Maxxuss Site Down Again?

As of Tuesday, March 7, 2006 at 9am ET, maxxuss.com is down. Last time Maxxuss changed domains, the OS X hacking community went into a frenzy because of coincidental timing shortly after Win2osx and OSx86 Project were served DMCA notices. This outage comes on the heals of Maxxuss releasing Patch Solution for Mac OS X 10.4.5 Security Update 2006-001 that allows the latest version of OS X 10.4.5 run on white box x86 computers. It could be nothing more than a bandwidth usage issue, something more severe like a server outage or it could be legal trouble.

The entire series of posts on Maxxuss and the hacked versions of Apple OS X are worth a read for context on the latest incident in a string episodes in this high profile back-and-forth soap opera.

Update (3.7.2006): The Maxxuss patch site is working but the blog is still down as of 12:52pm ET.

Update (3.9.2006): maxxuss.com is working again.

If there are any new developments, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or dropping a comment below. I’ll post updates as this story develops.

As always, I don’t condone piracy so please don’t do anything illegal.

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March 7, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | Comments Off 

Maxxuss Posts OS X 10.4.5 (8G1454) x86 Patches

Maxxuss has done it again by posting patches for the newest OS X 10.4.5 which allows non-Apple branded x86 machines to run the operating system. Before anyone attempts to upgrade to the latest version, there are some open issues that must be taken into account:

  1. Darwin kernel has been updated from 8.4.1 to 8.5.1 in OS X 10.4.5. This won’t affect Mac owners but it does affect everyone attempting to run OSx86 on non-Core Duo hardware. The most notable change is 8.5.1 drops support for general Intel power management and the LAPIC timer. In leu of that, the new kernel now only supports Intel Core Duo enhanced power management and its HPET (High Performance Events Timers) facility. To address this, the latest Maxxuss Patch Solution v1.0 for 10.4.5 uses the older 8.4.1 kernal until the power management code can be reinserted into a modified 8.5.1 kernel.
  2. AMD CPUs show some instability while running iTunes. Maxxuss is attempting to look into this matter.
  3. The install procedure is still very involved and prone to errors if not followed properly. Maxxuss and others in the community have already attempted to create a patched 10.4.4 Restore Disc in an attempt to address this issue. Unfortunately, the results aren’t showing the same level of success as following the the list of instructions posted on Maxxuss’ site.
  4. DVD playback is not 100% working yet.

The hiccups of the past few days involving DMCA threats and the unavailability of Maxxuss page has not hampered progress on the OS X x86 hacking front. On the contrary, it is continuing at a hurried pace which means that resolutions to the last few remaining issues aren’t too far off.

This does not mean Apple has given up fighting piracy of it’s operating system through direct intimidation tactics. Robert Braun, a developer involved in Apple’s open source efforts, wrote a column today that suggested Apple has been hampering releases of certain core components back to the community. He basically declares Apple’s open source efforts dead. Could this be another front in Apple’s war against the enthusiast community trying to get OS X working on white-box systems?

Update (3.2.2006): Maxxuss has fixed the iTunes problems on OS X 10.4.4 and 10.4.5 for AMD CPUs in Patch Solution 1.0a.

Update (3.4.2006): Maxxuss has a new domain. Update your bookmarks.

If there are any other new developments, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or dropping a comment below. I’ll post updates as this story develops.

As always, I don’t condone piracy so please don’t do anything illegal.

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February 23, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | 2 Comments 

Maxxuss Site Shutdown, Apple to Blame?

Note: Some of this information may be out of date. Although I provide updates to posts as postscript, many times an entirely new post may be necessary. Click one of the tags above to find the latest entries by the subject matter you are interested in.

In yet another follow-up to my previous posts on Maxxuss cracking OS X 10.4.4, it looks like Maxxuss’ site is down (thanks Zeth for the heads up). A snippet of a post from the front page of OSx86 Project reads:

It appears that Apple may have gotten to Maxxuss, the hacker made famous for his flagrant cracks and patches of Mac OS X for Intel. A visit to his website reveals that his site has been shutdown by his host, the cause of which we do not know at this time.

Although the reasons aren’t very clear at the moment as to what may have happened, there is rampant speculation of everything from exhausting bandwidth to Apple serving a take down notice as it had to the OSx86Project Forums a few days ago. Discussion is continuing on the shutdown in their forums.

According to a post at OSx86China Forum, all requests to:

http://maxxuss.hotbox.ru

are being redirected to:

http://pochta.ru/notfound.php

At the 360 Insider Forums, a message provides a list of links to Google’s cache of Maxxuss’ site.

If Apple has in fact shut down Maxxuss site, then they can learn something from this incident. The x86 community has a history of playing “whac-a-mole” which is defined as:

The term Whac-a-Mole, or Whack-a-mole, has been used in the computer and networking industry to describe the phenomenon fending off recurring spammers, vandals or miscreants. The connotation is that of a repetitious and futile task: each time the attacker is “whacked” or kicked off of a service, he only pops up again from another direction.

It is inevitable that someone will rehost Maxxuss’ pages using either the Google cache versions or a local mirrored copy. Can Apple Legal keep serving take down notices to people scattered all over the globe? It is not likely. Although what is likely is that people with a political axe to grind over free speech issues (but no interest in Apple’s operating system) will take up the call to start disseminating this information. Eventually Maxxuss’ or his successor’s information will make it to a host like HavenCo that has no restrictions on copyright or intellectual property data being hosted on it’s servers or onto the encrypted Tor anonymous network as a hidden service. If history is any indicator then Apple can’t win this battle. Most of the enthusiast work on getting new versions of OS X will continue whether it moves further underground or offshore depends on how hard Apple pushes. If this was truly Apple’s handiwork then it can be firmly said that they may have won this round but the fight is far from over.

Update (2.22.2006): The Maxxuss Patch Solution v1.0 can still be found via Google Germany. Search terms: maxxuss patch solution 09.55

Update (2.22.2006): Maxxuss has a new blog that is up and running. It does not contain any copyrighted material according to him so I think it’s safe to link it. A posting on his site is saying that everyone should bookmark http://maxxuss.tk/ just in case he moves his site again. He has also put up mirrors of his original site:

http://-.host.sk/ and http://-2006.narod.ru/ where “-” is equal to the 7-letter name of our friendly OSx86 hacker.

If there are any other new developments, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or dropping a comment below. I’ll post updates as this story develops.

As always, I don’t condone piracy so please don’t do anything illegal.

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February 21, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | 4 Comments 

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