Ambrosia Software legacy continues with Decoder Ring

[CC_333]

From what I can tell, the Mac (only?) version of DecoderRing is an Intel-native application that runs under Rosetta on Apple Silicon Macs. I wonder what will happen when we lose access to Rosetta given this news:

Apple details the end of Intel Mac support and a phaseout for Rosetta 2

Rosetta app translation features for Intel apps won't stay around indefinitely.

arstechnica.com

I don't really get Apple's stupid dumping of models that are only a few years old.

With some careful hacking, Windows 10 can run on almost anything dating back to the original Core2 Duos, and 32-bit versions of 8.1 can run on early P4s (I can prove it, too, because I've run it on my Northwood-based P4 PC).

Granted, Windows is a bloated mess, but jeez, if they can maintain backwards compatibility to the degree they do while still managing to support new hardware and software, why can't Apple?

Of course, all my griping won't change the situation.

However, a thought just occurred to me: What will happen when the first generation or two of AS Macs lose support? They're not like Intel Macs that can easily run Windows or Linux as more up to date alternatives, although, as I understand, there's a sort of half-baked Windows for ARM that is semi-compatible with AS, and there's at least a couple experimental Linux distros, so it's not entirely hopeless.

Hopefully this situation will improve in the future, preferably before it becomes a problem.

c

 

[adespoton]

However, a thought just occurred to me: What will happen when the first generation or two of AS Macs lose support? They're not like Intel Macs that can easily run Windows or Linux as more up to date alternatives, although, as I understand, there's a sort of half-baked Windows for ARM that is semi-compatible with AS, and there's at least a couple experimental Linux distros, so it's not entirely hopeless.

They'll run Asahi Linux.

The bigger question in my mind is this: what will happen when the first generation of AS Macs have their built-in root certificates expire? AFAIK, they can't install updates without a valid root cert.

If they can boot to recovery, possibly the date can be rolled back and then Asahi Linux installed, but is that possible? Anyone willing to crank their date forward 25 years and see what breaks?

 

[Forrest]

FYI, in February, 2026 Apple unexpectedly released a security update for OSX Catalina to address expired security certificates. This means most Macs that were released in 2012 can still be used in 2026. Here’s a link to the article from MacUser https://macuser.org.uk/2026/02/09/macos-catalina-10-15-8-update/

 

[adespoton]

FYI, in February, 2026 Apple unexpectedly released a security update for OSX Catalina to address expired security certificates. This means most Macs that were released in 2012 can still be used in 2026. Here’s a link to the article from MacUser https://macuser.org.uk/2026/02/09/macos-catalina-10-15-8-update/

Yes; this is a slightly different issue: since the final release of OS X 10.6 (so, the start of pure Intel-based Mac OSes that use the App Store and iCloud), Apple has signed the OS installers and updaters. Once those certificates expire (10 years?), you need to roll your date back in order to run them. From time to time, Apple has refreshed the certificates in older OS versions as they approach expiration, with the exception for some reason of OS X 10.9.

The problem with AS Macs is that they use a completely different architecture; Intel Macs come with baked in Apple EFI (and more recent ones with a TPM) from where you can load any OS you want; a Microsoft-style "Secure Boot" was never enabled.

With AS Macs, cryptographic keys are stored in the secure enclave, and then the boot ROM contains Apple's public keys used to validate other firmware components and the verified boot process. Each firmware and software component, including the iBoot and kernel extensions, must be signed with a valid (non-expired) certificate in the certificate chain. Unlike with Secure Boot, this can't be disabled.

The boot process therefore relies on Apple's online infrastructure for certificate verification. If the computer is offline and the boot key has expired, the computer won't boot. At all. And as cryptographic key formats progress, older Macs will become incompatible with the newer formats, just like we've seen with older web browsers and the modern web.

 

[LazarusNine]

The boot process therefore relies on Apple's online infrastructure for certificate verification. If the computer is offline and the boot key has expired, the computer won't boot. At all. And as cryptographic key formats progress, older Macs will become incompatible with the newer formats, just like we've seen with older web browsers and the modern web.

This is the first I’d heard of this, so thank you for explaining in such detail. It’s also really disappointing to hear, as I may (just) live long enough for this to be an annoyance. It’s a different issue, but it reminds me of the slight controversy around the most recent game consoles. If I remember correctly, Xbox Series consoles require an online connection for initial setup and authentication with Microsoft servers. If Microsoft ever shuts down those servers, the Xbox is effectively a brick. It’s frustrating to hear that my Apple Silicon devices will likely suffer the same fate. I tend to replace newer Macs, but we have a couple older Intel Macs knocking about with Linux on them.

 

[CC_333]

Gosh!

This is a very sinister form of planned obsolescence, isn't it?

It's one thing for software to expire (one can always find different, unexpired software (or software for which expiration is no issue) to install in it's place), but it's another altogether for the computer itself to expire such that it becomes bricked and useless.

This has bothered me about iPhones for years, and now, it seems, Apple has finally done it to Macs. While on Intel, they could only do so much because they didn't have control over the CPU's microcode and other particulars, but now, with the whole architecture under their complete control, it's pretty much hopeless.

In other words, all AS Macs have a built in, time-activated kill switch with no known override. Hopefully I'm wrong. Is anyone here with an AS Mac willing to experiment by setting their clocks say 30 years forward and then deliberately blocking internet access to see what would happen? If it does brick the computer, I wonder if it would be reversible by simply allowing it to connect to the internet, or of a more involved procedure is required?

Regardless – and I've said this before – I think that in the distant future, archeologists studying this period of human history will find it very difficult because all they'll see is a big blank in the record because all our hardware and software will have self destructed and locked out access to all our data (other than whatever info had been deliberately kept in some unencrypted and/or analog medium).

Of course, quantum computing will probably be a mainstream thing by then, so whatever encryption would take a present-day binary computer an infinitely long time to break could probably be broken by a quantum computer in a few minutes or less, allowing what is considered lost now to eventually become easily recoverable, so maybe the situation won't be so dire.

c

 

[adespoton]

Gosh!

This is a very sinister form of planned obsolescence, isn't it?

It's one thing for software to expire (one can always find different, unexpired software (or software for which expiration is no issue) to install in it's place), but it's another altogether for the computer itself to expire such that it becomes bricked and useless.

This has bothered me about iPhones for years, and now, it seems, Apple has finally done it to Macs. While on Intel, they could only do so much because they didn't have control over the CPU's microcode and other particulars, but now, with the whole architecture under their complete control, it's pretty much hopeless.

In other words, all AS Macs have a built in, time-activated kill switch with no known override. Hopefully I'm wrong. Is anyone here with an AS Mac willing to experiment by setting their clocks say 30 years forward and then deliberately blocking internet access to see what would happen? If it does brick the computer, I wonder if it would be reversible by simply allowing it to connect to the internet, or of a more involved procedure is required?

Regardless – and I've said this before – I think that in the distant future, archeologists studying this period of human history will find it very difficult because all they'll see is a big blank in the record because all our hardware and software will have self destructed and locked out access to all our data (other than whatever info had been deliberately kept in some unencrypted and/or analog medium).

Of course, quantum computing will probably be a mainstream thing by then, so whatever encryption would take a present-day binary computer an infinitely long time to break could probably be broken by a quantum computer in a few minutes or less, allowing what is considered lost now to eventually become easily recoverable, so maybe the situation won't be so dire.

c

The situation is slightly trickier than it might seem -- because communication over the Internet depends (currently) on the TLS specification -- your hardware reaching out to Apple is going to be using a TLS3 cipher (totally separate from the Apple public key stored in ROM).

Guess what TLS requires? Not only does its public key have to not be expired, but two computers communicating with this protocol have to have clocks whose time match within ~3 minutes of each other.

This means that if you crank your clock forward 30 years -- TLS is broken, since all the certificates are expired AND no other computer out there has a compatible date.

I'm not sure if Apple fails back to HTTP though -- I'd suspect not, as that'd be really insecure; all anyone would have to do to mess with your computer would be to somehow adjust your time (fake NTP signal?) and suddenly you'd be sending everything over HTTP where they could intercept and read/manipulate at will.