OS X on generic PC hardware

OSx86 Project - Apple Seeks (Poetic) Justice

I’ve been following the “run OSX on generic PC hardware” thread for, well, since it got started when Jobs announced that they had been secretly developing an x86 version in parallel for like that last 5 years. Very cool.

I’ve witnessed the thing running firsthand on a Dell Latitude D600 almost flawlessly. Even wireless worked. Which, with a closed-source Broadcom chipset, was quite amazing. I guess not so amazing, since the Broadcom chipset is what is used by Apple in its own products, but still, it’s pretty neat.

So how cool is it that Maxxus and other hackers have gotten the 10.4.4 release (the official release) to run on generic hardware, even with the TPM (secure computing thingy)? Very cool.

What’s even cooler is that Apple put in a little notice in the encrypted file the TPM reads. It has this in it (decrypted, of course):

Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind,
he’d do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don’t steal Mac OS!
Really, that’s way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.

Nice job. I dig it.