[marcodiego]

Apple does not support running other OS's on their hardware. This is bad in many senses but it is specially bad since it weakens competition and reduces incentives for Apple to improve their own OS, meaning it is bad even for their users in the long run.

If you choose to buy hardware from apple, you must consider that you're encouraging a behaviour that is bad for everyone, including yourself.

[cweagans]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Their bootloader explicitly supports other OSes. They make it easy to run Windows (even through a built-in app that helps you set it up). There are plenty of reasons to criticize Apple, but they literally don't do anything to prevent you from running another OS.

[pjerem]

> Their bootloader explicitly supports other OSes

That’s true but that’s probably only so that it wouldn’t have been a subject when Apple Silicon Macs were released because Intel Macs weren’t locked.

In reality, the bootloader isn’t closed (yet) but the hardware is so much undocumented that it’s easy to understand that Apple doesn’t want anything else than their OS on your mac. The « alternative os » situation is actually worse than it used to be with Intel Macs and Apple is paying a lot of attention in never talking about this "feature".

IMO, they will just quietly remove this possibility on new generations when everyone will have forgotten that boot camp used to be a thing.

[zbentley]

Eh, you may be right, but there's a big difference between "they are going to forbid other OSes by placing a software restriction where they explicitly permit things now" and "they already effectively forbid other OSes by not publishing developer documentation for proprietary hardware"--that's a tall order, and not a bar that many other hardware manufacturers meet either.

Like, could they lock down the bootloader? Sure. But that's effort they'd have to put in for minimal benefit at the moment. Opening up their hardware would be a lot more effort for questionable benefits (to Apple).

[marcodiego]

> they literally don't do anything to prevent you from running another OS.

Like not documenting their hardware? Like making Asahi Linux becoming a multi-year reverse engineering project that may possibly never achieve perfect compatibility?

> They make it easy to run Windows

On apple silicon without virtualisation? Sorry, didn't know that.

[dangus]

The point is that Apple could have easily locked down the bootloader and made it not possible at all to install something else. In designing the M1 hardware they explicitly went out of their way to make sure other operating systems could be installed and they’ve said as much. They took their smartphone SoCs and bootloader that never allowed alternate operating systems and added that feature in actively.

Technically Asahi Linux isn’t facing a much different situation than standard Linux distributions as they relate to x86 hardware. There are thousands of PC components that don’t provide any sort of Linux driver where contributors reverse engineer those drivers.

Sure, in the PC world a lot more vendors do voluntarily provide Linux drivers, and Apple will never to that for its hardware, and that specific point is a valid criticism.

As far as assisting in running Windows, my understanding is that the company that makes Parallels and Apple have some kind of relationship. Microsoft officially endorses Parallels.

You can complain about it being virtualization but it’s perfectly fine for desktop apps or even some more intensive apps. And it’s not really a very valid complaint considering that Microsoft doesn’t distribute a general purpose ARM distribution of Windows.

[marcodiego]

> Technically Asahi Linux isn’t facing a much different situation than standard Linux distributions as they relate to x86 hardware.

Very very different.

> There are thousands of PC components that don’t provide any sort of Linux driver where contributors reverse engineer those drivers.

Increasingly more rare. Maybe that only happens thèse d'ays on extremely specialized hardware.

[dangus]

It’s only rare these days because Linux spent decades clawing its way into data centers and workstations.

You can find a somewhat similar situation on Linux, with other non-Apple ARM hardware.

[cweagans]

> Like not documenting their hardware?

They aren't actively hindering that reverse engineering effort. They aren't _helping_ either, but I didn't claim that they were helping. For as long as I can remember, Apple's stance with Mac computers has been "We sell the computers to you in the way we think is best. If you want to tinker, that's on you." and I don't think that has materially changed.

[queenkjuul]

Apple Silicon cannot boot Windows ARM and Apple is dropping boot camp support alongside x86 support in the near future.

[alwillis]

> Apple Silicon cannot boot Windows ARM

That's totally up to Microsoft… they could done a licensing deal with Apple years ago to enable Windows ARM to run natively on Apple Silicon hardware.

[AlexandrB]

Why does this need a licensing deal? Windows didn't need a licensing deal to run on commodity PC hardware back in the day.

[alwillis]

Because computers don't boot the way they used to in the commodity BIOS era. The boot loader has to cryptographically check that it's valid operating system it's attempting to boot.

[queenkjuul]

Well, Apple could follow industry standards, too. The argument was Apple approves alternate operating systems as evidenced by boot camp. That's demonstrably not true anymore.

[angulardragon03]

This. It’s technically possible (the same way Asahi uses), but Microsoft has to bring the support in Windows.

[Aurornis]

> Apple does not support running other OS's on their hardware.

The bootloader was intentionally left open to other OSes. You should look into Asahi Linux.

[pjmlp]

Neither does any other hardware vendor, even the likes of Dell, Lenovo and Asus clearly state on their online shops that their laptops work best with Windows, even when something like Ubuntu or Red-Hat is an option.

Also they hardly ship any updates.

[zackb]

Asahi Linux[1] is unbelievably great on Apple Silicon. It's honestly the best Linux install experience I've ever had.

1. https://asahilinux.org/

[Jnr]

Yes, but only on M1 and maybe M2 devices. Doesn't work at all on M4.

Stability is an issue (as I tested it with M1 Pro throughout the years).

Not all of the hardware features are supported. For example no external monitors through the usb-c port.

Also the project seems somewhat dead, having some core developers leave the project.

I had high hopes for Asahi but currently it doesn't seem like it will ever be fully production ready for currently relevant hardware.

[jlokier]

Unfortunately, while Asahi Linux runs fine on M1 and M2 with some missing capabilities, it doesn't run at all on M3, M4 or M5.

The M1 and M2 are still great laptops, so it's still a good experience if you're looking for a second-hand Linux laptop with Apple quality hardwre.