And if Apple did it themselves, like Intel or AMD do, it would be released at the same time as macOS.
Furthermore we are lucky that Apple at least tolerates Asahi and does not throw at them more technical hurdles, legal issues (DMCA?) or whatever. Based on past history (in the 90s, so a lot of management changes) Apple would shut them down if they were a threat to their bottom line. I remember the shortly allowed Mac clones so, a possible scenario: a significant fraction of sold Macs is immediately reinstalled with Linux and provide zero dollars to cloud services and followup sales of other hardware. Apple is not going to like that.
Would be cool if Apple decided to support Linux, of course. But why would they? If it was profitable for them, they would do it. Instead they think it's more profitable to enshittify their products. That's life.
Now people who reverse engineer that to help us run Linux on Apple hardware... I would guess they don't make a fortune doing that, and I find it impressive work.
This analogy is really tortured. Apple doesn't make bikes.
But they do make software, and hardware. People want to use them however they choose.
This is more like a bike company choosing a proprietary air valve that only lets you inflate your bike tires with their own company-branded air pump, even though there's been other air pumps for many decades before them, and their design isn't particularly better than the others. And you say "well they don't have to design an air valve adapter to use other air pumps" and -- yeah, that's true. But people are gonna bitch.
So we agree :-). Of course I would like it if Apple was making my life better. I just find it naive to consider that companies are anything other than profit-maximizing machines. If they happen to do something you like, it's because it is profitable for them. They couldn't care less about you.
> But people are gonna bitch.
Whatever you do, people are gonna bitch. Again it would be a bit naive to think that if you do "your best", or if you do "what's right", or if you "genuinely try", then everybody will appreciate. There will always be enough people bitching, of that I am certain.
So we agree :-)
Well, to be fair, they occasionally make rather nice hardware.
For my usage, the reason the Linux-on-Mac efforts are useful is that Apple hardware becomes easily and cheaply available once it is no longer supported. My home server is an old Mac Mini (GigE, HDD + SDD, double core Haswell, 7 W power envelope, doesn't take up space, silent) running stock Debian. When it dies, I'll probably be able to replace it with an M2 model, thanks to Asahi and friends.
Sure, Apple (like all other BigTech) suck. But the Asahi project is quite amazing. I don't see a reason to complain about the Asahi project.