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ThinkPads used to have accelerometers to protect the hard drives, so if you dropped the machine or treated it roughly, it could park the drive, protecting it from data loss.

People used to write Linux utilities that read these accelerometers, allowing for example to switch virtual desktops by physically smacking the machine on either side.

That’s horrifying.

i think these also existed for macs with HDDs, i recall seeing some very fun demos on youtube

Look, my setup works for me.

ISWYDT https://xkcd.com/1172/

HDAPs

Hard drive active protection system parked the heads in Ms, fast enough to handle a hard drop off a desk

Maybe what you are noticing is the "laptop on lap" detection? Check the bios, there was a "cool when on lap detected" mode on mine. Turn that off and re-test.

Yes, that's it, but there's no toggle to turn it off. Maybe it can be patched, but I don't want to fight my hardware like that.

> there's nothing I'd spend my money on if I can just as well install Asahi on an M-series laptop.

But such laptops don't work 100% with Asahi. Speakers and mic, external displays, fingerprint reader, suspend are the sore points I've read about, and shorter battery life compared to when they run Apple's SO.

> Some Intel ThinkPads have accelerometers built-in just to throttle your PC to oblivion when it moves

Wtf? That sounds crazy, any sources?

They don't want you to burn your testicles when keeping it in your lap.

https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/pubs/x1e_p1_gen5/html/htm...

> The Cool and Quiet on lap feature helps cool down your computer when it becomes hot. Any extended contact with your body, even through clothing, could cause discomfort. If you prefer using your computer on the lap, it is recommended that you enable the Cool and Quiet on lap feature in UEFI BIOS:

(it can be disabled on this laptop)

more: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1416567/disable-lap-mode-on-...

Honestly, I wasn't to say this is ridiculous but I've got a i7 13" laptop which I bought to do practically everything (personal coding projects, a bit of gaming, video editing, 3d modeling etc). I do find the heat of it is quite uncomfortable after a short period of time on my lap. I was thinking about getting a M series MacBook for messing around on the couch and building a desktop for many of those other tasks.

My work MacBook Pro on the other hand could do with the opposite some times. Burn a bit of battery to heat up the aluminium case please!

This used to be a feature to protect spinning hard drives. Why this would exist today and why it would throttle anything is bizarre.

In my experience Intel and AMD Thinkpads of that era are about the same for battery life but Intel always needs some kernel parameters set. Where I notice the biggest difference is Intel's integrated graphics gets you better battery life over anything AMD if your GPU needs are modest enough to be handled by Intel's integrated graphics

M1 and M2. But those are in an entirely different price bracket. I’d go so far as to say those are not comparable.

You can buy refurb M1s for $379 at Walmart.

Has a proprietary bootloader that Apple can lock in an OTA update. Also doesn't support Linux as well as Intel or AMD chipsets, unfortunately.

Last I heard asahi ran pretty well on M1/M2. Is that not the case?

It runs well but battery life is quite a bit worse than on macos.

That’s not particularly surprising to be honest. A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software. Not trying to put it too poetically here, but that’s what it’s always seemed like to me.

In general when I install Linux on an Apple device I just assume there isn’t the same level of performance. I remember installing mint on a 2016 intel MBpro and the limitations/cons didn’t surprise me at all because I just kind of expected it to perform at 70% of what I expected from macOS but with far more free freedom/control. It ran very smoothly but you definitely lose a lot of functionality.

> A lot of what makes Apple tech what it is is the concert between their hardware and software.

That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.

Apple Silicon has terrible and inefficient support because Apple released no documentation of their hardware. The driver efforts are all reverse-engineered and likely crippled by Apple's hidden trade secrets. This is why even Qualcomm chips run Linux better than Apple Silicon; they release documentation. Apple refuses, because then they can smugly pride themselves on "integration" and other plainly false catchisms.

And on Intel/AMD, Apple was well known for up-tuning their ACPI tables to prevent thermal throttling before the junction temp. This was an absolutely terrible decision on Apple's behalf, and led to other OSes misbehaving alongside constant overheating on macOS - my Intel Macs were regularly idling ~10-20c hotter than my other Intel machines.

>That's very cute, but it's not why Apple laptops run Linux poorly.

I have no doubt you have good information after this, but this sentence makes me not want to read any further.

Okay, that's your call. You can't phone Craig Federighi for the straight dope, so you're stuck hearing it from internet douches or product leads on prescription SSRIs.

And yes, your statement was a cutesy catechism with no actual evidence provided. A big reason why Apple tech doesn't work like a normal computer is Apple's rejection of standards that put hardware and software in-concert. ACPI is one such technology, per my last comment.

i don't think either of those is really true?

https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/open-os-interop/

Literally the first step of the boot overview depends on a proprietary and irreplaceable Apple-controlled blob:

  iBoot2 loads the custom kernel, which is a build of m1n1

Apple decides whether or not m1n1 ever loads.

Only if you boot into macOS and connect it to the internet. iBoot2 never changes by itself, you, the user, decides if you want to boot into recovery or macOS and run an update.

So can Apple stop signing new iBoot2 versions? Sure! And that sucks. But it's a bit of FUD to claim that Apple at arbitrary points in time is going to brick your laptop with no option for you to prevent that.

Granted, if you boot both macOS and Asahi, then yes, you are in this predicament, but again, that is a choice. You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them.

> You can never connect macOS or recovery to the internet, or never boot them

In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.

YMMV, but I would never trust my day-to-day on an iBoot machine. UEFI has no such limitations, and Apple is well-known for making controversial choices in OTA updates that users have no alternative to.

> In other words, you're completely fucked if you brick your install. I consider iBoot a direct user-hostile downgrade from UEFI for this reason.

That's a bit of a creative perspective, isn't it? You have no control over the UEFI implementation of your vendor, same can be said for AGESA and ME, as well as any FSP/BSP/BUP packages, BROM signatures or eFused CPUs. And on top of that, you'll have preloaded certificates (usually from Microsoft) that will expire at some point, and when they do and the vendor doesn't replace them, the machine might never boot again (in a UEFI configuration where SecureBoot cannot be disabled as was the case in this Fujitsu - that took a firmware upgrade that the vendor had to supply, which is the exception rather than the rule). For DIY builds this tends to be better, Framework also makes this a tad more reliable.

If anything, most OEM UEFI implementations come with a (x509) timer that when expires, bricks your machine. iBoot2 is just a bunch of files (including the signed boot policy) you can copy and keep around, forever, no lifetimer.

Now, if we wanted to escape all this, your only option is to either get really old hardware, or get non-x86 hardware that isn't Apple M-series or IBM. That means you're pretty much stuck with low-end ARM and lower-end RISC-V, unless you accept AGESA or Intel ME at which point coreboot becomes viable.

Basically your counterpoint is that I'm absolutely right to be concerned, but I'm wrong because UEFI can also be implemented with the same objectionable backdoors that Apple implements.

We're done here, have a nice day.

It's not a counterpoint, it's a display of your factually incorrect statement.

except apple silicon notebooks are notably unbrickable[0]? you can always do https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-asahi-remix/trou...

[0](through any user-accessible software action, obviously)

M1 mac minis or macbooks?

MacBook Air, though the $379 price does seem to be a Black Friday deal: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Restored-Apple-MacBook-Air-13-Lap...

Just note that listing is for an item from a third-party seller. Walmart's website includes listings from their third-party marketplace unless you explicitly filter them out.

Accelerometers aren’t new, they were a feature 20yrs ago to suspend platter hard disks.