Wired.com are running a story which says that:
Hackers have found a way to bypass a chip designed to prevent the Mac OS from running on non-Apple PCs, which are often cheaper than Macs …. The hacked version of OSx86 is based on pirated software, which came from copies of the operating system sent to participants in the Apple Developer Connection. The ADC participants also received MacIntel computers for testing and development.
Now the hacked version of OSx86 is running on Dell laptops and other PCs with Intel and AMD microprocessors.
OS X running on Dell PCs and AMD chip PCs? Heads are gonna roll in Jobsville today!
You can bet that before the next generation of MacIntel computers ship, this issue will have been completely locked down – the last thing Steve Jobs wants is OS X running on non-Apple computers!
UPDATE:
There’s a video here of OS X running on a PC laptop – be aware that due to heavy demand this video isn’t always available!
Also, there are not just but videos as well as instructions on installing 10.4 on an Intel machine. (In this case a Sony Vaio.) here.
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The most telling point in that article is:
“It seems like getting around the TPM wasn’t that hard, according to a hacker nicknamed “parch,” who said, “Apple could have made the lock heavier.”
It’s probably not in their interest to close the door right now as they need to get as many developers on board the MacIntel train as they can before it leaves the PPC station for good. People writing kernel extensions for currently unsupported hardware is a good thing, they’ll slam the door shut, hard, when it comes to products which they can sell.
They really don’t have a choice when we consider that Apple can’t afford to lose hardware sales, even if they were to legally sell boxed versions of OS X for Intel processors, it’s questionable that they’d sell enough software to offset the loss of their healthy hardware margins.
I think it’s a complete non issue. Sure some people may be able to do it when the final version comes out (expect it to look for codes in the hardware etc.) but that’s gonna be a tiny subset of people.
Besides that even the guys who I read got it working today didn’t have the specs they needed to get everything working so we can assume that it’s going to be very dependent on what hardware config you have.
The moment the decision was made to run MacOS on Intel machines, it should have been obvious to anyone involved that sooner or later, someone will hack it to run on “regular” PC’s.
Any maybe it’s the conspiracy theorist in me, but I guess they very well knew what they did.
I guess in 2-3 years, you can decide upon purchase whether your PC will run Windows or MacOS, and many PC’s will run both with a boot-switcher. This will push Apples marketshare finally to 50% – or to 100% with a total market of 200%.
And I’m pretty sure that is what Steve Jobs is dreaming about all along.