Anybody else notice this?

[Louis Santillan]

Saw this on insanley...Quo seems to be making progress on their Hack compatible board.  See <http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285920-new-os-x-compatible-motherboard-quo/page__st__40>.

-L

[mosslack]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 12:47 AM, Louis Santillan wrote:

Saw this on insanley...Quo seems to be making progress on their Hack compatible board.  See <http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285920-new-os-x-compatible-motherboard-quo/page__st__40>.

-L

My favorite comment from the thread:

The good thing about the MB (if it's going to be as described) that a user can install OS X as easy as Windows or Linux. It's cool and exacting, but IMO boring.

For me the whole Hackintosh thing is mostly about overcoming technical difficulties, doing things that are not done easily. In other words the game itself is more important then the result. No pain, no game  It's just the way I see it.

From developers' point of view it (the development of the MB) most likely is the same exacting thing (overcoming technical difficulties) as installation of OS X is for some. So I can understand all the joy about it. And I do respect the effort and hope it will be success.

An easiness of install may have few negative side effects. Though it may also stimulate some new ideas. Let's wait and see... 

I actually agree with this. Half the fun of a Hackintosh is making it work. Besides, I can't see Apple standing by letting this happen. It's one thing if a person buys an off the shelf motherboard and gets it to work with OS X, but another thing altogether when a third party company is taking that same motherboard and altering it so it will easily run OS X. 

From the main system of mosslack...

______________________________

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[mosslack]

I asked iztech <rash...@gmail.com> about this project and below is how he responded:

On Feb 4, 2013, at 8:36 AM, mosslack wrote:

Just curious as to what kind of response you are getting for this board. While I think it makes it less fun for those of us who enjoy the challenge of building a Hackintosh, I can see where a lot of people would be interested in it. Also, any comment from Apple on this project? 

From the main system of mosslack...

The response has been overwhelming, feels like the first day we opened QUO, but more intense.

It is a motherboard so why should there be a response from Apple?

Regarding challenging - The question to be asked is do we want to leave control up to the motherboard manufacturer or have the ability to allow the community have influence on the development of the board.

Trust me we have shown Gigabyte a lot of technology and shared much.

Also we will now have the opportunity to have a 2 cpu systems etc.

At the moment all the manufacturers change chipsets etc. on a whim. This is not good for the community.

Also we have to fix things from an OS point no matter what and will need to - Why have the uncertainty of having both OS and Hardware concerns.

We want to supply System builders through the world and that is the goal.
So System builders can focus on building machines at a larger volume instead of constantly having to worry about what to build and how to support them. Non support is the worst thing anyone can do, even if your building a system for a family member or a friend.

Thanks for writing.

[Louis Santillan]

Personally, I love the idea of having a 100% oob compatible board.   And rashantha having customized the board to provide higher quality capabilities is just awesome work on his part.  I'm one of those users who appreciates the 'no fuss' approach to Hacks.

-L

[mosslack]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 4:13 PM, Louis Santillan wrote:

Personally, I love the idea of having a 100% oob compatible board.   And rashantha having customized the board to provide higher quality capabilities is just awesome work on his part.  I'm one of those users who appreciates the 'no fuss' approach to Hacks.

-L

Absolutely understood. For those who don't want to invest a lot of time and effort, but still have the luxury of OS X (at a lower cost) system, this is most likely ideal. But for those of us who do it primarily for the thrill of the chase, I can also see their point as well. I do hope the venture is successful as it would help a lot of people out there in the community.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

I believe he could have accomplished the same objective by supplying an
installer USB flash drive which was also used as a "helper" for booting OS
X.

But, that would have opened him up to rip-off artists who simply bought
one instance of his system, and then simply duplicated his USB flash
drive.

Psystar tried essentially the same approach, whereby the system could not
be backed up nor duplicated without its rescue disk.

However, through research, I was able to provide such a capability,
completely independently of Psystar, for my Psystar Hack.

I shared what I had developed, or had adapted, with Psystar, and they
promised to compensate me with an update to my Psystar, but they never
did.

They were obviously just a bunch of fakes, anyway, who "stole" the
technology of other researchers.

Thereafter, I dedicated my efforts to 100 percent "free" Hackintoshing.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> Psystar tried essentially the same approach, whereby the system could not
> be backed up nor duplicated without its rescue disk.
>
> However, through research, I was able to provide such a capability,
> completely independently of Psystar, for my Psystar Hack.
>
> I shared what I had developed, or had adapted, with Psystar, and they
> promised to compensate me with an update to my Psystar, but they never
> did.
>
> They were obviously just a bunch of fakes, anyway, who "stole" the
> technology of other researchers.
>
> Thereafter, I dedicated my efforts to 100 percent "free" Hackintoshing.

My Psystar, which has since been "mined" for all its usable components,
was supplied in a fashion which would indeed boot Snow Leopard, but it was
modified by Psystar so it could not be updated using Software Update.

Hell, you could not even create a backup partition of the damned boot drive.

Enter Boot132 and my relationship with the Hackintosh community (I had
been 100 percent Apple Mac, either 68K, PPC pre-G3, PPC G3 or PPC G4,
before that), and my dedication to Intel Mac Hackintoshes. Also, my
introduction to Mosslack.

I supplied my fixes and my methods to Psystar, but they "stiffed" me on
their promises to update my Psystar system.

NEVER AGAIN!

I now develop my own Hacks, to my own specifications, and I have not been
displeased with my efforts, although some have been relatively long in
coming to the forefront (namely, my H77M m-ATX Hack).

[Kris Tilford]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 3:13 PM, Louis Santillan wrote:

> Personally, I love the idea of having a 100% oob compatible board.

Until a PC hack supports Target Disk Mode booting it won't be OBB
compatible in my opinion. I'd trade quite a bit of hardware
compatibility hassles for Target Disk Mode boot support.

[Louis Santillan]

IMO, this is the kind of thing Rashantha works to prevent.  But maybe I'm biased since I've met him in person <http://www.osnews.com/story/21864/Mac_Clones_Initiating_the_Change_of_Status_Quo>.  I don't believe he would ever impose that kind of restriction on the hardware he sells.  From my discussions with him, he believes people should able to use and customize the hardware and software they purchase any way they see fit, and he loves helping people do that.  He's not biased for or against any company; he just doesn't seem that naturally political in nature.  He just wants people happy with his service.

I also believe that you (PH) & Mosslack are tackling the same issues as Quo, just from different angles.  PH excels at enabling hardware via software configuration and testing, Mosslack excels at procedure writing, system documentation & being a great tutor/mentor, and Quo has focused on custom configurations & customer service.  At some level you're all working to lower the barrier for would-be Hack users.  Now Quo is adding a tested-board with higher end component chips that are supposed to work OOB.  I wish them luck.

-L

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[mosslack]

On Feb 5, 2013, at 12:52 AM, Louis Santillan wrote:

IMO, this is the kind of thing Rashantha works to prevent.  But maybe I'm biased since I've met him in person <http://www.osnews.com/story/21864/Mac_Clones_Initiating_the_Change_of_Status_Quo>.  I don't believe he would ever impose that kind of restriction on the hardware he sells.  From my discussions with him, he believes people should able to use and customize the hardware and software they purchase any way they see fit, and he loves helping people do that.  He's not biased for or against any company; he just doesn't seem that naturally political in nature.  He just wants people happy with his service.

I also believe that you (PH) & Mosslack are tackling the same issues as Quo, just from different angles.  PH excels at enabling hardware via software configuration and testing, Mosslack excels at procedure writing, system documentation & being a great tutor/mentor, and Quo has focused on custom configurations & customer service.  At some level you're all working to lower the barrier for would-be Hack users.  Now Quo is adding a tested-board with higher end component chips that are supposed to work OOB.  I wish them luck.

-L

I have no doubt his motives are mostly to help the Hackintosh community, but at the same time, I'm sure Apple doesn't see it that way. They see a man (company) trying to profit by selling a Mac clone. Like it or not, I can see no other way to put it, designing a computer system to run OS X OOTB is a clone computer, pure and simple.

Whether this computer will run other operating systems is irrelevant, even true Macs run other OSes. The big thing to Apple is that it will run OS X and violates their EULA. While other computers are close enough to allow one to hack the system to get OS X running, those individuals are not trying to profit from their efforts and so far Apple has not shown an interest in stopping these people. Trying to stop people from experimenting with hardware and software they purchase for use in their own home is a whole lot different than going after a retail store selling clone computers. 

For the record, I wish Rashantha success. Having a system where OS X could be easily installed and updated would be beneficial to a lot of people. But then Apple has been doing it for awhile and I'm sure they know this as well.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> I also believe that you (PH) & Mosslack are tackling the same issues as
> Quo, just from different angles. PH excels at enabling hardware via
> software configuration and testing, Mosslack excels at procedure writing,
> system documentation & being a great tutor/mentor, and Quo has focused on
> custom configurations & customer service. At some level you're all
> working
> to lower the barrier for would-be Hack users. Now Quo is adding a
> tested-board with higher end component chips that are supposed to work
> OOB.

Well put. and accurate, I believe.


> I wish them luck.

As do I.

However, I do believe Apple will throw the same issues at them (EULA,
violation of same, particularly including DMCA and the decrypter).

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> I have no doubt his motives are mostly to help the Hackintosh community,
> but at the same time, I'm sure Apple doesn't see it that way. They see a
> man (company) trying to profit by selling a Mac clone. Like it or not, I
> can see no other way to put it, designing a computer system to run OS X
> OOTB is a clone computer, pure and simple.

Some of the principals of the former Amdahl Corporation, including Dr Gene
Amdahl himself, founded Platform Solutions Inc, a company which produced
Xeon-based generic computers, and which featured Linux (no issue there)
and IBM's z/OS, among others.

IBM sued PSI for violation of its patents and then refused to license z/OS
to run on PSI's hardware, not withstanding that they would license z/OS to
run on a somewhat similar device produced many years earlier by another
company.

PSI was forced to counter-sue.

Ultimately, IBM bought PSI and took it dark (namely, it eliminated it as a
competitor).

IBM will still allow z/OS to run on the historically old emulator, as it
is pure software emulation, and is really pretty slow.

Also, IBM can do nothing about those who would run OS/370 (any of them,
but most particularly including MVS/370, which is a direct antecedent of
z/OS) on PCs or Macs, using the Hercules emulator, as those OSes are in
the public domain by IBMs failure to properly copyright the code.

However, IBM will not, with very few exceptions, license z/OS to run under
Hercules, even though Hercules has a mode which will run z/OS, and perhaps
more particularly, IBM refuses to disclose how it compresses so-called
"Count-Key-Data" drive images on "Fixed Block" devices, such as hard
drives, although this technology was actually created many years ago by
someone else. EMC, I think.

[Pizzaboy192]

One thing that makes this different from a company selling a clone of a Mac is that they're not selling it WITH OSX like Psystar did, but instead are billing it as an OSX Compatible system. It would be the same as if they were to sell three separate add-on cards for your generic Intel system that had a compatible GFX chipset, a compatible audio chipset, and a compatible networking chipset.
Better yet, they could roll all three together and sell a double-wide nVidia 8800GT with 512MB of ram, and the compatible Audio, Networking, and WiFi chips onboard. These could all be connected via PCI express with headers inside to replace the ones onboard.

They're just packing the hardware that they know is compatible with OSX onto the board, and if I have read everything correctly, are including a bit of extra flash memory on the system itself that will contain Chameleon. (This is where they could get into trouble)
However, it's not unheard of for product manufacturers to include secondary boot loaders on their systems. My HP Dm-1 laptop has a bit of code in it's BIOS that searches the HDD for a partition called "HP_TOOLS". If this partition is found, it extends the BIOS functionality into a faux EFI state. Pretty nice since it has a large quantity of HP's tools, and can be modified via Windows to add other functionality to it like an editor for the boot manager, and a small Windows PE subsystem to repair simple issues if I dare to.

if Apple presented them with a lawsuit, that's exactly what they can claim. They're not different than the company that produces a keyboard that is "Mac OS x Compatible" or a USB audio dongle that works with OSX. They're just making it into a single piece of hardware.

I see the same type of issues pop up in the gaming sector all the time. Small-company X releases a hardware product that does Y. Console maker Z doesn't like what X is doing, because Y can lead to piracy. To avoid this, Company X sells the product with no firmware installed, and a claim saying that they're being used to legally backup the games, and don't support Piracy etc. Company Z doesn't have much to make a lawsuit out of when the shipping product ships in a useless state, and needs to be modified by the end user to do Y that Company Z doesn't like.

I could see Quo selling it with a download on their site to Install\update Chameleon on the built-in flash. Only contains the software if the end-user does it themselves. No longer the company's liability if they download and install it.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> However, it's not unheard of for product manufacturers to include
> secondary boot loaders on their systems.

Indeed, PRIMARY, SECONDARY, and even TERTIARY boot loaders, all of which
"conspire" to enable the lowest-level hardware to APPEAR to be a Mac.

So far, the SCOTUS, which certainly seems to feel that it can SELECT a
POTUS, the Constitution not withstanding, has yet to determine how MANY
LEVELS DEEP a software system MUST necessarily APPEAR TO BE, before it is,
de-facto, infringing,

For, if an INFINITE set of levels is NOT INFRINGING, then a non-infinite
level MUST also be held to be NOT INFRINGING.

I have no "horse in this race".

I, however, as a former Psystar purchaser, MUST, necessarily, elect to
assume a relatively small level ... perhaps one or two.

[rashantha de silva]

Guys customers can use Cham or anything they want. We are not going to restrict anything. But what is different in the motherboard is the use UEFI (not done before). Opensource and you can use the hardware as you please.