iWin32 Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 Hello, everyone! Before I get started with this post, I figured I would introduce myself. I'm Rico, and I've been into Hackintoshing for a while. I started in the tail-end days of Leopard distros, and have since set up several Hackintoshes, including a custom AMD build and an Acer Predator gaming laptop. I'm not a developer or programmer in any sense of the word, but I am fairly knowledgeable when it comes to computers. I also am a musician and an aspiring filmmaker, and I currently run several YouTube channels, including Robdeltonie and RECORE Entertainment. Now, while being quarantined, I recently came up with an interesting YouTube video idea that I'm pretty sure hasn't really been done before. I figured I could look at the history of hackintoshing and the OSx86 scene, from the Apple-Intel transition announcement in 2005 through today, covering Mac OS X Tiger through macOS Catalina. It wouldn't really be a how-to video or a walkthrough of any sort, but rather just an informative look at how much the scene has changed in terms of technologically, practically, and legally. (I know that Hackintoshing is not really the most legal thing depending on your jurisdiction, but you have to admit it's evolved into a more gray area compared to running a heavily-modified leaked version of Tiger from the Developer's Transition Kit back in the day.) As I've stated above, I'm not a programmer, but I want it to be technologically accurate while still being accessible and easy-to-understand for the lay viewer. That being said, I have a few questions that I'm hoping can be answered, most of which goes back to the early days of the Hackintosh scene. First, am I correct in saying the TPM was not even used for DRM back in the days of the Developer Transition Kit? I know for sure that the TPM was not used on real Intel Macs from the start. Either way, I'm sure Apple used some kind of DRM to tie Mac OS X to the Developer Transition Kit, as there were patches and cracks floating around back in the day. Speaking of which, how exactly was the developer transition kit cracked so easily? I tried looking on the forums for more info, but almost every post that could help was either blanked or edited out because of DMCA violations that the mods wanted to avoid. If it's anything like how macOS is tied to Macs today, and I'm understanding it right, several key binaries for the operating system are encrypted with the AES algorithm. A kext called Don't Steal Mac OS X decrypts the binaries on-the-fly by retrieving the "secret haiku" stored in the firmware of the SMC, a proprietary power management controller only found on Apple hardware. If a similar DRM scheme was used on the DTK, you would think it wouldn't be cracked as fast as it would, as the binaries would have to be manually decrypted in order to function, and not just a hard-coded crack to prevent the checks from working. Also, when Leopard was released, I understand that there were new technological changes that made it harder to crack than Tiger. What were they? Was it just the use of EFI? If so, why did it take so long to attempt to create some kind of EFI simulation that was later developed by David Elliot? Also, what is the difference between AppleDecryptor.kext, DSMOS.kext (NOT the official Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext mentioned above), FakeSMC.kext, and VirtualSMC.kext? Finally, I read that Clover will soon be deprecated in terms of new macOS builds in favor of OpenCore (similar to how Chameleon was deprecated in favor of Clover). Is this technologically true? If so, why? I think this just about covers it. Once I have answers to these questions, I'll post a link to a proposed transcript in a Google Doc here, just to be 100% sure that I'm technologically accurate. Thank you all in advance! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STLVNUB Posted March 29, 2020 Share Posted March 29, 2020 (edited) For starters get the topic right HackinToshing Edited March 29, 2020 by STLVNUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iWin32 Posted March 29, 2020 Author Share Posted March 29, 2020 8 minutes ago, STLVNUB said: For starters get the topic right HackinToshing Sorry... My T key has been sticking lately for some reason! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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