What is the prospect for newer M support, e.g. M3, M4? I am hesitant to adopt something that doesn't work with current and future models.
That said some of the prominent developers have left the project. As long as Apple keeps hoarding their designs it’s going to be a struggle, even more so now.
If you care about FOSS operating systems or freedom over your own hardware there isn’t a reason to choose Apple.
I’ve heard it’s mostly because there wasn’t an m3 Mac mini which is a much easier target for CI since it isn’t a portable. Also, there have been a ton of hardware changes internally between M2 and M3. M4 is a similar leap. More coprocessors, more security features, etc.
For example, PPL was replaced by SPTM and all the exclave magic.
https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-exclaves-d683a2c...
As always, opinions are my own
> I’m ashamed to say sometimes their documentation is better than the internal stuff.
The reverse engineering is a monumental effort, this Sisyphean task of trying to keep up with never-ending changes to the hardware. Meanwhile, the documentation is just sitting there in Cupertino. An enormous waste of time and effort from some of the most skilled people in the industry. Well, maybe not so much anymore since a bunch of them left.
I really hope this ends up biting Apple in the ass instead of protecting whatever market share they are guarding here.
https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-subdevs-v6-4-0...
> Our priority is kernel upstreaming. Our downstream Linux tree contains over 1000 patches required for Apple Silicon that are not yet in upstream Linux. The upstream kernel moves fast, requiring us to constantly rebase our changes on top of upstream while battling merge conflicts and regressions. Janne, Neal, and marcan have rebased our tree for years, but it is laborious with so many patches. Before adding more, we need to reduce our patch stack to remain sustainable long-term.
https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/
For instance, in this month's progress report:
> Last time, we announced that the core SMC driver had finally been merged upstream after three long years. Following that success, we have started the process of merging the SMC’s subdevice drivers which integrate all of the SMC’s functionality into the various kernel subsystems. The hwmon driver has already been accepted for 6.19, meaning that the myriad voltage, current, temperature and power sensors controlled by the SMC will be readable using the standard hwmon interfaces. The SMC is also responsible for reading and setting the RTC, and the driver for this function has also been merged for 6.19! The only SMC subdevices left to merge is the driver for the power button and lid switch, which is still on the mailing list, and the battery/power supply management driver, which currently needs some tweaking to deal with changes in the SMC firmware in macOS 26.
Also finally making it upstream are the changes required to support USB3 via the USB-C ports. This too has been a long process, with our approach needing to change significantly from what we had originally developed downstream
Stop buying Apple laptops to run Linux.
i've been doing this for maybe a year, after frustration with power draw and sleep modes (and dual boot) with Asahi.
it's been great...and Apple silicon is still super efficient, which is why i said hard disagree.
I’m quite glad that those talented guys finally escaped from the pit hole of reverse engineering. It maybe fun and interesting, but its future was already capped by Apple. I wish they find another fashion, hopefully something more original and progressive. Stop chasing and push forward.
https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-subdevs-v6-4-0...
Asahi Lina, who also did tons of work on the Asahi Linux GPU development, also quit as she doesn't feel safe doing Linux GPU work anymore [1].
[0] https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l...
They are more common than you would think. There just is not many willing to work on a shoe string salary.
You explained it well by yourself.
I blame Apple on pushing out new models every year. I don’t get why it does that. A M1 is perfectly fine after a few years but Apple treats it like an iPhone. I think one new model every 2-3 years is good enough.
That’s why I don’t like it as a consumer. If they keep producing M1 and M2 I’d assume we can get better prices because the total quantity would be much larger. Sure it is probably better for Apple to move forward quickly though.
In general, I don't think it's reasonable to worry that Apple's products aren't thoroughly achieving economies of scale. The less expensive consumer-oriented products are extremely popular, various components are shared across product lines (eg. the same chip being used in Macs and iPads) and across multiple generations (except for the SoC itself, obviously), and Apple rather famously has a well-run supply chain.
From a strategic perspective, it seems likely that Apple's long history of annual iteration on their processors in the iPhone and their now well-established pattern of updating the Mac chips less often but still frequently is part of how Apple's chips have been so successful. Annual(ish) chip updates with small incremental improvements compounds over the years. Compare Apple's past decade of chip progress against Intel's troubled past decade of infrequent technology updates (when you look past the incrementing of the branding), uneven improvements and some outright regressions in important performance metrics.
Why would this be true? An M5 MacBook Air today costs the same as an M1 MacBook Air cost in 2020 or whenever they released it, and is substantially more performant. Your dollar per performance is already better.
If they kept selling the same old stuff, then you spread production across multiple different nodes and the pricing would be inherently worse.
Also there’s nothing wrong with buying used or refurbished. Apple doesn’t have to keep making older tech for people to continue getting use out of it.
I've got a few ideas