Intel Mac OS X Catches Up With Older Brother

RetrogradeMotion writes "Apple is now one step closer to the Intel transition. According to the OSx86 Project, a recently leaked installation DVD of Mac OS X 10.4.3 reveals that the Intel version is in sync with the PowerPC version - the two are now identical. Initially, "OSx86" was substantially behind its PPC counterpart, but the recent update makes it ready for the public. The article also notes that Apple has continued to learn from hackers' efforts to crack the operating system and has greatly strengthened the TPM protections."

Comments

"article"????

[winkydink]

It's a posting in a blog, which is a far cry from an "article".

Read the Fine Summary

[dduardo]

"The article also notes that Apple has continued to learn from hackers' efforts to crack the operating system and has greatly strengthened the TPM protections."

TPM protections = OSX locked to Apple hardware

Re:Read the Fine Summary

[vought]

TPM protections = OSX locked to Apple hardware

Anyone who has any allusions about cracking this scheme might be in for a surprise. After thoroughly reading the TPM spec, I think that if the OS is looking for TPM_Owner = Apple's Value and doesn't find it, it ain't gonna run.

Changing TPM_Owner isn't exactly trivial, as you have to set the value during manufacturing.

Re:Read the Fine Summary

[vought]

2)Hack the hardware so it lies.
Dude. I don't think you get it.

You can't change the TPM_Owner value in a TPM. The value is set during manufacturing. You have to BE the owner to CHANGE the owner. It's on a level of permission at least two levels away from userland.

Perhaps you can hack the OS so that it doesn't look for that value in hardware, but if Apple can do a reasonably good job of burying that check in the kernel and having the TPM verify the kernel's boot process itself, you won't be able to do that either.

For the same reason, installing the OS on a GenuineApple(TM) machine's disk and installing that disk into a computer that does not have Apple's TPM_Owner value won't work.

Re:Read the Fine Summary

[vought]

Chances are the TPM check will be part of the Install program and not the OSx86 itself.

No, it's part of the kernel - and has been since the first developer versions were sent into the wild. Fooling the installer would be easier, but still far from trivial if it's relying on the TPM to authenticate the machine's origin.

Look, I'm not saying it can't or won't ever be hacked, but from what I've learned about TPM, it's going to be a LOT tougher than anyone here is thinking.

Put another way: how much is your time worth? If you want to crack TPM protection on OS X x86 for the glory, then it doesn't matter; if you want to avoid paying another two hundred bucks for an x86 Mac, it'll never be worth it - I think that at least in the near term, getting around this is going to involve some soldering.

Re:Read the Fine Summary

[Senjutsu]

Sure will be fun playing with the BIOS on that thing, since that's the only thing it'll boot into in your config. Let's continue, shall we?

Full copy of Windows XP Pro (for closer feature equivalence) - $135 OEM from NewEgg. We're up to $985.

Now, I'm a developer, and Apple ships their full RAD development environment with every Mac sold. I'm going to need the same for my new Windows box, so throw on a copy of Visual Studio Pro - A whopping $700 from NewEgg. Now it's costing $1685 and we haven't even started talking about the iLife equivalents...

Cheapness is largely a matter of expected use.

Re:Read the Fine Summary

[Hiro Antagonist]

Er, where the hell are you finding 160G SATA drives for $60 and DL 8x DVD burners for $50? Try *doubling* the prices on those and you'll be reflecting reality, at least where I live.

$50 for a case and PSU? Not only is that going to be ugly as sin, but you're going to need a more powerful PSU if you decide that you want your homebuilt PC to, you know, turn on.

Basically, you've listed a bunch of bargain-basement components, at prices below anything I've seen at Fry's, and are telling me that this is equivalent to an iMac. Except it's much uglier, built with substantially shittier components, and has no OS (unless you install Linux or steal a copy of Windows). And no software. Oh, and you forgot the webcam and a good set of speakers, and a microphone.

Add in those components, and then add a 20% 'reality factor' to reflect the price that this stuff will actually cost (shipping, rebates that never show up), and you're right up there with the iMac.

Re:How does the protection work?

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

I think it stands for Trusted Platform Module. Basically, the software does a check on the hardware to see if it's genuine or not.

Re:Advice

[Duncan3]

Um, no.

Either ppc or x86 machines can produce FAT^H^H^Huniversal binraries.

Re:What I want from Apple

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I want an OS that I can multi-boot MS-Windows and Linux on that runs on commodity hardware.

Apple has said they will not try to prevent other OS's from booting on intel boxes they sell. As for commodity hardware, well that will depend, I suspect Apple boxes will, as usual, implement lots of hardware that does not yet work in Windows. Apple will prevent OS X from running on hardware they don't sell, since the OS and all the other software they produce is a loss-leader to sell hardware and they would be losing money developing the OS and all the free applications and selling it at current market prices. Also it would put them in direct competition with MS, whose illegal contracts make business pretty much impossible. Four superior OS's (to Windows) have already died trying to sell into that market.

Otherwise, "Mac OSX on TPM'd Intel" is just another way of saying "Mac OSX on a proprieTary PlatforM." Not interested.

That will probably be your opinion of Apple boxes. They will run OSX , Linux, and the BSDs just fine, but Windows is anyone's guess. Windows will probably run fine in emulation ala VMWare and the like, and their will probably be some sort of WINE like way to run Windows programs, but I would not count on MS letting it boot out of the box. Of course Apple's PPC platform was technically even more open and runs Linux and the BSDs as well. It was even produced by multiple Vendors without reverse engineering (unlike x86). So when you say , "proprieTary PlatforM" I assume you really mean "platform that runs Windows."

Re:Moving from the PowerPC to Intel... Bad Move

[be-fan]

The G5, at least, isn't that efficient. I just bought a brand new PowerMac G5 (dual core 2.3GHz). It's certainly a fast machine, but for almost everything I do, its slower than the 2.2Ghz dual-core Athlon X2 that's sitting next to it. For compiling code, it's about 70% as fast as the X2 system. For SciMark, it ranges from 95% as fast (for the small in-cache dataset), to 80% as fast (for the large in-memory dataset). For nbench,if you leave out one really awful score that's probably the result of a bad compiler optimization, its about 80% as fast. These were all done with GCC 4.0, of course. The 970MP SPEC benchmarks suggest that if I used XLC (and EkoPath on the X2 to be fair), I could probably get it to be 90% as fast in integer as the X2 and 25% faster in floating-point, but considering those scores is entirely an act of intellectual mastrubation, since most stuff on OS X is compiled with GCC or CodeWarrior anyway.

Of course, I love the machine to death, because of OS X, but the way I see it, Apple is going to gain a good deal of performance by moving to x86.

Re:Simply running OS X does not a useable system m

[be-fan]

The point is that the 5% of your peripherals that are supported are very common. Looking at the Intel HCL, I know I could easily dig up several of those cards (lying around the house). Most onboard AC/97 soundcards seem to be supported, which is what is used on the Mac anyway. The only sticky point is video (only Intel 900GMA cards are accelerated), and perhaps SATA (nForce4 SATA isn't supported, most PATA controllers are). Firewire and USB are standard EHCI and OCHI, so that's all good. What more does your average user have?

Re:not quite caught up

[be-fan]

Wow. You managed to regurgitate something without actually understanding it. There is no way the OS would be able to run 64-bit applications without being compiled for 64-bits. On Tiger (different from Panther), which can run 64-bit apps, the kernel is compiled as 64-bit code. Then, there are two versions of a couple of the libraries (System and Accelerate), one 32-bit and one 64-bit. What's missing is 64-bit versions of stuff like Quartz or Cocoa, which means that 64-bit apps are basically limited to the command line.

Re:not quite caught up

[Guy Harris]

On Tiger (different from Panther), which can run 64-bit apps, the kernel is compiled as 64-bit code.

Wrong:

$ sw_vers
ProductName: Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.4.3
BuildVersion: 8F46
$ file /mach_kernel
/mach_kernel: Mach-O executable ppc

Not "ppc64", just "ppc", and not "Mach-O 64-bit", just "Mach-O", unlike libSystem:

$ file /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.d ylib: Mach-O fat file with 2 architectures
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (for architecture ppc64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (for architecture ppc): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc

You don't need a kernel built in 64-bit mode to run 64-bit binaries in userland. If you think you do, you've made an incorrect assumption somewhere.

OS X: the 64-bit OS with a 32-bit kernel

[Wesley Felter]

Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger: Developer Overview. "...there is only one version of the kernel for all Apple hardware." (Which must be 32-bit in order to run on older hardware.)

64-Bit Transition Guide. "Because 64-bit applications will be supported using a 32-bit kernel, this 64-bit support will have no impact on most device driver or kernel extension writers."