i think i lose a bet
Jeff and I had a wager: would OSX x86 be cracked, allowing it to be run on generic hardware before it was released, or would it take until six months after the release for the crack to come out?
Well, I’m not sure who won. It took, what, like a month and a half.
February 16th, 2006 at 6:34 am
I don’t think either of us “won”, as this isn’t a very appealing crack.
See here:
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177400&cid=14717521
for reasons why, but essentially, this crack replaces the mach kernel, the Finder, the Dock, and a host of other pieces of OS X components with older, buggier versions of the Intel build of OS X. Sounds way iffy and not sustainable.
I think the real news is that Apple’s hiding poetry inside their TPM decrypted files:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/02/15/apple.poetry/
February 16th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Beta piracy and half-assed cracks aside, if Apple doesn’t plan to sell Mac OS x86 as a standalone, what’s their reasoning behind hindering the spread of their product? It would seem to me that there’s an entire market there that Apple would just be giving the finger.
February 16th, 2006 at 8:27 am
The rationale is: because it wouldn’t run “right”. Apple can’t provide drivers for *all* of the commodity PC hardware out there at this time, so if people were to try it on their PCs, they probably wouldn’t be able to get networking working, etc. Apple is all about the “just works” philosophy, so until they can get the x86 build of OS X working “right”, I don’t think they want it out in the wild.
However, they still don’t even have a serial number on their OS (or most of their products!) so they can’t be *that* serious about piracy.
…plus, who says they don’t plan to sell it as a standalone?
February 16th, 2006 at 10:09 am
Jeff’s right: the Macintosh experience is one where you open up the box, it says “bong” and you’re on the Internet as soon as the machine’s done booting. Then you put another ethernet and video card in, rebong, and now it has new capabilities. You can do that because Apple makes the hardware.
If you’ve gotta jump through hoops and do little pirouettes to make it work, it’s clear that it’s not Apple hardware, so they’re absolved of having to support the motherboard you found in the trash.
So, now I gotta make good on the desire I’ve had for years: to design and build my own Macbox.
First, I gotta make good on the desire I have to make a living, though.
February 16th, 2006 at 11:03 am
I appreciate the explanation(s)! The mental block I’m having with this theory is that I find myself writing this on an Intel system, complete with “Designed for Microsoft Windows XP” sticker on the front, despite running Fedora Core 3 (kernel-2.6.11-1.14). I know, totally unsupported, seemingly impossible, a miracle that each and every one of my various “Wintel-only” cards and usb devices are working, yet here I am. WEIRD
Looking around, the only things I’m really missing are iTunes, Quicktime, and Flash 8. HINT HINT
But no, I really *do* get the idea.
It’s just that when I’d originally heard of Mac on Intel, I had a vision of a world where I’d have the freedom to go to Target, walk past all the Microsoft software boxes, pick up a copy of Mac OS x86 for $330 (the going rate for XP Pro) and upgrade my totally-unsupported system - without selling a kidney ($1300) for an iMac.
Considering hardware compatibility, I reasoned that if they can create linux kernel modules for commodity PC hardware, then the most powerful minds at Apple are more than capable of doing the same thing for their operating system. No?
February 19th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Josh, I have no idea why you — or anyone else — would want to build your own Hackintosh. Ideologically, I get it, but realistically speaking:
First off: if you use a hacked kernel with your OS to avoid the keycheck, you’re stuck at one revision of software. No system updates, no security updates, nothin’. You are at the mercy of The Nerds On The Internet and their ability to continually foil Apple’s OS-level anti-piracy patches. Also, you could fall prey to the deadly SNOB32 virus I’ve been hearing so much about.
Second off: Go ahead, go price out some x86 hardware. If you can get a quality bunch of motherboard, ram, hard drive, optical drive parts all for *meaningfully* less than $499 — the price of a Mac Mini — I salute you. NOTE: Anything less than a $100 savings is not meaningful.
Third and last: note the lesson of the Sony PSP as a cautionary tale. One *used* to be able to run homebrew software on it, when the firmware was at version 1.5 or so. Now with the higher firmware, you need to run Grand Theft Auto, run a cracked save game, pat your head, rub your tummy, and then and only then can you run your own code. I would expect a cracked MacOSX86 to be pretty much like that — starting off easy to hack, but as the security holes get closed one by one, increasingly more of a giant so-very-not-worth-it P.I.T.A.
~jeff