CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cocoamacos
Frank
Frank

Reputation: 949

Standalone, Bootable OS X Applications

What techniques/frameworks are being used by companies like Alsoft (DiskWarrior) to create applications that are bootable without booting into OS X?

I've searched far and wide, and I can't seem to figure out how they're doing it. My guess is that they're using a stripped-down version of OS X, but I'm not at all sure.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 263

Answers (2)

al45tair
al45tair

Reputation: 4433

The answer is that Alsoft, just like us (Coriolis Systems), will have licensed the bootable DVD development kit from Apple. In exchange for an annual license fee, this gives us the right to distribute certain parts of Mac OS X (not the entire system, I hasten to add), for the specific purpose of booting our utility software.

Contrary to one of the comments above, which suggests there is no official way of doing this, this is the official way to go about things.

Alsoft’s remarks on its website reflect the fact that Apple typically takes quite a while to give us updated DVD DDKs, even after releasing new machines that would require them.

Anyway, if you need the ability to do this for some reason, you need to talk to Apple.

Upvotes: 2

Bill Brasky
Bill Brasky

Reputation: 2644

To boot from CD on a Macintosh system, you'll need to create an EFI-compatible boot disk. From there, you can do whatever you want.

Check out http://refit.sourceforge.net/

Upvotes: 4

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