Apple _is_ a walled garden ecosystem. That has many obvious advantages, things just work, etc.
Personally I happen to not like it, but it's a choice folks have to make by themselves.
I buy my H/W from vendors that actually support running Linux (in my case) like Dell, Lenovo, and others.
iOS is a walled garden. (as are it's cousins for Apple TV, & HomePod.
MacOS is not.
If MacOS was a walled garden, I wouldn't be able to do my job with it.
Technically, that is true. But it is getting there. Apple makes more money, and importantly recurring revenue, from its services now than selling its hardware. The move to ARM processors is one of their strategic moves to further "close" their desktop platforms too. The only reason they don't do it outright right now is because they know people like you and me will immediately abandon the platform if we are stuck with only macOS and can only install everything from the App store. But we would be fools to ignore that the noose is tightening and, with M1 you are now stuck with macOS (unlike the older macs). The next iterations will close it down further ...
Yes, the line I've been hearing for the past 15 years or so.
Meanwhile Homebrew still works, I can still install non-App Store Apps, and Apple is publishing directions on how to install non-MacOS operating systems.
Literally the single difference their "Closing the platform" has made in my life has been getting prompted for permission to open various directories and services on the platform and much of that can be disabled.
> But we would be fools to ignore that the noose is tightening and, with M1 you are now stuck with macOS (unlike the older Macs).
Are we on the same conversation here? Did you read the article? Or the similar ones about people loading Linux on the M1? This is literally a thread about people who followed Apple's documentation on how to install a different OS on the M1 Macs.
You can't sell $10,000 Mac Pros and $6,000 displays with a neutered operating system. Nobody is buying the 16" MacBook Pro if they can only buy apps in the App Store. Overnight they would lose pretty much every (non-iOS) developer, most video editors, every podcaster and audio engineer, most photographers, every single scientist, most engineers, mathematicians, and many artists...
That would be an absolutely fantastic pitch in a management meeting. Who is left, accountants... teachers? A few schools? Not only would this be a massive hit to the Mac... likely lethal, it would also be a massive blow to iOS. Because much like every other developer on the planet iOS developers lean heavily on tools which cannot ever be found in the App Store like git, Python, Ruby (required for CocoaPods), and a million other Unix tools.
This has to be one of the most bone-headed, yet commonly repeated bits of anti-Mac nonsense out there.
shrug
There is zero sense or logic in these assertions, business or otherwise. It’s baseless nonsense.
Apple aren't preventing anything, they're just not helping us out either. Agree it would be nice for them to help out a little, but it's really not the same thing.
It's the same thing. (And the only reason they aren't yet outright preventing it is because it would be bad PR - nobody wants their desktop computer to be like the iPhone or iPad. But it will happen.)
You'd be surprised.
(Also, this exactly has been the proposition and allure of the Chromebooks - a computer that you can just wipe and restart again and it's like a phone or tablet device, and your data are synced in the cloud).
Apple has a computer which isn't locked down, it's the Mac. Apple maintains MacOS as a flexible/ pro platform because if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to sell $2000-8000 Macs to pro users who need that power and flexibility to do their jobs.
For Apple there is zero profit in neutering the Mac. Whatever profits you think Apple could make by forcing people to use the Mac App Store, would be dwarfed by the sales lost due to pro & power users leaving the system en-masse.
Linux users would buy M1, with the intention of running Linux, and if it doesn’t work, they can still run macOS.
I don’t see the risk to Apple, if they at least provided documentation for the M1.
They already describe how to do so, and the specification to merely boot is trivial anyway. Linux, OpenBSD (as in TFA), and others have booted already.
It's the details of the GPU and other such stuff that needs drivers (touchpad, etc) that are missing. And those are rarely well documented on the Intel side, by AMD and NVIDIA either, anyway.
This is just false.
iOS is a walled garden. The Mac is not by anyone’s definition.
You can run whatever you like on Mac Hardware.
You can run whatever software you like on Mac OS.
Installing MacOS on computers you haven’t licensed it for is just that.
It’s not free software. It is commercial software.
You are conflating the concept of commercial software with the concept of a walled garden.
Commercial software is the software for which developers get money. It can include free software, too. It has nothing to do with the license or the topic we are discussing. You are conflating the concepts here.
Walled garden in general is a convenient system, from which a user can hardly escape when the users wants to. This is exactly what Mac license does. Wikipedia has Mac OS as an example of a walled garden. I did not make it up myself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Walled_garden_(te...
The Wikipedia article does mention Mac OS, but does not, anywhere, use it as an example of a walled garden.
Here is the definition from the page you link:
“A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem[1][2] is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content.“
This definition is simply not true of Mac OS.
A 2008 Harvard Business School working paper, entitled "Opening Platforms: How, When and Why?", differentiated a platform's openness/closedness by four aspects and gave example platforms.
Platform provider (hardware/operating system (OS) bundle), Mac OS: closed
Platform sponsor (design & intellectual property (IP) rights owner), Mac OS: closed
Tl;dr:
It's not a walled garden in all aspects, but it definitely restricts users in a significant way, depending on your use case.
Notably for some reason you chose not to include the part where they also say about Mac OS:
Demand-side use (end-user): open
Supply-side user (application developer): open
It is not a walled garden in any way that they define a walled garden.
Here is the definition from the page you link: “A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem[1][2] is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content.“
It doesn’t apply to Mac OS.
Restricting installation of the operating system itself on other hardware just isn’t part of the definition.
No matter how much you selectively copy and paste from a Wikipedia page, it will not say what you claim it is saying.
Trying to say any restriction of use means a walled garden is akin to saying any software that isn’t completely free is a walled garden.
That just isn’t what the term means.
By the definition I quoted MacOS is an open platform. The provider of MacOS (Apple) doesn’t have control over access to applications and content.
It is not a walled garden in any aspect, even by the definition you yourself provided.
Installing OS itself is restricted by commercial license. But the platform is open.
You are trying to make the definition fit, but it just doesn’t.
I cannot access my OS and all my applications after changing the hardware or using a VM. Do you call it “unrestricted access to applications”? How is this unrestricted if there are restrictions? This is not an open platform by the original Wikipedia definition, more so by my definition. One cannot escape from Mac OS after using it, because all apps will not work (without the legal OS). My SSD dies, I cannot event replace it. All I can do is to pay $$$ to Apple to help me.
No - why would you imagine that?
The article mentions MacOS and by it’s own definition the conclusion is that MacOS is not a walled garden.
It would be weird to think that merely mentioning an operating system in a discussion about walled gardens makes it into a walled garden.
> I cannot access my OS and all my applications after changing the hardware or using a VM.
This is obvious bullshit. Your application and OS still work just fine.
Nobody is telling you what you can and can’t run on the operating system, or on the hardware it is running on.
That’s what the Wikipedia article defines as a walled garden, and has nothing to do with the licensing conditions of the operating system itself.
As to needing to pay certain people for hardware repair, that is also simply not true, and is not relevant to the discussion about walled gardens.
There is nothing preventing you from having your SSD repaired or replaced by anyone with the capability to do it.
By your definition, Linux is a walled garden because you can only run Linux binaries on Linux.
See how this makes no sense?
There’s nothing wrong with you preferring GPL’d software. But that doesn’t mean that everything else is “walled garden”.
This is just bullshit (if one uses your wording). Every new Apple laptop comes with glued SSD.
> By your definition, Linux is a walled garden because you can only run Linux binaries on Linux.
This is absolutely not what I am saying. The problem is not in the compiled binaries. The problem comes when I want to escape the Mac OS walled garden. I can run Linux or Windows in a VM on any operating system and escape its ecosystem any moment in this way. All apps will work in the VM. Not so for Mac OS. I don't think you are even trying to understand my reasoning. Instead you are finding every possibility for a tangential reply having nothing to do with my point.
>It would be weird to think that merely mentioning an operating system in a discussion about walled gardens makes it into a walled garden.
Then please tell me what the example of Mac OS with word "closed" nearby is doing in that Wikipedia page? Does it indicate that Mac OS is an open ecosystem?
In the sentence “Mac OS is not a closed system”, the word ‘closed’ is near the words ‘Mac OS’.
I assume you don’t think that sentence means that Mac OS, is a closed system.
Generally, when words are ‘nearby’ other words you have to read the context to understand why they are there.
> Does it say that Mac OS is an open ecosystem?
Yes, it does say that it’s an open ecosystem.
In the parts of the table describing the ecosystem it has the word open in the rows for MacOS.
Obviously you can see that.
You are absolutely right. Let me quote it for you, so that you understand the context:
"Harvard Business School working paper... differentiated a platform's openness/closedness by four aspects and gave example platforms".
Then, in the table you can see that in 2 out of 4 aspects Mac OS is a closed ecosystem according to the published research. I am astonished by Apple fanboys who cannot accept flaws in Mac OS, even if it's clearly explained by respectful independent researchers.
>In the parts of the table describing the ecosystem it has the word open in the rows for MacOS.
All four points describe the ecosystem, not just those which you choose. Again, quote: "differentiated a platform's openness/closedness by four aspects".
The two on which Apple is rated as ‘open’ are the criteria which the article’s definition uses to determine whether a platform is a walled garden.
You are using a definition of walled garden to mean ‘any level of closedness’.
This is not what a walled garden means, and not what the article says.
If you want to use a private definition, by all means do so, but the article doesn’t have anything to do with your private definition.
For the third time - here is the definition from the article:
“A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem[1][2] is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and media.”
The table shows that Mac OS is open when it comes to applications, content, and media.
The definition is clear, and Mac OS is not a walled garden by the definition. The table supports this conclusion.
Glued components are common and do not prevent repair - what has that got to go with anything?
An emulated VM obviously doesn’t allow a binary to escape the platform because of course you still need the platform, and the binary is still running on the platform so nothing has ‘escaped’.
As I say, your point is just about what hardware you want a license to run MacOS on, which is nothing to do with whether it is a walled garden.
You are just trying to make a definition of walled garden that isn’t what people generally mean so you can include MacOS within it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26230338
Windows and MacOS have the same entries in the table which means it’s not a walled garden as defined in the piece.
Seems to me like a whole lot of arguments about Apple involve changing accepted definitions of things or using different standards for Apple versus others.
Apple does enough things wrong and I'm perfectly willing to accept those things and understand when people are frustrated by those things. No need to invent whole new things or shift definitions just so you can complain about them.
Since I agree with you, I assume this is aimed at the comment I’m responding to it, and those like it, rather than me.
Totally understand why people might prefer Linux/ Windows/ Amiga/ whatever. People should just enjoy what they want.
It goes both ways. I'd add that atleast the "Apple-haters" have more of a standing in defending open computing standards and demanding Apple be open too.
Also - why does hating Apple give anyone any right to demand anything from them?
Why not demand more from people who are actually working on Open computing?
So you think ignoring facts and making nonsense gives you credibility so long as you hate the right people?
Maybe in your own head.
Even if I were God I wouldn't stop anyone doing it, but does it not leave a bad taste in your mouth that Apple charge the best part of 2 thousand dollars for a laptop with a basically brand-new (so not rotted) stack but utterly refuse to document anything beyond the absolute basics - this is the world's largest tech company, from which I conclude that they have no interest in allowing users to control their own hardware since it's literally chump change for them to (say) publish some extremely basic info about the peripherals like even nvidia do now.
Computers are tools to get a job done. I buy a computer so I can write software on it. While I am happy that we can get Linux and OpenBSD on a Mac, it's not a deal breaker. Regardless of whether OpenBSD or Linux boots on it, I can get my job done quickly and effectively.
If they did something that got in the way of building the software I need to build? Then I'd punch out in a heartbeat.
Not everyone is interesting in fiddling with the internals of the tools they buy. Even if that tool is a computer.
And I use Free Software operating systems to ensure that I can continue to do so.
In the mean time, it's very fun seeing how quickly people are making progress on this.
> And I use Free Software operating systems to ensure that I can continue to do so.
The point of this discussion is your ability to run a free OS on an M1 Mac.
Sadly I don't do it for a living, but the stuff I like to write is all tuned for performance, they don't tell me anything about the CPU, so even if I was in the market for one I still wouldn't buy one as I couldn't have any fun using it.
And Computers stopped being mere tools years ago - the phone has now supplanted the laptop and desktop in this regard, but it remains true that many people are in terms of knowledge and purchasing power completely at the whim of (in this case) Apple to go about their lives.
> And Computers stopped being mere tools years ago - the phone has now supplanted the laptop and desktop in this regard
Is just plainly inaccurate. The phone has nowhere near supplanted the desktop in multiple scenarios. Office work and programming [0] both come to mind.
[0] And this was the specific use-case brought up by the parent. Pretty obvious a phone is not a competitor for that.
I do apologize for how aggressively I came across as well, that was uncalled for.
No problem https://xkcd.com/386/ - you know the drill!
I don't follow your chain of though here at all. It is a thing I use to get a job done... that's pretty much the definition of what a tool is.
Nvidia does so kicking and screaming, because 1) they have no choice but to abide by the GPL for things that use kernel internals, and 2) Since they make money from linux, at least in the HPC/ML space, they want users to at least be able to see the screen light up so that they can install the proprietary stack.
The lawnmover analogy is apt for most companies.
I don’t see how that’s any different from PC or ARM world, save for a couple of larger scale exceptions (Dell, Lenovo, Intel, AMD) and a bunch of insignificant players (Raspberry, System76 & al), and even then it’s a fairly recent development in PC history that these players document/support/contribute anything.
The fact that Linux pretty much works+ on any PC out there is mostly due to volunteers hacking stuff around on PCs that are getting increasingly normalised.
And even with the normalisation of hardware architecture, there are still a lot of either unspecified of spec violating special cases. If one is not convinced by that, I encourage one to lurk the Linux kernel tree for quirks, device trees, and other various DSDT hacks. The weird size of payloads for the T2 SSD controller that stumped everyone for some time is only one among many, many other quirks that exist overall.
After 10+ years, dust is only settling on the BIOS to EFI transition, and I’m not the least surprised that it takes a bit of time to adapt to the overall ARM Mac architecture.
+ by “works” I mean boots reasonably well to init 5+VESA, and most of the time something else than VESA. But taking random hardware and having a bulletproof system out of the box down to every nook and cranny is still a tall order. There are systems that fully work optimally out of the box, but they’re a very small minority.
To be honest I just ordered my first MacBook Pro as well, so I guess I’m part of the ,,problem’’
On the long term though they can get more App store / cloud revenue by making sure that Apple's apps are always ahead in hardware compatibility.
Edit: The transcript at https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10686/ discusses reduced security, but doesn't say anything about booting arbitrary code.
I for one am glad people are making progress.
> Running an alternative OS "natively" on a Mac doesn't seem very appealing to me.
Which is pretty much exactly the kind of comment that I said I've seen ("I'm not interested in running another OS on my Mac"). Again, not the same as "a free OS will never run on this bespoke Apple product, and shouldn't."
It's the difference between "I bought a Mac because I wanted to run macOS on it" and "I bought a Mac out of vanity and want to separate myself from the plebes." Or, to put it another way, the difference between actual Apple users and Artie MacStrawman.
I'm personally interested in Linux on the Mac as a curiosity and as an alternative in case Apple ever screws up MacOS so much I feel desktop Linux is the least bad alternative.
There have been other times when I thought apple hardware was more interesting than macOS. I don't think macOS is bad per se. There are times when I find it pleasant and times when I would greatly prefer something else. The attitude we're describing -- why use Linux when there is macOS?? -- strikes me as a little odd, because there is a built in hostility and assumption that everyone shares the Mac fan's opinions and preferences, universally and in all circumstances.
As a Linux/ OpenBSD user, Mac hardware is suddenly a bit more appealing.
As a Mac user, the reverse it not true. OpenBSD or Linux are no more appealing than it was before the switch.
As for the rest of your post, I feel like the conversation is moving here under me. Use whatever OS you want. I don't see a ton of Mac people on here discouraging or disparaging any of this. I do see a a fair number of posts like the top one. "Running an alternative OS natively on a Mac doesn't seem very appealing to me." Which I don't see as the same as what you are suggesting.
I like those middle 2 lines; for a user of a free OS, Mac hardware is interesting, but the reverse is not true.
And sure, "use whatever OS you want" is kind of my point too. I have seen the Mac community at large seeming to not have that live and let live attitude. Not anyone on this thread, but I think it is a thing that happens.
In short, "But think of my Grandma" as opposed to think of the children.
nobody thinks apple is doing it because they're their friend. And they know apple is making money off it. Some people prefer having apps with limited, audited permissions over a more wild-west approach where you could install anything and apps could demand anything or prevent you from using the app.
(and if you don't that's fine, Android exists and no apple users mind that. Market choices are good, stop trying to shut down Apple's ability to provide a different experience.)
if you really really want to sideload an app on an apple phone, pay the $50 a year for a developer account and you can compile and sideload whatever you want. Same for xbox btw, you can run any UWP app on an Xbox if you have a developer account.
Most apple users have almost zero-information in an economic sense. Market choices are being made when consumers are being segmented into very rigid, hard to leave, cultures like Apple and Google - on top of that Apple and partly google own much of the stores, they do all the marketing, and can wield considerable basically unchecked power over their users.
And also, your mum isn't going to be using third party app stores, that whole part of the argument is quite vacuous and is effectively a logical basis for Apple to have complete oversight of everything on the app. And if she did want to play fortnite, Apple obviously aren't doing this for the goodness of their customers because they only pulled the plug when fortnite did the payments itself - that's just rentseeking.
OK, let's talk Microsoft then.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/19/21296657/microsoft-apple-...
Microsoft is making exactly the same argument as Epic Games, in fact, but they're not racing to allow third-party app stores on the Xbox either. This is a one-way street, these companies want to sell locked-down hardware but be allowed onto their competitors' platforms.
Similarly Facebook runs similarly exclusive stores on their Oculus Quest platform, which they also argue they should not have to open up.
This is purely down to companies who themselves employ similarly locked-down stores, which they feel should not have to be similarly opened, wrapping themselves in the language of openness and using it to attack their competitors' business models while arguing they themselves should be excluded. They are not making a good-faith argument for openness, they are using the legal system to take down a competitor.
Frankly I have much less problem with Microsoft opening up, since we don't do day-to-day business on our game consoles. How about they go first, model for us how an ethical company is supposed to behave?
> And also, your mum isn't going to be using third party app stores,
Yeah, actually, she will, that is the point. If she wants to use Facebook, she will use a third-party app store (where the application is not subject to Apple's rules about permissions and datamining). This is an immediate race to the bottom, won't even be a year and the superior privacy of the Apple ecosystem will have been completely undermined.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-hits-back-facebook-revo...
Here's an example of Facebook encouraging people to sideload a developer-licensed application with enhanced permissions so they could bypass permissions and leech more data.
So this is not a theoretical problem, this is something that actually happens, and that Apple has had to push back on.
I’m the person to whom you are responding. I’m very interested in the M1 and never saw such a post. I’ve literally never heard anyone express this view about a Mac.
Craig Federighi said this when talking to John Gruber:
"We're not direct booting an alternate operating system, it's... purely virtualization is the route. But these hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn't be the concern."
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hfkdlg/craig_federig...
Apple documented how people could boot alternative operating systems.
I don't get the downvotes of the parent post, the interpretation is completely reasonable. The point is that Apple was very clear that they are only supporting macOS on their hardware.
Apple execs are infamously careful about how they word things. Federighi could have said they won't allow other operating systems, but he didn't because that's not what they did or were planning.
If they didn't intend for this to be possible, they wouldn't have shipped it this way and documented how to do it.
And that is exactly what they mean. They’re not going to help you with your port or field your questions when you ask for how things work. They are just going to leave the door open for you.
I suspect Federighi chose his words carefully and deliberately. The alternative is they changed their approach. Regardless, documentation and code don't lie, nor do they contradict him in any way.
Btw, Asahi has a Patreon page for anyone who wants to contribute. I’m tossing twelve bucks a month and recommend any Mac users with interest in booting alternative OSes support such projects.
Now I’m gonna see if there’s an option to throw money at this.