[lovelyviking]

How about much simpler scenario, no threat at all. Just dumb bug in software that puts your computer in DFU mode that says, please connect it to another Mac. Nice isn't it? And then you should run and find 'another mac'. What if there are no other macs around? What if you travel and have no connection to the internet or it's limited ? This is not a hypothetical situation, this is exactly what have happened in my case. And then you are stuck in the field without any way to recover your machine. Nice isn't it?

"When Apple's servers go down you lose the ability to do low-level recovery on these machines anyway, since DFU flashing requires phoning home to get a ticket for your machine as well as low-level configuration data"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29704923

[mlyle]

> Just dumb bug in software that puts your computer in DFU mode that says, please connect it to another Mac. Nice isn't it? And then you should run and find 'another mac'.

If your fundamental firmware-stuff is screwed up on any platform, you are going to have a bad time. Being able to plug into an off-the-shelf machine and fix it, or to plug into another PC running special software, is much better than I'm accustomed to.

[lovelyviking]

>If your fundamental firmware-stuff is screwed up on any platform

Sure I just have an impression after some googling that this DFU happens much more frequently then one would expect. Certainly I didn't expect it to happen in the first day after purchase but it did. So perhaps this pleasing 'much better' ability to fix it by just connecting it with another device that you probably do not possess(in my case) comes with another pleasure of having to do it more frequently. If that is the case then I really prefer the state to which you are accustomed to.

[mlyle]

I have never had to deal with firmware on Apple hardware (excepting "zapping the PRAM" on classic Macs). I've had to deal with it dozens of times on other platforms.

We have 3 Apple Silicon based Macs in the house, and there's 4-5 others that I support. So far 0 incidents in about 3 device years. I don't think it's tremendously common like you imply.

In the same time period, I built two Ryzen machines, and had to swap in older processors to run BIOS updates on each, and the laptops in my wife's classroom all decided to take themselves out of service for an hour one day to do BIOS updates that were delivered by Windows update and then only triggered on the second reboot after update when we all thought we were safe.

[marcan_42]

I've bought one of every major M1 model for testing purposes and have done all kinds of crazy things to them, and the only time something weird happened was with the original firmware version where I managed to break recovery mode by messing with diskutil, but I was able to fix it from macOS without requiring a DFU flash. It's never happened again and I've done the same thing dozens of times, so I think that was some silly bug in the shipping firmware version that has long since been fixed. I never actually had to resort to DFU recovery (though I still tested it a bunch as part of improving support for it in idevicerestore).

[argsnd]

Just use https://github.com/libimobiledevice/idevicerestore on a Linux or Windows machine.

Yes, if you don't have internet access you have a problem, but I'm personally happy enough with the benefits of this security model that I'm willing to accept the tradeoff.

[lovelyviking]

>I'm happy willing to accept the tradeoff.

For now ... Thank you for the link but may I suggest you to think about the future and where it leads.

[marcan_42]

The Mac has existed for 37 years and the iPhone for 15 of those and the Mac is still open to running whatever OS users choose. You really need to find an argument other than an unqualified "the future is doom and gloom" when after all this time that future hasn't come and the platform remains open.

[lovelyviking]

>The Mac has existed for 37 years and the iPhone for 15 of those

So iPhone is closed for 15 years already and thus "the future is doom and gloom" is happening for 15 years already. The more important question is what will be next.

>You really need to find an argument other than an unqualified "the future is doom and gloom" when after all this time that future hasn't come and the platform remains open.

Argument can be qualified or unqualified depending on the topic. It is unclear which topic assumed here.

[marcan_42]

> So iPhone is closed for 15 years already and thus "the future is doom and gloom" is happening for 15 years already. The more important question is what will be next.

"I disagree with one product's direction, therefore all other products from the same company are doomed to that direction" is not a valid argument, especially not after 15 years of it not happening. Companies are capable of producing products targeting different markets and use cases.

"Domino's added a pizza I don't like to their menu, what will be next? Their entire line up will be a horrible inedible mess in a few years!"

See how stupid that sounds?

All you have to do is not buy an iPhone (like I didn't either) and stop spreading FUD about Macs.

[lovelyviking]

There is a difference between topic of 'independence and freedom' and the 'topic of security' . They are somewhat related but not the same. If deviation toward the 'topic of security' from the 'topic of independence and freedom' observed and if 'independence and freedom topic' is presented as useless and unrelated to 'real life'. Intentionally or not - in both cases it can be considered as contributing to the "doom and gloom". So I am not sure I need to find other argument as it is provided each time when switching occurs from 'independence request' to ' it's good security'.

>... not a valid argument, especially not after 15 years of it not happening.

It's not about trusting or not particular company. The idea is to protect and insist on certain level of respect toward owners of the computers that no company would dare/able to diminish without consequnces.

>"Domino's added a pizza I don't like to their menu, what will be next? Their entire line up will be a horrible inedible mess in a few years!"

>See how stupid that sounds?

"what will be next" question was addressing the issue of trusting to any company and about level of dependency from any company for any owner of any computer. The context of the question was not about trusting particular company. When the context is switched then anything may appear "stupid" but then it is interpretation to blame not the question.

>All you have to do is not buy an iPhone (like I didn't either) and stop spreading FUD about Macs.

The issue I am discussing can not be resolved by marked and buying preferences and therefore 'just buy something else' would not work and cannot help.

Like I said above, it's not about trusting Macs or company. It's about pushing back against the tendency to make personal computers more dependent and less personal.

It's about respecting independence for the owner not about security, not about trust to a particular company. It's about making trust to the company irrelevant enough. It's about preserving level of respect to the owner which reduces dependency and importance of the trust to a particular company.

[marcan_42]

> What if there are no other macs around?

https://github.com/libimobiledevice/idevicerestore