Re: [MLUG] Mac moving to Intel

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 6/6/05, Vern Green <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> There was an article I read today, it might have been Slashdot but I
> cannot remember for sure.
> 
> Anyway, the article was saying that the OS from Apple will only work
> with Apple licensed hardware. Supposedly they are working on some kind
> of ROM that will allow the OS to work only on their hardware.

Actually, the biggest problem with running any future version of Mac
OS X on other hardware is that Apple will make zero effort to support
to make it work, and some features of current Wintel hardware are
useless or worse to  OS X.  So, for one thing, Mac OS X currently (and
in the future) uses OpenFirmware and has no concept of a PC-like BIOS.
 You can similarly expect it not to have any clue about non-PCI slots,
and any I/O that isn't USB or Firewire.  It won't support any but a
handful of graphics cards, and it will probably be just as fussy about
RAM as the current Macs.  I further expect that Apple, not being bound
by backwards compatibility at the hardwared level, will embrace other
new features not commonly seen on current Wintel boxes.

All that said:
 
> This will last about two minutes before someone comes out with a crack
> for it. Microsoft's new security measures were cracked before the OS
> was ever released.

I don't think there will be any way to prevent somebody from running
OS X on a non-Mac if they spend enough effort, but I think a lot of
the reason for MS never having a chance with their security against
piracy is just that MS just can't simultaneously support all of the
random hardware it does and provide the backwards compatibility it
does without making some basic trade-offs.

jking

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