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It is odd that Apple doesn't chip in here... they've originated so much decent stuff in the OSS space. Seems like a huge missed opportunity.
by shmoe 24d ago
It is odd that Apple doesn't chip in here... they've originated so much decent stuff in the OSS space. Seems like a huge missed opportunity.
- happymellon 24d agoApple are hostile to everything CopyLeft. Why would they "chip in" here?
- worldsavior 24d agoWell, they will get more people buying MacBooks, though they won't really use their services.
- vorticalbox 24d agoI do wonder if the margin on Mac isn’t that high vs the price and the services (iCloud etc) make up for that. Amazon do the same with the fire.
- coldtea 24d agoWe know that the Mac has fine margins.
- globular-toast 24d agoThey don't care about people buying MacBooks. They want you in their ecosystem buying i-everything.
- utopiah 24d agoWhat makes Apple valuable is precisely its full vertical integration. Nobody else does it at that scale except maybe Sony for consoles and Microsoft but both don't have the same usage coverage and thus integration. It wouldn't be economically rational for Apple to bring down its own moat.
- deanishe 24d agoApple isn't Sony. They make an arm and a leg on their hardware. When they switched to x86, it didn't take long for them to release Boot Camp, so they could take Windows users' money, too.
- esskay 24d agoThey also make an arm and a leg on services, which is why its not in their interest to make it so you cant use them.
- xnickb 24d agoIt's not like users will just stop using the services. Rather Linux users will start considering MacBook as a potential laptop to buy. How could that possibly disrupt their Software/Services infra?
- esskay 24d agoOf course they will. Why would you pay for icloud storage you cant use?
- xnickb 24d agoThat statement is true for the users that both bought and didn't buy a Macbook (with Linux support). The difference is, the one who bought has paid money for the Macbook. I am not an Apple user. Do you _have_ to pay for iCloud if you buy the laptop? I don't think so.
- coldtea 24d agoWindows dual boot meant millions of potential switchers, if not for anything else, as a list item to tell them "you could still dual boot". Asahi-on-Mac would bring in irrelevant numbers for a company of Apple's size.
- 24d ago
- pjmlp 24d agoFolks are much better supporting Linux and BSD OEMs than buying Apple than then trying to run Linux on their devices.
- Angostura 24d agoFrom what I can tell from the project team, Apple aren’t being hostile. Just not contributing resource
- bel8 24d agoThe decision to not contribute when you have infinite resources is a hostile action on itself.
- elromulous 24d agoSurely this is missing "/s"
- LtWorf 24d agoCan you make 3 examples of things they originated? I'm honestly asking.
- zer0zzz 24d agoWebKit, clang, the llvm backend for arm64
- LtWorf 24d agowebkit is a fork from KDE, so "initiated" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. llvm also existed from before although apple supported the development. I was curious if apple had actually started any FOSS project.
- brewmarche 24d agoSwift comes to mind, and this website has more https://opensource.apple.com/projects/ https://opensource.apple.com/projects/ (it lists WebKit, but I guess they count WebKit after it split from KHTML, I’d agree with you there) Also, Bonjour originated at Apple and it is cross-platform, although Avahi probably is more popular CUPS is associated with Apple as well, but it seems that it also did not originate there
- LtWorf 24d agoLast I heard from CUPS they fired the only guy who was working on it? last thing i found https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/26/apples-dormant-cups/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/26/apples-dormant-cups/
- zer0zzz 23d agoI was going to say swift, but I figured someone would undercount that because it is so overly relevant as an iOS/Mac development language even though it really is a pretty good portable language. But man... undercounting webkit and clang+llvm is a new level of ignorance..
- surcap526 24d ago[dead]
- pjjpo 23d agoI would like to have a great laptop running Linux but the hardware options are just not there. So I end up with a MacBook with macOS. Some may refuse to do that but I expect that's only a tiny missed opportunity.