Notable merchant of Mac clones, Psystar, added another argument to its countersuit against Apple, yesterday.
Reports have surfaced that the company is accusing Apple of burying code in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that blocks anything that doesn't faintly resemble a Core 2 Duo, further extending Apple's grip on who and what runs their operating system.
According to Psystar, the fruity OS will run code at boot that checks which processor your system is running and shuts down in the event it isn't a Core 2 Duo processor. This unknown bit of code, present in Mac OS X Leopard, claims Psystar, is further proof of Apple's sneakiness. True, Apple only has Core 2 Duos in its current Mac range, with the exception of the Mac Pro that uses Xeons on Mac OS X Leopard Server - hardly the budget philosophy you'd see at Psystar.
Psystar has argued that you don't need high-end hardware for Mac OS X, you can imagine the company carefully eyeing Intel's cheaper dual-core Celerons or AMD's Phenom(II?) and Athlons for its catalogue... but Apple wouldn't want its OS running on cheap hardware, now would it?
We spoke to some developers and industry sources and we were told that OS X Leopard will run (and is running) on any SSE3-gifted processor (theoretically that would even include AMD platforms), rather than just the "Core 2 Duo"-specific claim. Drivers, however, are the main issue with this approach, as Apple only supplies drivers for a very limited range of hardware - its hardware - so any other kit running OS X is likely to be missing a feature, or ten.
One particular developer is, at the time, running a (non-Psystar) Core 2 Quad at 3.83GHz on an X48-DQ6 motherboard and had no problems with the system boot. He also said that he had no problem running OS X Leopard on a "simple dual-core with Nvidia 7300 card". Although he recognises the OS does have some hardwired processor recognition in the code, he can't say for sure what it's doing there.
The real problem, adds one industry source, is that, Psystar "said some very true things about the EULA", and therein lies Apple's problem. Apple, "should realise by now that they are a big company, and that they should open up," he said.