Bootcamp on Intel Macs was a different story because Apple's hardware was mostly an assortment of other vendors' hardware (with some custom components and set up). That means they could bundle drivers for Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Broadcom, Realtek, Marvell, Synaptics, etc plus a couple of their own (the camera, the touchpad, the mouse, etc) and call it a day. Since the hardware was x86-64 it mostly just worked. That's an immensely different world from their custom hardware. They would need to write Linux drivers for all of their networking chips, each of their processors, their GPUs, work around Linux/Windows' 16KB memory page issues, their neural engines, the SEP, their DCP, the interrupt controller, IOMMU, their custom storage drivers, etc. You're vastly underselling or misunderstanding the size of the situation.
They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.
Sure but that's not really their point. They're not saying that Linux is a joke nor that it's useless; they're saying that the amount of people installing Linux on their Macs is so small that it wouldn't make financial sense for Apple to support them. Knowing how much an engineer gets paid, even staffing a small team to supporting Linux would cost Apple a couple million each year. That's not even taking support into account.
They're avoiding it because installing Linux (or Windows, even), would actually decrease their income. I doubt people running Windows on Intel Macs were avid Apple Music subscribers.
No, they're not loss leaders, but in 2015 services were about 9% of Apple revenue. Now they're about 28%.
It's fairly clear which direction the wind is blowing.
Also, hardware - software integration pushes more hardware sales. People with iPhones are a lot more likely to buy Macs than people with Android phones. Same story for Airpods & co. I've also basically never seen an Apple keyboard used with non-Apple computers.
Also Apple stops supporting the hardware and the software at the same time. The case that Linux support lets hardware be used longer is a harder sell when the company stops manufacturing/stocking parts for servicing at the point where someone would consider Linux.
If Apple doubled their Mac revenue, the financial benefit of Linux would remain the same. That means it would then be effectively half as important for their business, but the operational challenges and risks remain the same.
At some point the ongoing maintenance and support as well as coordination and organizational distraction mean it wouldn't get approved if internal engineers offered to start it off for free.
I think it's great but it's important to remember that we haven't seen Xiaomi's chips in actual devices under real world tests. We don't know if the speeds are sustainable, under what wattage, etc. Competition is still great and I look forward to learning more, of course.
Specifically, the M7 is supposedly coming out in the Spring. The M6 band is going to be so small because the M7 will have a lot of AI-focused upgrades and Apple doesn't want to waste manufacturing on M6 Pro/Max/Ultra chips when they can start building the M7 sooner.
On the flip side, I've been using Fable to statically recompile a game binary from a system that's never been emulated to modern C++ while also keeping the code clean, maintainable, and portable and it's been a dream. I'm in awe of how fast Fable is able to bring a 20 year old game that's largely been lost to the sands of time to SDL3. It finished the recomp in about 3 hours. The next day has been fully rewriting the functions to remove old hardware-specific quirks and then rewriting large swaths into multiple classes, subsystems, building tests, etc. Tomorrow I'm going to add mod support and then experiment with a random platform like making a Switch build of the game.
It's expensive but it's doing in hours what no one's done in 2 decades.
iPod Classic click wheel games. Specifically Mini Golf. I've also been working on an emulator for the others and it can now boot all of the 20 decrypted games released ~20 years ago and play most of them. There's a Sims Bowling, Sims Pool, and Lost game in there which is cool from a preservation standpoint. Less cool are the SAT Prep 2008 games which have actually been surprisingly annoying to emulate due to the way the text uses blend modes.
I plan on releasing all of this at one point. It's crazy it hasn't been done in 20 years!
Yeah, it's genuinely my favorite game of all time but to compare it to Rollercoaster Tycoon as "a technical marvel" is doing a massive disservice to Chris Sawyer.
They have 12 month options for the Apple Upgrade program. I just checked how much it would cost to get an iPhone 17 PM + AppleCare+ with theft protection like I currently get from the IUP and it's $3 more a month.
I mean, it is $36 more a year but I guess that's not terrible. What will be interesting is the tax paid up front. IIRC, I paid tax on the entire device every time I renewed rather than just paying it during each month. So I always thought it wasn't the best deal because I paid tax on a device that I only ended up paying off half of before renewing and starting the process again. I could be wrong, though. I'm not the best with finances.
Would love to see the Fulu Foundation start designing open hardware like this and producing it with CrowdSupply. Like if the Apache Foundation made hardware.
They do make biodegradable hot glue [1] but it's still not perfect. It's biodegradable and certified compostable under industrial conditions but it still has a polymer base. It's also not ideal for projects that are always in UV light.
They were also in a different place back when they made Bootcamp. They were fighting a "Mac vs PC" battle head on and trying to convert other OS users to macOS. Now they don't really seem to care about that because their strategy is converting iPhone users into ecosystem members.
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