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OSx86 Cracked Again
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Feb 14, 2006 02:21 PM
from the oneupmanship dept.
from the oneupmanship dept.
The Cardboard God writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting that the intrepid hacker 'Maxxuss' has once again eluded Apple's security methods and cracked the latest release of Mac OS X for Intel, or 'OSx86', to run on standard x86 PCs. It seems Apple just can't win this eternal struggle with the hackers, as 10.4.4 included beefed up security designed to prevent similar hacking methods used on beta releases of the operating system. Is this a blessing for Apple, or simply a nuisance?"
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Mac OS X on x86 Videos Get Apple's Attention 758 comments
RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting that Apple has served a legal notice to MacBidouille, a French news site that posted videos and instructions on running Mac OS X on x86 hardware . You can find an English translation of the MacBidouille notice on the OSx86Project's forums. This is the first known legal action by Apple regarding the hacked version of OS X and calls into doubt the future of other news sites, similar to the OSx86 Project." Slashdot previously covered the story of hacking Mac OS X onto non-Apple hardware and followed up again a few days later.
[+]
Intel Mac OS X Catches Up With Older Brother 672 comments
RetrogradeMotion writes "Apple is now one step closer to the Intel transition. According to the OSx86 Project, a recently leaked installation DVD of Mac OS X 10.4.3 reveals that the Intel version is in sync with the PowerPC version - the two are now identical. Initially, "OSx86" was substantially behind its PPC counterpart, but the recent update makes it ready for the public. The article also notes that Apple has continued to learn from hackers' efforts to crack the operating system and has greatly strengthened the TPM protections."
[+]
Mac OS X Cracked For PCs Again 319 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica and The Register are reporting the Apple Kernel 10.4.8 has been cracked using Apple's publicly available source trees. This is the first time Apple was hit by hackers again since Maxxuss silently left the scene.The funny thing about this is the hacker who cracked OSx has released his sources according to APSL. He told Ars Technica in an interview that he did this because he believes in freedom of information, but will this now harm Apple's opensourceness?" From the article: "Unfortunately, free and legal are not necessarily the same thing, and the EULA for OS X requires Mac hardware. However, there is an interesting comment on the blog, one that asserts the requirement of Mac hardware is a "post-sale" restriction. Such a restriction may not be applicable in certain countries, such as those of the European Union. Expect to see what Apple Legal thinks about that shortly."
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Nuisance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup as long as Dell isn't doing it (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah, a few geeks will get OSX running on their PC's. They'll struggle with getting drivers to work correctly on non-blessed hardware, but generally feel cool. The rest of the world will buy Apples when they want to run OSX.
But one interesting twist on this: if I was looking to buy Apple hardware in hopes of having a dual boot OSX system this might change my mind. To my knowledge nobody has managed to get XP to run on Apple's hardware, but OSX is apparently running on non-apple hardware. That might all change with Vista coming out soon, but in the mean time running OSX on non-apple systems might be the better option.
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Re:Yup as long as Dell isn't doing it (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't? Why would OS X have security measures then? Steve Jobs himself has spoken out against such "theft."
It's money in their pocket either way.
How is it money in their pocket when someone pirates a cracked DVD of OS X? Apple isn't getting a cent. It's just more freeloaders who don't want to pay for stuff and think that's a valid reason to pirate everything under the sun.
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It is about control (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
The patch replaces the following files:
- AppleSMBIOS
- ATSServer
- diskimages-helper
- Dock
- Finder
- loginwindow
- mach_kernel
- mds
- SystemUIServer
- translate
- translated
So, as long as you have no shame and don't mind running Mac OS X in a state that is completely unsupported, with a different kernel (!), modified in unknown ways, and in a state that won't be able to be updated with any OS or security updates from Apple (until they themselves are cracked), perpetually repeating this scenario ad nauseum, and also have no problems either:
- pirating Mac OS X, which is the current only way of obtaining Mac OS X (Intel), and
- seem to think that a commercial manufacturer's wishes for its products amount to nothing (e.g., via the EULA, perhaps claiming EULAs aren't enforceable in your jurisdiction)
...then I'm sure you'll be able to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware indefinitely.
Is this actually surprising?
Someday, Apple - you know, the entity that has invested billions of dollars, all told, and countless thousands upon thousands of manhours in the development of Mac OS X and its associated products - may choose to partner with specific x86 vendors and specific hardware products to allow Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware at some point in the future. But for now, I love the editorial slant of x86project.org:
What this means is that Apple's best attempts to secure their OS have, ultimately, failed. For its best efforts, the company is unable to lock OS X to their hardware. Without doubt, this will have profound impacts on the company's future as running OSx86 on a PC becomes less a hacker's trick and more mainstream. When all it requires is the downloading of a DVD, that's certainly the future we're looking at.
This also opens a host of new questions for Apple, OS X, and the PC users who love it. Will this mark the beginning of Apple's legal endeavors to keep OS X locked down? Will it persuade Steve Jobs that releasing his OS is an insanely great idea?
Time will tell. Things keep getting more exciting. Stay Tuned.
"When all it requires is the downloading of a DVD"? I'm sorry, but even if you claim they're just "telling it like it is", that attitude has absolutely no respect for the hard work of others. Forget copyright. Forget the DMCA. What about just pure ethics? I suppose if one is a relativist, they might ask, "Ethics? By whose standards?"
And again: if you change enough of Mac OS X, of course you'll be able to get it to work on non-Apple hardware. It will take some reverse engineering and time, but it will always happen. This doesn't mean TPM is any less "secure" for its purposes. Ironically, it actually validates TPM: trusted computing is designed to make a platform just that: trusted, and operating in a predictable state. This hack job on Mac OS X (Intel) is anything but.
I'm glad people are so smug in their beliefs that it's okay to have an utter lack of regard for the work product of others to produce an excellent product, one whose creation is predicated on the business model that company has chosen: namely, to sell HARDWARE along with their operating system. Apple has every right to choose that as the mechanism for selling its product. Even if Mac OS X (Intel) is sold standalone (as it may be in the form of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard).
Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm on board that just "downloading a DVD" is unethical, but if I BUY an official copy of OS/X, then who the hell is Steve Jobs to tell me what I can or can't do with it?
This is one of the main reasons I dislike Apple as a company: the arrogance. Steve wants to tell me what I can and can't play on an iPod (e.g., suing Real). Steve wants to tell me what I can and can't do with software I buy. Frankly, screw Steve!
Apple could be so much more successful if they would stop being such a-hole control freaks and just sell their products and embrace people wanting to use THE SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE THAT THEY FREAKING OWN the way the want to.
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Apple may never release a standalone copy of Mac OS X (Intel) that you can actually buy without purchasing a machine. With Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), this may occur, but it is not yet guaranteed. In this scenario, I don't think there is any excusable way in any jurisdiction to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware, since you *must* pirate Mac OS X to do so.
1a. To extend on the above, some people might justify their action by buying a copy of Mac OS X (PowerPC), and reasoning that they've "paid" for Mac OS X, and that therefore it's then okay to pirate Mac OS X (Intel) and use it as they wish. However, that's not an acceptable argument since it's not the same product.
2. Even if a standalone version of Mac OS X (Intel) (or a universal release of Mac OS X) is released at some point, I don't think you can get completely in the clear with your argument. Sure, it's just bits on a plastic disc. You should be able to install it on your Mac, run over it with your car, do nothing with it, juggle it, wipe your ass with it, or even hack it and install it on your PC. Right? Sure, I'm with you. I understand the argument you're making. But, like it or not, this hurts Apple. *You* might not think it hurts Apple, but the only people in the position to *decide* that it hurts Apple - i.e., Apple - have decided that it *does* hurt Apple. Whether it's because of business model or arbitrary decision, that's their decision to make. And if there is law in certain countries/jurisdictions that allows companies to make that kind of determination, I do not see how operating within the bounds of law to protect oneself from injury - whether you are a person or a corporation - is inappropriate.
To ratchet this argument down to being a little more practical, I'd submit that Mac OS X's pricepoint is predicated on the assumption that it's associated with Apple hardware, and that there will be continuing purchases of Apple hardware by satisfied customers running Mac OS X on Apple hardware, ostensibly becausse the quality, attention to detail, and software/hardware integration is so pleasant, and myriad other reasons. Apple loses this control when Mac OS X is not run on Apple hardware. Now, you might say, "tough shit." And in some locales in the world, the government might also agree with you. Great. Congratulations. But that still doesn't change the fundamental truth to what I've just said.
I see it as just a semblance of respect for the work of others.
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not exactly. You could buy an intel mac, and run linux on it, while running OSX on your white-box.
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news: This has never stopped me from running any software the way I want to use it.
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm on board that just "downloading a DVD" is unethical, but if I BUY an official copy of OS/X, then who the hell is Steve Jobs to tell me what I can or can't do with it?
I agree with you in principal, but OS X for x86 is only available with the purchase of an imac right now (as far as I know) and while it is possible that you might want to take that one license and install it on a different machine while wiping the imac, don't think it is likely. I'm all in favor of hacking the OS and researching, but I'm more than a little leery that this will lead to just another way to get crappy warez versions of OS X hacked up to work on generic boxes without paying for a license. Right now it is just that, a concern. I don't see anything that has been inappropriate yet.
This is one of the main reasons I dislike Apple as a company: the arrogance. Steve wants to tell me what I can and can't play on an iPod (e.g., suing Real). Steve wants to tell me what I can and can't do with software I buy. Frankly, screw Steve!
And here is where you lost me. When did Apple sue Real? As far as I know there has only been one lawsuit and it was Real suing Apple. What Apple did do was change the DRM authentication on the iPods to stop Real's hack from working, but seeing as Real was using Apple's servers to do the authentication I don't think anyone can really fault them for that. It was a very legitimate security and support concern. Hell, I wouldn't let my competitor's use my servers to authenticate their DRM either.
Apple could be so much more successful if they would stop being such a-hole control freaks and just sell their products and embrace people wanting to use THE SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE THAT THEY FREAKING OWN the way the want to.
Apple is very successful now and not because they operate using a simplistic view of the market. They are in a market dominated by a monopoly and they can only compete by maintaining a complete vertical chain on their own. Apple sells computers because they can't survive selling software and because they make more money that way. They use software as a differentiator, but they are not an OS company, they are a hardware company. Selling OS X for intel would be huge financial loss. The OS market, like it or not, is basically the pre-installed OS market. MS has that market locked down. Apple can only sell pre-installs on their own hardware. The secondary market of installs after the fact is a small one for the tech savvy. A lot of Apple's customers would be included, but not a significant share of the market. Operating in such a commodity business Apple would have to grab nearly 40% of the market just to break even with the hardware sales losses they would endure. It is just not very likely. I'd like OS X for generic hardware as much as the next guy, but not at the cost of Apple going out of business and it no longer being available in the future. Sorry but a lot of people have looked at this business case including Apple and it just doesn't make sense for them.
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Re:If you replace enough files... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the music piracy world, it's "the RIAA made us do it!" In the PC game world, it's "the greedy publishers made us do it!" Always something to blame for your getting free shit except yourself.
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Slashdoted . . . (Score:5, Informative)
The hacking guru has announced preliminary patches for Apple's latest release of OS X for Intel, version 10.4.4. According to his website, http://maxxuss.hotbox.ru/ [hotbox.ru]
This is a preliminary release of my Patch Solution for the official Mac OS X on the Intel platform. Ultimately, it would allow you to run this Mac OS X release on a generic x86 computer (SSE2 required).
There's still a lot of work and documentation to do, like support for SSE2-only CPUs, a proper installation procedure and a PPF patch. However, if you like to play around, this will get you started.
The significance of this event is huge. While many users were able to run OSx86 on their PCs last summer, the general feeling was that Apple hadn't implemented their final security solution. That much was true.
Onlookers have told us that 10.4.4 is a serious step forward in security, utilizing many of the same technologies as the 10.4.1 and 10.4.3, as well as the obfuscated code that Apple filed a patent for a few months ago.Few expected this final version - or at least the version that shipped with the first Macintels - to be easy to hack.
What this means is that Apple's best attempts to secure their OS have, ultimately, failed. For its best efforts, the company is unable to lock OS X to their hardware. Without doubt, this will have profound impacts on the company's future as running OSx86 on a PC becomes less a hacker's trick and more mainstream. When all it requires is the downloading of a DVD, that's certainly the future we're looking at.
This also opens a host of new questions for Apple, OS X, and the PC users who love it. Will this mark the beginning of Apple's legal endeavors to keep OS X locked down? Will it persuade Steve Jobs that releasing his OS is an insanely great idea?
Time will tell. Things keep getting more exciting. Stay Tuned.
Apple Appliances? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe in a few years it won't matter if OS X runs on commodity boxes, as Apple won't really be competing with them as their main business. Apple/TiVo anyone?
Curse (Score:5, Insightful)
But if the process is easy, Joe Sixpack will look at Apple like they do Microsoft: "it keeps crashing"
I doubt Apple has any drivers written for even the more common hardware out there. Chipsets, NICs, video cards, sound cards, etc. Sure, you might be able to get it running in a beige box, but too many will be outside of OSX's driver realm.
Of course, this will lead to normal users saying "Gollleee, now I can run OH ESS EKKS on my Walmart laptop by downloading it from the torrent thingeee." The next thing you know, they're cursing Apple's name as being a bunch of programmer hacks.
Who's less worse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
The won't release it easily (Score:5, Insightful)
"Will it persuade Steve Jobs that releasing his OS is an insanely great idea?"
I don't think so, Apple wants to produce a quality product, and can control the hardware and the OS, so it's fairly easy to make it a very stable product.
If they would want to release a version that runs on all (intel) x86 PC's they won't be able to have as much stability and quality control at all, and might give end users a bad feeling about this producs just as lots of people are annoyed with those driver issues that plague the Windows world (in terms of stability)...
Of course Apple can't win (Score:5, Insightful)
They're new to x86. Hackers have been here for *decades*.
Welcome to the mainstream, Apple.
Both nuisance and blessing... mostly nuisance. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, when you look at Dell's Core Duo laptop and Apple's Core Duo laptop... the differences aren't much. That's the big win for Apple in switching to Intel hardware- the systems are really comparable and fairly easily similarly priced.
People hacking OS X to run on non-Apple Intel hardware *is* a blessing in a sense, because those who do go through the extra hassle to install OS X on non-Apple hardware are certainly asserting, beyond their hacking ( or simple file-sharing ) skills, that OS X is a really, really worthy bit of software to have... and they'll find, I suspect, that some things, in particular Software Update, won't play nicely at all with their very non-standard system. They're a seriously small number of people, probably, and are folks who either wouldn't for whatever reason buy *either* a Dell or an Apple system ( because it's all about building it yourself ), or, quite possibly, they're buying Apple hardware or software already ( don't you think the folks who worked out how to do this bought Apple hardware in order to do so ? ) in which case... well, let's just say Apple doesn't exactly go to great lengths to keep you from installing the same copy of OS X on multiple Apple machines... it's just not something they're worried about preventing. The notion that hacked x86 systems amount to try-before-you buy is probably not unfounded.
In short, while it's interesting to us geeks, it's not exactly a threat to Apple's business model... in a very real way, the fact that someone would want to do this pays quite a compliment to Apple's software, and is not terribly significant otherwise... just normal and likely small-scale software piracy, really.
As a third-party OS X software developer, it's just another ( small, likely ) set of machines I might be able to sell software or online services to, so it's all good for everyone except maybe Apple, and it's just not a big deal to them either, since hacked versions of OS X aren't going to be installed on over 1% of existing Windows PCs any time soon.
I don't see the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why Apple is missing the boat here. I'm waving my $150 at you Steve Jobs come and get it. If you would just sell it to people you'd have the number one os in the world. (and #1 in my heart)
Just think of being able to ACTUALY choose your OS. Linux/Mac/Windows on the same hardware - Why not?
Re:I don't see the problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why Apple is missing the boat here. I'm waving my $150 at you Steve Jobs come and get it.
I'll explain it. You and the several thousand others like you would cost more money for the free support and other missed opportunity cost than you would give. Basically, Apple offering OS X fort other hardware will cost them hardware sales since many people will buy other hardware now that they can run OS X on it. It will increase support costs in trying to deal with all that hardware. And Apple makes very little money selling OS X. They make their money selling hardware and in order to make the same amount of money they would have to capture 30-40% of the OS market. Since they are locked out of the pre-install market by MS's OEM pricing and since the non-preinstall market is about 5% of the market right now the chances of them even making the same amount of money as they do now are basically zero. I'd buy it too, but it just doesn't make sense for them to sell it.
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Actually, it's (Score:5, Insightful)
Cracked OSX environments can float around. They'll make almost no impact on sales, as they will be completley unsupported and a royal PITA to keep patched. Meanwhile, it will mean a lot of hackers out there who would otherwise not touch an Apple computer a close, personal look at what they are missing out on. If a tiny fraction of those people like what they see, more Macs get sold.
Meanwhile, Apple only needs to apply just enough security that non-hardcore hackers will consider OSx86 to be not worth the hassle, especially when the Intel-based Macs (so far) offer fairly similar ! for the $ to the other major brands.
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Re:Actually, it's (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:anti-competitive bundling (OS-PC) (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has been making hardware for a long time and that is their primary business, making computer hardware. The fact that they have developed a brilliant OS to run on their hardware is another issue. Naturally this OS is only available on their hardware.
Now, Microsoft has been making software for a long time and this is their primary business. They do make some hardware but not full computers. If they move into that area they wouldn't be able to do anti-competitive things like making their software only run on their hardware.
MS software has previously ran on all PC hardware, to change this would be anti-competitive. MacOS has never before ran on PC hardware.
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