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First Look at Apple's Intel Developer Macs
xyankee writes "Think Secret is reporting that developers have started taking receipt of Apple's Intel-based Mac kits. Along with some specs and photos, the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch on the systems and that casually trying to install Mac OS X for Intel on a Dell doesn't work... yet..."
the site reports that Windows XP installs without a hitch
Perhaps this is part of the strategy? I wonder if they could run Windows on one core and OSX on the other.
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Now that Think Secret has confirmed that developers have the Mactel machines, will it only be a matter of time before OS X leaks out onto the Internet? Perhaps the previous stories were a little premature, but as soon as the protection mechanism on these machines is understood, it's only a matter of time.
Nowhere did Apple say x86, they just said Intel chips! So maybe there is a brand new chip that Apple will use from Intel.
Now the truth: Apple did say x86 and that, if you are interested in which specific Intel x86 chips Apple will use, check the Intel CPU roadmap for mid 2006 to get an idea.
Just trying to be efficient...
Other versions of Darwin will run on that Dell. I'm not familiar with OS X innards, but couldn't someone figure out how to replace the handshake-enabled Darwin with the Dell-friendly bits?
I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
Need ISO....
Really i'm suprised the images have not leaked yet...
since OS X is based on the BSDs there should be quite a few drivers out there that could be easily ported.
Evolution or ID?
I think you're missing the point - this is a developer's model. It's sole purpose is to enable developers to transition across to Intel based macs. Lets just wait until Apple start releasing actual Intel based products before complaining about the hardware?
Well by your logic you can build a Dell. But of course you can't, only Dell can Build a Dell! ;-)
So, the Grandparent was right. You'll be building a PC that runs MacOS.
Umm, the MAC is a bog standard computer, it's not just the same bog standard. Mac is not going to use OEM boards, you're not going to see a Tyan motherboard in there.
They don't throw shit on the motherboard that they don't need just to rice it out, Everything on your motherboard has a reasom for being there, and all of it is designed similar. Windows has to install on a lot of different flavours of hardware, so there's no big shocker when it installs on this one.
Ok this may have been suggested before, but:
If wine runs on all x86 unix-like OS's, and OSX is unix-like, will wine run on OSX-86? It would open up a very large market for apple without having to invest too much money. They will need to do some tricks to get it to use native widgets and stuff, but that's not impossible to do.
The downside is that the better wine works, the better the adware/spyware works on it too. I am probably not the only one to infect my wine IE install with ad/spyware.
What works for OSX will maybe also work for linux. There are already ABI's to make use of executables compiled for *BSD, so maybe OSX-86 binaries will run on linux soon too.
(yup wishfull thinking and pie in the sky...)
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I doubt Apple would care too much. They make money selling hardware. If you bought an Intel Mac just to run Windows on it, it's your loss, not Apple's.
Even so, Apple probably won't do anything to make it easy for those who want to run Windows on the MacIntels. They've said that they won't prevent, it either.
It's probably simply not an issue.
The reverse though, running Mac OS X on PCs, now there's a subject they probably worry about a lot :-D
But just how "normal"? Sure, it's enough to get NTLDR going, but can you install DOS on it? I didn't think that the NT/2K/XP boot process used too much of BIOS functionality. I'm pretty sure that once the kernel is loaded, most or all of BIOS is ignored.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I'd be more interested in them reviving Yellow Box. Use the Mac as a development platform for deployment on Windows. If they can encourage Windows developers to use Macs (or even Yellow Box on Windows) then it suddenly become just a matter of a recompile to produce native Mac apps, which could be a huge benefit for OS X adoption.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why would you ruin a Porsche by putting a Yugo engine inside?
Actually, with the earlier 911's it was quite common to put in a beetle engine temporarily while the original was taken out for service/repair.
Think of these "Apples" as test-drivers driving a Porsche chassis before the engine is finished.
I can't find my link at the moment, but there is already a group set up that has purchased a kit and is selling testing services. (You ship them your code/app, and they test it for you.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I don't get this argument at all. The few slashdotters are the ones who will run OS X on their x86 boxes just because they can, but plenty of other people will want to because it's a good idea. People such as: Mac users who don't have unlimited disposable income. PC users who might be interested in running OS X, but not enough to buy new hardware. Basically, anybody who would ever want to run OS X, but isn't obsessed with Apple's shiny/white hardware. I don't expect Apple to cut their pricing premium for Mactel hardware, but it would be a good idea if they're worried about revenue lost to generic-PC OS X. They could also change the way OS X is sold/licensed, so that there isn't quite so much incentive to run OS X on a generic PC. Or maybe they have some killer hardware feature which will only be available from Apple. But so far, I haven't seen any good reason why anyone would want to buy an Apple Mactel box if generic PC OS X is reasonably easy.
I'm not a smorgasbord.
will a intel mac run longhorn? Apple probably doesn't care if it will run XP since that will be old news by the time the entire apple line is converted to intel
I think that a lot of people have forgotten that Intel didn't really have a plan to get anywhere. Shrinking the process doesn't buy you the world, and that was all they were doing.
Intel has ditched their own 64-bit platform in favor of AMD's, they have essentially reached many material limits in their process, they backpedaled to the PIII for the current Celeron and Pentium M designs, and their fake-dual-core designs are pretty lackluster also.
Apple has problems with IBM advancing the PowerPC and producing enough of them to give Apple a very good image in the processing power area. Sure...the PowerPC might have a lot more room to grow (and other such arguments), but if you can't get them fast enough for demand...you have a problem. And with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony looking to the 970 and the Cell for their new consoles...supply wasn't looking better for Apple.
Intel is gaining new life with dual and quad-core designs that Apple has property rights over. Intel is also getting new VPU designs. Lo and behold they have already announced new processors with some of these design changes in them, and I bet Apple will use them in their new machines.
Apple get a product line that doesn't have the shortcoming concerning clock-speed envy. They get Intels successful marketing. And Apple gets a company that can meet processor supply demands. In addition Apple has a very smooth transition plan with fat-binaries for new applications, and Rosetta to run old binaries on the new systems.
They have obviously had this on the back burner for a long time. I personally think this is win-win for both Intel and Apple.
And additionally for us consumers and professionals, we may get a slightly cheaper machine...but will definitely get lower cost items like video cards, controllers, etc. that don't have to have special firmware for PowerPC platform.
It's not only about the money. Literally for YEARS I went to the Apple web site and tried to make a decision about what kind of Macintosh to buy. You know why I hadn't made a decision in all that time? Because Apple sets up their machines on a scale where if you want particular options, you must upgrade to the next level and spend more money on a bunch of other options you may not even need.
iMac had a good processor and a decent video card, but was not a case with expandable PCI slots. So look at the desktop, if I don't want a shitty video card, I have to upgrade the CPU and hard drive.
Here's the thing. Apple is using all commodity parts in their new systems, apparently, but are going to rig them up somehow so that you can't just run the OS on another machine with essentially the same parts. Their components are going to be the same as any other x86 components. I guarantee you that some motherboard manufacturer will come out with a board that uses the exact same commodity parts as a new Apple, but won't run OS X until someone comes out with the "hack". You get the hack, and suddenly you've got the same hardware, all the drivers work, and you start adding in the components you want.
Regular businesses will not be doing this, but frankly regular businesses tend to run Windows anyway, and if they ARE a mac shop, they are sufficiently zealous that they will continue to buy macintoshes.
Who WILL build their own macintosh computers are people that for years have wanted a Macintosh but APPLE has never offered them the options they wanted.
Incidentally, I finally did buy a Macintosh, a Mac Mini. Even though it wasn't everything I wanted, it came without extra crap I already had, and was cheap enough that I was willing to sacrifice to get on board with OS X. This should be a lesson to Apple, since it does appear that they are getting interested in that market demographic.
Hold the delete key down at boot. It's a Phoenix Bios!
Now if you want to get really freaky, go into the 'boot' menu and turn off the quick and silent boot options. This will display the bios information at boot...
The bios at boot will display the same serial number that is on the chasis sticker, and another secondary id string. It also indicates the system as a Apple Transition Dev system.
Now on the first time you boot it, for 2 seconds you will see 'Darwin x86' on the screen - but we all figured that out all ready.
What if one tried installing on a machine with chipsets supported by Darwin x86, e.g. something already running Darwin? I'm curious if it's actually a Darwin issue or if it's some other check that the install does.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
That's not correct -- Apple designed the G5's chipset, including the superfast memory bus that almost equals the Opterons'.
Apple engineers may change the name to G5, and slap their logo on the technology, but you need to go look up the POWER achitecture.
The G5 is nothing more than a IBM designed CPU, from the original IBM POWER designs, and is identical in operation to the IBM POWER designs which Apple has NO hand in...
This is why Apple is fed up with IBM's slow migration to the 3ghz version, and is moving to the Intel architecture.
If Apple was 'designing' the G5 or PowerPC CPUs, they would move them to the 3ghz range, instead of waiting for IBM to do it for them, and getting upset because it isn't happening.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerpc
Okay, wow. I haven't had a chance to look since this morning, but I started a war here. Eep.
My thought was that a gpu driver will exist in the darwin-x86 release, as well....they need video cards too, so the little-endian cpu and gpu issue is taken care of there, as is the PC Bios. Chipset as an extension is resolved.
The only remaining issue is the 10.4.2's implementation of quartz. My understanding up until now is that if the OS has the proper kernel drivers, and it understands the OpenGL instruction set (which man do), and it is an AGP card (unless you hack the xml file stating to use PCI instead), AND you have more then 16MB of RAM for Quartz Extreme, you're ready to go.
What part of this am I missing? Remember, I'm an administrator and network designer, not a hardware designer, and I just barely pass as a programmer here.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Personally I got an original Rev A CRT iMac gratis, and it grew on us a ton.
I'm currently typing on a 600 Mhz Graphite CRT iMac right now. And it's sitting on a plywood desk in the kitchen. It's been my wife and my internet computer since it was new. And I have no need to upgrade it any time soon. (Running OSX 10.3, btw)
These old iMacs are good machines, and I haven't had any problems with mine yet. That's why we love it.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
My thought was that a gpu driver will exist in the darwin-x86 release [...] What part of this am I missing?
You're missing where the video driver lies and how it works. Darwin includes (or can use; I don't recall if they're actually bundled) X11 (x.org or xfree86) video drivers. Those drivers are specific to X11, and bear no relation to the video drivers that are used for Aqua/Quartz/QE on MacOS X.
(Well, if they're vendor-provided drivers there's probably some code overlap, but the driver interfaces are completely different, and that's what counts.)
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Bingo. Add to that, Apple isn't going to introduce a machine that can't be sold as "the BMW of computers." Apple probably has already struck a deal with Intel that will allow Apple to be the first to include "The Newest Latest And Greatest CPU EVAR" (for the next two or three months) into their initial offering.
Can anyone who's gotten their hands on one of these tell us a bit about the BIOS?
I know that we're losing some of the Open Firmware features, but nobody has mentioned if we're losing Firewire Target Mode. Hope not, I use it all the time.
And I know this is silly, but what is the boot like? Is it "mac-like," or are we treated to flashing screens, memory counts and hardware charts?
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.
Up until after Rhapsody DR2, Apple shipped both x86 and PowerPC versions of Rhapsody, as well as the Yellow Box runtime and developer tools for Windows. The advantage of Apple shipping Yellow Box for Windows again would be that they could sell Macs to developers, the developers could write software for Windows (the largest market), and the OS X port would be free, generating more OS X software.
Red Box, while never released, was a speculated Windows emulation layer inside OS X. Red Box was abandoned when Apple decided not to release Rhapsody (OS X) for x86. It might be brought back with OS X86 (assuming it is still being developed internally, which seems unlikely), and this is what the grandparent poster was talking about.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well yeah, that'd be great, I'm sure.
...but is highly resistant to most attacks. ...has awesome security features like... ...generally has a good set of secure, default settings...
It is great! Thanks for recognizing. Try running RHEL 2/3 or Debian Woody/Sarge sometime. In a bad month, I'll have to update 1 or 2 packages, usually ones I don't even need to be there (telnet, etc).
blame the Apple Fanboys who preach absolute security, because they're creating unfair expectations.
Wow! This is what I'm trying to do! Look at some of these things I've seen lately:
1.
2. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely...
3. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs...
4.
5.
6. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches.
the one blown totally out of proportion because successful remote code execution was extremely difficult?
I wasn't aware the vendors like Apple could blow off vulnerabilities because they were hard to exploit.
The last time I checked, some people on Full disclosure spend hundreds of hours on just one exploit.
The point is: you claim Apple has a "fabulous reputation" - I say they don't. They're no different than everyone else. This negates your "fabulous" claim, which is obviously overzealous.
I don't see any special "poster child treatment" as far as RH, Gentoo and Debian are concerned. Maybe you're taking this too personally - maybe I'm misinterpreting it?
Absolutists like you piss me off. OSX can't have good security.
People who claim OSX has awesome security piss me off. I don't consider myself an absolutist, but if you do, that's fine. I just like to see facts spread around rather than the same old OSX astroturfing that we're seeing so much of lately.
Karma be damned!