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Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

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Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#111

Post by therein »

zanethomas wrote: post #107
jfoster wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly seems like they want to move in that direction, but it's critical that they retain the developer segment. It'll be game over for them if developers are unable to be productive on a Mac. There's likely a way to make both of these things happen, to some degree. For instance, they could start with just locking Macs to the app store as a default that is changeable. (similar to how Android is locked down)

Do you think they still care about developers or other creative types? Judging by what the did to Final Cut and then to the Mac Pro line I'm not so sure. There are several good alternatives to the Mac Books now and I'll be moving to Linux for my development efforts the next time I buy a machine.

What are some decent alternatives for the MBP? I was hoping to replace my mid-2014 MBP Retina with the ones that just came out but honestly they seem really undesirable, especially with the lack of physical ESC key. Surface Book 2 seems interesting but I don't want Windows 10 to spy on me. How is Linux on the Surface Book series?

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#112

Post by DiabloD3 »

agumonkey wrote: post #76
DanBC wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love that. I had a hard drive that had a firmware fault, and I repaired it using a USB-Serial converter, taking the pcb off the drive to temporarily mask off a connector, and then issuing a couple of commands. http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-... http://superuser.com/questions/365999/how-do-i-recover-data-...

You must have suffered full mental god complex for a few days after that. I'm happy when I succeed in creating a bootable live iso usb key with grub2...

I call that an ego boner.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#113

Post by djrogers »

oDot wrote: post #45

Quick question -- what's so good about ARM specifically? Aren't there other minimal architectures, maybe even one with lower/no licensing costs?

The most likely answer is that Apple has one of the best engineering groups at designing and implementing ARM processors in the industry. The A series chips for example have been absolute power/performance leaders for many generations, and the things hey can do with the tiny S-series chips in the watch are really remarkable. It would be shocking if they were to consider anything other than AMR?

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#114

Post by kps »

whyenot wrote: post #108
memracom wrote: post #102

You mean that they are using a tried and proven architecture that helped the 4.77 MHz IBM PC find success in 1982? Yawn.... The IBM PC keyboard had its own Z-80 CPU way back then and likely every single PC of any sort since then has done this. And then there are the disk controller CPUs. Wasn't that introduced around 1984?

Do you have any further information on this? Having opened up an IBM PC keyboard, and knowing that Z80 CPUs were still fairly expensive in 1982, I'm a little surprised.

Intel 8048.

[edit: citation needed? http://classiccomputers.info/down/IBM/IBM_PC_5150/IBM_5150_T...]

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#115

Post by jfoster »

apendleton wrote: post #109
zanethomas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they still care about developers or other creative types? Judging by what the did to Final Cut and then to the Mac Pro line I'm not so sure. There are several good alternatives to the Mac Books now and I'll be moving to Linux for my development efforts the next time I buy a machine.

I wouldn't lump "developers" together with "other creative types." They depend on developers to make the apps that make their devices desirable. If devs stopped buying macs there would be nobody to make apps for iOS. They don't depend on film editors in anywhere near the same way.

Exactly. I suppose if they did lose the developer segment they could open up iOS development on other platforms to remain relevant, but that whole path just seems very undesirable and a great thing to avoid.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#116

Post by kalleboo »

sveiss wrote: post #96
krastanov wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a point though. Why would there be any software that controls the LED? Is it not more secure to have it hooked up directly to the camera power line and turn them both on and off inseparably?

Turning off the camera power would mean it wouldn't show up on the bus, so the computer wouldn't know it existed. It would make sense for the camera itself to drive the LED, instead of the computer/drivers doing it. I don't know if the camera ICs support this or not, though -- if not, it's not really something Apple can add if they're integrating a standard camera component. On the other hand, they control the T1 ent…

From what I recall when it was in the news, the camera does control the LED, but it's just a USB camera on the USB bus, so the demo attack worked by reflashing the software on the camera.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#117

Post by stephen_g »

wolfgke wrote: post #89
Rebelgecko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell some (all?) Macbooks even have FPGAs

What is the FPGA used for?

I'm not sure about the FPGAs the parent comment is specifically talking about, but often FPGAs in general purpose devices are used just for glue logic - that is, buffering and interfacing between different types of busses.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#118

Post by phs318u »

agumonkey wrote: post #42
ginko wrote: post #4

Not really that surprising. Your average laptop nowadays probably has more ARM cores than x86 cores. They're in all kinds of peripherials like wifi controllers, power supplies, harddisk controllers, GPU job control, heck even AMD's recent APUs come with an integrated Cortex-A5.[1] ARM cores are everywhere, people just don't know about it. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/6007/amd-2013-apus-to-include-...

Whenever this topic occurs, I send this in http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 Ubiquitous com...fusion.

Thank you. That is one of the best hacks I've read. Very enjoyable.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#119

Post by stephen_g »

zanethomas wrote: post #107
jfoster wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly seems like they want to move in that direction, but it's critical that they retain the developer segment. It'll be game over for them if developers are unable to be productive on a Mac. There's likely a way to make both of these things happen, to some degree. For instance, they could start with just locking Macs to the app store as a default that is changeable. (similar to how Android is locked down)

Do you think they still care about developers or other creative types? Judging by what the did to Final Cut and then to the Mac Pro line I'm not so sure. There are several good alternatives to the Mac Books now and I'll be moving to Linux for my development efforts the next time I buy a machine.

Just a note - though FCPX had a bumpy start, there are now a lot of professional editors back using it. After the 10.1 update it most editors biggest complaints were fixed - and that was years ago.

Re: Intel driven MacBook Pros have secondary ARM processor for Touch ID and security

#120

Post by webrender »

jfoster wrote: post #101
zanethomas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a nagging suspicion that Apple will eventually lock the hardware and OS down to the point where their computers will only run software delivered through the app store.

It certainly seems like they want to move in that direction, but it's critical that they retain the developer segment. It'll be game over for them if developers are unable to be productive on a Mac. There's likely a way to make both of these things happen, to some degree. For instance, they could start with just locking Macs to the app store as a default that is changeable. (similar to how Android is locked down)

This is already in place - by default macOS does not allow apps to be installed which do not include a signed Apple developer ID. The setting can be turned off in System Preferences.
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