite willing to concede that Apple doesn't need to lock the bootloader on the Apple Silicon Macs, as long as no viable alternate OSes for it emerges and / or every reverse engineering effort to port and run alternate Oses on it can be countered and hampered by changing the hardware in the next model. So in effect, Apple can continue claiming that Apple Silicons are "open". But how much does this "openness" of Apple Silicon matter when they are only available in custom hardware (the Mac platform) and any change in the hardware means you may not be able to run the OS to use the Apple Silicon CPU / SoC to the full extent? The soldered parts ensure planned obsolescense and limited life anyway for every Apple Silicon Mac. So even if someone manages to reverse engineer one model, it will have a short life, and they will have their work cut out for the next new Apple Silicon with enough hardware modifications to sabotage any serious competing OS. If Apple really wants it users to believe that Apple Silicon Macs are open, all it has to do is release the drivers for an alternate OS. For all those who claim that it will be an additional unnecessary burden, remember that Apple has done it in the past with Bootcamp and Windows driver. For those who claim that Microsoft cannot offer Windows on Apple Silicon because of their tie-up / contract with Qualcomm, note that there are other alternate OSes too. If Apple doesn't want to release their hardware literature to the public and is comfortable with only working with corporate I can point Apple to IBM or Canonical who make Red Hat Linux / Fedora and Ubuntu OS respectively, and who don't care about including propreitary driver blobs in their distribution (as far as I know).