Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Updates Platform Security Guide, Says Kernel Extensions Won't Be Supported on Future Apple Silicon Macs

Just makes the M1 less useful as far as I'm concerned. Make things too difficult and they are just dropped/ignored. I love the M1 but something as basic as Xbox Controller doesn't work properly. I don't know why Apple has been advertising adding "support" for PS5 and Xbox Controllers when they just don't work even on the Beta where they are "supported".

Windows has a million options to get controllers working on everything. I can't use a controller on Hollow Knight in the DRM Free or Steam versions. Looking online reports of only some buttons working and not others. Just an inconsistent experience. Never had an issue with Windows.

My primary Apple use is in the mobile space. The M1 Air is the second Mac I have ever owned. I don't want to be a troublemaker but in all the years I've been in technology of all types the M1 Air feels a lot like a fancy Chromebook right now. Many things I want to do on it just don't work and I have a Ryzen Windows laptop next to it.

Hoping in time software will catch up. Apple really seems to want everything in their store/sandbox. Which is how opensource things end up costing money because there is no free way to play.

Processing power doesn't do much when there is no tools to use or worse the only tools are expensive and aimed at businesses.

Virtualization = Subscription
3D Slicers = Ones that work are proprietary and the universal ones are likely months/years away.
Games = Limited Controller Support
Basic Essentials (SSH) = Paid Apps and Subscriptions
Things I've taken for granted = Putty, Cura, VirtualBox/Hyper-V, XInput, Drivers
 
  • Like
Reactions: 123, amartinez1660 and Morod
Phil A. said:
I have always found iSCSI very useful to connect to my synology NAS and the lack of a built in iSCSI initiator is a glaring omission for me.

Before Big Sur, I used the globalSan one.

With Big Sur, the writing has been clearly put on the wall and you have to jump through hoops to get it to work (plus it will kernel panic your machine if you shut down without ejecting the targets first)

As this is the only third party kext I use, I reluctantly decided to migrate to using SMB shares where I could and increased my local disk space rather than continue to invest in something that clearly has limited life left.

I continue to keep the somewhat forlorn hope that Apple will step in with a native solution (although I suspect it’s too niche for them)
Click to expand...

That hope faded many years back for me personally. It’s not going to happen.

There are only prosumers in the macOS space now. Many of my contemporaries have moved to Windows/WSL and/or have Hackintoshes (including myself with an 2017 XPS.)
 
  • Like
Reactions: adib, AlumaMac and Phil A.
Good that Windows, Linux, other UNIXes, PCs and Raspberry Pi's still exists and comes to the rescue.
Macs are becoming plain stupid consumer low tech computer devices, just like iPhones and iPads.

IF someday Windows, Linux & Co. goes that route too, we'll end with a huge skills shortage crash in the whole industry, but at the same time they will wonder how and why China & Co. leapfrogged.

Maybe people in here wake up some day, when they fully lockdown macOS just like iOS.
Security through obscurity is the right term here, or just pure greediness.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: Ulfric, minik, jdb8167 and 2 others
Surely, you'll always be able to load kernel extensions by turning off SIP and/or something similar, right? Apple uses kernel extensions for its own hardware, they can't just remove support completely.

I don't really care too much what macOS allows "normies" to do, just what I get to do on my machine without SIP and stuff.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Max48
Stromos said:
Just makes the M1 less useful as far as I'm concerned. Make things too difficult and they are just dropped/ignored. I love the M1 but something as basic as Xbox Controller doesn't work properly. I don't know why Apple has been advertising adding "support" for PS5 and Xbox Controllers when they just don't work even on the Beta where they are "supported".

Windows has a million options to get controllers working on everything. I can't use a controller on Hollow Knight in the DRM Free or Steam versions. Looking online reports of only some buttons working and not others. Just an inconsistent experience. Never had an issue with Windows.

My primary Apple use is in the mobile space. The M1 Air is the second Mac I have ever owned. I don't want to be a troublemaker but in all the years I've been in technology of all types the M1 Air feels a lot like a fancy Chromebook right now. Many things I want to do on it just don't work and I have a Ryzen Windows laptop next to it.

Hoping in time software will catch up. Apple really seems to want everything in their store/sandbox. Which is how opensource things end up costing money because there is no free way to play.

Processing power doesn't do much when there is no tools to use or worse the only tools are expensive and aimed at businesses.

Virtualization = Subscription
3D Slicers = Ones that work are proprietary and the universal ones are likely months/years away.
Games = Limited Controller Support
Basic Essentials (SSH) = Paid Apps and Subscriptions
Things I've taken for granted = Putty, Cura, VirtualBox/Hyper-V, XInput, Drivers
Click to expand...
Macs are going the route of pure consumer devices.
I bet one day you won't even be able to compile software on it anymore, and Apple will setup some fancy Cloud based infrastructure to allow future "iOS macOS Developers", Sorry let me call them "iOS and macOS Framework Puzzlers" to build software solely in the Cloud.
 
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: lifeinhd, Stella, Ulfric and 3 others
Wowfunhappy said:
Surely, you'll always be able to load kernel extensions by turning off SIP and/or something similar, right? Apple uses kernel extensions for its own hardware, they can't just remove support completely.

I don't really care too much what macOS allows "normies" to do, just what I get to do on my machine without SIP and stuff.
Click to expand...
Nobody will release M1 kexts if they can’t be used by what you’re calling „normies“; it is just too much work for the one OS release Big Sur. Rosetta is not working for kexts, therefore certain programs won’t run or only run without certain drivers or features.

I haven’t got the slightest problem turning off SIP in Big Sur, but if nobody actually writes the drivers for Big Sur (because you need advanced hacking skills to make them work with the next OS release) I’m at wits’ end...

H.
 
Helmlein said:
Nobody will release M1 kexts if they can’t be used by what you’re calling „normies“; it is just too much work for the one OS release Big Sur. Rosetta is not working for kexts, therefore certain programs won’t run or only run without certain drivers or features.

I haven’t got the slightest problem turning off SIP in Big Sur, but if nobody actually writes the drivers for Big Sur (because you need advanced hacking skills to make them work with the next OS release) I’m at wits’ end...

H.
Click to expand...
Well, just for example, I don't think Joergen Lundman is going to drop his Mac port of OpenZFS (which absolutely requires kernel access) just because it requires SIP to be turned off. And the type of person using ZFS on a Mac is going to be fairly technical anyway.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rjp1 and adib
Dang. As far as I'm concerned Apple hit optimal user-security with Sierra. The security 'features' since then have been decidedly inconvenient and made MacOS less usable. (My current grip is the needless complexity to install a 3rd party application onto an external drive)
 
Okasian said:
Not user-space programs per-se, but more fundamental protocols like iSCSI and third party iSCSI initiators (SMB/AFP at the disk level, not file level) won’t be supported anymore. (You cant format a SMB share with APFS for example.)

With kernel-space iSCSI, you can do things like having a constantly connected virtual hard disk, which is handy for iTunes, Lightroom, Plex and other use cases which require a lot of storage on a hard-drive-like /dev/ to ‘act like’ it’s physically present (constant TCP connection to disk, so always ON.) (Lightroom/iTunes doesn’t allow storage of huge catalogs/media over file-space - SMB/AFP - without symlink trickery for example, whereas you can buy a 10TB HD with a NAS and emulate 10TBs local storage over Windows, Elementary, other non-regressive UNIX-based OS's, handy for huge Final Cut projects without having a physical SSD attached etc.)
Click to expand...

Does this have what one needs? https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10210/

I have no idea of low-level programming, so I am genuinely curious how "ready" Apple is to offer good support for userland storage and custom PCI devices.

chucker23n1 said:
Well, if "reboot twice" is the new normal for a user experience, anyway.
Click to expand...

The "normal" should be that you don't have to reboot at all. I have no idea what that app is doing exactly, but they are obviously using the kernel extension interface.

Okasian said:
It doesn’t support enough relevant use cases, and that’s the problem (Feb 2021.)
Click to expand...

The success of the entire enterprise is predicated on Apple delivering flexible, fast, reliable and easy to use driver interface. I hope for Mac's sake that they know it and that they can deliver.

Since I am not a driver developer, would you be so kind to tell me what are the obvious still missing things?
 
leman said:
Gabebear said:
Apple is inching MacOS to full Mach, which would be awesome... killing kernel extensions before having third-party GPU support will be interesting. What is old is new again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
Click to expand...
There won't be any third party GPU support on Apple Silicon. Why would Apple sabotage the developer and user experience ecosystem they have been painstakingly bulding?
Click to expand...

I think forcing PCIDriverKit for all future graphics cards on MacOS could turn out great. Graphic cards have pretty awful drivers in general... they break most of the rules about good software design in search of an extra 1% performance.
 
  • Like
Reactions: amartinez1660
I wonder if this the reason why Apple is asking developers to adopt system extensions instead is because they will remove "Reduced security" in the future? It fits with the whole privacy and security thingy going on.
 
  • Like
Reactions: amartinez1660
smulji said:
How did you manage to come to that conclusion as a result of Apple removing kexts?
Click to expand...
Just look at macOS, it's *slowly and very carefully* moving in that direction.
If they abruptly cut the cords, users and devs will just rebel, they need to get used to these things first.

That's why they are slowly sanitising the UI, adding more and more security barriers, e.g. just like now with the kexts. Sure, You can still circumvent most these barriers, but one day they will fully pull the plug. They just can't pull the plug now, because they still can't offer a fully locked down platform which also includes a development environment that covers the development scenarios *THEY* find useful. These niche scenarios which does not make any profit, they won't care about, they are after the mass.

This all will serve their main goals which is: e.g. kill macos side loading, gain more mac app market control, push up the macOS wallet garden (30%). Invasion into health, payment and mobility is ongoing, that's a additional way to secure and keep the overall user base high and stable by interlocking different business types.

By that time, the high user base will force the devs to keep being their dev lemmings, just because the market will be there and too late to jump off, just like a vicious circle.
And they are really great at building unescapable, complex interlocked software/hardware solutions.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
  • Disagree
Reactions: dimittar, killerovsky, 123 and 5 others
mazz0 said:
Yeah, but iPads can’t run ‘em. I’m just saying that’s one thing I’d miss if they made MacoOS more like iPadOS. It was a tongue-in-cheek semi-serious response to that common accusation that MacOS is becoming iPadOS.
Click to expand...
Oh, gotcha.

I still haven't entirely given up hope that iPadOS gains a few more power user features. Gatekeeper, running VMs, window management, …
EvanBatter said:
A kext is also needed to connect to SMB fileshares from a NAS or Windows-fileserver. This was already broken in early betas of BigSur, was later fixed in the release and is now in the last two betas broken again. Seems they try to find an alternative solution for that. Hope they will not discard it.
Click to expand...
Seems they're still relying on a kext for SMB, unfortunately. (Maybe only on Intel?)
 
  • Like
Reactions: mazz0
Wildkraut said:
Just look at macOS, it's *slowly and very carefully* moving in that direction.
If they abruptly cut the cords, users and devs will just rebel, they need to get used to these things first.

That's why they are slowly sanitising the UI, adding more and more security barriers, e.g. just like now with the kexts. Sure, You can still circumvent these barriers, but one day they will pull the plug. They just can't pull the plug now, because they still can't offer a fully locked down platform which also includes a development environment that covers the development scenarios *THEY* find useful. The niche scenarios which does not make any profit, they won't care about.

This all will serve their main goals which is: e.g. kill macos side loading, gain more mac app market control, push up the macOS wallet garden (30%). Invasion into health, payment and mobility is ongoing, that's a additional way to secure and keep the overall user base high and stable.

By that time, the high user base will force the devs to keep being their dev lemmings, just because the market will be there and too late to jump off, just like a vicious circle.
And they are really great at building unescapable, complex interlocked software/hardware solutions.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. One more question: if your scenario plays out, why would there be any reason for one to buy an iPad Pro?
 
leman said:
If DriverKit supports enough relevant use cases, I don't see a problem.
Click to expand...
Some things are just fundamentally impossible to do outside the kernel, at least without killing performance. The one that's most top of mind for me is ZFS. You can't really do filesystems in user-space (FUSE works well enough, but it's slow), and certainly not a combined filesystem-and-volume-management monster like ZFS. And I really like ZFS.

But as I said above, I'm not too worried since I'm pretty sure you'll always be able to turn off SIP to load kexts. I don't think Apple can completely pull support for kexts... you really don't want to integrate everything right into the kernel.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Okasian
leman said:
The "normal" should be that you don't have to reboot at all. I have no idea what that app is doing exactly, but they are obviously using the kernel extension interface.
Click to expand...

Nope. While that macOS UI calls it a "kernel extension", it's not a kext but a plug-in in /Library/Audio.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back