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Apple M1 and the ultimate closed system – Part 2

(Part 1 – how Apple’s locked down your freedom to run software on the M1 Mac computers)

Control over application software, continued

One could imagine a worse scenario than restricting the distribution of ‘forbidden’ of binaries: the Mac is the development platform for MacOS, iOS and other Apple operating systems. The toolchain is entirely Apple’s, right down to the compiler/linker. It isn’t far-fetched at all for Apple to identify and refuse the compilation of code – that is, even if you managed to get hold of the youtube-dl source code, your Mac could refuse to turn it into an executable binary for you, even just to run on your own machine.

This is not an outlandish scenario. There have been countless examples of Apple taking software off its App Stores. But Apple has also revoked developer certificates for iOS before, most famously with Facebook. It is not hard to imagine Apple taking this one step further to disallow compilation of what it considers disallowed code.

The two big distinctions between an operating system for a ‘personal computer’ like a desktop or laptop, and one for a phone or tablet are (a) the ability to run arbitrary software on the machine and (b) the ability to build software for the machine on the machine. The freedom to do either on Big Sur for Apple Silicon is severely constrained.

2. The operating system is controlled

The bootloader on Apple Silicon machines will be locked. This means that they will not support booting into other operating systems like Linux.

The Apple software executive Craig Federighi confirmed this in a podcast shortly after WWDC:

“We’re not [allowing for] direct booting an alternate operating system. It’s purely virtualization…”

Reddit discussion thread referencing this

The Verge also referenced the same section of the podcast in the specific context of Apple’s BootCamp service with which people could dual-boot Windows and Mac OS on Intel Macs:

Apple later confirmed it’s not planning to support Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs in a Daring Fireball podcast. “We’re not direct booting an alternate operating system,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “Purely virtualization is the route. These hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn’t really be the concern.”

– Apple’s new ARM-based Macs won’t support Windows through Boot Camp

Of course I’d like to see a clear statement from Apple than a comment in a podcast, even if it was Federighi who made it.

But this means you also don’t have the option to use just the Mac hardware and install your own software, as people do with Linux (and Windows) on their Macs today. In other words, you cannot install an open source operating system with an open source toolchain to compile and run open-source software on the M1 Macs.

3. The architecture is controlled

The M1 (and all of Apple’s system-on-chips) are not licensed. This means only Apple can manufacture them, and consequently the only machines that can have M1 chips are Apple Macs.

This is as opposed to the thousands of different laptops, desktops, tablets, two-in-ones and other machines that run on x86 and x86_64. Intel, AMD, VIA and other companies typically only manufacture the processor, not entire system-on-chips. So you have computers with different processors, graphics cards, RAM and input-output capability, with different BIOS/UEFIs with support for different bootloaders and, therefore, different operating systems – even more than one on the same computer.

But so in the Apple world there’s no concept of buying an ‘alternative’ M1 machine with an unlocked bootloader so you can install Linux or BSD or another open OS on it.

The lock-down is utter and total.

Summing up

So. MacOS on the Apple M1 Mac computers severely limits what software you can run on it. The locked bootloader prevents the installation of anything other than MacOS. And the proprietary nature of the chip prevents the existence of any alternative M1 computers without locked bootloaders.

For most people – Apple’s customers – these restrictions are all a net positive. They make their computer safer. Developers that make software for ordinary people now have to jump through some additional hoops, but that is in order to make things difficult for malware creators.

But for those who value openness and want control over their software, the M1 machines are closed at every layer of the stack. Look for alternatives.

Update: Point 2 may have changed. Here’s a Reddit discussion that points to a WWDC 2020 video stating that non-signed operating systems can be made to run on M1 Macs. I’m speaking to people to understand this better. If this is true, it also makes Point 3 moot, though not untrue.


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