58 ms·

Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Atleast they should support major device categories with official drivers.

embedding-shape 6mo ago
> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Isn't that the whole point of the walled garden, that they approve things? How could they aim and realize a walled garden without making things like that have to pass through them?
- curt15 6mo ago
  I think the OP is asking why Apple is enclosing macs in a walled garden when that concept is generally associated with iPhones, not general-purpose computers.
  - nxobject 6mo ago
    TFA is a little unclear, but I think it might be a (userspace) driver signing situation?
GeekyBear 6mo ago
> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? For the same reason that Microsoft requires Windows driver signing? Drivers run with root permissions.
mschuster91 6mo ago
> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Because third party drivers usually are utter dogshit. That's how Apple managed to get double the battery life time even in the Intel era over comparable Windows based offerings.
wtallis 6mo ago
Doesn't Apple support the major standard device categories: NVMe, XHCI, AHCI, and such, like most operating systems do? The challenges are all for hardware that needs a vendor-specific driver instead of conforming to a standard driver interface (which doesn't always exist). Lots of those can be supported with userspace drivers, which can be supplied by third parties instead of needing to be written by Apple.
- bigyabai 6mo ago
  > NVMe Using proprietary connectors. > XHCI Not on Lightning. > AHCI How exactly would Apple not support AHCI?
  - wtallis 6mo ago
    >> NVMe > Using proprietary connectors. Not for the past decade; it's been no connectors for most products, but standard PCIe connectors for the Mac Pro, and NVMe over Thunderbolt works fine. >> XHCI > Not on Lightning. Again, not relevant to any recent products. And I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding what XHCI is if you think anything with a Lightning connector is relevant here (XHCI is not USB 3.0). You can connect a Thunderbolt dock that includes an XHCI USB host controller and it works out of the box with no further driver or software support. I assume you can do the same with a USB controller card in a Mac Pro. >> AHCI > How exactly would Apple not support AHCI? This might be another case of you not understanding what you're talking about and are lost in an entirely different layer of the protocol stack. Not supporting AHCI would be easy, since they're no longer selling any products that use SATA, and PCIe SSDs that use AHCI instead of NVMe died out a decade ago. But as far as I know, a SATA controller card at the far end of a Thunderbolt link or in a Mac Pro PCIe slot should still work, if the SATA controller uses AHCI instead of something proprietary as is typical for SAS controllers.
MrArthegor 6mo ago
Macs and PCs are fundamentally different. Their architectures have always been distinct though the Intel Mac era has somewhat blurred the line. Modern Mac is Macintosh descendants and by contrast PC is IBM PC descendants (their real name is technically PC-clone but because IBM PC don’t exist anymore the clone part have been scrapped). And with Apple silicon Mac the two is again very different, for example Mac don’t use NVMe, they use just nand (their controller part is integrated in the SoC) and they don’t use UEFI or BIOS, but a combination of Boot ROM, LLB and iBoot
- dd_xplore 6mo ago
  Not using NVMe is not a difference. It's not a different architecture. It's just simple circuit/space optimization, and has been done in other platforms as well. The controller, instead of being on the ssd module; it's present onboard the device.

embedding-shape 6mo ago

> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Isn't that the whole point of the walled garden, that they approve things? How could they aim and realize a walled garden without making things like that have to pass through them?

curt15 6mo ago
I think the OP is asking why Apple is enclosing macs in a walled garden when that concept is generally associated with iPhones, not general-purpose computers.
- nxobject 6mo ago
  TFA is a little unclear, but I think it might be a (userspace) driver signing situation?

GeekyBear 6mo ago

> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? For the same reason that Microsoft requires Windows driver signing? Drivers run with root permissions.

mschuster91 6mo ago

> Why does Apple need to make the drivers in a walled garden? Because third party drivers usually are utter dogshit. That's how Apple managed to get double the battery life time even in the Intel era over comparable Windows based offerings.

wtallis 6mo ago

Doesn't Apple support the major standard device categories: NVMe, XHCI, AHCI, and such, like most operating systems do? The challenges are all for hardware that needs a vendor-specific driver instead of conforming to a standard driver interface (which doesn't always exist). Lots of those can be supported with userspace drivers, which can be supplied by third parties instead of needing to be written by Apple.

bigyabai 6mo ago
> NVMe Using proprietary connectors. > XHCI Not on Lightning. > AHCI How exactly would Apple not support AHCI?
- wtallis 6mo ago
  >> NVMe > Using proprietary connectors. Not for the past decade; it's been no connectors for most products, but standard PCIe connectors for the Mac Pro, and NVMe over Thunderbolt works fine. >> XHCI > Not on Lightning. Again, not relevant to any recent products. And I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding what XHCI is if you think anything with a Lightning connector is relevant here (XHCI is not USB 3.0). You can connect a Thunderbolt dock that includes an XHCI USB host controller and it works out of the box with no further driver or software support. I assume you can do the same with a USB controller card in a Mac Pro. >> AHCI > How exactly would Apple not support AHCI? This might be another case of you not understanding what you're talking about and are lost in an entirely different layer of the protocol stack. Not supporting AHCI would be easy, since they're no longer selling any products that use SATA, and PCIe SSDs that use AHCI instead of NVMe died out a decade ago. But as far as I know, a SATA controller card at the far end of a Thunderbolt link or in a Mac Pro PCIe slot should still work, if the SATA controller uses AHCI instead of something proprietary as is typical for SAS controllers.

MrArthegor 6mo ago

Macs and PCs are fundamentally different. Their architectures have always been distinct though the Intel Mac era has somewhat blurred the line. Modern Mac is Macintosh descendants and by contrast PC is IBM PC descendants (their real name is technically PC-clone but because IBM PC don’t exist anymore the clone part have been scrapped). And with Apple silicon Mac the two is again very different, for example Mac don’t use NVMe, they use just nand (their controller part is integrated in the SoC) and they don’t use UEFI or BIOS, but a combination of Boot ROM, LLB and iBoot

dd_xplore 6mo ago
Not using NVMe is not a difference. It's not a different architecture. It's just simple circuit/space optimization, and has been done in other platforms as well. The controller, instead of being on the ssd module; it's present onboard the device.