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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..."
A first look at Apple's Intel Mac (with photos)
By Ryan Katz, Senior Editor
June 22, 2005 - Apple's Intel-based Mac development kits have started trickling into developer's hands, Think Secret has learned.
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The Apple Development Platform ADP2,1, as the systems are officially designated, features 3.6GHz Pentium 4 processors with 2MB of L2 cache operating on an 800MHz bus with 1GB of RAM.
The Intel systems run Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger identically on the surface as ordinary Macs, with the exception of a modified Processor System Preference (from Apple's CHUD tools) that allows the user to toggle Hyper-Threading on or off. Apple System Profiler includes a new line under Hardware listing CPU Features; for the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 this comprises a rather lengthy list of technical acronyms: FPU, VME, DE, PSE, TSC, MSR, PAE, MCE, CX8, APIC, SEP, MTRR, PGE, MCA, CMOV, PAT, PSE36, CLFSH, DS, SCPI, MMX, FXSR, SSE, SEE2, SS, HTT, TM, SSE3, MON, DSCPL, EST, TM2, CX16, and TPR.
Apple's System Profiler reports the graphics card as an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 800. Inside the Intel Mac, DVI support for the video card is provided by a Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16. Oddly, neither Silicon Image's Web site nor Google turns up much information on the latter card, the latter yielding a single link to a recent Dell support forum posting.
The motherboard on the system is unmarked except for the word Barracuda. The system's internals are housed inside a case similar to Apple's Power Mac G5 systems but with a different configuration of fans.
Running Windows; Mac OS X on other PCs
Along with running Mac OS X, Windows XP installs without hitch on the Intel-based Mac, just as it would on any other PC, and booted without issue when installed on an NTFS-formatted partition. The only misbehavior sources encountered involved the video card. Initially, Windows refused to budge from an 800x600 setting on a 23-inch Cinema Display. Some prodding managed to get the screen to 1600x1200, but sources were unable to get Windows to take advantage of the entire screen.
Apple alluded to developers at its recent Worldwide Developer Conference that Windows should be able to run on Apple's Intel Macs.
As for installing Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, attempts to boot from the included Mac OS X for Intel disc resulted in an error message on both a Dell and off-brand PC. The message states that the hardware configuration is not supported by Darwin x86.
Sources have indicated that Apple will employ an EDID chip on the motherboard of Intel-based Macs that Mac OS X will look for and must handshake with first in order to boot. Such an approach, similar to hardware dongles, could theoretically be defeated, although it's unknown what level of sophistication Apple will employ.
Also uncertain is whether the Intel-based development kits seeded to developers already feature the EDID chip or whether the installation disc contains a less sophisticated installation check that simply seeks out one particular hardware configuration--the one given to developers--and will not install on other configurations.
No doubt that they will eventually get OS X to work on a generic PC clone. It will probably take some serious work around and then you have the driver problem. nobody can get an airport extreme to work on a mac right now with any version of linux, so driver's are goign to be a problem.
But since Apple won't officially allow it to install OS X on any other computer but a mac, nobody will ever be able to sell a computer with OS X pre-installed. So it will enver get mainstream and i'm sure Apple will have few sleepless nights because a few geeks have it running on their generic PC box.
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?
People people people....
:)
/etc/rc.
;)
We're all unix geeks here, right?
**crickets**
Okay, well even if not....
Go to the Darwin site. Download Darwin for x86, install it. Ta da! We have the BSD Subsystem.
Okay, get your shiny new developer mac, place it side by side with your Darwin machine. Check the passwd file, the passwd entry in netinfo, and groups. Make sure the uid's and gid's generally match up.
Export for nfs from you dev mac:
/ --alldirs --maproot=0
Now, mount that someplace on your darwin boxen.
Use cp -pr anything of interest to the darwin box. I would take special note of anything in
Kick the darwin box.
I filesystem comparison between a clean dev box and a clean Darwin box might me useful, diffs on text files to go along with it.
Provide me or any good hacker that, and we'll have an installer out in no time.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Intel's chips for 2006 should all have the 'Vanderpool' work in them, which improves hardware support for virtualization. This will make programs like VMWare, VirtualPC and Xen much faster.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
How many times does it have to be said? These machines do not represent the final products Apple will put up for sale to the public. These are a quick hack to get developers working on the Intel platform, nothing more. The real Intel Macs will use 2006-era processors and chipsets, will be legacy-free, and will almost certainly not use BIOS (the best possibility is EFI), and will probably feature some custom Apple logic on the motherboard somewhere to head off all the problems you're predicting.
That's one of the reasons people like to say Apple is secure. For remote exploits, they have a fabulous reputation of quick patches. For local exploits, they have an average (good, but marred by a few bad apples, like the sync bug).
But, MacOSX has always defaulted to all-services-off. So, you wouldn't see a worm targetting the AFP server making it very far on the net.
Apple's security is on par with most Linux distros. This does not mean it's OpenBSD. It means that it does have some bugs, but is highly resistant to most attacks. Apple has been able to be more lax about buffer overflows because of the PPC's architecture, which makes a classic buffer overflow more difficult. When they switch to Intel, we'll probably see them step up their local security policy to compensate.
And your comment, "Most of these are ludicrous! Look at how many remote vulnerabilities there are! Some are absurd! Didn't apple do ANY checking?" That implies that you are not a security person, don't really understand the vulnerabilities listed, and are trying to spread FUD. I count 5 exploits that are triggerable remotely (even if they are not going to disclose data and permissions remotely). Of course Apple does checking. That's why the thing isn't riddled with bugs, has awesome security features like a time sensitive, integrity-checking Keychain, and generally has a good set of secure, default settings.
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