Submitted by Apple is experiencing a widespread outage today, with a wide range of the company’s services and apps down or experiencing issues currently.
Affected services and apps include the App Store, iCloud, Siri, iMessage, iTunes Store, Apple Maps, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, Apple TV+, Find My, FaceTime, Notes, Stocks, and many others, according to complaints across Twitter and other platforms. Apple’s developer website is also inaccessible due to server issues.
Another great day to be a Linux user.
True, in Desktop Linux you avoid these kinds of issues by not having access to these kinds of services (because all you get is 720p Netflix).
Look, I don’t like online services that have proprietary APIs either, much less online services that have proprietary APIs and use them to impose all kinds of OS-level DRM, but the “solution” Desktop Linux provides (which is to avoid all of these services or make do with lower resolutions) is plain ridiculous. Because there is demand for those services.
Also, Apple users aren’t obligated to use any of those services, just like Windows users don’t have to buy a single piece of music or a single movie from the Microsoft store (I personally haven’t). But the modern (post-millenial) generation hasn’t been raised with torrents (unfortunately so, if I may say), so they want to have access to these services, and so does the older generation who can’t torrent. So, good luck selling them on Desktop Linux and 720p Netflix.
kurkosdr,
Tell that to netflix, it’s their policy after all.
Did you forget about the walled garden? Apple literally obligates users to use apple services and actively blocks owners from using alternatives. Android owners can disable the restrictions, but IOS owners cannot.
Whaaa? How can this be done on MacOS considering you can download any .dmg you want?
I was replying to Thom proposing Linux as an alternative, so I assume we are talking about Desktop OSes.
BTW iOS is something I am actively avoiding in my life.
kurkosdr,
Ok. It wasn’t clear to me that your statement about apple was only referring to macs.
I don’t think it’s related to this outage, but several months ago another apple server outage affected macs specifically causing users to experience trouble running their local software:
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/11/13/apple-server-outage-makes-mac-apps-hang-on-launch/
Neflix doesn’t preclude Linux from 1080p, it’s just they want you to use Google Chrome. I use an application called QTWebFlix which is a Chrome webapp that serves me 1080p Netflix on Arch/KDE. I also use YouTube, Nebula and whatever video service in any resolution my devices support.
You can say that you don’t have to use those Apple services on Apple devices, but that’s quite hard (on an iPhone you can’t even side-load apps) and by the time you do you get dependent on them.
And yes, in Windows, you do absolutely need to log into a Windows account to use your device fully.
iNotify,
I don’t have an account to test with. While many people have had success in using plugins or software, I think that all of these solutions work by tricking netflix into thinking you are using a different browser/OS.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/h781jk/why_is_netflix_limiting_firefox_to_720p_or_less/
By observing the restrictions that netflix imposes on unmodified browsers it seems that the limitations are quite intentional, no matter how flimsy said detection is. That’s Hollywood for you.
How many people actually watch Netflix on their PCs these days? Even in 2018, TVs where 70% of devices. I bet that now this is even more crushing against any other device.
Watching Netflix on a PC is their lower of the lowest priority. And, AFAIK, Prime Video, HBO Max, and others has 1080 on Linux, since Widevine DRM do run just fine on Linux. Absolutely nobody know why Netflix don’t support 1080 on Linux other than simple pure very low priority for browsing watching, and PC watching, as a whole (that happens to be a shit experience on any platform).
Another great day to be a Asahi Linux on M1 user. My Mac mini is purring along nicely with the official Asahi installer. Up next, OpenBSD for even saner computing!
But Linux on M1 Macs doesn’t even have GPU acceleration. No offense intended, but I never understood why people run Linux on M1 Macs. Intel Macs make for good Linux boxes because the open drivers guarantee hardware support (at least for the essential things), so buying Intel Macs (and paying Mac prices) and then using them as Linux boxes kind of made sense.
But paying Mac prices for an M1 Mac and running Linux on them with worse hardware support than a PC?
kurkosdr,
A lot of linux users would rather use more efficient ARM CPUs over x86 ones especially for mobile devices. Windows ARM laptops run UEFI, which would have been ok for linux except that MS locks them down so they can only run windows 🙁
Of course few manufactures really want to cater to us because our numbers are too small, but regardless the interest in M1 macs for linux is one of unmet demand, but also that the M1 is a high performer.
Of course, there’s a serious risk of apple taking steps to block linux, but for the time being these are probably the best ARM laptops available.
“Windows ARM laptops run UEFI, which would have been ok for linux except that MS locks them down so they can only run windows”
Is this a philosophical thing, or can it be made to work with the RedHat SecureBoot certificate?
Also, whatever gains you are making on the CPU side, you are losing them (and then some more) due to the need to draw pixels one-by-one using the CPU and do all the rendering on the CPU due to lack of GPU acceleration.
kurkosdr,
That’s a good question, I don’t remember the exact wording of the certification requirement. I’ve done a search for running linux on the surface pro X and while it appears that many people have attempted it I don’t see any success stories. I know the security on some of the older ARM models was cracked, but that’s different. Many threads end up suggesting WSL2 instead.
If anyone has succeeded, please post a link since I’d like to read up on it.
BTW the restrictions aren’t always just “philosophical”, I actually have a specific distro that I like to run. I came across a secure boot locked x86 laptop and neither debian nor my own distro would boot due to secure boot restrictions. Ubuntu did however. Some may say “who cares” because they’re not in this boat, but I’m very annoyed that a monopolist gets to exercise secure boot control over owners…grr.
Yes, you make a valid point and I think that’s a long term goal. Understand that as much as it sucks that the M1 GPU needs to be reverse engineered before it can be used, that’s pretty much par for the course for all these ARM platforms. Nobody thinks this is ideal, but sometimes there is no alternative when manufacturers don’t cooperate.
One comment about using a system without acceleration, the vast majority of productivity applications don’t use any acceleration at all even on systems where it’s available. Obviously if you are gaming or streaming, the loss of GPU acceleration will be more problematic for you, but otherwise it isn’t the end of the world.
It’s a work in progress. Work can’t be done to bring full Linux support to M1 Macs without buying an M1 Mac. GPU acceleration is under heavy development and is pretty far along according to the devs working on it (Alyssa in particular). Just because we early adopters can’t see it in the alpha release doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
In other words, imagine in 1993 if someone complained that Linux on x86 didn’t even have proper GPU drivers and Linus said “you know what, you’re right, why even bother with continuing to make Linux?” Give it time, it will get there.
But Linux on M1 Macs doesn’t even have GPU acceleration. No offense intended, but I never understood why people run Linux on M1 Macs. Intel Macs make for good Linux boxes because the open drivers guarantee hardware support (at least for the essential things), so buying Intel Macs (and paying Mac prices) and then using them as Linux boxes kind of makes sense.
But paying Mac prices for an M1 Mac and running Linux on them with worse hardware support than a PC offers what benefit exactly?
It’s a great day to be a user of ANY other platform than Crapple right now.Lets see if they blame th eRussians on this one. LOL
“eRussians”
Surely you mean iRussians !
Using GNU/Linux on desktop is always a vise choice. Still in this context i would say that Nextcloud is a viable alternative to iCloud. That is when the cloud services are down much less people are affected by it. Due to one or two clouds being down in contrary to the sky shutting down completely.