At 3:48 AM -0400 8/31/2008, Wallace Adrian D'Alessio wrote:
>On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 10:55 PM, Dan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > At 9:29 PM -0500 8/30/2008, Ralph wrote:
> >>I don't want remarkably bad things like the treacherous firmware in
>>>the Apple Intel Macs
>>
>> Explain please? What's wrong with EFI?
>
>I ask here an innocent question ( because I don't know the answer)
>Is EFI the Mac equivalent of ".NET Framework" by MS. A way to track
>licensing of SW on the drive installs and DRM rights ?
No. They have nothing to do with each other.
(dot)NET is a proprietary software environment for Windows, created
by MS to control the world.
Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the firmware that "runs" the
motherboard of the x86 Macs. This replaces OpenFirmware (OF), that
was used in later PowerPC-based Macs.
EFI was originally developed by Intel as a replacement ("next
generation") for BIOS. They have since passed development of it to
the UEFI Forum. (the U stands for Unified)
The UEFI Forum is an alliance between a bunch of computer companies:
AMD, Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, and a few others.
>Is that Ralph's concern?
I have no clue what Ralph's concern over EFI would be. Maybe he's
afraid of it because he thinks all PCs have to be BIOS-based. But
EFI is the future. Even MS is supporting it now, in Vista. And many
newer PCs are using it instead of BIOS now. BIOS has soooo many
problems (address space limitations, etc) that it needs to die.
Intel is trying...
Of course, because x86 Mac OS X is EFI based, to run on a BIOS-based
PC, you need a "wedge" or "emulator" to make that BIOS smell like
EFI. That was done as an open-source project, which is used by
companies like Psystar in their products...
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth
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