Tag Archives: Apple

[iPhone] iPhone 3G Unlock “yellowsn0w” on Distribution

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… by the iPhone Dev Team. You guys really rock. The unlock tool requires a jailbroken iPhone 3G and either Cydia or the Installer installed to download the unlock program called “yellowsn0w” from the Dev Team’s repository.

The tool gets distributed for free. Anyway some code-thieves are obviously already selling it by saying it is their work. Find further information about yellowsn0w on the Dev Team’s blog.

And yes: happy new year guys. We’re back from vacation and Berlin is full of “white snow” :-))

[MacOS] EPOS I. – EFI Post Install for White-Box PCs

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We were working quite some time on this. Now here is EPOS I. – the “EFI Post Install” Script for white-box PCs that are almost hardware compatible with Apple’s devices

“EPOS I.” is an “EFI Post Install” Script

What does it do?

EPOS helps installing retail DVD’s of Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on white-box PC’s. EPOS is SlimBuild-Preboot compliant. And as such it makes installation very easy. Grab a copy of a SlimBuilt-Preboot CD image that matches your hardware (motherboard and graphics), then install Leopard and after installation run EPOS.

Technically EPOS I. automates the necessary steps of preparing MacOS’ native EFI partition and the installation of (legacy-) kexts to this EFI partition. The whole shebang was first discovered and described by Munky (all shouts fly out to him!). You may find his article here on the InsanelyMac forums.

Installation and Usage:

  • unplug ethernet cable from your white-box PC
  • copy EPOS I.zip to USB drive for instance
  • install Leopard from retail DVD using a SlimBuild-Preboot standard compatible CD (find links to tested disks below
  • boot installed Leopard using the SlimBuild-Preboot CD again
  • on first boot provide all the registration information required from Apple
  • see desktop for the first time
  • unpack EPOS I. and run it as ROOT from a terminal (have your SlimBuild-Preboot CD mounted)
  • EPOS takes about a minute to install everything
  • remove SlimBuild-Preboot CD from drive, reboot and let Apple’s autoinstaller grab the newest updates
  • enjoy a white-box Mek

Habit:

  • EPOS must be executed from the disk that will hold the EFI bootloaders.
  • If you are unsure what this means: better make sure you only have your DVD drive and your OS X harddrive connected.
  • I recommend using this script on a clean and fresh installed system, no other operating systems on the same disk!
  • prefers mounted SlimBuild-Preboot CD’s for getting kexts and the com.apple.Boot.plist
    (looks for /Volumes/SlimBuild-Preboot/initrd.img and /Volumes/SlimBuild-Preboot/com.apple.Boot.plist)
    if no SlimBuild-Preboot CD is found, EPOS tries to find Extensions in EPOS’ own Extensions folder

Supports:

  • autoextraction kexts from SlimBuild-Preboot CD
  • kexts in own Extensions folder
  • autoextraction com.apple.Boot.plist from SlimBuild-Preboot CD
  • com.apple.Boot.plist in own Plist folder
  • internally pretested with Leopard retail DVD’s 10.5.0, 10.5.1, 10.5.4 and 10.5.5

Notes:

  • Munky’s EFI Boot 6.1 included (found here)
  • compatible to Galaxy’s SlimBuild-Preboot creator 2.0 (Kudos!) found here
  • Tested with ximekon’s (Kudos, aswell) Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3 SlimBuild-Preboot CDs found here

Error handling:

  • integrated for a bunch of common errors, anyway it remains an ugly script

Todo:

  • code cleanup / rewrite ;-)
  • autoinstallation of custom kernels
  • GUI is in the works, but don’t ask for timelines, we all got jobs to feed our families

License & restrictions:

  • This script is freeware but may NOT be used for commercial purposes!
  • It may NOT be included in SlimBuild-Preboot Disks that contain original / modded Apple kexts.
  • that means until not everything is self enabled via homebrew or legacy kexts you may only include it in your private SlimBuilds but don’t distribute them, please.
EPOS 0.95 running on a sample system :


Feedback

You are welcome to leave a note here in the comment’s section or on the insanelymac forums.

Download EPOS

Please download from the version history overview below. Did you know our sponsors yet? No we neither. Because it’s just Google adds. Anyway these premium sponsors really got the coolest offers and moreover by considering them you help us in return maintaining this site free… :-)

Version history:

  • 0.5 semi automatic really much too ugly one day rapid prototype (not released)
  • 0.6 rewrote using functions (not released)
  • 0.7 autodetermining of EFI partition (not released)
  • 0.8 improved error handling for common errors we experienced (not released)
  • 0.9 included autoextraction for SlimBuild-Preboot images (not released)
  • 0.95 included com.apple.Boot.plist extraction (released) –
    » Download EPOS 0.95 here…
  • 0.95.1 (cosmetic) bugfixes (not released)
  • 0.97 com.apple.Boot.plist bugfix (released) –
    » Download EPOS 0.97 here…
  • 10.0 “the got rich as bill from writing even uglier code” version (will definitly be released) ;-)

[e-Biz] A Nasty Conspiracy Behind Psystar?

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What might sound like a conspiracy book by John Grisham is reality. Apple obviously believes that another company or even companies are secretly backing up Psystar. Groklaw.net explains that this might be an explanation why a major law firm took this case. Apple’s lawyers wrote:

(..) Apple will seek leave to amend this complaint to show the unknown John Doe Defendants’ true names and capacities when they are ascertained.(..)

Apple seeks revenge and these new claims read badly for Psystar. Apple even added claims for DMCA violation. So the main question is: Is Psystar about to go down, or do they have aces in their sleeves? You may find the whole article on Growlaw.net.

Unimpressed by this current development Psystar is continuing to sell their MacClones…

[MultiPlatform] Microsoft Live Mesh Beta now online

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Live Mesh is part of Microsoft’s new online activities. In contrast to Apple’s MobleMe it concentrates on syncing files and folders from different PCs and Macs. It currently does not include syncing of addressbook entries, calendars or mails. Anyway Live Mesh is free.

Microsoft offers 5GB harddisk space that can be accessed using their Live Mesh client software (available for Windows and Mac) or thru their website.

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[Apple] IBM Manager Papermaster Hired by Apple

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Mark Papermaster, formerly known as IBM’s Vice President of Microprocessor Technology Development, got hired by Apple. Papermaster was employed with IBM for the last 26 years, where he was actively involved in the development of the Power PC architecture and IBM’s Blade Server.

IBM now filed a lawsuit against Papermaster. They say he breaks his IBM work contract. IBM says the contract includes a term that disallows Papermaster to work with a competitive company like Apple within a period of  12 months after quitting.

Papermaster is indended to be the successor of Tony Fadell at Apple. Fadell was the Senior Vice President of the iPod Development Unit, thus reporting directly to Steve Jobs.

[Apple] Pictures of New Mac Book Series Leaked

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Three days to go until the new Mac Books will be presented to the world. On YouTube a video appeared that either shows a well done fake or it really is the new Mac Book Aluminium series. As Apple does not like to see pictures or videos of their products before their official launch we will not embed the YouTube video here.

You may go to YouTube and search for “X6jsJfiENAs“… Don’t wonder the quality is very bad…

[e-Biz] Apple Asks Court To Dismiss Psystar’s Countersuit

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After Psystar countersued Apple a month ago for anticompetitetive business practices (read here). Apple’s attorneys now respond on 23 pages. Apple’s argumentation in short: Psystar violates Apple’s license agreement when putting Mac OS X on Psystar’s OEM computers.

In the paper Apple tries to circumvent the whole monopoly issue by argueing that there is no specific Mac OS X market, but an Apple Computer market. And since there is no specific market for the sole operating system, Apple is no monopolist. Rather than having a Mac OS X operating system market, there is a market for computers and in this market Apple Computers compete with other computers. Apple sums up that Psystars charges need to be rejected, because Apple as a company cannot be forced to help their competitors and thus weakening their own market position.

You may read the whole argumentation here at ZDNET. They released the whole 23 pages as a PDF.

Our comment:

This whole topic remains fascinating. From a technical point of view we would not follow Apple’s argumentation here, because of a simple fact. Mac OS X is heavily based on lots of open source parts from the Linux and GNU worlds. And the Mac OS X’s kernel Darwin was and still is available for x86 based PCs aswell. This might mean by releasing the kernel as a stand alone version, they implicitly admit that the operating system is only artificially bound to the hardware. You may find more some technical notes in our recent article here (see VII. Modify startup script) and on the wiki of the Chaos Communication Congress 2007.

[iPhone] Apple drops NDA for iPhone Developers

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In a press release Apple yesterday announced to drop the “non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software (..)”, because it “created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success (..)”. Developers are now allowed to publicly discuss matters of Apple’s iPhone SDK. Anyway, Apple added this does not apply to unreleased software. Unreleased software will remain under NDA until release.

John Timmer of ars technica took the time to write an introduction into developing iPhone apps.

»Read Apple’s press release here…
»ars technica’s “Inside the iPhone SDK”…

[e-Biz] Apple Stock Going Down 17% on Nasdaq

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Morgan Stanley and the Royal Bank of Canada yesterday downgraded Apple’s share from “overweight” to “equal-weight”, cutting down the price target from $178 to $115. They don’t expect Apple to sell as much Macs within the next three months like in the 2.5 years before. After this information the Apple share went down from 128.24US$ to 105.26US$, thus losing more than 17%.

Morgan Stanley expects a deceleration in PC unit growth in general. The only part of the market that will have (little) growth is the sub-$1,000 area. A field in which Apple is not represented well.

» Nasdaq stock quote for Apple…

[iPhone] Apple Sells Unlocked 3G’s in Hong Kong (update)

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As of today Apple sells their new iPhone 3G factory unlocked in Hong Kong. The Apple Site explicitly says:

“iPhone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier.”

Prices will vary from 5,400HK$ for the 8GB model (695US$ or 476€) and 6,200HK$ for the 16GB model (798US$ or 547€). This obviously is the end of Apple’s strategy of exclusive carrier linking of their iPhones.

We want to remind you that import taxes will apply when shipping from Hong Kong to either the US or Europe. So this would not be a bargain. You’d better wait a couple of weeks, probably Apple will apply this new selling strategy to other markets as well in the near future. Next step should be to license visual voicemail to any carrier worldwide and make it a standard in cell phone communication.

» Find more information on the Apple Hong Kong page…
» See our iPhone 3G “Factory Unlocked List” list here (update)..

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