The other day i got a link to the osx86 project, a website dedicated to the useage of Mac OSX on PC hardware. Since Apple decided to switch over to PC (more specifically Intel) hardware, there have been questions about how they would make sure that you couldn't run OSX on any PC, since they still want to sell Mac hardware. The solution seems to be the usage of TPM technology to ensure that only moderboards from apple will run OSX. The above website follows the development of this, and of the hacks that allows you to run OSX on any PC hardware.

The current version of OSX doesn't run on anything but PPC hardware, but there is a developer dvd that runs on specially supplied PC's, to allow 3rd party developers to start porting their software to the new hardware. It seems that this version can be modified to run on other boxes the the ones supplied by Apple (which contant the TPM chip). There are right now two different guides on how to get this version to run inside of WMWare, and also in some cases from a native disk.

The main reason i got interessted in this has to do with the computer lab i have been building. If OSX could be run on PC hardware it would enable me to boot into it from the lab computers. The problem as it seems (apart from the fact that i could probably not obtain the x86 version of OSX in any legal way) is that it requires SSE 2 support from the CPU, something i don't think the old boxes i am using supports.

All in all its an interesting development, will Apple cling to their hardware sales, or will they realise that there will always be people out there with to much time on their hands, whom will find ways to run OSX on any PC, and concentrate their efforts on the software part of the company. Only time will tell.

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Carl Cedergren
2005-08-14 17:23

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