OS Battle: which is the best? (OS X, Windows, Linux ...)

[Tiberius]

My apologies for not providing evidence.

Here is the FAQ section on the official "OSx86" website (LINK). In the section with the heading "Do I need Apple hardware to run Mac OS X?", it states: "Not anymore. Projects such as OSx86 have succeeded in allowing the Intel-based version of Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware largely by bypassing the TPM in software".

Did you just ignore the top bit of that page? It states:

"This page is outdated and should not be updated further. The content below is preserved purely for historical reasons. As such, any instructions or suggestions on this page may damage your system. Follow them at your own risk."

In other words, it is not accurate. I didn't deny that people used to think the TPM was restricting the OS, but it wasn't. That was a misconception; apparently believed by some in the Hackintosh community who updated that entry. Wikipedia is up to date...and denies absolutely that the TPM was ever used for that function.

I think you have some misconceptions about "hardware". You could find a laptop that has identical internal components as the MacBook Pro in terms of the CPU, memory, GPU et cetera; the only real difference would be the presence of the TPM in the Intel based MacBook, which is exactly what Mac OS looks for during the boot process. If TPM is not present, Mac OS will not boot or install. Hackintosh / hackboot bypasses the search for the TPM.

I don't have any misconceptions about hardware thanks. If you read the Wikipedia entry I linked to, you'll find that there are many different technical hacks that Apple used to prevent people from installing OS X on non-standard hardware.

As I've stated before; Apple are no longer shipping Macs with TPMs. It has been this way since 2009, yet you still need a Hackintosh to get OS X installed, which should make it obvious to you that Apple are using non-TPM based methods to restrict their OS.

Plus, as I said before (yet you ignored), if a TPM is required for boot, why can I boot both my MacBooks? Both lack TPMs; both were made after 2009.

[Tonus]

And I strongly doubt that the US government has made it illegal to install MacOS X on a non-Apple-specific hardware platform.

Also, Apple machines are ubiquitous on a global scale, not just the United States. The United States government obviously does not have lawful jurisdiction over any other country, so your point falls there.

I'm not sure I understand. You validated both of my points, but they "fall?"

[Tiberius]

I'm not sure I understand. You validated both of my points, but they "fall?"

Judging by his responses to my posts, I'm not entirely convinced he's reading everything we write. He certainly doesn't seem to understand it, in any case.

[Love]

Did you just ignore the top bit of that page? It states:

"This page is outdated and should not be updated further. The content below is preserved purely for historical reasons. As such, any instructions or suggestions on this page may damage your system. Follow them at your own risk."

Due to my mental health condition, I sometimes suffer from psychomotor retardation, so there will be times when I misread something or skip it altogether. I actually completely missed that "outdated content" message, so well spotted.

I concede that I might be incorrect about the requirement of TPM hardware for Mac OS X. However, I am not entirely convinced since I don't think Wikipedia is an authoritative source (for example, it has not provided any authoritative citations for the claim that Apple has not used TPM since 2009). There is actually still an ongoing debate as to whether Apple machines still use the TPM, and, indeed, if the presence of such is vital to allow Mac OS X to function. I will research further because I want to get to the bottom of this.

[pocaracas]

Well... My 2 cents on Macs, why not?... given that I've never used one... it seems I'm fully qualified!

When you buy a mac, you buy the hardware, the design and the OS.
.A similarly specced machine of any other brand costs little more than half of a mac.
.The design... I have to admit, they are pretty, the UI is... after some getting used to... intuitive and quick and bouncy, and pretty, and cute and gay and girly, and directed at the hipster, the designer, the advertiser, the creative minds. In that respect, it works.
.Traditionally, it suffers little from viruses... however, the surge in mac ownership of the past few years has made it worthwhile investing in viruses for mac... so those are on the rise, while the users are convinced they are invulnerable just because they're not running windows... disaster waiting to happen?
.I once helped a friend pick out RAM to upgrade his macbook... for something like 4 GB of RAM, apple was asking for ~$100, at a time when 4GB of RAM for a pc would cost ~$35... turns out, mac requires RAM with some very specific (and non-standard) timings, making it a bit complicated, but not impossible to find ram at a decent price.... if you're ever in need, here's the magical site all geeks should know: http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx
.OK, macs do tend to bring some more gimmicks than the spec sheet indicates. I've seen a fairly old macbook (~2008) with accelerometers so that you could tap the side of lid (where the screen is) and it would change to the desktop on the left or on the right, depending on which side you tapped. It also comes out of the box with the software to take a picture of the guy opening the lid and, if it's not who it expects, it sends a warning to the owner's e-mail and turns itself off, or so I've been told... quite neat..... but gimmicks!

So, yeah... when you buy a mac, you should know what you're paying for.
To some people it's just a sleek, pretty, computer that just works.... to others, it's an infuriating attempt at making it behave.... I think I'd fit in the latter group, so I go with ASUS and, so far, win7.... I recently changed my work pc (pentium IV@ 3GHz) from winXP to Fedora 18 and, apart from some hiccups, I'm happy with that linux.

[Tiberius]

I concede that I might be incorrect about the requirement of TPM hardware for Mac OS X. However, I am not entirely convinced since I don't think Wikipedia is an authoritative source (for example, it has not provided any authoritative citations for the claim that Apple has not used TPM since 2009).

Well, there is the authoritative claim from the guy who wrote a book on OS X (and incidentally, one of the modified drivers so you could use the TPM when Macs had one). Other than that, the fact that Apple don't list one on the components list seems indicative to me that there isn't one there.

Of course, you could also get hold of a Mac and run the following command on a Terminal: ioreg -x | grep TPM

It will highlight any TPMs present on the Mac. I've run this on both my machines, and neither come back with anything.

There is actually still an ongoing debate as to whether Apple machines still use the TPM, and, indeed, if the presence of such is vital to allow Mac OS X to function.

There really isn't. I work in the computer security industry; I understand what TPMs are and how they work (took a course on them back in university). If one of my computers had one, I'd know about it (and use it).

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The design... I have to admit, they are pretty, the UI is... after some getting used to... intuitive and quick and bouncy, and pretty, and cute and gay and girly, and directed at the hipster, the designer, the advertiser, the creative minds. In that respect, it works.

Also, quite a few people in the computer security industry use them, mainly because they are UNIX based and are reliable.

Traditionally, it suffers little from viruses... however, the surge in mac ownership of the past few years has made it worthwhile investing in viruses for mac... so those are on the rise, while the users are convinced they are invulnerable just because they're not running windows... disaster waiting to happen?

Well, this depends. You can't just compare viruses on Windows to viruses on OS X/Linux. The main reason being that the Windows environment is incredibly insecure, often by design. For instance, most people install and use Windows as the Administrator account, so viruses often have no problem elevating privilege and doing nasty stuff. On OS X and Linux, the administrator account is separate, and requires a password if you want to use it. Unless the virus knows the password, it has to use other ways to elevate privilege (which are much harder).

So yes, no operating system is invulnerable; but OS X and Linux are more secure than Windows in many respects.

[Love]

I concede that I might be incorrect about the requirement of TPM hardware for Mac OS X. However, I am not entirely convinced since I don't think Wikipedia is an authoritative source (for example, it has not provided any authoritative citations for the claim that Apple has not used TPM since 2009). There is actually still an ongoing debate as to whether Apple machines still use the TPM, and, indeed, if the presence of such is vital to allow Mac OS X to function. I will research further because I want to get to the bottom of this.

Okay, after reading more on the subject, I now admit that I came to the incorrect conclusion about Mac OS's core requirement of TPM hardware. It seems a lot of people had the same misconception.

I think you misread one of my replies. I did not state that you claimed the hardware is specifically designed for Mac OS. I simply denied that Mac OS is designed specifically for the MacBook hardware, and I still maintain that Mac OS could work perfectly well on any laptop if Apple allowed this to be the case.

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There really isn't. I work in the computer security industry; I understand what TPMs are and how they work (took a course on them back in university). If one of my computers had one, I'd know about it (and use it).

Fair enough. I have an MSc in IT and am presently a PhD Computer Science student; however, I have never actually studied TPMs.

[pocaracas]

Traditionally, it suffers little from viruses... however, the surge in mac ownership of the past few years has made it worthwhile investing in viruses for mac... so those are on the rise, while the users are convinced they are invulnerable just because they're not running windows... disaster waiting to happen?

Well, this depends. You can't just compare viruses on Windows to viruses on OS X/Linux. The main reason being that the Windows environment is incredibly insecure, often by design. For instance, most people install and use Windows as the Administrator account, so viruses often have no problem elevating privilege and doing nasty stuff. On OS X and Linux, the administrator account is separate, and requires a password if you want to use it. Unless the virus knows the password, it has to use other ways to elevate privilege (which are much harder).

So yes, no operating system is invulnerable; but OS X and Linux are more secure than Windows in many respects.

Ever since Vista, that windows tries to make users create and use a standard user account, instead of the administrator one.... regrettably, many people got too used to the administrator account and just use it and don't even think about it.
However, if security is a concern, the user will move to a user account.
UNIX based OSes enforce the user to create a user account and strongly discourage the usage of the root account.... I remember a Ubuntu that wouldn't even allow you to use the root account under the window manager... or maybe I remember wrong... :-s

[Love]

I don't have any misconceptions about hardware thanks. If you read the Wikipedia entry I linked to, you'll find that there are many different technical hacks that Apple used to prevent people from installing OS X on non-standard hardware.

It seems that the key feature that Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) seeks is the "Extensible Firmware Interface" (EFI), which must also include the presence of a HFS+ driver. The developers of the latest version of "Hackintosh" have emulated the EFI (which presumably includes emulation of the HFS+ driver). The hackers have developed two boot loaders that provide this emulation: PC EFI and Chameleon. Mountain Lion will not work on a computer that uses the BIOS firmware interface. Therefore, if BIOS is eventually superseded by EFI in all future desktop PCs (and includes a HFS+ driver), I can see no other reason why Mountain Lion would fail to install. What do you think?