And any architectural changes could require another lengthy reverse engineering process rendering these devices unbootable with non-Apple OSes until then.
I would not be surprised if Apple completely closes off the Mac ARM64 platform for “security” in the next few years. The option to boot third-party OSes seems like a short-term gimme to keep the pitchforks and torches at bay.
I make this distinction because this is precisely the issue being discussed.
There was too much engineering work put in to make the M1 be still secure by default while allowing you to run other OSes. If Apple wanted to make it so you could only run signed kernels then the best time to make that breaking change would’ve been when the first Apple Silicon macs were released, not three or four years down the road when suddenly they say “throw away that bespoke firmware and all that special security work we did, just load the iPhone bits on there”.
Try it on a physical Mac Mini machine and tell me it’s useful.
Progress is being made by REs such as marcan and others but it’s not useful, yet. And I speculate that by the time it is solid, the M1X/M2 machines will be out and a bunch of additional REing will be done.
No, not in any useful form it can’t.
And any architectural changes could require another lengthy reverse engineering process rendering these devices unbootable with non-Apple OSes until then.
I would not be surprised if Apple completely closes off the Mac ARM64 platform for “security” in the next few years. The option to boot third-party OSes seems like a short-term gimme to keep the pitchforks and torches at bay.
I make this distinction because this is precisely the issue being discussed.