Howdy, On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 22:55 -0400, Dan wrote: > >I don't want remarkably bad things like the treacherous firmware in > >the Apple Intel Macs > > Explain please? What's wrong with EFI? > The problem with EFI is that it give some remote party, which is Apple in this case, the ability to decide what OS I can run on my computer. There is no problem right now, but there could be. Let's say I decide I want to keep running Tiger, or I want to run Linux on my Intel Mac. Apple currently supplies Enablers to allow those OSes to boot. Maybe someday in the future, Apple pushes out an EFI update that allows only 10.5 or some version of Mac OS to run. There are several reasons this might happen, and they don't require Apple to be a bad guy. For example, the MPAA might sue Apple to stop Linux from running to stop some piracy threat and a court orders Apple to do it. The update and a new enabler would be put out and marked as a security update. If I applied them, my machine would stop booting the OS I wanted. So, the problem is that Apple is using a mechanism that could, at any time make my computer stop running the software I want to run. This is different from the old firmware. They could push out a new firmware for a New World Mac and maybe break some device driver, but I can get a fixed driver, or figure out how to put the old firmware back. EFI is cryptographically strong enough that a new version might turn my working computer into something I have no use for. I readily admit this is a theoretical problem, but it is a real one and there is no reason I should accept it as a customer. The term treacherous firmware is not my creation. It is used because this firmware makes the computer I own obey the wishes of some third party over my own. This sounds like virus like behavior, but in this case, every time an Intel Mac computer starts, it checks to see if Apple allows this software to run. I want my computer to run what I want, not what someone else wants me to run.
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