<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div>Another trick is that Apple's dev languages and frameworks (Swift and Objective-C) use reference counting, which requires atomic increments and decrements. On Intel, these operations are five times slower than non-atomic operations; on Apple Silicon they run at the same speed. This is something I wish the other CPU vendors would get right, because refcounting has some technical advantages over tracing GC, and I use it in software I write. C++ and Rust, both "performance" languages, provide refcounting but not tracing GC.<br></div><div><br></div><div>On Sat, Dec 12, 2020, at 5:42 PM, Mikalai Birukou via kwlug-disc wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style=""><p>Actually the whole depth of this only now opened to me. You see,
I am not that into Apple, and I didn't realize that story is about
desktop/laptop. Holy, moly! By inertia I naturally thought that
this security-justified f&&kery happens on the phone. Wow!
... looking for tin foil ... What Microsoft is doing these days,
as they have an example?<br></p><p>Regarding M1. My Understanding is that placement of RAM inside of
processor package/silicon is the trick that makes it run fast. Is
there anything else?<br></p><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CAG+C2Ac8=RBOKgE8d-TAZrFJnxKe8vJQSLOF_pO_7P7_yGHurA@mail.gmail.com"><div dir="ltr">To those that peek under the hood, the last few
releases of macOS have clearly shown how Apple is rapidly moving
macOS to be a device-like operating system that parallels iOS.
Since the introduction of APFS, most of the OS is on an
immutable volume. But it's done in a horribly complex way that
defies any semblance of the core Unix principles of simplicity (<a href="https://eclecticlight.co/2020/09/16/boot-volume-layout/">https://eclecticlight.co/2020/09/16/boot-volume-layout/</a>).
And Homebrew (the poorly-implemented open source package
manager) is regarded like the hackintosh community in the eyes
of Apple, who wants complete control over their whole ecosystem.
It really is a shame - about 15 years ago, OS X was a decent
Unix that was fairly open. Nowadays, it just feels like iOS on a
PC that you can't modify. The Apple M1 looks decent, but since
Apple no longer lets you run Linux on their hardware, I have no
desire to ever buy one.<br></div><div><br></div><div class="qt-gmail_quote"><blockquote class="qt-gmail_quote" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-color:rgb(204, 204, 204);border-left-style:solid;border-left-width:1px;padding-left:1ex;"><div>This
isn't new behaviour, and MacOS has had telemetry for years.
What seems to be new is that the latest MacOS is so locked
down that you can no longer block telemetry. The /System
folder is immutable and cannot be changed by the owner of the
computer, it can only be changed by Apple during an OS update.
Firewalls work by using a kernel API, but Apple telemetry and
spy services bypass user installed firewalls so that you
cannot block them.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> When I first heard about Apple Silicon, I wondered if Apple
would use this as an excuse to further iOS-ify MacOS, so that
Macs would cease to be general purpose computers under the
control of their users. It seems this is what has happened, at
least with respect to MacOS. But there may be technical
details I am missing, this impression is just from reading
opinionated blog posts.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> I'd consider buying an Apple Silicon laptop if I could wipe
MacOS and install Linux. According to Linus Torvalds, the main
barrier to this is that it will likely not be possible to
write a GPU graphics driver for the new Macs due to a lack of
technical information. That's a deal breaker for me. I've not
heard anything to suggest that the hardware will be
cryptographically locked to MacOS in a way that prevents Linux
installs.<br></div><div> <br></div><div> > In case you missed it (I did) there is new way Apply is
treating its <br></div><div> > users. Before starting 3rd party app, macOS talks to some
server. Every <br></div><div> > time, or often, instead of once, when app is installed!<br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > <a href="https://www.fsf.org/news/the-problems-with-apple-arent-just-outages-they-are-injustices" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.fsf.org/news/the-problems-with-apple-arent-just-outages-they-are-injustices</a><br></div><div> > <br></div><div> > <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/macos-leaks-application-usage-forces-apple-make-hard-decisions" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/macos-leaks-application-usage-forces-apple-make-hard-decisions</a><br></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div>_______________________________________________<br></div><div>kwlug-disc mailing list<br></div><div><a href="mailto:kwlug-disc@kwlug.org">kwlug-disc@kwlug.org</a><br></div><div><a href="https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org">https://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org</a><br></div><div><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div></body></html>