Allegedly? Apple added a feature useless for themselves but something Asahi Linux benefited from greatly. Can't really make it more clear then this. Or do you expect Tim Cook to announce Asahi Linux in the next keynote?
Maybe the "allegedly" is misplaced, I hope my overall point is clear anyway. Apple haven't "officially" helped Asahi, the change could have be made by a single contributor to the kernel for example, or more of a "why not" change without regarding Asahi specifically. We (unless you work at Apple) don't really know at this point.
Marcan has been pretty clear in saying the same thing as I've said here. Apple doesn't have much use of such a feature themselves (apparently), but no communication was made of why the change happened. However small chance is that the change was made for other purposes, we simply don't know why it was made.
> "Okay, it's been over a year, and it's time to end the nonsense speculation."
> "I have heard from several Apple employees that:"
> "1. The boot method we use is for 3rd-party OSes, and Apple only use it to test that it works, because"
> "2. It is policy that it works."
> "Hacker News peanut gallery, you can drop the BS now. It's not an "assumption" that this stuff exists for 3rd-party OSes. It couldn't "be something internal Apple uses that could go away any minute". That is not how it works, it never was, and now I'm telling you it's official."
> "And this isn't even news because @XenoKovah (who invented and designed this entire Boot Policy 3rd party OS mechanism) already tweeted about this whole thing a long time ago, but apparently it needs to be restated."
So no, we do know why this was made and no, Marcan hasn't made the claim that you have.