Wow what a neat project, I have spent a lot of time recently working around vulkan on m1 machines with compatibility layers and while it's not a huge pain it does suck to miss out on some of the more powerful features of vulkan that the hardware is certainly capable of. I'm not keen on learning metal to bridge the gap and this is just what the doctor ordered.
This will be a huge boon for me, way to go!
Easy to imagine when you understand that this is developed to support hardware that is widely popular and that will be sold by a lot less in the second-hand market in a couple of years, and that this makes far easier for people that are currently stuck in this walled garden to experiment with free software.
True, but the M1 MacBooks have really taken a beating in price. And the Airs were already quite a good deal to start with, so they do still seem competitive (8GB RAM notwithstanding). Been using a base model air since launch, and unless I hit swap super hard (I rarely do) it's still great :)
There's not a whole lot of good options for decent ARM PCs and the M1s are legitimately pretty good machines, repairability aside.
Even if you can't repair them at least it's pretty much guaranteed they can at least have their OS upgraded to a libre one. There's going to be millions of them on the used market in a few years for cheap.
I have zero complaints about the hardware of my work provided MacBook Pro, very nice machine to use overall.
Are they the best bang for the buck? No. But Linux isn't just about getting as much as possible for as little money as possible. Not everyone wants to daily drive an old bulky ThinkPad because it's free-er. I'm happy with my framework but the battery life, keyboard and touchpad are quite inferior compared to my work MacBook. I wouldn't buy one for myself, but I can recognize it's still a nice machine and it's much better than whatever crap Microsoft is pushing out with its Surface line.
Nah, a ton of Linux fans seem to shill hard for Apple for some reason.
Sadly, Apple is doing ARM CPUs for desktop/laptop PC incredibly well, and at a cheaper price than just about any competitor.
Before the Macbook Pro M1 I would've hard agreed with you, but this sentiment no longer goes with the current ARM PC's that they're selling.
