Item — HN Reader

> Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips

Is it possible to buy a compatible M-whatever Mac and install Linux on it without network access, without it phoning home to Apple for permission?

Sincere question since I have only used one Apple Silicon Mac ever, and it was a work machine so I never tried Asahi on it. I am curious about the privacy implications of non-macOS support.

1 comments

Hmm you know I’m actually not sure. I think at least currently you have to do the install from macOS so I guess you have to set it up once at least, but I’m not sure if that actually requires internet access.

I so know that once you have Asahi installed you never need to boot into macOS again if you don’t want to and don’t require network checkins or anything like that to keep using it.

Also unlike Windows 11, it’s trivial to set up macOS without ever creating an account with Apple, so you don’t have to give them personal info or even an email or anything to do the initial macOS setup.