Could Apple wall garden MacOS like iOS so you can't revert backwards?

[roadkill401]

Up until quite recently, Apple has used 3rd party chips that in a sense limits what functions feature and restrictions that they have implemented inside the OS. For iOS and PadOS they have a walled garden in you are stuck with loading only a signed OS that Apple controls and in some senses are stuck with even forced upgrades to new OS that you have no control over. They have shown that they can slow down or render a device useless to force an upgrade trade in to supplement sales numbers. Face it. Apple is a hardware company that gives you a software OS to use for free but doesn't make any money from that.

How easy would it be to put inside the M4 and beyond (or have inside all the M chips) the ability to reject an OS update if it isn't signed and authenticated by Apple like they do with iOS and PadOS?

This function would allow Apple to if you will, control the upgrade schedule of users to keep buying newer products at controlled intervals. Without the option to downgrade, Apple can make an OS slowly run less and less efficient for older Mac's by simply putting in new code inside the OS that requires a newer hardware versions to run efficiently. So like in the case of A.I. that it will require hardware functions inside the newest M series chip to run with full speed and will introduce speed reductions inside the OS for older chips that do not have that hardware inside. So your old M1/M2 chips for example will run all code now at 40% of the possible speed because the OS is eating up process power doing OS tasks that might no be of any use for the application being run, but will make the Mac seem sluggish enough to drive the user to upgrade to the latest M4 series chip to get that feeling of fast back. As you couldn't downgrade to pre-current versions of the OS you are then locked in with the speed of that OS with your version of chip. Lock out Linux or any other OS as that is controlled by the firmware and chipset controlled by Apple.

Just wondering.. would that be possible?

 

[BigBlur]

They certainly could. There's already a form of this in place now with Apple Silicon Macs, where it'll check if the software is signed/trusted before installing - the same way it does for iOS and iPadOS, except Apple hasn't stopped signing/trusting older macOS versions...yet.

Full Security is the default, and it behaves like iOS and iPadOS. At the time software is downloaded and prepared to install, rather than using the global signature that comes with the software, macOS contacts the same Apple signing server used for iOS and iPadOS and requests a fresh, “personalized” signature.

Startup Disk security policy control for a Mac with Apple silicon

To set security policy on a Mac with Apple silicon, Startup Disk has replaced Startup Security Utility.

support.apple.com

 

[Fishrrman]

Original question:
"Could Apple wall garden MacOS like iOS so you can't revert backwards?"

I'm thinking that they can and WILL do this at some point in the future.

They're just spoon-feeding the changes to us slowly (like the frog in the pot of water on the stove).

I'll even go so far as to speculate that at some point in the future, the [former] "Mac OS" will lose "the finder", and the Mac user will no longer have direct or easy access to the file system (in its entirety).

Consider:
Apple has already removed user access to the System files (Sealed System Volume). Eventually I would expect to see such restrictions "grow" to wrench more and more "out of the user's grasp".

Perhaps the Mac OS will even lose its name, becoming something like "Mac iOS".
Or perhaps just "iOS", period.

 

[cjsuk]

This won't happen. There are a huge number of professional and academic users who would march on Apple HQ with pitchforks and torches if they even thought about pulling this one. I am one of those people. Also most of us would probably switch to Linux overnight. On top of that universities would stop recommending macOS for their courses. Outside generic consumer space, Apple would be dead overnight.

The side effect of this would be that Apple would not be able to develop macOS and iOS related stuff on their own platform as well.

With respect to the system volume, you can turn off SIP and futz with the system files, then turn it back on again. I've done that before.

 

[ChrisA]

Up until quite recently, Apple has used 3rd party chips that in a sense limits what functions feature and restrictions that they have implemented inside the OS. For iOS and PadOS they have a walled garden in you are stuck with loading only a signed OS that Apple controls and in some senses are stuck with even forced upgrades to new OS that you have no control over. They have shown that they can slow down or render a device useless to force an upgrade trade in to supplement sales numbers. Face it. Apple is a hardware company that gives you a software OS to use for free but doesn't make any money from that.

Before Apple could lock up macOS, first they would need to port all their development tools to Linux. If they didn't Apple would be unable to continue creating software for ANY of their platforms. The same would apply to all the developers who create the apps in the App Store. All of Apple's ecosystem depends on macOS' ability to run arbitrary software, especially software that is all of 15 seconds old that you just finished modifying and now need to test.

Closing macOS would not only kill further development of macOS but also IOS.

That said, Apple does seem to be placing "training wheels" in macOS to prevent casual users from doing dumb things but in every case, there is an easy way to remove them.