Jorbanead
macrumors 65816
He’s already been contacted by Apple. Hopefully he’s able to upload the video before Apple sends in the lawyers.
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Apple DTK teardown
- Thread starter tripleintegral
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He’s already been contacted by Apple. Hopefully he’s able to upload the video before Apple sends in the lawyers.
Cookie18
macrumors 6502a
They sent the DTK back. They probably just did it as a cheap publicity stunt, he’s a tool.
He probably got a letter pointing out the obvious: the DTK is legally Apple's property. You don't pay $500 to own it, you pay $500 to rent it, and the terms and conditions (available from Apple's developer website without even applying for the chance to rent a DTK) make it very clear that the loan is personal. As in, outside of fairly narrow approved scenarios, you aren't even allowed to loan out the unit.
For example, an employer can shuffle their DTKs between different employees working on porting software to ARM as needed. Handing one off to an outsider who has no intent of working on porting Mac software to ARM, however, is right out.
So all Apple had to do was let it be known that they'd have police knocking on LTT's door to recover their stolen property and possibly arrest someone, and that the dev who supplied it to LTT would face consequences, and I'm sure LTT rolled over.
For example, an employer can shuffle their DTKs between different employees working on porting software to ARM as needed. Handing one off to an outsider who has no intent of working on porting Mac software to ARM, however, is right out.
So all Apple had to do was let it be known that they'd have police knocking on LTT's door to recover their stolen property and possibly arrest someone, and that the dev who supplied it to LTT would face consequences, and I'm sure LTT rolled over.
It kind of throws his objectivity out the window. He would never do this stunt with a development kit with a company that was in his pocket.
Linus is an incredibly irritating Apple-hating tech bro...
... unless you actually watch his videos which are usually insightful and balanced, and no more salty than say Quinn Nelson.
... unless you actually watch his videos which are usually insightful and balanced, and no more salty than say Quinn Nelson.
Tafkaeken
macrumors member
Yeah, I can see that people see his thumbnails and dismiss him which I understand but I have the most respect for people in his staff like Anthony Young.
An obvious workaroubd if I had a system and waned to disassemble it...
Step one, report the unit as "stolen". But I would actualy just give the unit to some third party.
Step two, the third party takes the unit apart and posts photos to the web. Then we all see that Apple as remove part numbers and paint black epoxy of much of the PCBs (I'm guessing about this but you have to figure if Apple wanted to hide somethig they could.)
Step three, The web site generates all of $3 from advertizing clicks because today "everyone" blocks ads so in retrospect they see it was kind of pointless to do this.
Abazigal
Contributor
I have given up on watching Linus’s Apple videos, because I have come to accept that he simply doesn’t understand the whole point and rationale behind Apple products and will never be able to cover them in any objective fashion.
Actually, come to think of it, I have pretty much stopped watching his videos altogether.
Bug-Creator
macrumors 68000
Thats the perfect reason to watch it as a counterpoint to all the fanboys glossing over what is wrong with anything Apple.
-> so I do know what I'm (not) getting when I buy the next Apple product (which I will).
As for the DTK being returned, *shrug* someone explained to him that his take on the legal side of this wouldn't hold up and he was man enough to admit he was wrong.
Not the 1st time he made a mistake and not the 1st time he admitted being in the wrong (another reason why his stuff is worth watching).
Aside from not getting any videos of the teardown, how do we know Linus returned the dtk?
I have nothing against him, I think he is objective in his videos, but this stunt... I don’t find beliavable that he actually thought he could have pulled this off.
Another point. Nowadays apple is more likely to let him publish the video, then go to legal war and shut ltt down as a result.
Bug-Creator
macrumors 68000
a) he does have a history of running his mouth and then having to climb back down
b) the legal matter isn't black or white as the whole "Apple still owns it hence it's stolen goods" may not work in Canada
That depends on wether Apple cares about a teardown going public, which IMO brings us back to the original question of what is in that DTK.
Also it seems his (non)action was proactive after getting some legal advice and not a the result of an Apple warning shot.
Remember back then the Intel transition kit was just an off-the-shelf Pentium4 board (with a custom BIOS) hacked into an PMacG5 case. Everybody who saw that knew that it had no direct connection to the HW that will be shipped later on.
So is this also the case with DTK? Just some surplus iPad-Pro board + hotglue and wires?
Or a fully designed PCB+cooling system just waiting for an ?14 to be dropped in replacing that A12x?
I assume the latter as they said in a video where about the same question was asked "we aren't even trying (with this A12Z)" and the CPU was not something they intended to ship (@ 48 min 16 sec.)
Wow, what a moronic thing to do. DTK is legally property of Apple, so they would be showcasing stolen property. With Apple's legal team, it could mean financial ruin for Linux Tech Tips and criminal charges on top of it.
There's probably not an iPad Pro board inside. It has a bunch of IO ports which an iPad Pro doesn't.
It's not a board which is going to have an A14Z dropped in to replace the A12Z. They can just do a whole new board when the time comes. It's not a big deal.
The thing people need to understand is that fully custom yet entirely throwaway PCB designs are common in the silicon design world. If you don't have to worry about making sure it's practical to manufacture millions of units, a relatively simple PCB costs a few man-months of engineering time, and perhaps tens of thousands of dollars to have a few built.
Compare that to at least hundreds and maybe thousands of man-years to design something as complex as an Axx SoC, and tens of millions of dollars to make the masks needed to begin silicon manufacturing. Compared to that, the cost of designing one or more completely throwaway PCB designs during silicon bringup and software dev is basically nothing.
This is why big drama over tearing down a DTK is a bit goofy. It'd be cool to see how they glued Mac-like IO to the A12Z, since I doubt it has HDMI out and ethernet and so forth, but it wouldn't tell us anything about what we're going to see in a few months.
Bug-Creator
macrumors 68000
Thats why I added "+ hotglue and wires"
Sure they can, but they also can/could use the DTK to test the PCB and cooling system prior to a mass release.
What we don't know is when they plan to release an ARMini and wether those plans had to be changed at some point.
As for HDMI/Ethernet and so on, the A12Z-iPad does have USB-C so that would be very simple on the HW side.
Or maybe that chip had it all along but functionality was never activated in SW.
I’ve heard on twitter that it’s basically the former. That it was a loud fan running constantly. Presumably just so the chip never throttles unlike an iPad.
aednichols
macrumors 6502
Yeah, that explains the lack of followthrough. I do like LTT’s technical content but some of their “engagement” tactics to draw attention are clickbaity. It quite evidently worked on me in this case!
Could be a deliberate tactic though. You post an announcement on Twitter, then back down and blame the big bad Apple. Free PR!
I wrote someplace else that the obvious workaround is to report the device "stolen". Then of course it ends up on some website totally disassembled.
But a good reason not to do this is not Apple being mad at you but that you lose the ability to port your apps to ARM. These development systems are too valuable to take apart just for photos
LOL chill breaking a NDA is not criminal. Hate it when people throw criminal everywhere when it's just a civil thing.
the8thark
macrumors 601
Apple can and will perma ban you from the Apple developer program if they catch you doing this. That's RIP you developing anything on any Apple platform forever. Not something that 99% of developers would ever risk.
We are not talking about breaking an NDA. The DTK is legally property of Apple that has been lent to a dev for a limited time. A third party obtaining a DTK without Apples content is pretty much tantamount to theft.
No it is not. It's breaking the lease contract that Apple and the developer has. The only point where it becomes theft is if Apple requests it back and the 3rd party withholds it.
If I rent a car and do not put a second driver on the contract, but let someone else drive the car (breaking the rental agreement), that person has not committed theft unless the company wants the rental car back and that person does not return it.