The boot menu and maintenance toolkit for EFI based Intel Macs has been updated to version 0.13. rEFIt basically allows to explore the EFI environment and supports installation and booting of many operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It also supports booting from external drives.
The update 0.13 supports the newest Intel Macs (like Mac Pro). Also an auto detect feature has been added that should automatically support forthcoming Intel Macs. For installation at least Mac OS X in version 10.4 (Tiger) is required.
Update 26.06.2008: Read latest news about EFI-X here…
Update 22.06.2008: Read latest news about EFI-X here…
The newest on the market is announced to be released on 23. June. It is called EFI-X and seems to be quite a revolution. Technically it is a small USB dongle that contains a bootloader. That bootloader allows booting of native MacOS X installer DVDs or yet installed MacOS X installations…
Are you yet shackling your heads? Well, we are. It is said it will support any PC hardware to run OS X. At that point we are skeptical, since even Apple themselves are not able to support any hardware… We expect this to allow seamless installation on close-to-original-mac hardware. Which means: Intel Core2Duo on MoBo’s with Intel chipset and typical ATI or NVidia graphic adapters. But anyway: the installation will become simple and easy. No more BrazilMac workarounds or illegal downloading thru torrents from darkest places on the net. More features – as far as known yet – to be found in the updates section below the video.
We are quite curious about more details but currently the project’s website doesn’t contain anything more than we just told you. Netkas provides a video that shows the bootscreen. Sadly it is of poor quality and light, but see here:
Update (14.08.08):
Rumors on forums are telling about the specifications of your PC required to allow EFiX to run MacOS X
Intel Core 2 Duo (not likely to support AMD)
Intel chipsets on MoBo’s req
ALC889A or ALC885 audio chipset on MoBo to work out of the box
USB stick needs to plugged all the time (well who cares?)
Update II (15.06.08):
Althought not finished, the website of EFI-X.com has been updated during the last few hours. It seems, the following product versions of EFi-X will be sold:
EFiX for desktop computers
EFiX for notebooks
EFiX PCI version
EFiX complete systems
That looks promising. More to come at latest on 23rd… Update III (16.06.08)
An FAQ has been published by the EFi-X Team. It clearly states, AMD CPUs are not supported, yet – as expected…
As denoted yesterday, the Psystar topic seems to be a little fishy. First: obviously they use the EFI v8 emulation developed by Netkas. For comprehensible reasons Netkas is not amused about Psystar and decided to edit his EULA to bar commercial use of PC EFI – well… we don’t expect Psystar to respect Netkas’ EULA, but not Apple’s EULA?! Psystar just don’t respect any EULA – quite simple. In the end, they don’t seem to care anyway – no matter if it’s Netkas’ EULAs or Apple’s EULAs. We all know Netkas can’t be bribed, but nevertheless Psystar should think about helping the community in return…
The second thing fishy is, Psystar had three different postal address in the last four days. Yes, three addresses. Users living in Miami could not locate the company under even one of these. There are rumors, that this company doesnot exist at all and is hoax. ‘Tune in tomorrow for the next episode of “Where Will The Little Green Mac Clone Be Next?”‘ (Guardian). And in the meantime: Apple just doesn’t react at all to the whole story…
