The Apple M1, ARM/x86 Linux Virtualization, and Boinc (2021)

I'd been somewhat uncomfortable with some of the decisions Apple has been making for a while, mostly related to China. The "iCloud in China" thing in which Apple gave the keys to iCloud in China to the CCP (you can spin it how you wish, but from my point of view, if you've given a Chinese company physical access to the servers, you've granted everything on those servers to the CCP, regardless of how much you go on about keeping the encryption keys yourself) was one issue, the treatment of workers was another. They've supply chained themselves into a corner called China, and are now entirely subject to the whims of the Chinese government, under the "Nice factories, it'd be a shame if something were to happen to those agreements you've got!" logic.

So I was considering what I wanted to do, and then they went down the whole on-device CSAM scanning path, complete with the internal email sharing the quote from a third party talking about crushing the "shrieking voices of the minority" who would dare oppose this obviously good thing. That, which I've also written about (doing some experiments in what it takes to change the hash and such), was a giant leap too far for me. I'm not OK with so overtly turning my devices against me with a system that has clearly not seen the slightest bit of adversarial analysis ("How can this be abused?").

Apple hasn't actually forced it out that we know of, but to borrow the punchline from a joke, "Well, we know what kind of company you are, now we're just haggling about timing" (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/07/haggling/). They built up quite a "privacy capital" credit with their actions in the debate with the FBI over backdoors, and appear to have decided it was worth burning it all down over the CSAM scanning, which they've yet to deploy.

So I've de-Appled my life quite substantially. I swapped from using an iPhone as my daily driver phone to a KaiOS Flip IV (wrote about that if you're curious on my blog), I sold the M1 and LG 5k monitor with it at a rather substantial loss, I don't use the iPad for anything anymore except ForeFlight (aviation software), I picked up a Kobo Elipsa for PDF reference for work to replace the iPad/Goodreader combo, and I've generally de-Appled my life as a result of their actions.

It leaves me lurking in the weeds of Linux on ARM small board computers (a weird hobby of mine, but they're quite capable these days if you understand their limits), and Qubes on x86, though I've not entirely purged legacy Linux because I do enjoy Kerbal Space Program and Minecraft on occasion, as do my kids.

The M1 Mac Mini was, for the time I had it, the best computer I'd used. It was blisteringly fast, and despite only 16GB RAM, didn't feel like it - you could just keep throwing workloads at it and it would chew through them, only occasionally spinning the fan above idle. The GPU was solid, the CPU performance was world class, and the entire experience, even running x86 binaries, just worked.

The M1 MacBook Pro is literally exactly what I want in a laptop. A slab sided machine with a set of useful ports, blisteringly fast ARM CPU, battery life for days, and having abandoned the abomination that the Ive era keyboard was (thin for the sake of thin, functionality be damned). And I will never own one at this point, because I cannot trust Apple anymore not to turn my hardware against me anymore.

So, I'm working out how to do my computing on far less. My daily driver laptop is a PineBook Pro, which is... adequate for my needs, if I'm willing to redefine my needs into "That which the PBP can do." Same for most of my desktops being weird little gutless ARM boxes anymore. Spotify won't run on ARM/Linux? Fine, ncspot it is. Etc.

Anyway, I don't expect a lot of other people to agree with this path or to take similar actions (though I wish many would), but I simply couldn't be as strongly against Apple's CSAM proposal as I was and continue using their products. And having cracked that box open, we now see the EU proposals that expand drastically on what Apple has done, "because clearly it can be done, nerd harder to solve it!"

... I don't actually like consumer tech and what we've done with computers very much anymore, if it hasn't come through.

Regardless the takeaway that "M1, and very likely the fastest Linux machine you can get right now for single threaded work." is conjecture.

If someone can benchmark chrome on asahi linux it would give us a better comparison.

EDIT: noticed the author's comment saying extensions may lower the performance, so tested again in raw chrome and got 304.

I want a tablet dumb terminal because:

- when I'm working I'm plugged into a monitor 99% of the time (with dedicated keyboard/mouse) - when I'm traveling/consuming media/couch surfing/shopping with wife - tablet is much more convenient

But I can't really use iOS for work - iPad pro would be perfect otherwise.

mosh?

A $1000 dumb terminal? Wouldn't a cheaper laptop be perfectly sufficient then? Or, if the performance is not that important, something like an asus laptop with an oled, pro-motion, higher res, ... screen (same price)?

Ah, Apple life.

You can order one today. I'm still waiting for mine I ordered in March.

So running Linux on QEMU with a virtualized GPU should provide a better experience than using CPU rendering or buggy drivers for most day-to-day tasks like browsing the web.