Update jan 01, 2009: EFI software solution called EPOS [1] available for free…
Update june 26, 2008: read latest news about EFI-X here [2]…
We yet reported the rumors about an EFI emulator being put into a USB boot device (read here [3]). The project is called EFI-X.com and the guys behind announced to open their shop tomorrow. Anyway they updated their website already and released some more details about “their” products. Though there are no information about pricing yet.
EFiX seem to start with two products (see here [4])
EFiX USB V1
- EFiX interactive system boot selector
- allows to install MacOS X from retail DVD (and online updates)
- installed into internal USB (this is quite vague still)
EFiX USB Deluxe / Sound
- EFiX interactive system boot selector
- allows to install MacOS X from retail DVD (and online updates)
- includes USB Soundcard
- USB Hub
- installed into internal USB (this is quite vague still)
Supported Hardware (see here [5])
EFI-X supports the following CPUs:
- Intel Core 2 Extreme
- Intel Core 2 Quad
- Intel Core 2 Duo
- Intel Pentium dual-core (E2xx0)
- Intel Celeron dual-core (E1200)
- Intel Celeron (420, 430, 440)
- Intel Multi Core CPU
and graphic adapters using these chipsets:
- nVidia Geforce 7300 GS / GT
- nVidia Geforce 7600 GT
- nVidia Geforce 7800 GT / GTX
- nVidia Geforce 7900 GS / GT
- nVidia Geforce 7950 GT
- nVidia Geforce 8600 GTS / GT
- nVidia Geforce 8800 GS / GT / GTS / GTX / Ultra
- nVidia Quattro FX 5600
- ATI Radeon 2600 XT
- ATI Radeon HD 3870
and these motherboards:
- Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P (rev. 2.0)
- Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P (rev. 2.1)
- Gigabyte GA P35-DS3R
- Gigabyte GA P35-DS3L
What (we) the people think
Many endusers will welcome this product. Endusers won’t need to download illegal distributions of adjusted and custom hacked/packed install DVDs (like Kalyway or iAtkos). People who where following the Brazil-Mac’s way will also like it. It simply seems to make the installation of MacOS X on whitebox PCs hassle-free, because we all will be able to use original retail DVDs. People will tend to buy those DVDs rather than just downloading from dark torrent sites. This is a strong position to like this product. Apple might like it aswell since it may help their propable guerilla strategy to silently undercut the PC market.
Anyway in the meantime several things have been mentioned that might detain people from buying it. First being the question of the legal status of EFiX. There has been a strong dispute about if EFI-X is legal or if it might contain parts of code that have been released under Apple’s open source license (like Dave Elliot’s Darwin Bootloader [6] or the EFI emulaton Chameleon [7]), which would require to release the source code of EFi-X as open source aswell. Second being something we’re gonna tell when we got enuff information…