[rched]

I'm not sure that's really the same thing. Apple doesn't own ARM and the main issue here seems to be the GPU no? Is this much different from how things work with Nvidia? I guess the difference is that Nvidia provides drivers for Linux while Apple does not. As far as I know Nvidia Linux drivers aren't open source either though.

[moffkalast]

Nvidia is not much better, but they do only make one component and generally ensure compatibility. If Nvidia went full Apple, their cards would have a special power connector for the Nvidia PSU, a custom PCIe express lane that only works with Nvidia motherboards, which also requires Nvidia RAM sticks and only boots NvidiaOS. And also most of the software that would run on it would be blocked from running on other OSes because fuck you that's why. Also if you tried running NvidiaOS in a VM, they would sue you.

It's still profoundly weird to me that nobody can run Safari outside MacOS, even for testing. At least the EU has strong armed them into dropping thunderbolt ports now, so we have that minor interoperability going for us, which is nice.

[trimethylpurine]

You left out that they would also cost ~double per unit of performance. And that when Nvidia claims to be better for graphics and video, they can back those claims (albeit unfairly, some might say), whereas Apple marketing appears to avoid any price/value comparisons. So, I guess, even when you're dressing Nvidia up to sound ugly for a hypothetical, they still sound better than Apple.

[seec]

Yeah the big difference is that Nvidia really is the top dog, in any way you look at it, they simply make better hardware. And even if you add value/cost into the mix, they still do very well, even their highest performing products.

Apple is better at some stuff but it's really not total domination and you really need to look at things in a very particular way to think they are indisputably better. If you add value/cost, everything falls apart and it really becomes: if you have cash, you can buy that stuff that is going to be much better at this very specific use case.

It's even true for their headphones where the only thing they are better at is integration in their own system, everything else is passably competitive but if you look for value it's just plain bad. I had AirPods, I find it amazing how much better the Nothing Ears are for the cost, if you don't care about the Apple ecosystem (the "magic" gimmicks never worked that well for me anyway).

[kaba0]

Are we living in the same world? Nvidia only recently started caring about Linux (due to profit obviously, it turns out servers don't run anything else nowadays).

May I remind you of the famous `--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia` flag in Linux compositor? Meanwhile, apple literally went out of their way to make secure boot for third-party OSs possible.

[jasomill]

Conversely, Nvidia provides first-party Linux support for most of the hardware they sell, and Apple goes out of their way to make booting third-party OSes on the majority of hardware they sell (read: all non-Mac devices) all but impossible.

[kaba0]

Except for the M-line where they went out of their way to make it possible in a secure way..

[beeflet]

The point is that apple acts as both the source of hardware and software. Your analogy is not applicable because you can't run apple's OS on generic third-party ARM hardware.

[rched]

But isn’t this whole thread about running Linux on Apple hardware? I haven’t seen anyone in this thread complaining that they can’t run macOS on non Apple hardware.