Tip Tuesday: Mac OS X on non-Apple Hardware

Okay, so this whole Psystar Thing has got me in a bit of an X86 mood. I have not tried this, nor am I advising you to try it. I am merely pointing out the process by which this whole thing works.

And I'm not going to give you a walk through on how to build one of these, as it is much better detailed elsewhere.

The x86 project is based on a simple premise. Mac is now running on Intel x86 chips, which are basically the same chips they are running in Windows boxes.

How come Leopard won't run on non-Apple hardware as a general rule?

Apple has been (and you might want to be sitting down for this revelation) fairly controlling about what hardware their software can run on. If you have a Leopard install disk for an iMac and try to install it onto your Macbook, it's not going to work, because it's not the right hardware. While the disk is not tied explicitly to that one machine, it is tied to that machine's configuration. They have something called a Trusted Platform Module, a computer chip inside the Mac that prevents Leopard from installing on the wrong device. When you put in the Leopard DVD and try and install, it talks to the TPM. If it finds out that the software and the hardware don't match up, it won't install.

As non-Apple devices don't even have a TPM, there's not a chance of installing the Operating System on it.

Unless....

Unless you can create a software patch that bypasses the OS's call to the TPM.

A note from the X86 project:

In building your "Hackintosh" however, you may want to keep as close to the hardware configuration of Intel-based Macs for the best compatibility. Intel Macs use (or have used) either a Core Solo, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, or Xeon processor. For graphics cards, Intel Macs have seen Intel's GMA950; ATI's Mobility Radeon X1600, Radeon X1600, and Radeon X1900 XT; and nVidia's GeForce 7300GT, 7600GT, 8600M GT or Quadro FX4500. . . . . .

This is not the first time this has been tried. PearPC was a port of osX back in the PowerPC days, but it was slow, clunky, labourious and more work than anyone would want to do other than as Proof of Concept.

At the heart of the x86 project is the TPM bypass. There are other tweaks and hacks, and the project keeps maturing, making it easier and easier to install Leopard on non-Apple Hardware. While it is getting more stable, you are still running a Hackintosh, and things will break, sometimes catastrophically so.

Why do people want to do this? Why drop a Lamborghini's engine into a Fort Focus? I suspect it is a function of the Mac starting to attract the attention of the hacker community that once was over on the Windows side of things.

I have a friend who was a passionate hater of all the Apple. We'd get into long, long religious discussions about Mac vs Windows, and neither of us made any sort of concessions...until Leopard. Then he got interested.

He even priced out a Mac system, but the Mac Pro was too high-end, the mac mini too low end and the iMac just not customizable enough, especially what with the built-in monitor.

He wanted a Mac. A mid-range machine between the low end and the high end. Something that was customizable, but not too expensive. The Mac equivalent of the beige box.

And of course, there was nothing for him. So instead of biting the bullet and going for a Mac Pro, he decided he was just going to build a hackintosh. As a Windows hacker (in the sense of one who hacks around on Windows machines to see what it could do), he was already used to playing around and digging into the guts of a system. And he was used to reasonably priced hardware. So he had no qualms about building his own x86 system, even it it was unstable it was probably no worse than Vista....

Which raises an interesting issue for another day. How are these people going to fit into the Mac community? They come with certain expectations of how things operate, and that's not how the Mac community operates. There are some people who fit in quite nicely, and have enriched the Mac community. And then there are people....

But that, as they say, is for another day.

And now, the continuing story of a quack, whose gone to the dogs

This whole Psystar thing? Just keeps getting more and more interesting. While I am not reading too much into Apple not making any official announcement (because Apple only has about one of those a month, and they're not going to waste it on anything trivial....), it is an interesting turn of events.

Anyone out there thinking about ordering one? Anyone actually order one? Anything to report yet? Anyone at all?

We're number one!?

So.

I'm not one to indulge in speculation and rumour myself (pfft.), but I'm always willing to pass on notes from people who do. In this case, Ars Technica, who claim to have come into possession of secret Apple insider memos that show that Apple is now the number one music retailer in the states.

I'm wondering if this is like the Canadian Dollar's climb to parity and above, where much of that was driven by emotion, and now that it is #1, it will slowly sink back down. Probably not. Market forces that govern the two are completely different.

Still, I worry that Apple is a victim of its own success. Already, we have the issue of Amazon, where music companies are selling 256 kbps, drm free songs through Amazon, while not allowing Apple to sell similar quality music. Will the record companies and movie companies keep dragging their feet when it comes to Apple, hoping that someone will innovate and be a competitor?

As long as Apple at least maintains the appearance of looking out for the consumer (ie, me), I will continue to buy my music from iTunes. And that has nothing to do with the fact that the Amazon music store still isn't available in Canada. Honest.

Daily Reading: Does Apple Hate Canada?

I am aware of this, and am going to comment (I'm gonna go all Gruber on the Globe & Mail ,itsa gonna be fun). Right now I am dad, and have sleeping baby in ams, which makes it tough to type. Back later.

Okay, I'm back.

The article currently under discussion is this one over at the Globe and Mail.

The opening paragraph sums up the argument, like any good inverted pyramid should. Here are the greivances:

"its products cost more here than they do south of the border despite near parity in the currencies, new services often arrive long after they're launched in the U.S., and then there's the conspicuous absence of the company's iPhone."

We'll get to that in a moment, but first, let's look at this line: "So does Apple hate Canada? It's a question that draws a mixed response from observers — and silence from the company's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters."

This is written like it is news, but it is not. Any question asked about Apple *always* draws mixed responses from observes, and it is a rare news story indeed that ever is commented on by the notoriously tight-lipped Apple. It's like saying that a Balmer commented on a story about Microsoft. Of course he did. He's Balmer. You can't shut him up. Jobs, on the other hand, has a cone of silence around Apple. They will talk about product releases when they are released, but in the meantime? Forget it. Rumours and innuendo, and the occasional leaked memo is all you've got to go on.

"When Apple looks out at the world, they look for the best market opportunities — and they don't see that with Canada," says Michelle Warren, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group of London, Ont.

Which is pretty fair. Let's look at the iPhone. Where is it rolled out? In the USA (population: 304 million) Great Britain (population: 59 million), Germany (population: 82 million), France (population: 64.5 million) and Ireland (population: 6 million). With the exception of Ireland, all these markets are bigger than the Canada (pop: 33 million) by at least almost double. If you're in the business of selling phones, you gotta go where the people are.

And lets not forget there are many countries out there with populations much bigger, much, much bigger than Canada's, that also don't have the iPhone.

Does that mean we'll never get the iPhone? Far from it. It just means that, in order of priority, we're not at the top of the list. We know this, as Canadians. It bugs us, but we know it.

And we wouldn't have it any other way. We don't want to be Americans. Someone overseas confuses us for an American, we will set them straight, boy howdy. unfortunately, sometimes not being American is not without its problems, and we have to deal with no iPhone for a year. Go cry about it to your Universal Medicare.

Apple's iTunes music store was not launched in Canada until nearly four years after the store went online in the United States. And when the service began offering TV shows, negotiations with Canadian networks prevented their distribution through iTunes Canada for more than two years after they went on sale in the U.S.

"In all of these instances, there are negotiations that are going on that require delay in the rollout of hardware," says Josh Martin, a senior analyst with Yankee Group.

Which is a far cry from hating us. It's like never letting your neighbour in, then calling them up and asking why they never come visit.

Now, I'm glad that there are rules around Canadian content, and Canadian ownership, even when it backfires in my face. Yeah, I'd love an iPhone, and I have a rant scheduled for sometime in the near future about the selection at the Canadian iTunes store, but I know that Apple really wants to sell me stuff. That's why they're in business. And if other people (government, record labels, TV stations, etc.) prevent them from doing that, should I really complain?

My biggest problem with the article, though, comes at the end.

Even though their currencies are within a couple of cents of parity, Apple's products and software cost Canadian consumers anywhere from 5 per cent to nearly 40 per cent more than their American counterparts pay.

A few paragraphs later, he goes on to discuss the iTunes music store. But instead of commenting on pricing models between the two store, the author again talks about delays and lack of selection. I'm with you there, but in the interest of fairness, don't you think you should note that in 2004, when the the iTunes Music Store was launched, Canadians were paying $0.99 per song, just like Americans. Except that the Canadian Dollar was hovering around $0.84 US, meaning that Canadians were paying about $0.83USD song, or $0.16USD less.

And I've discussed the discrepancy between buying products from Apple US and Apple Canada in the past, and yes, there is a discrepancy. Sometimes, it's pretty big. But the fact remains that Apple is not the only one to do this, nor are they the most egregious offender. A quick search at Best Buy's American site and Canadian site shows the Canadian Sale price for a 42 inch Toshiba REGZA is still $200 more than the non-sale price for the same TV in the states. While there are exceptions, as a general rule Canadians pay more for consumer electronics, almost universally across the board. Heck, a new Rav 4 starts at $21,250 in the states, and $27,400. This is not something that should be shocking.

Yes, it is not something we should take lying down. And if this article causes the Apple prices to drop, I'll be happy as a clamshell (first gen bondi blue)

Does Apple hate us? Do they hate Australia? Mexico? Japan? 90% of the world? No. If they can't move as fast as we would like, I don't know it means they hate us. When the Air was announced, it was available in Canada at the same time as in the states. I really wish they'd negotiate faster to get movies and better (you heard me, better) shows on the Canadian iTunes store.

But the fact that they even bother negotiating at all, considering Roger's deathgrip on GSM, considering the many layers of copyright and legal wrangling to sell or rent movies in Canada means that they do care about us as a market.

Just, you know, not as much as we Canadians would like....

64 bits of pain?

Any Photoshop users out there will remember this like it was last year, which it was.

Back in the days of CS2, it was actually faster to run Photoshop on an old PowerPC machine than it was to run on an intel machine, because Adobe was late to the whole Intel party. Because the program was built in Carbon, they didn't have the option of clicking on that fancy button to build an app that would run natively in Cocoa on both PPC and Intel chips.

But, for CS3, they scraped and coded and pushed and prodded and beat it into shape so that Photoshop actually ran quite well on Intel Macs.

Well, yesterday, it came out via John Nack's blog that Carbon has bit them in the bottom once again, and by extension, all Photoshop users.

At last year's WWDC, says Nack, Apple announced that it was dropping it's efforts to create a 64-bit version of Carbon, which meant that Adobe had to drop plans for a 64 bit version of Photoshop for Mac, at least for CS4.

How important is 64 bit? In my life, not very. Not until I start seeing what it can do. Yes, they say it has the musclepower to open big files faster, and it will allow Photoshop to be bigger, stronger, faster. But how much bigger? How much better? How much faster? I guess we see when the next version of the software comes out what sort of gulf there is between the Windows and Mac version. Nack's blog seems to imply that it will be 8-12% faster.

I suspect in my life what it'll mean is not that I find a Windows box to use photoshop on, but at worst, I'll just skip a cycle of Photoshop. Heck, I skipped CS2, not that this'd be any different.

And, since Adobe is well aware of the problems and issues, I suspect that the Mac version will be optimized for what it can be. Will it be covered in 64 bit shiny goodness? Nope. But it will still rock.

I hope.

In the meantime, get ready for a couple years of name calling, flag waving, and yelling back and forth from users. Apple vs. Adobe. Mac vs PC. WoW players vs. Star Wars Galaxy fanboys....

Update:

Read all about the history of Apple and Adobe (and carbon and cocoa, and 32 bit and 64 bit) over at Ars. Gruber has his thoughts on the matter, too.

Evil? Not hardly.

After the recent Wired Story on the inherent evilness of Apple (and by evilness, they mean "not like Google", AFAICT), you'd think that they'd be stealing candy from babies. Not offering refunds and store credits to customers hosed by the recent writer's strike. 

But, they are. And, while they took longer than they needed to to get there, the fact remains that they are doing it, showing that again, providing a great user experience is important to them. 

Now, if they'd only start selling all those TV shows on the Canadian iTunes, I'd be happy. Because while customers are important, apparently Canadian Customers aren't....

Gruber is such a firebrand...

Here's his thoughts on the Wired Feature on Apple...

A closer look at the iPhone video

So, a lot of the folks over at ehMac are looking at the fact that the iPhone demoed in this video has French Canadian built in as a language preference as not having much weight. They don't see it as an imminent release of the iPhone.

So I went and watched the video all the way though (rather than stopping at the point where French Canadian pops up), and noticed that not the guy who does the video goes thumbing through the Region Format Menu, which has date and time options for different countries.

Here are the countries listed, followed by whether they have the iPhone:

Zimbabwe No

UK Yes 

US Yes 

Us Virgin Islands No

South Africa No

Singapore No

Philippines No

Pakistan No

New Zealand No

Malta No

Ireland Yes

India No

Hong Kong SAR China No

Canada No

Botswana No

Belgium No

Australia No

A couple things to note:

Germany and France, both of which have the iPhone, are not on the list.

A whole whack of countries that don't have the iPhone are. 

Is this setting up for a planned roll out? Is this just a standard list of countries that the Mac supports, or is this just someone pulling our leg, yet again, with a fake video?

Well, if you open up the International Pane and select formats, you'll note that the short list of Regions is as listed above. However, if you look next to it, there is a check button that say "show all regions" that allows you to see about a billion other countries and regions. Is it in the video? Survey says, no. So, what does that mean? One option is that this is a fake, a video or a website designed to look like what it might look like. Of course, the video doesn't show the top of the screen, so there is a chance that the "show all regions" is at the top, and this really is 2.0 software.

But, again, it is the standard list from the International Preference Panel. Does the fact that Zimbabwe is listed mean that the iPhone is heading for the streets of Harare? Or is this just a standard format menu for all mac devices? Either one is acceptable, but neither one really sells me on the fact that the iPhone is coming to Canada. 

Rogers may decide to negotiate with Apple, knowing that there may be competition coming down the pipes, but I suspect they'll wait and see what happens with the spectrum auction before caving under.

Still, that would be a coup for a new cell phone provider: We're new, and we've got the iPhone, with data plans starting at a really low price. Now that's the way to enter the market with a bang....

Wired on Apple

This just in my RSS feed: Wired has a whole bunch of stories on Apple. Including a head to head (literally) between Leander Kahney and Fake Steve Jobs.

Some good stuff there; go and have a read. 

Apple will credit iTunes Season Pass Holders. Anyone care? Anyone?

And by anyone, I mean Canadians. Is there anything worth watching on iTunes Canada yet? 

Good to see that Apple is being nice about it, though....

Phone issues

So, more news round the Canadian cell phone industry:

The government is auctioning off spectrum for cell phone providers. And, they are holding 40% of that in reserve, not allowing Telus, Rogers or Bell to bid on it. That opens things up to new cell phone providers. 

I've already mentioned rumours of T-Mobile, but here's some recent news.

A backgrounder on the auction. 

A list of applicants. 

Quebecor Inc says it is making a bid to be a fifth national carrier. 

Niagra Networks bid on 6,510 spectrum licenses. 

Of course, the most exciting part of this, from an Apple POV, is that there is an emphasis of GSM in this auction. I haven't found the official form yet, but it sounds like preference will be given to, or applicants must use, GSM. Which means that the iPhone may not be that far behind 

Except, of course, for me. Still. And forever. Until I move. 

Automator in action

I've been playing around with Automator a lot more in the last few days than I normally do (meaning a bit vs never). And as I was staring at the automator icon I noticed a striking similarity between the Automator icon and the new robot from the new Wall-E trailer.

What do you mean you haven't seen the new Wall-E trailer? Go. Now.  Wait. Make sure you come back. When. You've watched. It. 

Sigh. There goes another one. Someday I'll learn to make my links open in another window. Until then....

Anyway. You seeing it? I do. Not 100%, but you can feel some influence rubbing off, yes? Not as obviously as Wall-E himself, and a certain numbered robot who shall remain un-numbered....