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Comment by doki_pen | Hacker News Reader

Not true. Poorly written device drivers can damage hardware. I'm a freetard and apple hater, but I think apple has every right to void the warrenty on stuff like this, for the most part. It would be a support nightmare for them to cover modified devices.

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Not true, poorly written device drivers can only damage poorly designed hardware.

Hardware should be designed with software failure in mind, and in fact should survive being attacked by software deliberately written for the purpose of damaging the hardware.

Assuming the software is going to play 'nice' is assuming that there will be no bugs, that there never will be a successful exploit and so on.

Dropping your phone can cause hardware damage.

Leaving it in the sun where it gets really hot can cause hardware damage.

Sitting on your phone can cause hardware damage.

Leaving headphones plugged in and in your pocket causes hardware damage (learned that firsthand).

They still warranty all of that stuff, and they are far more likely to cause damage than the "this driver is so bad it actually fried my CPU" idea.

Simple counter-example:

1) I buy a macbook pro (covered under warranty, etc)

2) I install software that disables the fans

3) I update the firmware to disable the automatic shut-down when overheating (or move it so it only happens at an even higher temperature)

4) I run high-cpu software until the machine crashes

5) I repeatedly do this for months on end

I'm pretty sure that machine will be toast soon enough. Is it fair that I should then take it to Apple and ask for a new machine "because it's under warranty"?

If you update the firmware you're at a different level altogether (above it said 'device drivers', not 'firmware', they're definitely not the same), but still, the hardware hopefully has a failsafe that will shut down the motherboard as soon as you reach a critical temperature over the one where the fans would have normally come on, and past the highest setting for the automated shut-down in software in case of overheating (that's a 'nice' shutdown), presumably that one is one that you can still recover from without any damage.

Designing good hardware is hard, but it definitely can be done and a few ntcs and a crowbar are not going to break the bank.

You make a great point about why passively cooled systems are better though :)

The whole point of buying Apple is that the hardware and software have been developed together, so they work pretty well together. I don't know why you'd bother installing another OS on Apple hardware. There's plenty of other hardware out there that you can play with.

Just my 2c.

How is this relevant? It is my hardware, I can do whatever I want with it.

Yes you can. But obviously then you're using it out of the normal confines and don't expect any help if the hardware blows up.

This whole discussion reminds me of a silly electronics engineers joke:

Q: How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: It can't be done, it's a hardware problem.

The implication of the joke is that if anything is 'hardware' you are not supposed to be either able to 'fix' it or 'break' it using just software.

Hardware is taken as a 'given', no matter how crappy the software you run on it, no matter how malicious your intent, the hardware is supposed to survive.

If you decided to try all possible pieces of software you could possibly run on your machine by simply enumerating them (yes, that's going to take a while) then you should not have to do a full hardware integrity test after every run.

The line between hardware and software is very small these days.

Most devices you can render into useful bricks if you mess up their software.

CPUs are probably the best examples of hardware that will protect itself from abuse. They already have a lot of power management circuitry to help battery life, and they have built-in thermal monitoring that will reduce voltage and clockspeed to prevent overheating. This is even used as a selling point on recent processors: "Turbo mode" means the processor is self-overclocking to within it's specified TDP.

That seems a little naive to me. Why should hardware be made to not fail when used improperly? Wouldn't that drive up the prices on everything? No thanks!

Because someone writing malware could destroy your hardware.

At least like this you have the option to go back to 'factory settings' (ie, a blank start) and you can expect to get your device back to the way it was when you bought it.

So you'd have no problem if a virus could physically incapacitate your keyboard, monitor, speakers, CPU and motherboard?...

In fact, back in the day it was possible to damage your keyboard through software. That must have been fun. Not.

How would you like it if a virus could flash your BIOS and render your motherboard unusable? It's happened before, and that's why most motherboards now either have their BIOS chips in sockets (so that the manufacturer can mail you a replacement) or have a back-up BIOS chip that you can switch to only with a jumper.

It's true it's possible. But damage is far more likely, IMO, in other ways. The point is that a blanket ban is not justifiable. If they want to deny warranty, they have to show it was at least reasonably caused by the modification.

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