[Beowulf] [craig.hunter@nasa.gov: Re: Intel?]

[Franz.Marini at mi.infn.it]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Michael T. Prinkey wrote:
> It seems that they are "daft."  One Apple's VPs has emphatically declared
> that they will not allow MAC OSX to run on anything but Apply hardware.

And they have declared that WinXP will run on their new Intel Macs, too.
So I think that there won't be any drastic change in the architecture from
a "standard" x86 pc...

My guess is that they'll put some kind of hardware signature on their
mobos, completely ignored by WinXP (or linux, for that matter), but looked
for by OS/X on boot.

And if my guess is right, I give hackers around the globe no more than 3-4
days from the availability of the first OS/X for Intel to find a way
around the protection, thus enabling any x86 pc to run it ;)

But, time will tell...

What's really amazing is that, from Jobs' words, it seems like it's been 5
yrs now that in Cupertino exists a OS/X port for x86 (Jobs' presentation
supposedly run on a vanilla 3.6 GHz P4, on a supposed x86 OS/X 10.4.1
beta), and *noone* let it slip outside Apple's hq in all this time...
Astonishing, to say the least... :)


Franz

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Franz Marini
Sys Admin and Software Analyst,
Dept. of Physics, University of Milan, Italy.
email : franz.marini at mi.infn.it
phone : +39 02 50317221
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