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OS X on Intel Still Not Complete

Swad

By Swad

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We recieved unconfirmed reports Sunday that Apple is introducing a new version of OS X Intel to developers. This build, 8B1027, is based on Tiger 10.4.2, which brings it up to date with the latest commercial PowerPC versions.

 

There are several interesting things about this new build - first, some applications that were built on the initial version that shipped with the Developers Kits will not work in the new verison. However, all applications that are built using the new version (8B1027) will be unable to run on the earlier (WWDC) iteration. This incompatibility could be in place to deter pirated use of OSx86... or it could simply be that the operating system is still evolving.

 

Reports state that previous attempts to break the TPM support no longer work with this new seed. It would appear that Apple is learning from the hackers efforts and using that information to stop those efforts.

 

Several other fixes are noted with this build, such as completed programming frameworks, improved OpenGL support, and proper localization, as well as a few minor stability improvements.

 

All of this points to the fact that OSx86 is still a work in progress - nothing is complete. This opens a host of questions - why the sudden incompatibility between the two versions? Will the final version that is shipped with the Intel Macs be compatible with this new build? Is the motivation for this new build one of helping developers or detering hackers - or both?

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joeknowz

Nice analysis, of course it doesn't show how the mac sales could possibly drive such a huge increase in net income.

 

Why would you think the "halo effect" would only pertain to the mac mini? The "halo effect" is about building up the brand. About bringing people into the apple stores. About inspiring confidence in all apple products across the board.

 

So, rev./unit fell. Don't you think the ipod minis and flash based ipods had something to do with that.

Apple did go from having 0% of the flash based market jan 1, to 46.3% by the end of june.

 

The mp3 player market is expected to keep on growing through 2010.

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luke256

Apple will release OSX86 for a select series of branded pcs (sony, hp, etc). But only after a good few months of having apple user upgrade to the latest shinny intelmacs. I think the reason they let it be hacked is that you guys with your ati drivers, etc are doing all the work for them. Releasing nice open source drivers they can copy for to support more hardware. This idea that apple is sooooo stable because it only runs on apple hardware is a bit dodgy. FreeBSD runs on all sorts of hardware, and is stable as hell. Its just a matter of drivers.. and oh it looks like they are getting that sorted for free.

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G5rocks
Releasing nice open source drivers they can copy for to support more hardware.

 

excuse me... what are all that (i think it was 20.000) apple employees should work on then? LOL ROFL... hell there are allready drivers for and from apple for nearly every piece of hardware on this planet... what the hell do you think apple is? still a company who is selling from the garage? that is really funny.

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jcruzlara

But there will be a way to hack x86 to run on a normal pc right? i mean u guys just gave apple a bunch of ideas but i think that were there's a security thingy there will be a way to break it, there always has been you geniuses will find a way

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bonehead
excuse me... what are all that (i think it was 20.000) apple employees should work on then? LOL ROFL... hell there are allready drivers for and from apple for nearly every piece of hardware on this planet...

 

Generally, most drivers aren’t developed by Apple.

 

NVIDIA, Ati, Intel, Via, etc., all develop and distribute drivers to Apple and/or MacOS users.

 

Edit:

As far as Apple releasing OS X on Sony and HP PCs: nope. That's wild speculation with nothing backing it up. Not gonna happen.

 

Just as Apple licensed HP to sell HP/Apple branded IPods, we may see the same for Macs... But this would be HP reselling Apple >hardware<, not just the OS.

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DeathChill
nvidia drivers are made by apple

Are you sure? I was under the assumption that all the drivers for any ATi or NVidia graphics cards are written by ATi or NVidia as they use special techniques and yada yada yada. Maybe I'm wrong though as maybe NVidia allows Apple to develop drivers for them xD

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G5rocks
Question: Will there ever be a control panel with 3D/GL/FSAA controls for the NVIDIA cards on the Mac platform? (ATI's retail Radeon cards (and OEM models with the 3rd party patch) have a '3D/GL overrides' feature - which is seen as a big plus by many end users.)

 

 

Answer: Apple provides all the drivers for NVIDIA-based add-in cards. We supply them with the source code and they provide the final driver.

 

Ujesh Desai, Nvidia's General Manager of Desktop GPUs in interview to xlr8yourmac.com

 

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/Graphics/nvidia...ultraQandA.html

 

Apple allways modifies the nVidia drivers - drivers really get better with allmost every OS X update. Anyway ATI makes it own drivers but there is a difference if you own a Apple OEM ATi cards or build in ATI graphics you can't use ATI firmware updaters or the "ATI Displays" Software - you have to use Apple Firmware Updates. I never heared of Intel or VIA Products for the Mac. I think the intel GMA900 is the first intel driver ever for the Mac. Even when Graphics are faster with every update it's not because Apple does a good job - on the other side OpenGL implementation is way to slow (i own a GeForce6800ultra - you need such cards on the mac to get normal performance - believe me). It's like a lot of other things in OS X which slows down the powerfull G5 Hardware. The old MacOS was MUCH faster on same Hardware in every tasks. OS X performance is a shame in some cases! Look here:

 

What can we conclude from this? First, the above tables demonstrate clearly that the creation of UNIX processes is much slower on MAC OS X, and the G5, the CPU, is not to blame. In the first test, the G5 2.5 GHz running Linux is only slightly slower than a Pentium 4 at 3.6 GHz. The third test shows that the G5 is even capable of outperforming the other CPUs, which points towards Mac OS X being the problem here. Even with a faster CPU, the OS X scores are all slower than the Linux scores on the G5.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2520

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bonehead
Answer: Apple provides all the drivers for NVIDIA-based add-in cards. We supply them with the source code and they provide the final driver.

 

As I said, NVIDIA provides the drivers to Apple.

 

In NVIDIA’s case, they provide reference drivers (w/ source) to Apple, that apple pretties up and distributes to its users... NVIDIA has still done the vast majority of core driver development.

 

I never heared of Intel or VIA Products for the Mac.

 

Intel drivers are obviously in OSX for x86.

 

For VIA, just as an example, look at the list of supported OSs here:

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageI...00&SubCatID=130

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GooberKing
I'm sick of reading people's {censored} opinions about the direction Apple is going with their business by not letting people install OS X on regular PCs. If you had such a brilliant blessed idea then Apple would replace Steve Jobs with you. Leave the business decisions to people who know what they're doing and shut the hell up.

 

Shut the f*** up, there is no reason to start swearing at people you stupid c***. :huh:

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blahsucks
Shut the f*** up, there is no reason to start swearing at people you stupid c***. :)

 

Please don't be a hypocrite. ;)

 

Do you really think that Apple has all those incomplete drivers for no reason? Not to mention the Mac cards... They could do it faster and better than we ever could.

 

jcruzalara: When the security is in the hardware, it's much harder to break.

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mrmcphisto

I think Apple gave a test for all of this great OS and now...

 

its time for everybody to switch to Apple hws!

 

OSX86 Leak has been a great marketing move...

 

its an APPLE leak, they wanted it to leak...

 

now EVERYBODY knows the POWER OF OSX.

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blahsucks

No one ever fully switches. There's something called "new games" that's.. pretty alluring.

 

Once Cedega and WINE are running on Macintels, then more people from here will switch.

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TheoCryst

Ah, the beauty of being used to crappy hardware... I'm lucky if I can even play "old games", never mind new ones.

 

As for the driver debate: I vote that Apple put into this build of OS X x86 are just placeholders; sloppy thrown-together drivers that would not be used by the developers anyway. That way, curious devs could dig into the Library and see the drivers to be, but never even need to find out if they work properly or not.

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