Bitcoin Forum

If I get some Mac versions of the 5870 will it work with Linux or will I need to flash them?

They are to expensive ... abd you propably have to flash them. With the chance to brick them too.

You will need to patch. They are hardware identical, but have differnt bios.

The mac cards have two parts to them the normal PC BIOS and the mac EFI it is the latter that is added to a PC card if flashing to work in a mac. So the normal PC part that is in the mac card should just work in a PC. If wanting more information/research on this try netkas.org who does a lot of this work for us mac users.

I have wondered for years why the mac parts sell for so much more on ebay... I really had no idea about this.
Most interesting thing I've read on here all day!

Yeah.  Think of it as DRM for people who like closed sandbox systems.  Take exact same hardware that works in a PC, add some "magical nothing" which enables the Mac OS to graciously allow it's presence and slap $100 (or more to the price).

"Magical nothing" sums up my opinions of Apple products entirely... It's all the same shoddy hardware that manufactured PC's have, but something magical about the sleek white and silver logo makes it worth 80-200% more than the lovely white-boxes we've all built from scratch.

Totally agree.

Anyone that buys into the Apple hardware or software or other products ( iPhone, iCrap etc. ) needs to do some research first.

You can get much better price / performance ratio out of non-Apple parts !

I am not one to pay for shiny plastic or for the "fashion" or brand etc.

although you gotta admit that ipod touch is pretty good. $250, no android clone even comes close to it.

I do like the ipod touch... But it's appeal isn't as an MP3 player to me. It's appealing because of all the apps, and my android phone can do (most) of the ones I actually enjoy. Bought an ipod classic 80-gig, new from a friend for $80 bucks. That discount was required to make me buy a new apple product...

(I still wish the bastard had more buttons...)

Personally I buy macbook pros. Much better than any pc laptop. The OS is flawless and utilizes resources much much better. Now for all these extras and mac pro desktops, etc... It's all bullshit and way too overpriced. But their operating system is far superior to any other in almost any other way. That is one thing people don't seem to give Apple.

Before I'm pegged as a mac hater, I'd like to clarify that price is my only deterrent from Apple PCs... (funny that Macs ARE PCs, isn't it?)
I play no games on computers, and know OSX almost as well as I know windows. Take away the ridiculous price tags on mac hardware, and I would buy it, easy.

Also, OS upgrades are cheap like none other when they roll out a new OS. I like this too.

I understand criticism but some people just really hate on one or the other. I love both macs and pcs. Windows is just glitchy and I'm not fond of it. And holy s*** does Microsoft really need to charge so much for their OS? On the other hand windows is good because you can build windows based systems with powerful hardware. But one thing is that people hate on macs for having inferior hardware but the thing is that macs are so efficient that an i5 on a mac can be superior to an i7 on a pc is most applications. And mac os x does a superb job in response time even with a mechanical hard drive which is not true of windows. People really need to learn their facts before they hate on stuff. I'm not hating on either as they both have their ups and downs. Also in all of my experiences Apple customer support has been amazing. I spilled coke on my first macbook pro and they gave me a brand new one out of the box (and I didn't have any kind of warranty). It's things like that that really make a difference. I would gladly spend more money knowing that I won't have to spend any more money in the future. But for desktops there is no denying that custom built windows systems are the way to go  ;)

And yeah MACS ARE PCS haha. Not sure how that separation ever started lol.

you'd better buy normal 5870 )

OS-X is actually a good reason to pay Apples premiums for a lot of people. 
I use linux myself, but I can acknowledge its not for everyone.  OS-X is actually pretty decent and the windows headaches it avoids alone would be worth the premium to me if I didnt have linux as an option. Add to that some pretty decent hardware and a hard/software stack that actually works together rather than fight each other, and one doesnt have to be crazy to buy one.

Likewise, ipad is still the best tablet out there IMO, mostly because of iOS. Android is catching up, but not quite there yet for big screens. 
RIM Playbook and HP touchpad could have been contenders if given time and a software ecosystem. I particularly like the playbook I ahmm.. played with. There is like no software for it, but Ive never seen a better GUI in my life.

iphones vs the competition is something else. Id say Android has become the superior option by now, and with a million implementations to chose from, iphone seems like a waste of money. A thing of the past, much like ipods.