Booting an M1 Mac from an external disk
eclecticlight.co
eclecticlight.co
At the time Linux desktops didn't cope with retina screens very well (and probably still don't?), but it was worth it for my code-heavy days. But I still went back into OSX for Skype-for-Business calls (shudder).
For ages I was very happy Linux-on-MBP user.
And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned.
So I'm kinda wary of ever doing any stunt like partitioning the internal ssd again in the future.
But reading about dual-boot from external SSD makes me think "when I get my M1, perhaps I can boot Linux from an external SSD". That way I can still use OSX for the MS Office Suite when the web-version isn't cutting it, kinda thing.
But is there any signing requirement for the external ssd boot-up?
I imagine the first person getting Linux booting at all (even without graphical acceleration) on the M1 will be at the top of HN.
Because the documentation only mention Intel CPUs with T2 chips.
Indeed it doesn't show the same options. This is what I saw when I went to Startup Security Utility:
(*) Full Security: Ensures that only your current OS, or signed operating system software currently trusted by Apple, can run. This mode requires a network connection at software installation time.
( ) Reduced Security: Allows any version of signed operating system software ever trusted by Apple to run. [ ] Allow user management of kernel extensions from identified developers [ ] Allow remote management of kernel extensions and automatic software updates
There's no option to turn on or off a firmware password, instead I had to login with a local administrator account first before I could access anything under recovery options.
There doesn't appear to be a way to set "No Security" as an option either. At least from the GUI. Maybe it's possible from Terminal somewhere. But it seems unlikely or undocumented for now.
Edit: Here's the Apple documentation on this: https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl768f7291/...
Regarding kernel extensions, there's also https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210999 and https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211860
Regarding macOS Recovery, there's https://support.apple.com/en-us/guide/mac-help/mchl82829c17/...
> And then OSX refused to upgrade to the next major version because the ssd was partitioned.
IIRC with some MacOS update it got confused when it rebooted while installing, holding alt and choosing the correct partition while rebooting got it back on track.
Starting this year I no longer use Apple devices, since everything work-related I do in Linux.
There are more than 5 years since I do not use monitors with less than 4k resolution with Linux and I never had any problems with correct scaling or with anything else.
While the NVIDIA drivers are not open-source, nevertheless they usually have the best Linux support and they have no problems with multiple high-resolution monitors. However, Apple does not use NVIDIA, so that increases the chances for problems on Linux.
For the smaller MBPs, with Intel Iris GPUs, the GPU drivers should also have been OK, even a couple of years ago.
The greatest chances of problems would have been on MBPs with AMD GPUs. Nevertheless, the AMD drivers have been improving during the last years, so today there should be better chances that they would work OK.
Apple pretty clearly don't mind you partitioning the SSD because you need to do that for bootcamp, which is supported (for Intel Macs at least). I'm not sure exactly what issue you had, but it's not a case of Apple saying "no, you can't do that".
Meanwhile, my no-name Chinese mobo exclaims "Press F10 for BOOT MENU!!" (the uppercase and exclamation marks are verbatim) on its BIOS post screen, and nearly all the other PCs I've used have similar if less exciting messages. But with Apple, all you get is an Apple logo, and if you need to do anything other than normal boot, you had better have looked it up because it won't tell you.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In...
3: Well, they added BIOS compatibility later, to allow booting OSes like Windows, but what's missing is some fancy GUI around it - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectu...
Not saying Apple has to do it the way it's doing everything to also innovate things like M1, but whatever happened to capitalistic society?
This may seem frustrating from a hackers perspective, but it is what it is.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/726938/how-to-boot-from-a-us...
https://www.ubackup.com/articles/lenovo-boot-from-usb-window...
https://sneak.berlin/20201204/on-trusting-macintosh-hardware...
2. Most consumers have no next to no information that wasn't given to them by the marketing departments of the companies, so that isn't an argument against basic regulation on things like consumer freedom.
I fundamentally disagree with the notion that government should have a say in design decisions for consumer products past safety and environmental concerns. I don't design things to support every consumer use case, I don't document it so those use cases can be supported, and I don't take it personally if a consumer chooses a competing product because it fits their use cases better. If enough consumers do that, I support those cases.
There is plenty of consumer freedom in consumer electronics. We don't need the government telling us what they think our customers want.
There’s nothing obvious at purchase time that this new breed of Apple laptops require an internet connection to reinstall. That’s what will cause some consumers material harm. If informing your customers up front about your product’s limitations causes your business material harm, maybe your product needs a rethink.
The online activation happens after the Recovery kernel is already booted from the installer USB.
I have no doubt that this is a walled garden dilemma where the gardener is held responsible if an app is seemingly used to cause damage. However, the claim that the gardener was influenced by an oppressive power doesn’t hold water given facts available and my personal observations[0].
It’s true that the level of trust required makes Apple hardware unsuitable for users with extremely heightened security needs. However, for the more casual user, trusting Apple is undoubtedly a more reliable bet than trusting their own infosec faculties.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong or given some other example as to why Apple should not be trusted.
[0] First, if they were, one would assume that (A) the app would not have been reinstated in App Store a couple days later, and (B) E2E-encrypted messengers such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram would have been taken off HK App Store, as groups there were used as the source of much more up-to-date information.
Second, considering the political split I have personally witnessed within Hong Kong population itself, a significant portion of citizens likely reported this app to Apple at their own volition.
On a more sentimental note, I was on location at the time and have seen first hand the destruction of property (such as breaking into and destroying ground-floor storefronts and bank branches) when the police were known to be away. It is far from clear to me that those were in fact actions of honest pro-democracy protesters. All protesters I know personally (about a dozen or so) either condemned those actions or were unable to explain what they were aiming to achieve. Meanwhile, the events seemed to obviously play into CCP’s hand, alienating more politically neutral HKers from the freedom movement, and later used by Beijing as an excuse to force the new “security” law on Hong Kong.
Bear in mind that genuinely peaceful pro-democracy protests—attended by many thousands of people—did not require police evasion apps.
But if they did decide to stop signing all versions for some reason, you'd be probably right. T2 is vulnerable to checkm8 so there may be a chance to get around it there, but M1 is not vulnerable.
They have made macs completely easy to install, upgrade, and repair over my years of experience.
If these kinds of things are disappearing in the iosification of things it will be a real shame.
The internal SSD gets ~2,800-3,000 MB/s read/write.
The USB-C case gets ~800-900 MB/s read/write.
If I'm not wrong, the M1 Mac's "USB4" supports 10Gb/s max, so external drives will always be slower.
That’s a noble goal, but I thought virtually all computers these days had some form of TEE?
It’s been too easy to mess things up by repartitioning the hard drive and installing a different OS.
The M1 is blazing fast; I imagine by the time the pro versions ship with 32 or 64 Gb of RAM and more high performance cores, running Linux in a VM on Apple Silicon Macs should be a solved problem.
My mum doesn't want to be able to brick her computer by pressing the wrong sequence of keys / buttons in the control panel. And she doesn't want a malicious program to be able to use her credentials to encrypt and ransom all her company's data. Removing features from my mum's computer makes it a better device for her. And sometimes a better device for me - I trust my iphone to safely run 3rd party software more than I trust my linux desktop.
Apple's philosophy - while very different from what I want in a computer - is absolutely oriented toward a sensible, well thought out vision of computing. I think us hackers do a disservice by dismissing the use case.
I've spent most of my career on the web. But web apps are always (and will probably always be) second class citizens to desktop apps because they're slower, can't integrate as well into the desktop environment, have a one-size-fits-all user interface, they can't really save and load local files and so on.
And sure - web software has been strengthening linux because most native software never targets linux anyway. But surely there are other answers?
Not everyone wants to or should be a system administrator in order to browse the web or use a spreadsheet.
The vast majority of computer users shouldn’t even attempt some of the things we used to do back in the day…
People make a big deal about UI changes between MacOS versions ("Oh god, now there are flat, rounded icons!" or whatever) and I suspect most users don't even notice anything's different at all.
I notice. I trip up for months. People build muscle memory and habit. It's not just a style thing, it's a psychology, human nature, and science thing. These are fundamentals of human computer interaction that Apple has lost touch with.
I think they only change that ever bothered me was when scroll bars started to disappear and stop looking uniform. That was a long time ago though, maybe before even OS X.
That said, every large visual overhaul in macOS/OS X has been followed by several iterations of refinement, and I don’t doubt this one will too. I expect by 13 or so the design will be more mature. Lately I’ve tended to skip an OS upgrade and this one doesn’t offer me much to compel me to change that, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they refine in 12.
Why is it news that it can be installed on a disk? That is a fundamental aspect of an OS.
It's both. Macs started as quite closed systems, were opened up a bit near the brink of bankruptcy and now are slowly being turned into appliances a la iPhone but with a small sandbox for app developers.
Under the same line of logic we should be able to boot an iPhone off an external drive since it’s technically just as capable.
True, I would expect that.
- The unified hardware is already there
- One single OS (which pretty much can be invisible)
- The only thing left is the software space. You can still install unverified apps but how long? Just require the App Store for everything and it's pretty much done. And I bet most people would love this (more safe!) or doesn't really care.
Why would one "waste time"? This information is, or will soon be, all around various forums.
And if its indeed a bug, it will be fixed in an upcoming update, so it doesn't make sense to forke for a (more expensive) TB3 enclosure if a USB-C will do.