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The fact that Apple is working on virtualisation shows that there is a user demand for running alternative OSes on a Mac desktop. And yet, instead of opening up

The fact that Apple is working on virtualisation shows that there is a user demand for running alternative OSes on a Mac desktop. And yet, instead of opening up their hardware just a bit (by making available some hardware literature on their ARM SoC) to system developers, they'd rather offer a more convoluted way of running other OSes only on their terms and control. It's all about having control over your personal data folks - with Apple ARM chips, Apple can now ensure and push that the "best" way to run alternative OSes on Apple Silicon Mac hardware is only on top of macOS with virtualisation. This way, even if you use another OS (through virtualisation), macOS can still continue to datamine your personal data.

derefnull 4y ago
There is already much user demand & vendor support for running virtual machines (including for Windows) on Apple hardware, through Parallels, VMWare and Qemu. Like there are options for containers, it is great to have another option for virtual machines.
- webmobdev 4y ago
  Options are good. But the way Apple operates to exert control and cripples softwares that don't align with their goals, don't be surprised if Apple suddenly forces developers to only use their virtualisation API on macOS, just like they did for application firewalls (that are no longer allowed to have their own custom kernel extensions for "security" and "stability"). They are slowly squeezing macOS to make it more and more like ios.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    They had the opportunity to do this when introducing the M-series Macs, because under the hood those work very similarly to iPhones and iPads. They could've done a direct copy-paste from the iDevice boot process and called it a day, but they didn't… they went out of their way to develop support for booting third-party operating systems, complete with a path for painless long term support with the flexibility of allowing the OS to choose which version of firmware to run on the hardware (so Apple can deploy compatibility breaking firmware updates for use with macOS without stepping on the toes of e.g. Asahi Linux). In macOS itself the main goal is to get third parties out of the kernel to the greatest extent possible, which makes perfect sense. Third parties, ideally, should be operating solely in userland, because otherwise you get pointlessly insecure nonsense like cloud file storage apps installing kernel extensions (like Dropbox used to on macOS).
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      > They had the opportunity to do this when introducing the M-series Macs No, they didn't because a Mac computer that is fully locked like the iDevices wouldn't have been popular and would have meant a lot of bad publicity for the M1 mac desktops. Apple Silicon M1 / M2 macs can only run crippled versions of other OSes and macOS is being slowly converted to be more and more like ios. It's the Boiling Frog strategy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - to ensure that they don't scare away their users. With soldered harware, no viable alternate OSes, and taking away developer options from macOS, all Apple Silicon M1/M2 macs are now just a few more steps away from becoming like the iDevices.
      - kitsunesoba 4y ago
        What do you mean by “crippled”? As far as I can tell the only limiting factor on the capabilities of other OSes on Apple Silicon is the state of hardware support, which is marching forward at a brisk pace and it doesn’t look like there’s anything stopping third parties from fully leveraging the capabilities of that hardware.
      - kergonath 4y ago
        > No, they didn't because a Mac computer that is fully locked like the iDevices wouldn't have been popular and would have meant a lot of bad publicity for the M1 mac desktops. Approximately nobody would have passed on a Mac because it could not boot Windows or Linux. This has been more or less the state of Macs since the release of the first M1 devices, and they sell rather well. There is demonstrably quite a lot of interest for these devices running macOS. > Apple Silicon M1 / M2 macs can only run crippled versions of other OSes How so? What do they do to cripple other OSes? > It's the Boiling Frog strategy Quoting Wikipedia for common phrases does not make you more credible. Again, people have been saying that for more than a decade. It is not inconceivable that it could happen in the future, but then anything could happen in the future. And in the meantime you still sound like a broken clock. > to ensure that they don't scare away their users. The whole history of iOS demonstrates the opposite. As said in the parent comment. They’ve had opportunities to actually go to that direction. Nobody was expecting third-party OS support.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    > that are no longer allowed to have their own custom kernel extensions for "security" and "stability" You keep implying that there are ulterior motives without a shred of justification. Why do you think that? What power do they get by doing this? Also, it does not prevent things like Little Snitch or the various Objective See tools from being developed. There are no fewer firewall apps than there used to be. There are no fewer virtualisation applications either. What you don’t get is that they started from the position that kernel extensions were an attack vector and a factor of instability. Then, they started addressing each use case for kernel extensions by providing user-level facilities. You probably set the cursor at a different location on the security spectrum, but it does not mean that you are any more right than they are. > They are slowly squeezing macOS to make it more and more like ios. Some people have been making that tired claim for more than a decade now. You’be had year to see how it works and where they are going, and it keeps not happening. Why do you think this is more credible now?
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I believe the bulk of the demand is coming primarily from a need to run Linux containers (e.g. docker images) than out of a desire to boot Linux directly. While there is demand for the latter (as demonstrated by the herculean efforts going into Asahi Linux), most people buying Macs are probably there at least partially for macOS and the ecosystem it fits into, as well as for the ability to run commercial software packages without a compatibility layer like WINE. All things considered it's probably generally easier to make headless Linux containers run acceptably on non-Linux hosts than it is to get complex UI software running acceptably under WINE or a Windows VM.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  I would say people don't care too much and take the path of least resistance. If it was an out of the box option they would definitely love a system with good hardware and a configurable os. When I spent some time and installed Linux on my MacBook Pro 2015 some people came asking for instructions (and were mostly deterred by the compiling needed to build a driver for the webcam). Macbooks are unrivaled for their hardware (pretty much any other laptop sucks), the software is meh and keeps getting worse.
Maursault 4y ago
> And yet, instead of opening up their hardware just a bit (by making available some hardware literature on their ARM SoC) to system developers, they'd rather offer a more convoluted way of running other OSes only on their terms and control. It's all about having control over your personal data folks I think the better argument is that it is what Apple says it's about, security. For the same reasons, we don't see Windows source code, nor are internally discovered Linux kernel security bugs advertised until they're fixed. I personally consider security bugs to be just "normal bugs". I don't cover them up, but I also don't have any reason what-so-ever to think it's a good idea to track them and announce them as something special...one reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifies—and thus encourages—the wrong behavior. It makes "heroes" out of security people, as if the people who don't just fix normal bugs aren't as important. In fact, all the boring normal bugs are way more important, just because there's[sic] a lot more of them. I don't think some spectacular security hole should be glorified or cared about as being any more "special" than a random spectacular crash due to bad locking. -Linus Torvalds, 2008 Instead of rolling over and vulnerably showing soft underbelly, armadillos fold in half, tuck in their legs and head, curling their tail beside the head and pull in tight, so that only their leathery armor shell is exposed. If they did what you wanted them to do, their species wouldn't exist for very long.
alwillis 4y ago
Apple isn’t “starting to work on virtualization”; it’s been around for several years. You can also run FreeBSD: https://dan.langille.org/2018/10/02/running-freebsd-on-osx-using-xhyve-a-port-of-bhyve/ https://dan.langille.org/2018/10/02/running-freebsd-on-osx-u...

derefnull 4y ago

There is already much user demand & vendor support for running virtual machines (including for Windows) on Apple hardware, through Parallels, VMWare and Qemu. Like there are options for containers, it is great to have another option for virtual machines.

webmobdev 4y ago
Options are good. But the way Apple operates to exert control and cripples softwares that don't align with their goals, don't be surprised if Apple suddenly forces developers to only use their virtualisation API on macOS, just like they did for application firewalls (that are no longer allowed to have their own custom kernel extensions for "security" and "stability"). They are slowly squeezing macOS to make it more and more like ios.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  They had the opportunity to do this when introducing the M-series Macs, because under the hood those work very similarly to iPhones and iPads. They could've done a direct copy-paste from the iDevice boot process and called it a day, but they didn't… they went out of their way to develop support for booting third-party operating systems, complete with a path for painless long term support with the flexibility of allowing the OS to choose which version of firmware to run on the hardware (so Apple can deploy compatibility breaking firmware updates for use with macOS without stepping on the toes of e.g. Asahi Linux). In macOS itself the main goal is to get third parties out of the kernel to the greatest extent possible, which makes perfect sense. Third parties, ideally, should be operating solely in userland, because otherwise you get pointlessly insecure nonsense like cloud file storage apps installing kernel extensions (like Dropbox used to on macOS).
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    > They had the opportunity to do this when introducing the M-series Macs No, they didn't because a Mac computer that is fully locked like the iDevices wouldn't have been popular and would have meant a lot of bad publicity for the M1 mac desktops. Apple Silicon M1 / M2 macs can only run crippled versions of other OSes and macOS is being slowly converted to be more and more like ios. It's the Boiling Frog strategy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog - to ensure that they don't scare away their users. With soldered harware, no viable alternate OSes, and taking away developer options from macOS, all Apple Silicon M1/M2 macs are now just a few more steps away from becoming like the iDevices.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      What do you mean by “crippled”? As far as I can tell the only limiting factor on the capabilities of other OSes on Apple Silicon is the state of hardware support, which is marching forward at a brisk pace and it doesn’t look like there’s anything stopping third parties from fully leveraging the capabilities of that hardware.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      > No, they didn't because a Mac computer that is fully locked like the iDevices wouldn't have been popular and would have meant a lot of bad publicity for the M1 mac desktops. Approximately nobody would have passed on a Mac because it could not boot Windows or Linux. This has been more or less the state of Macs since the release of the first M1 devices, and they sell rather well. There is demonstrably quite a lot of interest for these devices running macOS. > Apple Silicon M1 / M2 macs can only run crippled versions of other OSes How so? What do they do to cripple other OSes? > It's the Boiling Frog strategy Quoting Wikipedia for common phrases does not make you more credible. Again, people have been saying that for more than a decade. It is not inconceivable that it could happen in the future, but then anything could happen in the future. And in the meantime you still sound like a broken clock. > to ensure that they don't scare away their users. The whole history of iOS demonstrates the opposite. As said in the parent comment. They’ve had opportunities to actually go to that direction. Nobody was expecting third-party OS support.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > that are no longer allowed to have their own custom kernel extensions for "security" and "stability" You keep implying that there are ulterior motives without a shred of justification. Why do you think that? What power do they get by doing this? Also, it does not prevent things like Little Snitch or the various Objective See tools from being developed. There are no fewer firewall apps than there used to be. There are no fewer virtualisation applications either. What you don’t get is that they started from the position that kernel extensions were an attack vector and a factor of instability. Then, they started addressing each use case for kernel extensions by providing user-level facilities. You probably set the cursor at a different location on the security spectrum, but it does not mean that you are any more right than they are. > They are slowly squeezing macOS to make it more and more like ios. Some people have been making that tired claim for more than a decade now. You’be had year to see how it works and where they are going, and it keeps not happening. Why do you think this is more credible now?

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I believe the bulk of the demand is coming primarily from a need to run Linux containers (e.g. docker images) than out of a desire to boot Linux directly. While there is demand for the latter (as demonstrated by the herculean efforts going into Asahi Linux), most people buying Macs are probably there at least partially for macOS and the ecosystem it fits into, as well as for the ability to run commercial software packages without a compatibility layer like WINE. All things considered it's probably generally easier to make headless Linux containers run acceptably on non-Linux hosts than it is to get complex UI software running acceptably under WINE or a Windows VM.

jokethrowaway 4y ago
I would say people don't care too much and take the path of least resistance. If it was an out of the box option they would definitely love a system with good hardware and a configurable os. When I spent some time and installed Linux on my MacBook Pro 2015 some people came asking for instructions (and were mostly deterred by the compiling needed to build a driver for the webcam). Macbooks are unrivaled for their hardware (pretty much any other laptop sucks), the software is meh and keeps getting worse.

Maursault 4y ago

> And yet, instead of opening up their hardware just a bit (by making available some hardware literature on their ARM SoC) to system developers, they'd rather offer a more convoluted way of running other OSes only on their terms and control. It's all about having control over your personal data folks I think the better argument is that it is what Apple says it's about, security. For the same reasons, we don't see Windows source code, nor are internally discovered Linux kernel security bugs advertised until they're fixed. I personally consider security bugs to be just "normal bugs". I don't cover them up, but I also don't have any reason what-so-ever to think it's a good idea to track them and announce them as something special...one reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifies—and thus encourages—the wrong behavior. It makes "heroes" out of security people, as if the people who don't just fix normal bugs aren't as important. In fact, all the boring normal bugs are way more important, just because there's[sic] a lot more of them. I don't think some spectacular security hole should be glorified or cared about as being any more "special" than a random spectacular crash due to bad locking. -Linus Torvalds, 2008 Instead of rolling over and vulnerably showing soft underbelly, armadillos fold in half, tuck in their legs and head, curling their tail beside the head and pull in tight, so that only their leathery armor shell is exposed. If they did what you wanted them to do, their species wouldn't exist for very long.

alwillis 4y ago

Apple isn’t “starting to work on virtualization”; it’s been around for several years. You can also run FreeBSD: https://dan.langille.org/2018/10/02/running-freebsd-on-osx-using-xhyve-a-port-of-bhyve/ https://dan.langille.org/2018/10/02/running-freebsd-on-osx-u...