Asahi is all reverse engineering. It’s nothing short of a miracle what has already accomplished, despite, not because of, Apple.

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.

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matthewfcarlson 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To be clear, the work the asahi folks are doing is incredible. I’m ashamed to say sometimes their documentation is better than the internal stuff.

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

	▲	WD-42 14 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is what ruffles my jimmies about this whole thing: > 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.
	▲	ZiiS 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I strongly support a projects stance that you shouldn't ask when it will be done. But the time between the M1 launch and a good experience was less than the time since M3 I would love to know what is involved.

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SamuelAdams 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have they though? Hector just added support for the power button, I wonder if he is officially back?

https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-subdevs-v6-4-0...

	▲	aliceryhl 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's an email from James Calligeros. All this patch says is that the author is Hector Martin (and Sven Peter). The code could have been written a long time ago.