roughlydrafted.com — Apple is a generation ahead of other PC makers in adopting Intel's modern EFI in its new Macs. Here's why that matters! An interesting look at the architecture of new Macs, plus how different versions of Windows work with GPT drives, the rivalry of Itanium vs PowerPC, the Itanium Killer, and Boot Camp utilities: Daniel Eran @ RoughlyDrafted
Aug 20, 2006 View in Crawl 4
maninblac1Aug 21, 2006
BIOS can be password protected, therefore, unflashable without authentication. But we must also know that this we a decade ago. Also, even if your BIOS is wiped the reset jumper should recover your PC. But has anyone heard of an attack anything like this in the last 5 years?Apparently the only way in now is through ACPI, but so far, nothing? Certainly a loophole as big as that should be exploited right, nothing yet, must be a reason. I wonder what it is.
kazemAug 21, 2006
val, I hate to say it, but RTFA.
evolution360Aug 21, 2006
@ danieleran "Buying a PC locks you into Windows"Linux, UNIX, BSD, OpenVMS(alpha and itanium), os/2, DOS (i know i know), GNU Hurd (i think its in testing), ReactOS, and "Hac OSX." I'm sure I'm missing dozens of others that have been ported to x86 but I think you get the idea.
philodoxAug 21, 2006
albk you are wrong. Vista x86-64 will support EFI."Windows 2003 Server supports EFI 1.10 on Intel Itanium platforms. Microsoft Windows Server codename "Longhorn" supports EFI 1.10 on Intel Itanium platforms, and also introduces support for native UEFI boot on x64 64-bit platforms. Although the initial release of Windows Vista will not include UEFI x64 64-bit support, a subsequent Windows Vista release will support UEFI."<a class="user" href="http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/efibrief.mspx">http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/efibrief.mspx</a>Granted it won't support it on release date, but you should watch what you say since you're accusing windows users of spreading misinformation.
blackforgeAug 21, 2006
deadbaby: You're thinking of the Chernobyl virus.From <a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_virus">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_virus</a>"In September 1998, Yamaha shipped a firmware update to their CD-R400 Drives that were infected with the virus.In October 1998, a demo version of the Activision game SiN that was propagated by users got infected due to contact with an infected file on a certain user's machine. That company's infection came from a group of Aptiva PCs shipped by IBM during March 1999 with the CIH virus pre-installed. The computers were shipped around a month before the CIH payload activated for the first time in the public eye on April 26, 1999. This was a catastrophic event, and an untold number of computers worldwide were affected with the first 1024 KB of their boot drives being over-written with zeroes and even having their BIOS damaged, preventing the computer from successfully completing the POST process. By April 26, 2000, much of the damage was happening in Asia, but the virus was not as widespread there. On March 2001, the Anjulie Worm was discovered. It drops CIH v1.2 into the system as part of its payload."
danieleranAug 21, 2006
You keep repeating how my articles are inaccurate, but the only reason they get marked as inaccurate is because the 10 trolls on digg jump all over anything I write and encourage each other to mark it down simply because they don't like what it says. A look through the comments shows that these trolls always present the same BS and have no real point. If you take an unbiased approach to the ideas I present, you'll find that the statements I make nearly always link directly to sources. Even professional writers rarely do that.Do I have opinions? Of course. Am I partial to better technologies? Yes. But when I do make observations or comparisons about the value of two products, I present why I think one is better. I don't just gush advocacy.
thorsethAug 22, 2006
@ TheCountApple got rid of all the obsolete connectors and peripherals, across the entire product line around the time of the first iMac (I think) even the floppy drive was scraped, thank God... Apple forced their users to think ahead instead of backwards - you may not agree but when was the last time you used your floppy drive?
saleens281Aug 23, 2006
1) Given that we've worked directly with intel from the Itanium's inception, I can tell you MOST ASSUREDLY it was NEVER meant to be a desktop chip, EVER.2) Ya, it's that whole backwards compatibility thing again. Just because apple decides their users don't need to use PS/2 devices doesn't mean the rest of the IT world is down with that. I can tell you our IT shop would flip a f**king lid if they had 1200 keyboards/mice that could no longer be used because dell decided to just stop shipping PS/2 ports in 1 years time.3) Right, the rest of the market doesn't agree. I'm not sure what world you live in, but I've yet to see a single person clamoring for AM2 vs. Core2. And as for the other person claiming AMD has had the chip out for "3 years" and it's like P3 vs. P4. AMD has revised the chip many many times. If you want to play that game, the Athlon64 vs. a P4 was the exact same situation in reverse. So technically the Core2 is the chip to match up to the A64, it's just late to the game ;)
thecountAug 23, 2006
I still don't see it, you're saying Apple small market share of users revolutionized the gobal usage of USB? Probably 95% of people that use computers had their first encounter with USB on a PC, you think that has nothing to do with it?