this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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Privacy
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I do like their laptops, but for literally everything else: the fact that I basically don’t own my own hardware.
I can’t install or distribute my own software without Apple’s arbitrary approval. When Apple decides it’s done supporting the products, I can’t even install a different OS like Linux because the hardware is completely locked down… they become paper-weights.
That is not how ownership is supposed to work.
What could you not install Linux on? I’ve never had that issue.
My 2011 iPad 3rd gen.
A lightweight Linux distribution would make that thing killer for word processing and document reading. Might even allow YouTube videos to be watched again.
Any equivalent Android tablet would have custom ROMs etc. to get a bit more functionality out of it. I know it's not a tablet, but look at the Samsung galaxy SII - the amount of community development for that is incredible to this day.
I mean, I wouldn’t expect to have custom Linux ROMs for an iPad. For an Android device, which is already Linux based, that would make sense. But it wouldn’t surprise me if the newer iPads had builds for them since they’re built on the same processor as the MacBooks
I was able to install Linux on my 2015 MBP, but weird stuff didn’t work OOTB like the webcam and while I eventually got it working, it was less than polished because it was all reverse engineered workarounds by the Linux gods who managed to figure out the exact commands that were needed to be run.
In what way is the hardware locked down? Is this something new with the M chips?
Everything except the Mac line has a locked boot process. So your iPhone or iPad must run the latest iOS, must have an Apple ID, must source apps from Apple, and Apple has gotten so good at securing their devices that its basically killed hobbyist jailbreaking.
Anything you do on these multi thousand dollar devices is only because Apple allows you to— reluctantly, I might add.