OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux

> I just can't justify buying hardware from a company that is so hostile to developers and hackers as nice as it may be.

I don't think it's hostile, I think they're just hands-off; they throw the hardware over the fence and say, "if you wanna make use of it, here's our software; if you don't like our software, sorry no docs but you're free to write your own". Which is exactly what's happening.

I mean it would be nice if Apple had released more documentation, but I totally understand if they don't want the burden of supporting it.

There's a line somewhere, and I think it's different for every person. For a lot of people, the pricing itself is just outright hostile. 8gb of RAM in a base model Mac is not future-proofed in an age of local AI models, and paying to upgrade it gets expensive, fast. For others the OS is hostile when it unceremoniously drops support for $THING they use, or because it has the gall to show them ads. For others yet, the hardware is hostile because it's basically a black box that Apple withholds documenting to maintain a monopoly on fixing them.

Apple is one of the few companies smart enough to deliberately do this. It is both a testament to ability to do brilliant things, and akin to being trapped in a room with a lion that has twice your SAT score. The "golden handcuffs", as they say.

First, personally I don't care what hardware or software people use, if they are happy with the tools that they using then that's good.

That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.

As far as I am aware, progress Apple as made has been in response to public image issues or changes in consumer laws within the EU.

Plus Apple software is heavily indebted to Open Source software so they very easily could be releasing drivers for their hardware instead of relying on community to do backwards engineering.

Well overall if you sum up what even a basic m1 mb air packs, be it the panel, quality peripherals and soc itself its rather reasonable and within reach for almost anyone contemplating of buying a new computer. When you factor in that they were the first ones with an actual capable desktop arm offer I'd even say its cheap.

At least this is how I felt 2 years ago back when I bought it and more or less even to this day. I'm wondering how is the market as of now, two years later, and how the $1k arm laptops coming out today compare.

That's not true for Macs. Apple allowed and worked with MS to allow windows to work on Intel macs. That's pretty insane from allowing people to do what they want with their hardware.

No offense but that's not even contextually the same thing so I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.

> Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked

You can only have so many flexibility in design with modern hardware — they are not fitting things into 5 cm “thin” chassics anymore. How exactly are such a thin device be repairable? Similarly to how old car motors could be tweaked with, you need special tools to touch anything in a modern engine. This is not against the customers, these are trade offs.

But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?

Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won’t be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example).

There is literally no other laptop on the market that would be anywhere close to an M1 air in terms of performance-battery life combo. And it is definitely not even on the upper end in price for that, tiny windows laptops are ridiculously expensive!

So, are they really expensive?

You claim Apples Mac line of products is adversarial to hackers. Which I dispute with the example they help alternative OS to run on the Mac. First with Windows and now Asahi.

> But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?

I would dispute this claim, e.g. Apple settles iPhone slowdown case for $500m[1], just the first link I found looking for "planned obsolescence apple" on DuckDuckGo. This is not exclusive to their iPhones as one can find with a quick search.

[1][https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51706635]

Which was about a very stupidly communicated, but genuinely good intentioned misshap. Iphones older devices with old batteries had cases where they no longer could provide sufficient voltage to the phone and thus it would reboot randomly for people. To fix the issue, they decreased CPU frequency so that it would no longer drain so high peak power.

But they should have made it an option (it is one now on these devices) instead, they might have even come out good from it (as an android manufacturer wouldn’t even care about such an old device at the time).

“I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.”

They are very much still doing that

"But even this way, apple devices have by far the longest lifetimes, macs, iphones will have 2-3 owners easily - so is it really fair to call them out, or is it just baseless emotional reaction?"

Why reply that criticism of Apple must be purely an emotional one? Kind of diminishes your argument here.

Immediate search result for repairable phones:

https://www.androidcentral.com/best-sustainable-repairable-p...

https://shop.fairphone.com/en/buy-fairphone-4

Here's a laptop that you can upgrade:

https://frame.work/

Lifetime for Apple isn't as long as you make it out to be when batteries need replaced and software support for hardware ends:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/macos-sonoma-drops-s...

"Also, what you heard about locked down components resulted in better security, a much lower risk of theft, and a much more clean second-hand market (where you won’t be sold a phone with a cheap chinese shittier screen for example)."

Apple could just release stuff that didn't break so easily too so no need to risk changing out a screen if it ain't broke. There are plenty of ways to increase security of the device without making it less consumer friendly.

Additionally since the context here is whether Apple has been hacker friendly or not, why shouldn't you be allowed to upgrade and change the hardware of YOUR device? As in, you want to put in more storage or change the screen to one that's better in some manner (maybe it's just cost) then you ought to be able to.

That is it should be the device owners choice whether or not to replace their screen with one from Apple or a cheaper one.

So the only option has 1/10th the hardware of an older iphone with shittier camera than that.. for me that’s not a good deal. Framework laptops are insanely expensive for again, worse hardware. Isn’t the point of linux to run on anything?

Also, every device needs battery replacements, like this is just the physics/chemistry of batteries and it has an absolutely doable price for any apple device.

What breaks easily on an iphone? They are quite sturdy phones with metal casing. They wouldn’t get sold after 5-7 years of active use if they weren’t sturdy. And glass will still be breaking when it meets with big enough force - I again don’t see your point.

> re hacker friendliness

The RAM has different architecture on the M series, so it can’t be replaced even theoretically. Also, every moving part is one more point of potential breaking, plus it takes up space. This is not a rasppi, different design goals/constraints.

You can put in a worse screen but one will be able to see that in the settings so they can’t be scammed.

> Framework laptops are insanely expensive for again, worse hardware.

1199 EUR is not insanely expensive, specially considering that I can put up-to 64GB of RAM in a Framework laptop with a reasonable amount of money, while I would need to pay almost the price of a full Framework laptop to do the same in a Macbook Pro [1]. This is IMO, insanely expensive.

And yes, I can definitely use those amount of memory during mass rebuilds that I sometime like to do in NixOS. I don't even try to do those same workloads in my macOS because they start to become hugely slow once you hit the swap.

[1]: by the way, this get even worse considering that I also need to upgrade from an M2 Pro to M2 Max to have the option to do so. I just did a quote for the cheapest Macbook Pro with 64GB of RAM, and I got a 4000EUR quote for 512GB of storage that is laughable low for something that expensive. At that price, I can get 2 of the most expensive Framework AMD and I would still have sufficient money to get another one of the older Intel ones as a spare.

Mind you, the two kinds of RAM are not directly comparable.

Sure, I never said so. It doesn't mean that there isn't workloads that benefit from more RAM (even if it is slower) or that the Apple's RAM prices are insane.

Not to mention I can't find anything on them having ECC capabilities but I could be wrong.

Going with the first link. The "best" phone is not globally available. The second "best" comes with three years of OS updates. I stopped reading there; three years is a much, much shorter lifespan than you get with iOS or MacOS.

Also, say you have one of these phones, and are in a major city, then break it. How will you get the parts you need to repair it? How many hours will you be without a phone?

With Apple phones, it's typically same day service to get it repaired. Worst case, you can get a new phone with your data mostly transferred, again, same day.

The Ars article you link is pointing out that Apple is dropping software support for laptops that are 6 years old. That's better than pretty much any other vendor.

As far as laptop repairs go, frame.work is probably the best non-apple option, but they don't have a fixed policy for how long replacement parts will be available. The story is similar for Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624

says they provide parts for up to 7 years, and battery swaps for up to 10 (subject to part availability). I hope frame.work will be able to do better, but I challenge you to find any laptop company significantly better than this.

(Other than soldered ram and disk, I honestly don't care about third party parts. It's not like Apple replacement part markups are insane or there are significantly better parts available. I've definitely never used third party parts for other brands of laptops, even when they were available. However, I've been repeatedly screwed over getting other brands of laptops repaired, especially under warranty.)

Anyway, I get why Apple has a bad reputation for support and repairability. There objectively bad. However, that doesn't mean they're not simultaneously also the best option (or close to being the best).

If you like the hardware or software that you use then I am happy for you.

"This is not a rasppi, different design goals/constraints."

That we can agree on.

Apple is a business with specific goals and so far as a business in terms of profits they have been successful.

All I wanted to point out was that Apple is not hacker friendly in my opinion, and I have listed good reasons that you don't want to accept. There's no amount of going in circles here that will change either point of view I fear.

Have a blessed day!

In fairness, most instances of them doing that actually significantly increase the cost of evil maid hardware tampering attacks.

If I could, I'd configure grub or whatever to serial-lock my Linux install to my desktop hardware (and keep a recovery key that would unlock it at another location).

I am sorry but you're missing the point here.

I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or price. I am arguing over hack-ability; that's it. I hope you can understand that.

> That said, Apple has been very hostile to hackers over the years imo. Hardware being hard to repair, access, upgrade, etc. I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.

That came partially out of the desire to reduce the lure for thieves and robbers. It was really bad during the first generations that regularly had jailbreaks and ways to bypass "Find My..." or whatever, then the first tightening reduced resale values of stolen iPhones by a good amount (as they were only good enough to slaughter for parts once reported stolen), and the latest round made it even worse for criminals.

Personally though, I'd preferred they simply provided "unlock codes" with a phone that could be used to remove the association between a part's SN and the IMEI/SN of the phone. That way, buyers of iPhone have something similar to a certificate of authenticity.

The issue is that Apple isn’t giving anyone access to the tools to pair the parts, unless you give them all the information in advance, buy them at possibly inflated prices through their self repair program if they’re even available, and then have Apple remotely approve it afterwards (and this process only really works for individuals, 3rd party repair is more important as most people don’t have the skill)

> I'm not arguing over better hardware (performance) or price

Neither was the comment you replied to.

They were arguing that Apple provides excellent hardware support (in terms of repairs and how long they take) and lifetime (in terms of how long updates are provided for the device).

Hackability is irrelevant. Apple clearly doesn’t target that market and hadn’t since the Apple II days.

Would you buy a Lamborghini and complain it makes a terrible truck?

That’s not something Apple designs their products for, and their users are either fine with that or willing to make the trade off for the other things Apple does prioritize.

Macbooks are really cheap for what they are, not sure what are you on friend. I would never buy one though, still, they are very impressive and its a shame that they are not free.

> If I could, I'd configure grub or whatever to serial-lock my Linux install to my desktop hardware (and keep a recovery key that would unlock it at another location).

This is the general idea behind TPM/Secure Boot, but as you present it, it just sounds like a headache for performing system recovery, at no obvious benefit for security.

What's your threat model? In the 99.(9)% case it's a crook snatching the laptop, wiping the HD, and selling the whole thing and/or the parts. Evil maid is a real threat, but only practical (in terms of sophistication/cost vs benefit) for high-value targets, like C-levels, devs holding company secret keys, etc.

I don't really care if the desktop gets snatched. I'm more worried about old tax returns, the credentials stored in its password manager, etc. Breaking in twice (once to install a bump in the wire key logger, and once to walk away with the machine) would lead to at least 10x more payout for a burglar.

Also, ignoring what it is worth to the attacker, having to roll over all my credentials, freeze accounts, etc, etc, because my desktop was stolen would cost way more of my time than buying a new desktop (happily, the drive is encrypted).

If I was running a third-party unauthorized repair shop, then I'd care. However, I just don't see why I should care, as a customer. Also, I have trouble wrapping my head around the standpoint that people want to pay the Apple "it always sort of works" tax, then spend lots of extra time trying to save $50 on a repair.

When I mess around with hobby hardware, it's esoteric stuff, not readily-available laptops that are being built by the millions. For that, sometimes you need a volt-ohm meter, or diagnostic rigs.

Every few years I even bring some piece of a Linux box to a repair shop, to narrow down some fault.

However, Macs are all identical, so repairs boil down to "yank component, throw in the recycling shredder box, and (if you just replaced the mainboard) restore from iCloud Backup". Apple hardware switched over to being livestock, not pets a long time ago, so I'm not seeing the point in spending lots of effort on custom repairs (vs. replacing + recycling the bad components).

None of the machines on that list are more hackable than a Mac though.

Some are more "hackable" than an iPhone, but only in some strange symbolic way, since once you de-googled android is somehow more user-hostile than iOS and completely unhackable in practice (in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft).

I'm a happy owner of a pine book pro, and a pc engines router; I get it. However, I don't think there are any viable Linux laptops or phones that compare favorably to the linux laptop + phone I had a decade ago.

Because as a customer you should have the choice to get a repair from whoever you want. Even if you only go to Apple, competition will force their prices down somewhat.

"pay the Apple"

It's not just Apple doing this

"then spend lots of extra time trying to save $50 on a repair."

What if you're trying to save precious data? Apple don't make much effort to do data recovery because they don't care; you can fund 3rd party repairers who absolutely do. What if you got the device second hand? What if it's not $50, but $1000+? I've seen a video where Apple tells a journalist they have to buy a new Mac, and a 3rd party repair shop fixes it for free because it was such a small issue that Apple didn't even check for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2_SZ4tfLns

"Macs are all identical, so repairs boil down"

This is the problem; Apple is pairing parts to devices, so if you use a 100% genuine part from a new device it still won't work

> What if you're trying to save precious data? Apple don't make much effort to do data recovery because they don't care; you can fund 3rd party repairers who absolutely do

I keep backups, both in iCloud and elsewhere. Apple makes it a headache to avoid doing this, and they apparently finally added proper E2E encryption support.

I guess I think of Apple computers more like generic corporate fleet vehicles, and Linux boxes more like classic cars.

I really don’t think anyone cares if a ford dealer irreparably destroys 1% of the bottom trim white F-150s they maintain, and also forbids the people that bought the service contract from opening the hood.

None of that applies to a mustang shelby, but that’s a different part of the market.

Maybe some people really like their macs / phones, and don’t just use them like interchangeable boring tools.

> I think at one point they were making it virtually impossible to replace components because they were serial locked.

That seems like an obvious reaction to the fact that criminals (once they were prevented by activation lock from selling stolen iPhones) started parting out stolen iPhones and selling the parts to repair shops.

I think a better approach would be for Apple to only block the replacement part if that part has a serial associated with an activation-locked phone, but I'm sure it's easier to just block everything except for the replacements shipped directly from Apple.

Sounds like paranoia.

Scratches head at how framework laptop is less 'hackable' than a Mac but okay.

"(in the sense that I can't make it do what I want and also be usable as a daily driver that lets me do stuff like pay for stuff, use public transit, charge my car, park, or take an uber/lyft)."

So either the hardware you bought isn't letting you do what you want with it (this includes iPhone too!) Or you become a better hacker and get it to work yourself.