This is the opposite of fun computing. This is commercial computing who's only use case it making sure that people can send/receive money through their computers securely. I love being able to peek/poke inside and look at my processes ram, or patch the memory of an executable. All this sounds pretty impossible on Apple's locked down systems.

They're not so much general purpose computers anymore as they are locked down bank terminals.

It's all fun and games until somebody else patches the RAM of your device, and sends your money away from your account.

More interesting is how to trace and debug code on such a CPU. Because what a debugger often does is exactly patching an executable in RAM, peeks and pokes inside, etc. If such an interface exists, I wonder how is it protected; do you need extra physical wires like JTAG? If it does not, how do you even troubleshoot a program running on the target hardware?

I think if you want to tinker with hardware, you shouldn't buy Apple. It's designed for people who use it as a means to an end, and I think that's a good thing for most people (including me). I want to bank on hardware that I can trust to be secure. Nothing wrong with building your own linux box for play time though.

If you like using debuggers, don't worry, MTE gives you a lot more chances to use them since it finds a lot more crashes. It doesn't stop you writing to memory though, as long as it's the correct type.

PAC may stop you from changing values - or at least you'd have to run code in the process to change them.

It’s a shame you’re getting downvoted because I think you’re correct, and this is a perfectly valid opinion to hold.

I would respond by saying that sometimes I actually want a locked-down bank terminal (when I’m banking for example), and I appreciate the opportunity to buy one.

Computing hardware in general is way less expensive and more abundant than it used to be, so there are still many options in the marketplace for people to peek and poke into.

Bingo. None of this is for users. Apple somehow managed to put on a marketing mask of user respect when they’re at least as user abusive as anyone else.