No Open Firmware and 64 bit

Posted on 6/9/2005 by admin

Now that the word on Open Firmware going away is out, it makes me wonder about this decision.

Frankly, I like Open Firmware a lot. Why wouldn’t they port it?

Maybe this has to do with DRM. In the future, DRM will be part of the BIOS, and maybe Apple doesn’t want to replicate or can’t keep OpenFirmware if they move in that direction.

Then there is the 64 bit question. Hopefully OS X will be released for 32 bit procs as well. The transition to 64 bits will still take a while and there are plenty of great 32 bit boxes out there for OS X.

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One Response to No Open Firmware and 64 bit

  1. terry chay says:
    6/9/2005 at 6:34 pm

    I read that Tiger x86 developer does not take advantage of 64-bit even though the chip is capable. I’d imagine that will change on release.

    In the same light it is possible that the bootloader on the Mac x86 will be Open Firmware and this system wasn’t simply due to time/quality constraints. I really hope so.

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