- M1 machines are 'closed' because of Apple and not because of the CPU architecture. They could adopt RISC-V and the GPU and drivers would still be closed etc.
- M1 is fast because Apple have invested a lot in building an outstanding CPU design team and the economics of their business allow them to fabricate on the latest TSMC node.
- Apple could have locked down the M1 machines much more completely than they have done.
If you want fast 'open' systems you need to work out how to incentivise firms to build systems in this way. RISC-V will not magically get there on its own because its a more 'open' ISA than ARM. In the meantime credit to those who are working out how to get the most out of the M1.
0: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/intro.html#sidebar-s...
Others have documented the engineering that went into a new boot system for the M1 to make multi-boot and custom kernels possible. Engineering that would be pointless if no one were expected to use it.
Actually I look forward to it, eventually Linux and BSD will stand alone as the only classical monolithic kernels, which is kind of ironic, given how much containers and hypervisors they get loaded with anyway.
What law? They locked down iPhone and law does not care. How is it different for Mac? The could've locked down their M1 Macs, but they deliberately chose not to.
"locked down" from your comment as I understand it, is just making it hard to gain root on the device. Nothing in most Western law prevents you or I from jailbreaking the phone or cracking it open and looking at it under a microscope or whatever. Thats good. What would be perfect is of course publish schematics and manuals etc.