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Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
It wouldn’t even be a problem for Apple to support Linux. Linux’s desktop market share has never been a threat to Apple at all. I hope Ternus, being the engineer he is, opens this up.
> https://talents.vaia.com/companies/apple-inc/software-engine...
Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You have to work through provided code samples and then eventually get the vendor’s engineers to look into problems that couldn’t be resolved through the documentation, where they would go look into the other teams and their sources to discover the answer.
The market for people who want to install Linux on a Mac laptop is very tiny. The honest answer is that it’s not worth the huge effort investment needed to document an entire platform for public consumption.
I don’t think many people realize how easily Apple could have locked down the laptop to be able to not run any alternate OS at all and the number of lost sales would be so negligibly small as to not matter. They chose to leave it open.
Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
They want control on the walled garden. When was the last time apple did anything for public unless forced by FCC. Now there is no hope since they can simply donate to trump.
It would have been trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
Even the Asahi team has been much more appreciative of Apple leaving this open.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple's hypervisor.framework lets other OS instances run very very fast with the UTM app (open source on github, but i use the prebuilt version from the App Store). In my case i've used arm native linuxes (arch with various compositors, kde, gnome, fedora) all on M2, M2 Max, M5 and the experience is indistinguishable from native. MacOS is running too. I think hardcore graphics folks might want direct accelerator acce…
This misses the point entirely. What happens when apple inevitably discontinues support for this hardware.
You can still boot Linux natively on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They want control on the walled garden. When was the last time apple did anything for public unless forced by FCC. Now there is no hope since they can simply donate to trump.
> They want control on the walled garden. It would have been trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely. Even the Asahi team has been much more appreciative of Apple leaving this open.
It is trivial for them to lock out other operating systems entirely.
Reverse-engineering Apple's custom silicon is basically the modern equivalent of repairing a spaceship while it's actively launching. Incredible work by the Asahi team!
Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
But to answer your question: Why would they? Apple hasn't asked anybody to put Linux on their machines. They deliver them with a fully functional OS already and there are thousands of other computer models you can purchase instead of a Mac.
Why Apple does not at least provide the specs to the community? So much wasted effort when they can just share a pdf.
> when they can just share a pdf. I assume your question was in good faith, but the information needed to support an entire platform like this is not as simple as sharing a PDF. I’ve spent parts of my career working on much simpler platforms than an entire Apple laptop where we would have to work through 10,000 page PDFs documenting registers and even that was not enough to get the full picture of the system. You hav…
Oh please - Apple provided a full suite of Bootcamp drivers for their hardware just a couple of years ago, not locking you out is not a big heroic move you're trying to picture here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can contribute support for it
Indeed, not sure why you are being downvoted. Contribute to open source with the energy you have to call out missing features.
Why are you demanding a user does that for free instead of the big corp that made the platform?
Still no thunderbolt support.
Not quite there yet though. No PCI or DisplayPort (latter is working but unstable). But at least they seem to be on it.