Microsoft Responds to Secure Boot Story, Doesn't Address Issue
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 23rd Sep 2011 22:22 UTC, submitted by kragil
Windows The story about how secure boot for Windows 8, part of UEFI, will hinder the use of non-signed binaries and operating systems, like Linux, has registered at Redmond as well. The company posted about it on the Building Windows 8 blog - but didn't take any of the worries away. In fact, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett, who originally broke this story, has some more information - worst of which is that Red Hat has received confirmation from hardware vendors that some of them will not allow you to disable secure boot.
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RE[7]: Pressure Microsoft
by Alfman on Wed 28th Sep 2011 09:27 UTC in reply to "RE[6]: Pressure Microsoft"
Alfman
Member since:
2011-01-28

MysterMask,

"Pure speculation driven by blind Apple hate."

Not likely. According to this link, there were already more than a million EFI systems on the market prior to Apple's x86 switch in 2006.
http://www.intel.com/technology/framework/overview1.htm

"The first example of a complete end-user PC that was sold by a major OEM incorporating the framework was released in the second half of 2003. During 2005, more than one million systems shipped with the framework."

It is well known that apple's x86 macos refuses to run on non-apple PC hardware. I really do not know exactly why, however the fact that Psystar sold a "Rebel EFI" implementation designed to run MacOS on standard PCs is pretty compelling evidence that, somehow, MacOS depends on a proprietary EFI implementation.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/22/psystars-rebel-efi-allows-you-to-i...

Edited 2011-09-28 09:29 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[8]: Pressure Microsoft
by MysterMask on Wed 28th Sep 2011 17:19 in reply to "RE[7]: Pressure Microsoft"
MysterMask Member since:
2005-07-12

You mix things up. We were taking about the HW limiting the OS, not about an OS that is limited to specific HW.

Furthermore, part of "EFI" is the "E" for extensibel. Of course the are specific Apple add-ons only availabel on Macs e. g. Target Disk Mode, the ability to ad-hoc boot from a different device, Target Display Mode, etc.. That still doesn't mean that Apple's HW engineers somehow try to create an incompatible EFI implementation. This is pure and blind speculation from your side.
If they wanted to create a "walled garden HW", they could have used OpenFirmware with x86, which is very uncommon in the x86 world. It's in Apple's own interest to be compatible with standard x86 HW which includes EFI compatibility

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[9]: Pressure Microsoft
by Alfman on Wed 28th Sep 2011 20:06 in reply to "RE[8]: Pressure Microsoft"
Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

MysterMask,

"You mix things up. We were taking about the HW limiting the OS, not about an OS that is limited to specific HW."

Sorry, I didn't read it that way, but you may be right that their EFI works with other OSes (I wouldn't know).


"That still doesn't mean that Apple's HW engineers somehow try to create an incompatible EFI implementation. This is pure and blind speculation from your side."

Hold on a second, I said MacOS was designed to require a proprietary EFI implementation, which may not have been what you were talking about, however it's not wrong. If I am wrong, then you have to come to gripes with the fact that MacOS is extremely buggy since it did not (still does not) run on standard EFI motherboards.

The fact that MacOS sued vendors of EFI implementations which were compatible with MacOS is damning evidence that the MacOS incompatibilities with standard EFI systems were deliberate.

Reply Parent Score: 2