Not if you expected to buy a general purpose computer.

What does that even mean? "General Purpose" != Linux. All software needs to be developed to run on specific hardware. Even virtualised platforms or interpreted code still depend on software that's developed to run specifically on supported platforms.

As it happens, Apple has released development tools and documentation to write and load alternate operating systems on this hardware. The Asahi Linux team have even said Apple is providing even more support than is available in the x86 world nowadays, it's just that this is in many ways a very new architecture.

Could they do more? Sure. Are they obliged to? No. Ultimately it's a product advertised with certain capabilities, no compromises means it can do that as expected, otherwise the phrase is basically meaningless.

Apple advertises the macs with macOS. So I suppose if you buy it expecting something else, that's on you, and the product still "works as advertised". They don't go out of their way to prevent you from running <not macOS>.

I'll also note that few companies advertise their PCs as "general purpose computers", if by that you mean "guaranteed to run Linux flawlessly". Even System76 / Dell developer / whatever, which ship with Linux out of the box, don't guarantee the pc will run, say, FreeBSD perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, as the GGP post puts it, I'd also like to be able to run Linux on a MacBook Pro. But since I don't want to have a wonky experience, since I understand it'll not work perfectly, I chose to put up with the wonky hardware of my HP, which works well enough.

If by "general purpose computer", you mean "runs any OS I could throw at it", then broadly speaking any Mac is more general-purpose than any non-Mac, since they can run macOS plus whatever other OSes will run on the architecture they're built for.

If, however, you actually mean "a computer that runs Windows or Linux"...why not just say so? Rather than passive-aggressively pretending that all you're looking for is "general purpose", with the obvious snide implication that macOS can't provide that...

This comment shouldn't be downvoted. People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is. We used to take much more pride and spend a lot more effort making hardware cross compatible with each other. It was never perfect, but more and more these days we seem to be given vendor locked, non-general devices.

By all accounts, a brand new m1/m2 mac is a general purpose computer. It allows arbitrary execution of code, it can be used generally for multiple purposes. This is contrast to special purpose computers, who were designed specifically for a computational task and cannot perform tasks of "general purpose." A Raspberry Pi, a Vic-20, an Apple II, the framework laptop, and yes, the current generation of Macs all qualify.

You're trying to narrow the definition of "general purpose" to mean something else entirely.

I agree. But if one doesn't define a "general purpose computer" as being a piece of hardware, then all kinds of different conclusions can be drawn.

If what Amelius pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32116822 is true, i.e. the documentation is junk. Then, IMHO, Apple is no longer trying to sell "a good piece of hardware"; because they're not documenting its operation.

And, in reality, I find this to be true... what Apple really sells is "an experience".

Whether it's a good or bad experience is likely in the eye of the beholder.

The Asahi Linux team lead don't seem to agree that this is a fair assessment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28762744#28764136

>People have just forgotten what a general purpose computer is.

OK, tell me what it is.

I had the same question because I’m interested in osdev and would ideally like to be able to boot something from machine language that I created from scratch. Currently targeting Raspberry Pi which is also ARM, but the laptop form factor would be nice.

Then check out the Asahi Linux project. From my understanding, it consists of two parts. First, kind of a boot loader, which makes it easy to boot any code on your Mac. This they use to run a Linux kernel, customized for the hardware of the Apple Silicon machines. Most of the kernel customizations are already part of the main Linux kernel or in process of being added.

How many "general purpose computers" are out there? There are a few vendors, which explicitly support Windows and Linux, but many computers are just designed for Windows, Linux might or might not run on them. Asahi Linux is making nice progress and I actually hope, that Microsoft decides to support Windows 11 on the Mac too.

All of those are "general purpose". That phrase doesn't mean "perfect official support for whatever alternative OS you like", it usually means something closer to "you are not forbidden from running your own code, even at a high privilege (kernel) level".

MacOs doesn't forbid to run your own code. Not sure what you are talking about.