Boot Camp Assistant (app) is STILL on my MacBook Air Silicon. Why?

[Mr$tone]

I bought a MacBook Air Silicon and used the system software to make it identical to my MacBook Air with Intel.

Now I have the Boot Camp Assistant app on my Silicon Mac. Is that normal even though Boot Camp can’t be used on Silicon Macs. It seems impossible to delete the app.

Did the app get installed from my Intel Mac? Why wasn’t the system smart enough to exclude it since it’s not supposed to be on my Silicon Mac?

Anyone know how to delete Boot Camp Assistant from a Silicon Mac?

 

[Acidsplat]

It's installed by default even on fresh M1 Macs

 

[Mr$tone]

It's installed by default even on fresh M1 Macs

Ok. Thank you for letting me know.

Any chance you know why that is (I mean, Boot Camp doesn’t work with Silicon Macs).

 

[w0lf]

The OS is the same between Intel/ARM machines.

Intel machines have the iOS installer app as well as the obviously unnecessary arm slices for every single app.

Technology doesn't work the way you think it does, if you think every release is tailor made for for your devices and excludes 100% of un-needed files.

You can not delete system files on Big Sur or newer, which is required for M1 machines. Why can't you just ignore the app? Nobody is forcing you to open it or even look at it for that matter.

 

[Acidsplat]

The OS is the same between Intel/ARM machines.

Intel machines have the iOS installer app as well as the obviously unnecessary arm slices for every single app.

Technology doesn't work the way you think it does, if you think every release is tailor made for for your devices and excludes 100% of un-needed files.

You can not delete system files on Big Sur or newer, which is required for M1 machines. Why can't you just ignore the app? Nobody is forcing you to open it or even look at it for that matter.

That doesn't fully explain why Boot Camp Assistant is there, because the M1 Macs use .IPSW files to restore their firmware and OS like an iPhone or iPad.

The installer for Intel machines is completely different than the new machines so they easily could have removed it from the M1 installer.

 

[w0lf]

That doesn't fully explain why Boot Camp Assistant is there, because the M1 Macs use .IPSW files to restore their firmware and OS like an iPhone or iPad.

The installer for Intel machines is completely different than the new machines so they easily could have removed it from the M1 installer.

An .ipsw is the equivalent of a .zip file it's just a compressed archive.

Just because M1 machines restore the OS via a .ipsw doesn't change the fact that they are installing the same Big Sur as on Intel Macs.

 

[Acidsplat]

An .ipsw is the equivalent of a .zip file it's just a compressed archive.

Just because M1 machines restore the OS via a .ipsw doesn't change the fact that they are installing the same Big Sur as on Intel Macs.

That's not how that works at all.

 

[w0lf]

That's not how that works at all.

How so...?

IPSW - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The .ipsw file itself is a compressed archive file (similar to a Zip archive) containing three Apple Disk Image files with one containing the root file system of iOS and two ram disks for restore and update.

--

The software on the M1 machine is the same as on an Intel. Apple has just compiled their entire OS as Universal Binaries, with ARM and x86 instruction sets.

If you're on an M1 it uses the ARM slice, if you're not then it uses the Intel slice. Go ahead and run `lipo -archs /path/to/exec` on any system binary, they're all Universal.

% lipo -archs /System/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
x86_64 arm64e

% lipo -archs /bin/bash
x86_64 arm64e

% lipo -archs /System/Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant
x86_64 arm64e

At some point in the future when Intel is legacy they will stop compiling for x86 and probably remove system components that are not used on Apple Silicon.

 

[Mr$tone]

Why can't you just ignore the app? Nobody is forcing you to open it or even look at it for that matter.

Relax. It was just an innocent question. I do however think it’s confusing that an app from Apple that isn’t compatible with the current Mac is installed and can’t be removed.

That’s all—relax!

 

[iStorm]

That doesn't fully explain why Boot Camp Assistant is there, because the M1 Macs use .IPSW files to restore their firmware and OS like an iPhone or iPad.

The installer for Intel machines is completely different than the new machines so they easily could have removed it from the M1 installer.

The .IPSW file is just one way to restore the OS on an M1 Mac. Another way (and probably the more common way) is actually using the method we're all familiar with -- the bootable USB installer. The same exact installer created using the 'createinstallmedia' command can be used for Intel Macs and M1 Macs. This is also the method Apple has in their help articles to reinstall macOS.

 

[techguy9]

Ok. Thank you for letting me know.

Any chance you know why that is (I mean, Boot Camp doesn’t work with Silicon Macs).

My guess is that they already have the drivers ready and are waiting on the OK from Microsoft: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...on-m1-macs-is-really-up-to-microsoft.2270331/

 

[TETENAL]

Apple could have easily adapted the installer to omit the Boot Camp app on M1 Macs. Even a simple script to delete it after installation would be better than having a useless app confuse users.