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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

Fundamentally, if people with your and the spawner of this thread's attitudes had won the day we wouldn't have any of the things this thread is allegedly about loving so much. That's my main point here.

Also I am not involved in or affiliated with or even a likely user of the Asahi project, to be clear. I just find this attitude incredibly frustrating, and I'm definitely bristling at accused of being a young'un or some shit for believing people can actually do surprising things. I am not the dewy-eyed idealist you seem to think I am, I believe what I'm saying here because I've seen it happen over and over and over again.

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> I just find this attitude incredibly frustrating

What attitude? The attitude that Apple's hardware is closed and Apple should be criticized for building a walled garden? That we should, where possible, invest in open hardware and technology and put our money where our mouths are, so as to create the kinds of economic incentives that ensure that technology remains open in the future?

Do you really disagree with that?

> I am not the dewy-eyed idealist you seem to think I am, I believe what I'm saying here because I've seen it happen over and over and over again.

What "it" are we talking about here?

What do you think the end game is going to be?

I genuinely have no idea what your argument is, other than to tell me how I'm wrong without providing any specifics regarding how I'm wrong.

Please, enlighten me, I'm happy to listen!

The attitude that pushing on technology that seems hard isn't worth it.

We can do both. We should do both.

At any rate, I'd suggest you go read marcan_'s replies and the OP submitted to HN because the picture you paint and the picture they paint of this platform are not quite the same to begin with. I think the people doing the work deserve a little more credit to describe the platform they're working on.

> We can do both. We should do both.

So, other than for the intellectual curiosity (which is absolutely a great reason!), I have a simple question: why?

Edit:

By the way, thinking about it, I have my own answer to this question: So that this hardware can continue to remain useful long after Apple has ended support for it.

Of course, I continue to believe that it's better, now, to simply buy hardware that doesn't need this kind of reverse engineering to ensure longevity, and I steer my hardware purchases accordingly.

But the hardware exists, and people are buying it, so this project is a way to keep it alive after Apple eventually abandons it (which, granted, could be a long time; while I have a lot of problems with Apple, they are very good about continuing to support old gear).

> Of course, I continue to believe that it's better, now, to simply buy hardware that doesn't need this kind of reverse engineering to ensure longevity, and I steer my hardware purchases accordingly.

For Linux and BSD, ALL OF IT was hacked and reversed engineered from the beginning. With your stupid mentality we would never have any free operating systems, we would only have proprietary operating systems. This is how its done. New hardware is released, someone hacks it, then its supported. If we are forced to wait like children for manufacturers permission or assistance (which is not actually required) then Linux, BSD, and other free / open source operating systems would never exist.

Linux has been ported to every modern computing device on the planet and this M1 port is par for the course. Only an actual idiot would recommend Linux devs should ignore the M1.

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