Microsoft Surface Pro Hacked to Run OS X...Maybe

Menneisyys2 said:

If I were you, I'd do the homework before ridiculing others.

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I think you need to respond to aristotle, not me. I was, rightly, agreeing on your problematic screen rez and quality comments. I was also noting that if battery life is your concern, you aren't going to want a Surface Pro either. AND, I was making a kind of fun comment you might not want to head out and buy a copy of Maya for it. If you want gfx acceleration, a netbook or franken-tablet isn't going to be a promising product for you.

I have little knowledge of bootcamp on laptops, other than it seems to generally work. I'll agree with you that what you seem to be referring to would annoy me if I were doing that.

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Menneisyys2 said:

So, does the Air have a 2048 X 1536 screen? REALLY? I compared the Surface Pro's screen to that of the MB Air as we've talking about them all the time.

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Ahh! I thought we were talking about tablets. I bet aristotle did too, as that's the iPad Retina rez.

SteveW928 said:

AND, I was making a kind of fun comment you might not want to head out and buy a copy of Maya for it. If you want gfx acceleration, a netbook or franken-tablet isn't going to be a promising product for you.

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FYI, 3D programs tend to tax the CPU far more than the GPU. It wouldn't be the best place in the world for it, but you could use Maya to make model consisting of a million polys or so on an MBA or Pro.

You'd lose out on some of the nicer GLSL realtime rendering effects in the preview window. But not even the Macbook Pro can display those, so it's not exactly a huge knock against it.

Renzatic said:

FYI, 3D programs tend to tax the CPU far more than the GPU. It wouldn't be the best place in the world for it, but you could use Maya to make model consisting of a million polys or so on an MBA or Pro.

You'd lose out on some of the nicer GLSL realtime rendering effects in the preview window, but hell, last time I checked, not even the Macbook Pro can display those.

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True enough! Yea, that would just be the beginning of the problems in trying to do such a thing. But, I think more generally... most desktop users are going to end up being frustrated by it. Which is why, in my initial comment, I asked WHY anyone would want to run OSX (or Windows desktop for that matter) on such a device.

If it's a tablet... run a tablet OS... do tablet things.

I LOVE my iPad and would not go back to using a laptop at this point, for the kind of work I do. For others, that isn't going to work. But, for those others, I'd STRONGLY recommend they just stick with a laptop. A tablet is (and should be) a different animal. Trying to use a tablet to be a desktop will only bring pain.

SteveW928 said:

True enough! Yea, that would just be the beginning of the problems in trying to do such a thing. But, I think more generally... most desktop users are going to end up being frustrated by it. Which is why, in my initial comment, I asked WHY anyone would want to run OSX (or Windows desktop for that matter) on such a device.

If it's a tablet... run a tablet OS... do tablet things.

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Yeah. It running a desktop oriented OS is one of the things I kinda hold against it. As far as the hardware goes, it's a brilliant little machine. Thin, sleek, light (for what it is), nice screen. If it had a more touchscreen oriented UI and a couple three more hours of battery life, I'd run out and grab one right this second.

Thing is, it's got just as many strengths as it does weaknesses. It's a tablet form factor, but it's best used as an ultrabook. It might be a well designed device, but functionally it's in a weird middle place between laptop and tablet that isn't a good fit for it's advantages.

Or to put it bluntly, it's good, but it needs more.

I LOVE my iPad and would not go back to using a laptop at this point, for the kind of work I do. For others, that isn't going to work. But, for those others, I'd STRONGLY recommend they just stick with a laptop. A tablet is (and should be) a different animal. Trying to use a tablet to be a desktop will only bring pain.

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I love my iPad too. So much so that I want it to be able to do more with it.

I don't don't want to use a desktop OS on it. They're not the best fit for a tablet. But that doesn't mean I don't ever expect it to be as capable as one.

That's the thing about the Pro and the iPad. They're both equal halves of the one perfect tablet. The iPad has the interface and battery life, the Pro the power and flexibility (I think this is about the thousandth time I've said this around here). See, I wanna have my cake and eat it too. This is why I'm rooting for the Pro. It might not be perfect right now, but I like the direction it's heading. Same thing with the iPad. I don't think it's anywhere near perfect yet, but I like it for what it does well.

spyguy10709 said:

There is, however a technical reason why it can't be done at the moment.

It has a secured bootloader that hasn't been cracked. ONLY Windows 8 is permitted to boot. There hasn't been a crack yet to the bootloader, so this is physically impossible!

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You don't need a "crack" to install a non-Windows system on a computer with UEFI. Several Linux distributions, e.g. 64-Bit Ubuntu 12.10, officially support the installation on UEFI systems with Secure Boot. So maybe these guys use a Linux boot loader to launch OS X. Or maybe they simply deactivated Secure Boot in the system's BIOS -- I don't know if that's an available option in the Surface Pro, but I have an Acer notebook here on my desk that actually has that feature.

SteveW928 said:

I think you need to respond to aristotle, not me. I was, rightly, agreeing on your problematic screen rez and quality comments. I was also noting that if battery life is your concern, you aren't going to want a Surface Pro either.

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Yup, X86-based tablets will never deliver as good battery life as a full-sized notebook. Nevertheless, the SP's battery life is still way better than that of my current x86 tablet (a venerable Wacom-based TC1100, which, because of the pen, I still love). And I'd only use it for tasks requiring running x86 stuff - for everything else, I have all (I teach iOS programming so I have all iDevices) iPad models ever released around (and use them all the time).

SteveW928 said:

If you want gfx acceleration, a netbook or franken-tablet isn't going to be a promising product for you.

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That (being forced to use discrete graphics) is what I want to avoid most of the time on my Mac. One of my (and a lot of other users') biggest problem with Apple is their not providing a way of booting into Boot Camp while not using discrete gfx card. The difference on my 17" 2009 MBP between the discrete and the integrated gfx is HUGE in both noise and battery drain. I need to rely on Parallels to do all my Windows-specific work, which introduces some 5-6% speed hit.

SteveW928 said:

Ahh! I thought we were talking about tablets. I bet aristotle did too, as that's the iPad Retina rez.

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No problem!

JoEw said:

Frankly the 2 experiences are 2 separate devices. Put them together you get well.. a Surface. It is half assed PC and half assed tablet experience in 1 device. According to reviews at least.

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Its as half assed as a Macbook Air, in terms of processing power, and as usable as an iPad or android tablet in tablet form.

The surface is a product somewhere between an iPad and a Macbook Air, and is perfectly suited for a market that wants both desktop apps when sat at a desk, and tablet apps when mobile, in a single device.

Nightarchaon said:

Apple, take a note, THIS is what the iPad Air could have been.

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U Sick

Rampage Dev said:

Its called Clover... know what you are talking about before posting. Thank you.

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what's called Clover? You mean Clover Trail chips from Intel!? The chips that they didn't use?!?

spyguy10709 said:

what's called Clover? You mean Clover Trail chips from Intel!? The chips that they didn't use?!?

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Clover is a bootloader for UEFI based systems to get around Microsofts Secure Boot Setting when enabled for Hacintosh. Does a lot more then just that but that is one of its leading features.

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AppleScruff1 said:

Let us know how you make out.

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I will. Local Best Buy said on the phone that they will get a display model next week... However the guy said that they were meant to get one this week. We will see.

Nightarchaon said:

Its as half assed as a Macbook Air, in terms of processing power, and as usable as an iPad or android tablet in tablet form.

The surface is a product somewhere between an iPad and a Macbook Air, and is perfectly suited for a market that wants both desktop apps when sat at a desk, and tablet apps when mobile, in a single device.

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Surface has a market for people who want a crappy tablet and crappy pc experience. But hey its in ONE device at least we agree there

Fake, just a remote desktop app!

Rogue. said:

Fake, just a remote desktop app!

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FAKE! I didn't read the thread! OLOL!

Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac, as small as possible and whih whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.

It seems there are no Mac drivers for the Marvell Avastar 350N in the Surface Pro - so it won't have any WiFi unless you plug an external WiFi dongle into the USB 3.0 port.

You might be able to use Bluetooth tethering to your iPhone instead however.

nick_elt said:

Any substance to back it up or is that the extent of your contribution?

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It is fake. VNC is written all over it

I WAS the one said:

It is fake. VNC is written all over it

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Why do you think it's fake? Because it's hard to do? Let me tell you, it's not. The Hackintosh scene can have a laptop rolling on OSX in a matter of hours.

There's nothing about the Surface that makes it any more difficult to hackintosh than other ultrabooks. It's far more likely to be a real thing than something faked through a virtual machine.

chainprayer said:

Safari seems... sluggish

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yup

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retroneo said:

It seems there are no Mac drivers for the Marvell Avastar 350N in the Surface Pro - so it won't have any WiFi unless you plug an external WiFi dongle into the USB 3.0 port.

You might be able to use Bluetooth tethering to your iPhone instead however.

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good idea

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Marx55 said:

Apple should make a light (400 to 600 g) Mac, as small as possible and whih whatever form factor (clamshell, slider or tablet). Great for Keynote and PowerPoint presentations. The Mac in your pocket. Always.

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meh

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Renzatic said:

That's the thing about the Pro and the iPad. They're both equal halves of the one perfect tablet. The iPad has the interface and battery life, the Pro the power and flexibility...

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Good point

Renzatic said:

Why do you think it's fake? Because it's hard to do?

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Nope. Because is has been made with VNC!

I WAS the one said:

Nope. Because is has been made with VNC!

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You keep saying that, but how do you know?

The title should probably have been OS X hacked to run on Microsoft Surface Pro.

Winni said:

You don't need a "crack" to install a non-Windows system on a computer with UEFI. Several Linux distributions, e.g. 64-Bit Ubuntu 12.10, officially support the installation on UEFI systems with Secure Boot. So maybe these guys use a Linux boot loader to launch OS X. Or maybe they simply deactivated Secure Boot in the system's BIOS -- I don't know if that's an available option in the Surface Pro, but I have an Acer notebook here on my desk that actually has that feature.

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I have a Surface Pro.
Yes, there is only 2 settings available in the BIOS screen of Surface Pro: SecureBoot and TPM.

Sweeeetness = Surface Pro / VMware 8 / OSX 10.8.3

Just finalized VM workstation 8 / Mac OSX 10.8.3 on my MS surface. Runs like a champ so far. But it full screens on surface into a fully usable Mac. So to all the negative responses that it can't be done. It has been done and will be done again...And yes the touchscreen functionality works, how? I don't know and I really don't care. So welcome to my world of touchscreen Mac OSX on a windows (surface pro) machine. Too bad all you Apple Fan boys don't have one, sure is nice =) LOL to all the naysayers, you were wrong....so so wrong indeed. Apple late to the game again, don't worry Samsung will eat you in the end....ROFLMAO!

iacovetti said:

Just finalized VM workstation 8 / Mac OSX 10.8.3 on my MS surface. Runs like a champ so far. But it full screens on surface into a fully usable Mac. So to all the negative responses that it can't be done. It has been done and will be done again...And yes the touchscreen functionality works, how? I don't know and I really don't care. So welcome to my world of touchscreen Mac OSX on a windows (surface pro) machine. Too bad all you Apple Fan boys don't have one, sure is nice =) LOL to all the naysayers, you were wrong....so so wrong indeed. Apple late to the game again, don't worry Samsung will eat you in the end....ROFLMAO!

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That's not "HACKED" that's VM. Exactly NOT like a full mac...

Oi...

Menneisyys2 said:

1, The SP has an IPS panel, unlike the Air (or any MBP).

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I'm only going to pick you up on this one point because I need to do some research into the other.

FAIL