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Solved - Why has Apple gone for this locked down approach?
- Thread starter Quackers
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I haven't done it on my M1 Mac since I don't need two partitions with the same system. But from what I understand it works exactly like it works now with Intel Macs. You just install as many systems on as many volumes as you want and then choose whatever you want to boot on startup. The following video should answer your questions:
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10686/ (starting around 15:50)
Like most things with M1-We are at the beginning. You can create a new partition. In recovery, you can set that partition to "Reduced Security Mode" -therefor not needing Apples cert. But at this time no other OS can boot. M1 systems do not support industry standard Booting processes like EFI. They use iBoot, the same as an iPhone. Of course no other OS's have the device drivers yet to support a M1 system.
I believe that these things will change. But it's all new and things take time. Parallels will have professional VM software fairly soon I think. That will be a start. But native booting is going to take some time.
I believe that these things will change. But it's all new and things take time. Parallels will have professional VM software fairly soon I think. That will be a start. But native booting is going to take some time.
I also switched to Macs when OSX came out... hated Windows and also worked on SGIs at the time... so yeah, OSX was a winner.
Microsoft's hold on the industry is through it's Office products... not through it's OS. If Word, Excel, etc weren't so ingrained in businesses as a whole, Windows wouldn't have the foothold that it does now.
Then there's the whole IT industry that would cease to exist overnight if Windows went the way of the do-do. It is in their best interest to keep Windows alive. Just as it is in Apple's best interest to keep their ecosystem closed.
The best doesn't always win, the one with the largest user base does... and we all know how herd mentality works.
Thanks. That does explain some things.
However the methods he suggests don't actually seem to work at the moment.
@Luposian is having really big problems just getting his M1 to boot from a USB. In fact he hasn't done it (though others have). See below thread.
As you say, maybe things will change and booting multiple OSes will be possible but in light of Mr Federighi's comments it could be construed that this is (or was) not Apple's original intention.
We'll have to wait and see (or I will)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/looks-like-its-the-end-of-the-road.2275009/
The M1 macs CAN boot from an external device, just look at the installer USB stick: it boots from that just fine.
That macOS 11.0.1 doesn't completely boot from an external device might be a bug just as well. It might not have been intentional.
That Apple doesn't actively support it: does that really come as a surprise ?
But that said, there might be very good reasons not to do boot from external devices at all.
Just as an example:
Apple does some unusual stuff with their unified memory architecture (not well documented to be honest) to reduce the amount of RAM needed by running tasks. That in part likely is relying on the ability to call up to be executed code from the "SSD" in a very fast manner without caching it in RAM. Apple did mention during the launch they had sped up the internal SSD access by a serious factor ...
Maybe the delay for getting the to be executed code from an external device would ruin the speed of the M1 solution to some degree ? And affect it much more than on an old Intel based platform that's more traditional in using RAM to cache the disks etc. ?
Dual booting if it's only available form the internal storage: AFAIK nothing is preventing you from creating more than one bootable partition ... (or is there?).
The M1 is not just an ARM based CPU, it's the entire system and it pulls its firmware from the SSD, booting it and supporting all it's features -including doing the thermal management of the entire system is something that needs to be done properly in the OS. Without any documentation from Apple on the "magic" they do in the M1: reverse engineering this is not only non-trivial, it's also dangerous: software can damage hardware in some cases. And overheating due to a lack of thermal management could well be possible. Hopefully there's a hardware level safeguard in there that pull the emergency break before it melts down, but all of that would easily give the M1 based machines bad press. I'm sure Apple will not want to have to cover support and warranty issues with people running hacked together pieces of an OS on their hardware, and then have it underperform or damage itself. Not just from a PR point of view, but also from a warranty viewpoint.
Similarly: the secure enclave holding things like your fingerprint etc.: how well is that goign to be protected when not running macOS, could that e.g. allow the sensor to be read by the new OS ? If it does, Imagine your laptop bootingn a rogue OS and yoou trying to unlock it only to essentially give a biometric scan to a hacker - remember: you can change passwords, but you cannot change fingerprints should they become compromised.
in the end: we all knew and know the M1 macs can only boot macOS starting from Big Sur.
We have 2 options:
- If you buy it: live with it.
OR
- Don't buy it.
I have one M1 mac mini just to see what it's like and it'll become my next Home Theatre machine replacing a 2014 mac mini. So far it's already far better than the intel based one - time will tell how much I'll end up liking it (It's currently updating to 11.1)
That macOS 11.0.1 doesn't completely boot from an external device might be a bug just as well. It might not have been intentional.
That Apple doesn't actively support it: does that really come as a surprise ?
But that said, there might be very good reasons not to do boot from external devices at all.
Just as an example:
Apple does some unusual stuff with their unified memory architecture (not well documented to be honest) to reduce the amount of RAM needed by running tasks. That in part likely is relying on the ability to call up to be executed code from the "SSD" in a very fast manner without caching it in RAM. Apple did mention during the launch they had sped up the internal SSD access by a serious factor ...
Maybe the delay for getting the to be executed code from an external device would ruin the speed of the M1 solution to some degree ? And affect it much more than on an old Intel based platform that's more traditional in using RAM to cache the disks etc. ?
Dual booting if it's only available form the internal storage: AFAIK nothing is preventing you from creating more than one bootable partition ... (or is there?).
The M1 is not just an ARM based CPU, it's the entire system and it pulls its firmware from the SSD, booting it and supporting all it's features -including doing the thermal management of the entire system is something that needs to be done properly in the OS. Without any documentation from Apple on the "magic" they do in the M1: reverse engineering this is not only non-trivial, it's also dangerous: software can damage hardware in some cases. And overheating due to a lack of thermal management could well be possible. Hopefully there's a hardware level safeguard in there that pull the emergency break before it melts down, but all of that would easily give the M1 based machines bad press. I'm sure Apple will not want to have to cover support and warranty issues with people running hacked together pieces of an OS on their hardware, and then have it underperform or damage itself. Not just from a PR point of view, but also from a warranty viewpoint.
Similarly: the secure enclave holding things like your fingerprint etc.: how well is that goign to be protected when not running macOS, could that e.g. allow the sensor to be read by the new OS ? If it does, Imagine your laptop bootingn a rogue OS and yoou trying to unlock it only to essentially give a biometric scan to a hacker - remember: you can change passwords, but you cannot change fingerprints should they become compromised.
in the end: we all knew and know the M1 macs can only boot macOS starting from Big Sur.
We have 2 options:
- If you buy it: live with it.
OR
- Don't buy it.
I have one M1 mac mini just to see what it's like and it'll become my next Home Theatre machine replacing a 2014 mac mini. So far it's already far better than the intel based one - time will tell how much I'll end up liking it (It's currently updating to 11.1)
Yes, my USB thumb drive installer DOES show up in Recovery mode and you can run it, but that is NOT macOS. That is an application that INSTALLS macOS. Difference.
However that same USB thumb drive installer does NOT show up in "Startup Disk". You cannot boot it, as it is not a bootable system volume. It's visible in one case, totally not usable as a bootable drive. No OS actually on it.
What others may try/want to do and what I want/am trying to do are two different things. Apple wants to exclude other OS's, that's fine by me. I don't want to run Windows or Linux or whatever. I want to run macOS. I simply want to do it from an external drive. That's all. In case something goes wonky with the internal drive. I have a method for still booting my M1 Mac Mini.
Have you examined the partitions on the disk? x86 Macs have an EFI partition, is there anything similar on the M1?
I agreee with you, it is very assuring to have bootable external backups, even if I won't ever actually use them.
I'm going to do some checking on this when I get my mini in a week.
I agreee with you, it is very assuring to have bootable external backups, even if I won't ever actually use them.
I'm going to do some checking on this when I get my mini in a week.
Because the only (big) version available for M1 macs is macOS 11 at the moment, you will need an Intel Mac to test for earlier version anyway.
In the future we will have more than one version of macOS available, and we will also have good enough virtualization solution for that purpose.
The reason there's no documentation of unusual stuff done to reduce the amount of RAM needed by running tasks is that, for the most part, it isn't real. It's just internet mythology.
The M1 SSD is just a NVME storage device. Anyone with a M1 Mac can see this by clicking Apple menu -> About This Mac -> System Report -> NVMExpress. M1 SSD performance doesn't seem to be any better than PCIe3 x4 NVME SSDs available in the PC market, either.
NVME drives are block storage devices: the host provides a command list specifying blocks to read or write, and the RAM addresses to read to or write from. CPUs can only run code stored in byte-addressable memories directly mapped into their address space, not block-addressed I/O devices like a NVME SSD. There are no changes here: any code stored on a M1 SSD has to be copied into RAM before it can be run.
Apple said they sped up the internal SSD by a huge factor because they did, but that was more about the previous gen Intel Air models having a relatively slow SSD than the M1 version having a profound game-changing new technology.
macOS USB thumb drive installers contain a bootable copy of macOS. That's how they boot!
Apple's announced intentions about external boot are opposite from your fears. One of Apple's WWDC session videos had a segment which was basically about Mac-only features that Apple was adding to Mac Apple Silicon to make sure they'd be giving users real Macs, not iOS devices. One of these tentpole Mac-only features they called out and explicitly intend to support: boot from external drives.
So calm down, relax, and realize that shipping Big Sur and Apple Silicon Macs on time probably involved a bug triage process where less critical bugs got deferred to future updates. Booting from external drives is probably done by like 1% of Mac users, especially the customers for low end Macs, so it's easy to see why it probably wasn't regarded as a must-have for launch date.
I wonder whether we get a choice of OS when we're vaccinated with the microchip? I've heard of the Bill Gates/Microsoft chip...but I'd really prefer a Tim Cook/Apple chip in my brain... it provides a much better mind-control experience
I think this is a wrong assumption.
Have you tried porting one of these other OSes to your M1? Did you run into a roadblock of some kind? Thre are a few people working on getting Linux to run on the M1 you could join one of those projects.
Linux is running virtualized on the M1 now.
You asked me a question and I answered it. Simple as that. And the answer I gave addressed the very thing I highlighted from your post.
Thanks. That does explain some things.
However the methods he suggests don't actually seem to work at the moment.
@Luposian is having really big problems just getting his M1 to boot from a USB. In fact he hasn't done it (though others have). See below thread.
As you say, maybe things will change and booting multiple OSes will be possible but in light of Mr Federighi's comments it could be construed that this is (or was) not Apple's original intention.
We'll have to wait and see (or I will)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/looks-like-its-the-end-of-the-road.2275009/
He's on 11.0.1. That's the problem.
The ability to boot into another MacOS install on another partition just got added to 11.1.
So Apple just missed making dual-boot available.
Also, Apple can very easily allow booting Linux or Windows 10 on ARM, but then they'll also have to provide drivers for everything. That's a lot of pain and suffering for such a niche use case. Virtualization can potentially leverage drivers already built in to the OS.
Have you tried installing Ubuntu on a MacBook with Touch Bar?
The state of Linux on a MacBook Pro with Touchbar
Install Linux on your MacBook Pro with Touchbar is a bad idea. The hardware support is not satisfying. Especially not for a desktop system. Here is why...
geeknet.me
So for that reason, I'm actually going to stick with virtualization. With virtualization, I'm only losing at worst 10 - 15% performance. Negligible given how fast M1 is. Plus I still have full access to Mac OS, Touch Bar, and everything. Also... it's very very easy to take backup snapshots of a virtual machine... versus trying to back up a full computer.
Nope. I just updated to 11.1. And while the external drive now shows up in Recovery mode, it's still not bootable. Why? Because this is what the external drive looks like (first picture), whereas this is what the internal drive looks like (second picture):
Only a tiny little discrepancy...
And, yes, I reformatted the drive and installed via Internet restore (everything updated to 11.1). Took much longer, but ended up the same.
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Thanks, yes I saw the release notes on 11.1He's on 11.0.1. That's the problem.
The ability to boot into another MacOS install on another partition just got added to 11.1.
So Apple just missed making dual-boot available.
Also, Apple can very easily allow booting Linux or Windows 10 on ARM, but then they'll also have to provide drivers for everything. That's a lot of pain and suffering for such a niche use case. Virtualization can potentially leverage drivers already built in to the OS.
Have you tried installing Ubuntu on a MacBook with Touch Bar?
The state of Linux on a MacBook Pro with Touchbar
Install Linux on your MacBook Pro with Touchbar is a bad idea. The hardware support is not satisfying. Especially not for a desktop system. Here is why...geeknet.me
So for that reason, I'm actually going to stick with virtualization. With virtualization, I'm only losing at worst 10 - 15% performance. Negligible given how fast M1 is. Plus I still have full access to Mac OS, Touch Bar, and everything. Also... it's very very easy to take backup snapshots of a virtual machine... versus trying to back up a full computer.
I have not tried Ubuntu recently (and I don't yet have a touch bar
)Virtualisation would be fine for me too. I'll wait for further developments in this area before I pick my final spec for the M1.
In view of the above I will mark this thread as solved.
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And more money making ideas (Tim: "Remove the charging brick from boxes. That'll net us a nice few extra millions").I wonder whether we get a choice of OS when we're vaccinated with the microchip? I've heard of the Bill Gates/Microsoft chip...but I'd really prefer a Tim Cook/Apple chip in my brain... it provides a much better mind-control experience
It would be good if you was given an option.
Failing that, pass the savings onto the customer.
They're not doing it purely for the environment, trust me.
Nope. I just updated to 11.1. And while the external drive now shows up in Recovery mode, it's still not bootable. Why? Because this is what the external drive looks like (first picture), whereas this is what the internal drive looks like (second picture):
Only a tiny little discrepancy...
And, yes, I reformatted the drive and installed via Internet restore (everything updated to 11.1). Took much longer, but ended up the same.
I think you're still thinking of "booting from external drive", whereas I mentioned "booting from another partition". Kind of fundamentally different.
What you want is likely just not implemented yet. It makes sense because there is not much you can do with it right now... aside from booting 11.0.1 or 11.1.
Everyone has the option of buying another single-port low-wattage power adapter if they need one.
As for "pass on the savings" -- would anyone really notice a $1 or $2 price difference? The cheap knockoffs sell for 50 cents or less in bulk - which includes profit for the vendor and a percentage for Alibaba. Even if Apple's higher quality versions cost two or three times as much to make, that's still a pittance. Sure that savings adds up over millions of units, but nobody'd notice whether the price was $997 or $999.
Of course not.
They'd also be stupid not to leverage the environmental aspect in their marketing even though it's just one facet of the whole picture.
Apple has very high profit margin on charges, but not nearly as high. Manufacturing and logistics expenses are probably closer to $7-10 per unit.
Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package
This article is now available in Vietnamese Bộ sạc iPhone của Apple . Disassembling Apple's diminutive inch-cube iPhone charger reveals ...
The internal SSD is the only place the machine will use to get its firmware from. If that drive dies you're SOL regardless of having a macos bootable external disk.
Same story for the T2 + intel macs: the internal drive must be working as it holds the firmware and the mac will not load its firmware from anywhere else. In fact there's a set of apple documents on how to restore the firmware on the internal storage using another mac.