“The Apple Developer kit version of MacOSX x86 has indeed been fully cracked! An anonymous source has sent us a video showing MacOSX x86 booting natively on a PC notebook Mitac 8050D (Pentium-M 735/1.6GHz),” MacBidouille reports. “The boot phase is rather fast, and the error message at the end is simply due to an right/authorization error due to the kext allowing PS/2 support.”
MacDailyNews Note: Recently, reports that Apple is using an authentication scheme using a TPM chip (Trusted Platform Module) in their Intel-based developer Macs to prevent Mac OS X from running on generic PCs.
MacBidouille also has a “second video showing the boot on the same hardware, the permission error was repaired. We can see the “About this Mac” panel, Apple System Profiler and CHUD prefpane showing information on the processor (frequency, cache etc…).”
Full article with link to the movies here.
MacDailyNews Take: Has “The Dvorak Prophesy” begun? (ominous music, see relaed article below). Or perhaps it’s “The Harrell Prophesy?”
It was Jeff Harrell who wrote for The Shape of Days on June 8, 2005, “There is nothing at all that prevents the version of Mac OS X that runs on the developer transition machines from running on any PC with compatible components… I estimate that we’re down to a matter of hours before Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel hardware is available for download on Internet software piracy sites and peer-to-peer piracy networks… If I can think through this stuff, Apple’s management can think through this stuff. This is the most awe-inspiring stealth marketing move I’ve ever seen.”
Harrell continued, “According to reports, Apple’s bundled iLife applications, major selling points for the Mac operating system, are already Intel-native and run at full speed… Given Apple’s experiences with software piracy, particularly the rampant software piracy that spread developer builds of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger all over the Internet this past spring, Apple’s management from the top down knows full well that this developer preview will be in the hands of every kid with a cable modem within days of its release. Most of them will be able to install it on their own computers and run it and the full suite of iLife ’05 applications at full speed, and run most existing Mac software in translation. As a result, Apple will give thousands, possibly millions, of people a taste of Mac OS X running full speed on their own PCs. Apple’s giving their potential future customers a free taste, that’s what they’re doing. It’s a try-before-you-buy deal.”
[UPDATED: 10:20am. Changed take to remark upon and review Harrell’s June 8th article.]
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Dvorak: Steve Jobs eventually intends for Apple’s Mac OS X to run on any x86 PC – August 09, 2005
DRM chip in Intel-based developer Macs prevents Mac OS X from running on non-Apple PCs – August 05, 2005
Report: Apple’s Mac OS X Intel kernel employs DRM to prevent OS from working unless authorized – August 01, 2005
Apple Intel-based Macs for developers runs Mac OS X and Windows XP – June 23, 2005
Apple’s ‘Mac OS X for Intel’ developer build reportedly running on Tablet PC – June 16, 2005
Video of Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel running on Dell laptop posted online – June 13, 2005
Report: Apple Mac OS X 10.4.1 for Intel hits piracy sites – June 11, 2005
This has no relevance in the world outside of hackers. It has no relationship to the retail world of computers or software. Hacked OSs offer nothing but tinkering fun for tinkerers. Does anyone really think that a hacked OS X on a garden variety PC will run productivity software smoothly and get along with peripherals?
Yeah, because the masses are really going to learn to modify their OS and their productivity software and their drivers and . . .
All that this means is that at the next Linux World and Black Hat conferences, there will be a OS X on 90% of the hardware, rather than >10%
This will not hurt mac sales but help mac programming and compatability.
It was only a matter of time. As it was, PearPC was trying to get it working when there was no OS X on Intel
When Intel Macs come out OF COURSE there will be a DRM chip or some other form of hardware present that prevents OS X from running unless it is in the machine. Apple ALREADY SAID that they would prevent OS X from running on anything but a Mac.
So this buggy developer version will be able to be pirated. So What? Only a very small percentage of people would run something like that. BUT as Jeff Harrell points out, a lot of people might just put it on to try it out. If they like it, they can either get a Mac or be forever doomed to an OS with no upgrades ever. And the people who would pirate this are not the kind to be able to sit still on an OS with no new developments in sight.
I just want to chime in with the “big friggin’ whoop” sentiment. Yes, hackers will be able get Mac OS X to run on their commodity hardware. We always knew they would, eventually. But…
— Such hacks won’t be supported by Apple, so there will always be hardware that won’t work on the hacked systems. I.e. running hacked Mac OS X may be a point of hacker pride, but it will never be as good as a Mac.
— Hacking OS X won’t be simple. Only geeks will want to put in the effort. Any utility that automates the hack will be tracked down and sued off the Earth by Apple, so it will have to be distributed through the hacker underground, further limiting its use to hardcore geeks.
— Consumers, still the meat-and-potatos of Apple’s hardware sales, rarely install an operating system at all, much less a completely different one than the system came with. So you won’t see Mom and Dad buying a Dell with the idea of wiping the hard drive and installing hacked OS X.
So in the end, what have you got? A tiny population of hardcore, hex-reading, box-building, Slashdot-posting nerds, putting Mac OS X on a PC, not to actually use it, but just to prove they can. In other words, it’s something Apple (and we) can simply ignore.
(Wow, though: This took over TWO MONTHS to happen! This must have been one heckuva challenge to the hackers…)
It is just me who remembers Jobs announcing that the Intel Developer Kit software is time-bound to just one year? I think i recall that at the WWDC, it was specified that the kit was only for one year… was that the software limited to die at July 2006, or the hardware had to be returned by that time?
Anyhow, I’m pretty sure that this sort of hack will only apply to the truly dedicated, and wont be as easy to setup/install as a pirated copy of Windows.
I subscribe to the school of thought that the forthcoming MacIntels are merely iMac G6 or PowerBook G5 with a different engine. Later… when OS 10.5’s successor develops might there be a breakaway, but that’s like AGES away…. Macs have been doing a very good job of making hardware look aesthetically appealing, and the software as reliable as possible. That’s a really compelling combination! I dont think they will want to upset the balance that radically by allowing Tiger to be on a typical PC hardware….
Another thing is… what IS a typical PC? Unlike a iMac G5 where you could say “Its basically a 17-20” LCD monitor that actually contains an entire PC”…. PC’s are all different shapes and configurations. Apple control the hardware build of iMac G5s, so they know the bare minimum is 256MB out there…. can you vouch for the same quality standard and experience with any x86 out there? I dont think so… so in order to preserve the Apple Experience, Steve Jobs should be trying really hard to ensure that even if the developer kits are broken into, its only a limited period and the forthcoming OSs will not have the same weakness.
deja vu? didn’t this happen a few months ago and proved unsubstantiated?
but, assuming it is true, DRM can’t do a thing about it. why? because this version will get out. new versions of the OS may not be crackable, but that doesn’t change the present.
hell, i knew people who ran windows 96.
Uh oh, it’s started… Nostradamus predicted Steve’s return:
(Century X, quatrain 4 – huh, 10.4… who’d have figured.)
At midnight the leader of the army
Will save himself, suddenly vanished:
Seven years later his reputation unblemished,
To his return not once they will say yes.
If it is a strategy, I like it. Actually, I experienced Macintosh feeling first time in my life with a hacked MacOS 6 on my Amiga. From that day my AmigaOS was useless for me.
http://www.concretesurf.co.nz/osx86/viewforum.php?f=10
I agree with Energy. I think this is great. Let all the patchers run the hacked os10.4 for as long as they like. Apple will lockdown the release version and come out with os10.5 at the same time. Then the patchers that fell in love with osX will go out and buy macs to get their fix. You just can’t get me to believe that after using iLife, Final Cut, Logic, Spotlight etc for any appreciable amount of time, that “all” the pcers are going to give up and go back to windoze.
Of course this is Apple’s strategy. Nothing to get upset about.
Al wrote:
“DRM can be hacked. Altering the CPU is more difficult to get around.”
Unfortunately, if it can be made it can be hacked. Apple will have to try a lot harder to keep OS X off generic PC’s. Firmware, dongles, even built-in checks that look for hacks are all possibilities.
How hard would it be for Intel to include unique instruction calls in the Mac chips? Have them be “dummy” calls (i.e. not really do anything), and call them fairly regularly in the Intel OX S. Would that be enough?
The day I read of Apple’s DRM chip method, I knew it would be easy to defeat an encrypted authentication chip that was intended to insure OS X runs on Apple’s Intel-based board. I very much doubt Apple will do it the same way when they get nearer to a release version.
It doesn’t matter how sophisticated the encryption chip and firmware is; ultimately there is a single line of code in OS X that asks “was the authentication process affirmed? This line of code expects a “yes” or “no” answer from the fancy-ass DRM chip. It’s like the captain of a ship asking his first office to go down to the radio room and use all sorts of sophisticated CIA-developed encryption hardware to authenticate a message from shore. The first office is then to report back to the captain. Why do it the hard way? You don’t try to hack into the encryption process, learn its inner workings, and reverse engineer it; you knock out the first office, masquerade as him, and then report back falsely to the captain.
The solution I expect Apple will use will be similar to when they put ROMs with key Apple source-code on the motherboard. This is presents a MUCH bigger challenge to pirates. One way to defeat this method of copy protection is to do what certain “vendors” (thieves) did to Apple: they copied Apples ROM chips and burned their own to allow Atari computers run Mac Classic software. These thieves asserted they were selling only original ROM chips salvaged from old Macs. Some ass-wipe even brazenly sold the chips at a Mac convention where Apple reps were floating about. Apple caught them and the thief went down in flames.
If Apple wants to make it MUCH harder for people to get OS X running on non-Apple-branded hardware, they can.
Okay, okay….i was having a bad day from the start-that just made it worse,
Of course i knew this was going to happen-but not this soon in the game. Plus, it was a stupid move to make because the developers are the only ones who have intel based Macs. I would think that Apple knows who they sent their dev kits to-and they’ll be reaming them where the sun don’t shine.