The Death of Apple?

[aidanjt]

Off topic, but related:
Do we know that processors the Mac Intel machines will use?
Do intel have a 64 bit processor analogous to the G5, i know there ARE 64bit cpus avaliable but aren't they server class? I suppose Intel will be readying a new desktop 64bit design my then, how long will apple keep 32 bit systems going for?

CPU arch table:
Athlon 64 x86_64 (desktop)
Pentium 4 600 series and higher: x86_64 (desktop)
Xeon: x86 (server)
Intel Itanium: IA64 (server)
G5: PPC64 (meh, its just an IBM RISC jobby)

I dunno specifics on apples intentions with Intel, probibly 600, or maybe 800 (dual-core) series.

[Matt1eD]

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125...tml?tw=rss.TOP

[bsodmike]

Not sure if you've seen this:

http://www.aqua-time.com/Startup_Hi.mov

[Red10]

Not sure if you've seen this:

http://www.aqua-time.com/Startup_Hi.mov

If that's for real, then it's seriously impressive...

[bsodmike]

It is, Also check out the HOW-TO guide here: http://osx86project.org/

So for now the TPM has been by passed but it is still an early build so there is still time for Apple to get their act together. Simply put, Apple KNOWS about this so they would (I imagine) have some special onboard circuitry to validate that the machine is an authentic macIntel box. Wonder if they would end up 'emulating' this via some PCI card, now that would be sweet.

[Jonny M]

If that's for real, then it's seriously impressive...

I love the way it's a ton faster than any Apple machine I've ever seen at booting up. How are Apple going to explain away the "OMG SO MUCH FASTER" Photshop graphs on http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/?

Surely they must have known that going to x86 and using commodity parts would have done this? I really can't see any way of stopping this in a way that can't be cracked in a few days at most, unless it starts going to online activation which the Mac community as a whole would throw a fit at, having never had it before.

[bsodmike]

Cadged, yea. They are gonna have to tone down their PR graphs. I bet they'll never go x86 vs G5 performance LOL...

[Kumagoro]

maybe you will need a usb dongle. they havent been able to do cubase sx3's dongle yet.

[Jonny M]

That's a point, but the main thing which will harm this is that I'm pretty sure the copy protection will need to be integrated at a low-level, and in the case of OSX, an open-source Kernel.

In theory having a TPM chip onboard should have prevented this, being more hardcore () than a USB dongle, but if it was that easy to hack the code out that checks for this chip, then there's nothing saying it couldn't be done for anything else they attempt to implement.