Many are undocumented. A lot can’t be disabled, even with SIP disabled. And, they’re chatty and persistent in trying to communicate out. You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
I only use my mac for development. I’m a simple man and don’t need all the bloat and hidden behavior. Plus, I always feel like I’m one automatic update away from it becoming unusable.
My Mac Mini M4 is for building the Mac/iOS apps, other than that it's useless as a daily driver. I will patiently wait for Asahi while I use my other computers that can run serious operating systems.
Sure you can
> You can kind of disable communication of TCP/IP but they’ll find alternatives - like low power bluetooth or even lower in the network stack.
No
Yes, I'm exaggerating about the networking. Yes, you can lock it down by turning off all of the devices, but honestly, I'm still not 100% on that. It was a surprise to me after I disabled ethernet and wifi and turned off everything in system settings, and someone passed by with an ios device.
However, if you're an expert - please save me a year of trial and error and point me to the minimal list of services and daemons.
I suspect there would be an element of induced demand here. IMO the MacBook range are the only laptops on the market worth buying - but not having support for gaming (or at least, hilariously bad support for a limited range of games) is compelling enough reason to install Linux for a large portion of users (filling the void left behind by the widely adopted Bootcamp).
> but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF.
Yeah, GPU ISA, controllers, power management, NPU, and who knows what else. I still believe that companies should be compelled by regulators to offer documentation and support necessary to write drivers as I believe it is part of the "right to repair" (M1 will lose support in 2 years, it's still a great platform).
> They chose to leave it open.
I _really_ wonder on this point. It's so uncharacteristic of Apple. Were they concerned about potential anti-competitive lawsuits and maliciously did the bare minimum to avoid them? "It's technically open hardware, but good luck figuring out how it works"
No docs is clear statement Apple hates FOSS. "how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop" argument is very weak considering that only consumer platforms that engage in a complete lockdown are maybe some gaming consoles, and those are basically appliances and not a general computing machines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://www.puredarwin.org/
It's only going to grow every year as apple stops releasing OS updates for perfectly functioning hardware.
Right now, yes. But Linux support is like freedom of speech in a dictatorship.
Everyone makes fun of it and says it's useless but fundamentally the powers that be are deathly afraid of it ever turning the tide.
That would be like you buying something at the dollar store.
At some point the ongoing maintenance and support as well as coordination and organizational distraction mean it wouldn't get approved if internal engineers offered to start it off for free.
They're avoiding it because installing Linux (or Windows, even), would actually decrease their income. I doubt people running Windows on Intel Macs were avid Apple Music subscribers.
or are you saying apple devices are loss-leader prior the app store revenue ?
that's the model taken to the extreme
It's fairly clear which direction the wind is blowing.
Also, hardware - software integration pushes more hardware sales. People with iPhones are a lot more likely to buy Macs than people with Android phones. Same story for Airpods & co. I've also basically never seen an Apple keyboard used with non-Apple computers.
Oh please - Apple provided a full suite of Bootcamp drivers for their hardware just a couple of years ago, not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.
It allowed a machine running Intel's EFI firmware (as Intel Macs have always done) to boot an OS that only understood the older BIOS standard.
Once Microsoft and the various PC vendors started supporting UEFI directly, Bootcamp was just a bundle of existing Windows drivers from the component vendors.
If you put a specific Broadcom Wi-Fi chip in the Mac, Bootcamp included Broadcom's Windows driver that was best suited for that chip.
I find it so bizarre that some of you here are defending a megacorporation that could have easily afforded to provide drivers for Linux Kernel like their competitors do.
You're clapping for free volunteers to spend hundreds of hours reverse engineering Thunderbolt controllers when companies like Intel outright contribute them.
Sure, they relied on community Linux drivers in the past, but that didn't have anything to do with money.
The person you're replying to didn't say that. Please don't misrepresent and please keep it respectful
They just don't care.
They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.
It’s all there and it’s been 25-26 years no one has bothered maybe that’s Apple is still the only vertical computer company left from the 1980s.
At one time there were many choices in hardware and OS software combined with that hardware that era is basically gone because no one wants to take the bull by the horns and do anything they want someone else to give it to them free.
That's not what they said. Please don't misrepresent
> is laughabe
And this disparaging language about commenters is not OK. Please stop.
Nothing about that statement is disparaging - just because you don't want to hear it, doesn't make it insulting.
Calling out nonsense is important, especially on this website.
The challenge isn't finding an engineer. It is picking what project doesn't get done in its place.