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macOS Container Machines

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Re: macOS Container Machines

#103
post #97
post #85

Every time I see Apple flaunting Linux containers I can hardly consider it as anything but admitting defeat. It could easily be Darwin, if they still had the capacity.

What is the alternative? They gave up the server market a decade ago and before that they barely actually supported it. If they were to support darwin containers, what would be the point? Literally nobody would build to it, Linux won.

> Literally nobody would build to it

because nobody does ci/cd against macOS or iOS apps right?

Re: macOS Container Machines

#105

Is there any reason why macOS doesn't try a WSL1 style approach? I get why that didn't fully work out for windows, but it seems like macOS being another *nix would make a lot of what was hard for windows, easy for mac. It seems like it should be possible to run most linux applications natively on macOS with few additional new APIs. BSD actually has this already.

What would be the advantages over a VM infrastructure Apple needs anyway and that has a much simpler, more stable “ABI” compared to the Linux kernel?

Potentially faster application execution along much lower memory requirements. In the case of docker, even a possibility of shared library loading further reducing runtime costs (For example, containers based on the same base image could load glibc into memory only once).

There's also simply the possibility of using linux software directly in macos without doing OS dependent changes to the software.

Re: macOS Container Machines

#107
post #85

Every time I see Apple flaunting Linux containers I can hardly consider it as anything but admitting defeat. It could easily be Darwin, if they still had the capacity.

Apple set itself up for defeat in the server and developer marketplace as soon as they decided macOS was proprietary code.

Why would any serious developer use closed-source code they can't debug and modify? Especially for a production server?

It's the same reason no serious developers or hackers use macOS, like part of the point of being a developer is being able to dig into the code at any layer and debug and fix things.

Re: macOS Container Machines

#108
post #37

Would be cool if you can redirect USB devices to the VM.

We just released this in OrbStack :) https://docs.orbstack.dev/features/usb Blog post soon

Thank you for sharing this - I looked into OrbStack a few months ago, and this was the reason I didn't use it (as my primary purpose was to have an external wifi adapter for wifi pwnage).

Re: macOS Container Machines

#109
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, a Linux system with no verified boot can be easily tampered with without the user detecting it by people lower than the government such as casual hackers. So in a world where your government is going crazy, you're opting for an operating system that can be penetrated with relative ease (e.g. with persistent root malware) both by a non-government hacker on top of a state backed one.

I'd also guess it's much harder to securely source components for a Linux build in the way Apple is able to.

It's not really about supply chain security it's about the hardware itself. PC manufacturers in general just can't keep up since they don't have full control/integration over the hardware stack like Apple does. Also CPU, secure element etc security is limited but Qualcomm is catching up pretty quickly I believe if they aren't there already. We won't talk about Intel and AMD. But that's beyond my knowledge so I can't say anything too specific that's just what I have from general knowledge I'm sure someone will jump in with additional info if needed.

I don't think Apple is particularly any more secure against the US government than Intel is with supply chain vulnerabilities but I have nothing to back that up with aside from vibes.

Re: macOS Container Machines

#110
post #103
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? They gave up the server market a decade ago and before that they barely actually supported it. If they were to support darwin containers, what would be the point? Literally nobody would build to it, Linux won.

> Literally nobody would build to it because nobody does ci/cd against macOS or iOS apps right?

And what is the revenue stream tied to that ci/cd pipeline they aren’t capturing today? Apple would sell less hardware in order to…?

There aren’t any app developers avoiding the Apple ecosystem because there aren’t Darwin containers. They don’t sell server hardware and by all accounts have no intention of ever reentering that space. So they’d spend a bunch of developer cycles to reduce their own revenue stream with no apparent upside beyond “goodwill” which they’ve never been overly concerned about.

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