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.
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.