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.

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.

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.

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

Maxxuss Releases SS3 Emulator and AMD Enabler for OS X 10.4.4 (Intel)

Note: Some of this information may be out of date. Although I try to 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.

There is a great deal of activity in the Apple OS X for white-box Intel PC world right now. In a follow-up to my previous posting regarding Maxxuss cracking Apple OSX 10.4.4, SSE2 and AMD machines are now supported. Also, Base-Patches have been updated to version 0.3 (See 2.19.2006 Update below).

Here is a snippet from Maxxuss’ site:

The v0.3 patches require an Intel CPU and SSE3. NX/XD support is not required, and Mac OS X works native and under VMWare.

However, AMD CPUs are supported by the AMD Enabler, and SSE2 CPUs are supported by the SSE3 Emulator…

In other developments, the OSx86 Project Forums were taken down after they were served with a DMCA violation notice. As of February 17, 2006 @ 21:05 ET, the site reads:

We’re sorry to report that despite our best efforts, the OSx86 Project has been served with a DMCA violation notice. The forum will be unavailable while we evaluate its contents to remove any violations present. We thank you for your patience in this matter.

There is no word yet if they’ll be brought back at all. Unfortunately, Apple does not realize that these sorts of tactics don’t work in the x86 world. If Apple pushes harder, then this community will go underground as so many have before. Quite frankly, Apple is wasting its time and should focus on releasing more Intel-equipped hardware than chasing a tiny community concerned with breaking through the TPM puzzle. However, the effect of the OSx86 Project Forum shut down did not go unnoticed and led to speculation of an Apple crackdown when Win2OSX was taken offline. At this time, the IRC channel topic reads:

Site is/was down because it took excessive traffic - IT IS NOT DMCA-RELATED.’ Set by Kal on Fri Feb 17 13:00:08

So it is probably safe to say that there is a chance that Win2OSX may be back whenever they get to paying their hosting bills.

UPDATE (2.18.2006): The OSx86 Project posted an announcement about the forums being brought back online. Apparently they’ve removed the offending posts/links but that doesn’t mean they won’t be hit again. I’m going to suggest people head over to the 360 Insider Forums for searching through old issues. Any new posts should be posted to the Non-Chinese Discussion forum at OSX86China Forum for, ironically, uncensored discussion.

UPDATE (2.19.2006): Maxxuss has released his latest patch set: Patch Solution v1.0 (Search terms on Google Germany: maxxuss patch solution 09.55). This integrates and supercedes all earlier patches. Native or VMWare guest install instructions are on his site. The easiest install instructions are at Radiotux.

UPDATE (2.20.2006): Although it is against my ideology of Free Speech, I have voluntarily removed some links to The Pirate Bay Bittorrent site. I think Google should remove this informtion as well because it tells users where to get OS X 10.4.4 Restore Disc necessary for the install.

UPDATE (2.21.2006): I’ve posted a full entry on Maxxuss’ site being unavailable. All updates on this topic from today will be in that post. Thanks to Zeth for the heads up. Also a review of someone installing a hacked copy of OS X 10.4.4 is posted at Cavemonkey50.

UPDATE (2.23.2006): Apparently Win2osx was sent a DMCA notice at the same time as OSx86 Project. Their provider took down the site while Win2osx removed links to Maxxuss’ site and other infringing material. Although the Apple lawyer later said they were in compliance, the hosting site still hasn’t restored Win2osx. The story is up on Digg (#win2osx ops have asked that people digg the story) and exchange of emails between Win2osx and the Apple lawyer have been made public.

If there are any other new developments, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail or dropping a comment below.

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

February 17, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | 8 Comments 

Apple OS X 10.4.4 for Intel Cracked (Again)

Note: Some of this information may be out of date. Although I try to 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.

I’ve written about running Apple’s beautiful OS X on Intel hardware many times in the past. Another one of my past posts on this topic even gave a list of links on where to find information on how to accomplish this feat on regular white box computers. The scene has been relatively quiet for a long time as Apple was gearing up to release their official Intel-based machines. The main problem was that many pieces of hardware couldn’t run under the OS X because drivers were not available much like Linux machines of yesteryear. Unlike Linux, the OS X for Intel community didn’t have the programmers necessary to start writing drivers so things began to stagnate. Many hoped that the official release of Apple machines would coincide with more drivers. Then a few new developments occurred:

Instructions are available on Maxxus’ page which show how to install the new version under VMWare so I’m sure people are very excited about this development. One of the biggest things holding back extended use of the operating system in the OSX86 hacker community was the lack of accelerated drivers for nVidia and ATI cards. At the moment, I haven’t bothered to check the message boards but something tells me that problem should (hopefully) be a thing of the past.

Both Slashdot and OSx86 Project are running stories on this as we speak and it seems like everyone is in agreement on one thing: mainly, this isn’t going to affect Apple in any big way. Most of the people taking the time to install the software are enthusiasts who have the time and extra computers to play with this operating system. The general public won’t be using this at all because it involves far too much time and energy for any of this to work. Even then, how can most people even begin to sacrifice their productivity in Windows or Linux to play around with an operating system that probably won’t support their hardware? Not many I assume. On the other hand, it will give some people a great conversation piece and maybe even give Apple a few extra machine sales.

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

February 14, 2006 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | Comments Off 

Running Apple OS X on an Intel CPU

Note: Some of this information may be out of date. Although I try to 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.

First of all, if you are lost after reading that Apple OS X runs on Intel-based computers (i.e. Dell, HP, IBM, etc. branded machines) then go to my earlier post to get some background.

I just wanted to post some links to places to get more info with some blurbs on recent updates.

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

September 11, 2005 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | Comments Off 

Mac OS X on a Dell? It’s true. (Picture & Video Proof)

Note: Some of this information may be out of date. Although I try to 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.

Apple announced many weeks back that they were switching to normal Intel hardware in their computers instead of IBM’s processors. It was no surprise to some in the tech industry because it was common knowledge that Apple had a working version of Darwin (OS X Kernel) for Intel processors freely downloadable for quite some time. Having a full version of OS X for Intel hardware (better known as: OSX86) in some hidden lab at Apple wasn’t that much of a stretch but always provided for a good debate.

Is it now possible to ditch your copy of Windows for a brand new copy of OS X? Not if Apple has anything to say about it. Apple has implimented hardware level security that will prevent normal users from installing the operating system on off-the-shelf Intel computers. However, some have managed to break the security and now have semi-working copies on certain types of hardware. The problem now is a wide number of drivers are not in the wild for devices so the chances of having all the hardware working on a given computer is not a certainty. Fortunately, this situation is changing because OS X is based on BSD so some people have began projects to write their own drivers. Below I have included both a screenshot of a desktop and video of an unnamed person dual booting Windows XP and Apple OS X on his Dell laptop. (None of the items are hosted on my server.)

Screenshot (click to enlarge):

Video (hit “play”):

Update (2.19.06): Original host for the video is down. Link updated.

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

August 22, 2005 | Filed Under Tech/Gadgets | Comments Off