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Leopard Already Hacked To Run On PC Hardware
PoliTech passed us a PC World link, noting that the newest version of OS X, Leopard, has already been adapted to run on a PC. "The OSx86 Scene forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple's new OS, without investing in new hardware -- even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple's terms and conditions. The forum is offering full instructions on how to install the system, including screenshots of the installation process. Not all the features of Leopard function with the patch -- Wi-Fi support, for example, is reportedly inoperable. Historically, Apple's likely next move will be to track down and act against those behind the hack."
Are these the same guys from the original hack?
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Apple uses EFI in Intel-based Macs instead of regular BIOS.
This is the same reason why you need BootCamp to emulate BIOS in order to boot Windows on an Intel Mac.
Obama 2012: our incompetent asshole is slightly less of an incompetent asshole than the other incompetent asshole !
But they do - at least a very broad range of PC hardware runs every build of Windows they make, for regression testing.
It's not as comprehensive, but they DO bother trying.
I am a registered ADC developer and so I had access to all the seeds. That was a god send for dealing with the new 64-bit Objective-C runtime but I also figured that since I had the seeds, well, why not see how compatible Leopard is with non-Apple hardware.
There are legit reasons to do it. For instance, a base Darwin system can be made out of entirely open source software. Until you start decrypting binaries or (given the DMCA) tell people how to do it, you're not breaking the law. Running binaries you compile yourself is also not breaking the law nor the license.
So I did some research into it and looked at the various hacked kernels that are out there as well as some of the available source patches. After doing some research on it I realized that a good bulk of the typical kernel patch is due to lack of the "/efi" node in the device tree. Well, boot-132 (the non-EFI bootloader) is open source and after a bit of hacking I modified it to look for the ACPI and SMBIOS tables and put them in the appropriate sub-nodes of the efi node.
Assuming the right processor (e.g. Core or Core 2) that's enough to get any kernel Apple has ever made to boot without modifying the binary or recompiling from source. Unfortunately I used a P4 as a test rig so I had to do a tiny bit of hacking. It's pretty easy since the source is available so you can just fix it and recompile. Or if the source isn't available (e.g. source for Leopard isn't yet) you can still quite easily patch the machine code to ignore the processor family.
Once you've got that the only thing between you and OS X is a way to get the kernel to decrypt the binaries. Amit Singh has illustrated the magic poem which is actually not the decryption but instead a secondary protection mechanism. In some earlier Leopard seeds, that mechanism didn't appear to be used anymore. The real decryption is two AES keys, also widely available. The interface between the kernel and the decryption kernel extension is public. That is, there's a function pointer variable in the source and basically you just write a function that does the AES decryption and then set the appropriate function pointer to the address of your function from your kernel extension's initialization routine. That's all I'll give away on a public forum though. And I'm not giving anything away here, it's public knowledge, right in the source code to xnu.
I post here not to tell people how to hack it but to illustrate that it's not some difficult scheme. I have a good laugh reading the various osx86 forums about how cool these hackers must be if they can crack OS X. It's not as if Apple tried to make it hard. I mean, putting the decryption hook in "Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext" is a pretty dead giveaway. The other good meme is the thought that the methods of hacking need to be kept secret so Apple doesn't figure them out. Believe me, if I can reverse engineer the hacks then I'm quite certain Apple has several people who can. If they even want to. I see no indication that anyone at Apple is trying to prevent hacks. They write code that works on their machines. If it happens to work on other x86 machines, it does. They haven't ever done anything to stop it.
2. Being indifferent to third-party hardware
3. Actively interfering with attempts to run on third-party hardware
Please excuse my ignorance in these matters, because I genuinely don't know. Is Apple doing #2, or #3? It's plausible that, as people claim, #1 interferes with Apple's desire to guarantee quality. But #2 and #3 should be essentially equivalent in terms of the quality that Apple can deliver for its customers, and hobbyists would be a lot happier with #2.
The problem is twofold.
Firstly: Apple is all about a brand, an experience if you like. It's a bit hard to explain to an IT crowd who are used to being able to mix and match what they like and don't mind too much if something breaks, but the whole point of Apple as a company is "sell elegant stuff which JFW". The "don't care if it breaks, I'll just fix it" customer mentality has never been particularly important to Apple.
If someone's experience of Mac OS is "oh, that's the thing the kid down the road installed on my PC and it never really worked properly", then it's very hard for Apple to get the message across that they sell elegant stuff which JFW.
Secondly: If Mac OS can be made by hobbyists to work well with non-Apple hardware, suddenly Apple finds that every PC OEM on the planet has just become an Apple-cloning company. Something similar almost destroyed Apple some years ago, they're not about to make the same mistake again.
Here is a chart comparing features of Leopard vs Vista...
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/27/leopard-vs-vista-feature-chart-showdown/
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Apple "recommends" you use their memory, but you can use any memory you want and install it yourself without voiding the warranty; see the standard Apple hardware warranty http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/cpuwarranty.pdf. Same applies to hard drives, video cards, etc.
The only exclusion is if you damage the machine while installing hardware, or if the stuff you are installing damages the machine somehow.
All is Number -Pythagoras.