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Why the "walled garden" flame bait? Just because Apple removes old drivers that were deprecated 3 major releases ago (because that's the last version where 5+ y
by oneplane 4y ago
Why the "walled garden" flame bait? Just because Apple removes old drivers that were deprecated 3 major releases ago (because that's the last version where 5+ year old Macs were still shipping with AMD or Nvidia graphics) doesn't mean that therefore nobody in the world could ever make drivers.
Any GPU manufacturer could right now make a driver that works on Aarch64 for Windows, macOS and Linux, regardless of what Microsoft or Apple does. But they don't (so far, at this point, but I can't foresee the future).
To the point of being 'blessed' by the OS manufacturer: Microsoft probably won't make DCH signed drivers until their contract with Qualcomm for exclusive Windows ARM end-user hardware expires, they only sign drivers for their own internal hardware and Qualcomms internal hardware, and that's it. Apple is in a similar situation but they just won't support any internal peripherals that they don't manufacture themselves. You can, however, still make and load those drivers, it's just not a non-technical experience for the average user (and one could argue that eGPUs aren't for the mass market anyway).
Keep in mind that both Microsoft and Apple have their own 'special' versions of GPU drivers for AMD and Nvidia (and Intel) that are code from those three manufacturers but packaged and maintained by them. And then there is the ODM and public versions, where the ODM version is mostly used by laptop manufacturers, and the public version is what you find in the downloadable 'universal' packages from the GPU manufacturer website. Those can be made by those manufactures at any time, for any OS, if they want to.
- rektide 4y ago> Why the "walled garden" flame bait? The new macs literally dont allow 3rd party components. The physical case literally serves as a wall against regular PC components. The new mac minis have m.2 slots for example... but you need a custom ssd just because, because Apple is keeping the walls high. > Any GPU manufacturer could right now make a driver that works on Aarch64 for Windows, macOS and Linux, regardless of what Microsoft or Apple does. But they don't AMD cards run on ARM linux. https://youtu.be/crnEygp4C6g https://youtu.be/crnEygp4C6g