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worthless-trashyesterday at 5:21 AM1 replyview on HN

> Not only that they go out of their way to obstruct running software.

Apple delivered EFI 32 bit(ppc, 32) firmware updates to their 64 bit mac pro range, make booting/installing alternative operating systems much more difficult only shortly after the new intel range came out.

I had a few of these running Linux at the time and made the mistake of booting one into OSX to see if an update would fix an networking corner case, not an easy roll back.

You may wish to prefix your statement with "apple software".


Replies

wtallisyesterday at 7:29 PM

As I recall, the PPC machines (like the Power Mac G5) never had EFI of any kind, and the early Intel Macs (including the Mac Pro) all had 32-but EFI even after the processors went 64-bit. I don't recall any of those Macs ever being switched from 32-bit EFI to 64-bit (U)EFI with a firmware update, or vice versa. It was a bit of a pain point because Linux was not initially ready to run a 64-bit kernel on top of 32-bit EFI, but that got resolved on the Linux side and I don't recall anything about Apple's firmware updates making that harder.