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Details, photos of Apple's Intel Mac developer system
As ThinkSecret reports in a recent posting, developers have begun to receive Intel-based Mac development system and, as such, further details (and photos) have emerged. Officially designated "Apple Development Platform ADP2,1," the development systems ship in the current G5's aluminum enclosure (with an alternate fan arrangement) are configured similar to previous reports:
Aside from booting Mac OS X for Intel, the PC BIOS-based development units allow for a smooth install of Windows XP onto an NTFS-formatted drive partition. The only issue ThinkSecret reports is difficulty in getting Windows to take advantage of the full resolution of an attached 23-inch Apple Cinema Display.
Lending doubt to the previous reports that OS X for Intel had been leaked and was being installed on standard PCs, attempts to install the Mac OS X for Intel CD on both a Dell and a vanilla PC resulted in an error message indicating that the systems' hardware configurations are not supported by Darwin x86. It is uncertain whether this error message is the result of an integrated security chip that will reportedly make its way into Intel-based production Macs or a simple check in the installer for an exact configuration match to the Apple spec'ed developer units.
See ThinkSecret's photos:
- Intel Mac motherboard | DVI card and slots | running Windows XP
UPDATE: New photos have appeared in an AppleInsider article:
- motherboard 1 | motherboard 2 | curious switch | OS X for Intel DVD
- BIOS setup 1 | BIOS setup 2 | BIOS setup 3 | BIOS setup 4
UPDATE: More photos have appeared in an O'Grady's PowerPage post:
- open case | motherboard close 1 | motherboard close 2 | motherboard far
It is worth noting that, while these development systems utilize PC BIOS and are, effectively, standard PCs, Apple may chose to use utilize a firmware configuration of their own design in the production units, thus making the Macintosh something other than a standard PC. At least one source inside Apple has indicated that, while the Intel-based Macs will not utilize OpenFirmware [Apple's Uinversal Binary PDF, page 47], developers should not assume PC BIOS will be present either.
Unable to select DB- Pentium 4 660 (3.6 GHz CPU w/ 64-bit extensions, 2MB L2 cache)
- 800MHz front-side bus
- 1GB DDR-2 RAM
- four SATA connectors
- Slots: two PCI, one 1X PCI-Express, one 16X PCI-Express
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 800 integrated graphics
- Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16 DVI-breakout card (PCI Express)
- FireWire 400 (but not 800, booting not supported)
- USB 2 booting is supported
- Phoenix BIOS (no OpenFirmware)
The Intel systems run Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger identically on the surface as ordinary Macs, with the exception of a modified Processor System Preference (from Apple's CHUD tools) that allows the user to toggle Hyper-Threading on or off. Apple System Profiler includes a new line under Hardware listing CPU Features; for the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 this comprises a rather lengthy list of technical acronyms: FPU, VME, DE, PSE, TSC, MSR, PAE, MCE, CX8, APIC, SEP, MTRR, PGE, MCA, CMOV, PAT, PSE36, CLFSH, DS, SCPI, MMX, FXSR, SSE, SEE2, SS, HTT, TM, SSE3, MON, DSCPL, EST, TM2, CX16, and TPR.
Aside from booting Mac OS X for Intel, the PC BIOS-based development units allow for a smooth install of Windows XP onto an NTFS-formatted drive partition. The only issue ThinkSecret reports is difficulty in getting Windows to take advantage of the full resolution of an attached 23-inch Apple Cinema Display.
Lending doubt to the previous reports that OS X for Intel had been leaked and was being installed on standard PCs, attempts to install the Mac OS X for Intel CD on both a Dell and a vanilla PC resulted in an error message indicating that the systems' hardware configurations are not supported by Darwin x86. It is uncertain whether this error message is the result of an integrated security chip that will reportedly make its way into Intel-based production Macs or a simple check in the installer for an exact configuration match to the Apple spec'ed developer units.
See ThinkSecret's photos:
- Intel Mac motherboard | DVI card and slots | running Windows XP
UPDATE: New photos have appeared in an AppleInsider article:
- motherboard 1 | motherboard 2 | curious switch | OS X for Intel DVD
- BIOS setup 1 | BIOS setup 2 | BIOS setup 3 | BIOS setup 4
UPDATE: More photos have appeared in an O'Grady's PowerPage post:
- open case | motherboard close 1 | motherboard close 2 | motherboard far
It is worth noting that, while these development systems utilize PC BIOS and are, effectively, standard PCs, Apple may chose to use utilize a firmware configuration of their own design in the production units, thus making the Macintosh something other than a standard PC. At least one source inside Apple has indicated that, while the Intel-based Macs will not utilize OpenFirmware [Apple's Uinversal Binary PDF, page 47], developers should not assume PC BIOS will be present either.