The day has finally come when a Mac operating system (OS) can be run on any AMD- or Intel-based computer. Instructions on how to install Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system were posted to the Internet late last week, and they could also be found on several Web sites today.

The move comes following Apple's announcement in June that its Mac OS X operating system will actually run on Intel's x86 architecture chips early next year. The company has also been working on a version of Mac OS X for Intel's chips since 2000, although Macs currently use PowerPC chips from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor. According to Apple, the switch was necessary to take advantage of the low-power chips Intel is expected to release in the future.

The biggest surprise is that at the time Apple insisted that Mac OS X would only run on x86 chips used in Apple-developed hardware. Intel PCs distributed to Apple developers with the x86 version of Mac OS X used a security chip (Intel's Trusted Platform Module) to prevent developers from copying Mac OS to other Intel PCs. However, hackers have been able to bypass the security chip and run the developer's version of MacOS for x86 on any x86-based PC.

The process requires a copy of Mac OS X version 4 (Tiger), VMware's virtualisation software, the PearPC emulator that can run operating systems written for PowerPC on any architecture, Apple's Darwin 8.0.1 software, an x86 processor that supports SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2), and two files created by an independent developer that can be downloaded using the BitTorrent file-sharing system.

BIOS, Aug 15, 05 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Apple Mac