Reservations for new hardware spotted in Apple data

Last year I blogged about Apple Serial Numbers Ending With F000-FZZZ and I thought what the heck. Let’s run the script and see what we get.

Well. Turns out that the size grew from 90 KB to 124 KB. Seems like I missed a few updates. Oops. Anyway. Apple recently reserved some data spots for new hardware. Here is the list of expected targets:

FPFL: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FPFQ: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

FTTN: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

FTTV: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTTW: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTTY: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTV1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTV2: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVD: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVF: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVH: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVG: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVC: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTTT: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTVL: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FTV0: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

FWCF: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FWCJ: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

FYVY: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYW9: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYW1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYW8: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYW0: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYW2: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWF: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWC: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYVW: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWD: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWM: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWN: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWQ: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWP: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYWR: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYY2: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYY1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYYH: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYYJ: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYY4: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYY3: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYYG: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYY5: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYYF: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FYYD: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

Some of this data is put into areas nearby current iMac’s, MacBook Pro’s and hold on… Mac mini. So are we finally getting a new Macmini? No idea. All I do here is to sum up last bits of serial numbers that have yet to be filled in by Apple. Like these from last year which are still not used.

FML3: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML4: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML5: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML6: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML7: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML8: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FML9: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FMLC: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FMLD: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>
FMLF: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><root><name>CPU Name</name><configCode></configCode><locale>en_US</locale></root>

My predictions for WWDC 2014

The Internet is literally scattered with all sorts of predictions for the WWDC 2014 event, and some are probably true, but this is what I make of the images.

Now. Apple has begun preparations for WWDC 2014 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, with the first banners appearing in the lobby of Moscone West with the tagline “Write the Code. Change the World.”

Via KielO on Twitter

Telling me that Apple will need app developers once again. And looking at some of the other images posted on the Internet… we find three images that, quite obvious, represent the top part of the Apple logo. In colour.

Via macstories.net

The images are made up of large ‘dots’ and while some believe it is a link to solar panels, which in my opinion it is not because that my friends is a clever link to the new retina hardware, some of which being made available right away in the Apple Store during the the event so expect the usual

You can check the Apple Store status with help of http://istheapplestoredown.com

Also. The three images are part of a new icon of a yet to release product. A complete new product for which developers will receive a new emulator. Made available next week. Later in Q4 the product will be officially launched during a new media event. This product is said to change the world, with help of app developers, but I seriously doubt that it is related to health, because for that you need professionals and not regular app developers. No. My guess would be more towards the iWatch or whatever Apple is planning to call it.

In short. Don’t forget to watch the keynote live

All this is pure speculation so take my word with a grain of salt 😉

p.s. My guess is that Apple will surprise most of us, but some disappointments are to be expected.

OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 (Build 13E9) Seeded

Apple seeded OS X 10.9.4 (Build 13E9) to registered Mac developers, made available through their Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store, as well as through the Mac Dev Center.

Other people can get the developer preview with help of this blog article.

Changes

The most interesting part is the addition of three new resources (plist) files for power management:

Mac-81E3E92DD6088272.plist / iMac15,1 (IGPU only)
Mac-42FD25EABCABB274.plist / iMac15,n (IGPU/GFX0/Apple display with id 0xAE03)
Mac-FA842E06C61E91C5.plist / iMac15,n (IGPU/GFX0/Apple Retina display with id 0xAE03)

This is based on the perf-bias value of 0x1 (highest performance) which happens to be the same as the current iMac14,n models – all other Mac models use 0x5 and 0xf. Unsurprisingly, of course, since Apple doesn’t want you to drain the battery flat in say two hours.

Update:

The EDID data for the GFX0 display is set to a screen size of 60 x 34 CM but the resolution data is blank.

Update-2:

I compared some of the data in OS X 10.9.3 with OS X 10.9.4 (Build 13E9) and found some additional changes. Some of which may indicate that the new iMac may have a Retina LCD. Which would be awesome.

System/Library/SystemProfiler/SPDisplayReporter.spreporter/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Localizable.strings:

spdisplays_vram_shared = “VRAM (Dynamic, Max)”;

spdisplays_retinaLCD = “Retina LCD”;
spdisplays_airplay = “AirPlay”;
spdisplays_airplaydisplay = “AirPlay Display”;
spdisplays_projector = “Projector”;
spdisplays_virtualdevice = “Virtual Device”;
spdisplays_captured = “Display Captured”;
spdisplays_donotdim = “Do Not Dim”;
spdisplays_stereo = “Stereo”;
spdisplays_1080p = “1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (1080p)”;
spdisplays_1080i = “1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (1080i)”;
spdisplays_720p = “1280 x 720 @ 60Hz (720p)”;
spdisplays_true480p = “704 x 480 60Hz (480p)”;
spdisplays_480p = “720 x 480 60Hz (480p)”;
spdisplays_480i = “704 x 480 60Hz (480i)”;
spdisplays_displayport_adapter_nonapple_dual-link_dvi = “Mini DisplayPort To Dual-Link DVI Adapter”;
spdisplays_displayport_adapter_nonapple_vga = “Mini DisplayPort To VGA Adapter”;
kHW_IntelIrisItem = “Intel Iris”;
kHW_NVidiaGeForceGTX750MItem = “NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M”;
kHW_AMDFireProD300Item = “AMD FirePro D300”;
kHW_AMDFireProD500Item = “AMD FirePro D500”;
kHW_AMDFireProD700Item = “AMD FirePro D700”;

System/Library/SystemProfiler/SPMemoryReporter.spreporter/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Localizable.strings:

“is_memory_upgradeable” = “Upgradeable Memory”;

Update-3:

Apple uploaded a new version of OSXUpdCombo10.9.4.pkg (Build 13E9a) but all I could find out so far was that some of the installation scripts and SystemVersion.plist was touched – no changes were made to the mach_kernel, frameworks or kexts. It did also not show up as a new update in the App Store, so it is, apparently, not intended for people with Build 13E9 installed. It also won’t install over builds: 13A598, 13D65 and of course 13E9a.

Edit: I also added two small screenshots.

Update-4

Apple changed some of the data in OS X 10.10 Yosemite Developer Preview. They also added a new display override file: /System/Library/Displays/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-610/DisplayProductID-AE03 so guess what. One of the to-be-released iMac’s will have a Retina LCD. It’s the one with board-id: Mac-FA842E06C61E91C5 😉

Major breakthrough for power management

Someone asked me why he only got a few P-States with his Haswell setup (GA-Z87MX-D3H motherboard) when logIPGStyle – Intel Power Gadget style logging – is set to false in AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext/C*/Info.plist The expected output is something like this:

AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ 8 17 34 35 36 37 38 ]

Three P-States (8, 17 and 34) plus the four turbo states (35-38). I know. I used to say that this is pretty normal, but now I know better. Yes indeed. I finally figured it out, and as a result his setup now gives him a lot more P-States:

AICPUPMI: CPU P-States [ 8 17 (20) 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 ]

Yes. This is with logIGPStyle set to false. The trick was to change two settings in the Gigabyte UEFI BIOS

With the Auto settings giving us this:

MSR_PP0_CURRENT_CONFIG…..(0x601) : 0x1F40
MSR_PKG_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x610) : 0xFFD00000EA82
MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x638) : 0xFFD0
MSR_PP1_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x640) : 0xFFD0

Note: MSR_PP1_POWER_LIMIT is for the IGPU only!

Then we changed the values from Auto to:

And this is the result:

MSR_PP0_CURRENT_CONFIG…..(0x601) : 0x2F8 (760 >> 3) is 95 Amp
MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x638) : 0x82A0 (672 >> 3) is 84 Watt
MSR_PP1_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x640) : 0x82A0 (672 >> 3) is 84 Watt

The value 3 above is taken from (MSR_RAPL_POWER_UNIT & 0xf) and that equals to power units of 1/8 Watt – hence the right shift to get the proper value.

We also changed some other settings, this to be certain that XCPM is controlling power management, and not the BIOS:

Let me know if this works for your setup as well.

Thanks!

Update

We already knew that MSR_PMG_CST_CONFIG_CONTROL is re-initialised by XCPM, the mach_kernel, but I also found out that the IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS (0x1B0) MSR is set by data that is taken from the resource plist (think Mac-F60DEB81FF30ACF6.plist et all).

Update-2

Ok. This proves that I was right when I said that having more P-States isn’t necessarily better. In fact. It now results in a (somewhat) slower PC, because the Geekbench v3.1.2 (32-bit mode) score is 3624/11298 without the changes in the UEFI BIOS (auto versus 85 Watts and 95 Amps) and 3613/9501 with the changes.

MacBook Pro data:

MSR_RAPL_POWER_UNIT……..(0x606) : 0xA0E03
MSR_PP0_CURRENT_CONFIG…..(0x601) : 0x1814149480000380
MSR_PKG_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x610) : 0x8000815E00DC8118
MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x638) : 0x0

MacBook Air data:

MSR_RAPL_POWER_UNIT……..(0x606) : 0xA0E03
MSR_PKG_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x610) : 0x4283E800DD8320
MSR_PP0_CURRENT_CONFIG…..(0x601) : 0x4010141400000100
MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT……..(0x638) : 0x0

Update-3

Someone over at Tony’s place with a Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H board (F9 bios) ran into another PM related issue – using ‘Auto’ as core ratio, instead of setting it manually to anything but 35 made PM fail for him.

I checked the MSR log of AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementInfo.kext from another user with a similar issue and found this:

MSR_PLATFORM_INFO……….(0xCE) : 0x80838F301002300

Nothing wrong here. Perfectly fine for his i7-4770K. The detected minimum and maximum core ratios are also fine.

CPU Low Frequency Mode………….: 800 MHz
CPU Maximum non-Turbo Frequency….: 3500 MHz
CPU Maximum Turbo Frequency……..: 3900 MHz

But then I spotted this:

MSR_TURBO_RATIO_LIMIT……(0x1AD) : 0x27272727

What is interesting here is that all core turbo ratios are set to 27 (3.9GHz) and thus a single turbo request will result in the top frequency of the processor. Completely ignoring the fact that the first turbo frequency must be set to the core ratio + 1. In this case 36. Otherwise we ran into issue ages ago already. Remember?

I have asked the person to set the first turbo ratio back to 36 and the core ratio to 35 (or auto) to see what this does. I’ll keep you posted if I have anything new to report.

Thanks to Toleda for the heads up 😉

Update-4

Both MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT and MSR_PP1_POWER_LIMIT are set to zero (0) on Apple hardware, and using two lines in the boot loader:

wrmsr(MSR_PP0_POWER_LIMIT, 0)
wrmsr(MSR_PP1_POWER_LIMIT, 0)

Didn’t change anything. Which is positive.

Expired Apple Certificate

Just so that you know this. I ran into this error when I opened the App Store:

Then I checked the URL being used to retrieve the XML data:

Looks like someone responsible for this at Apple forgot to put this on his calendar, to renew this certificate in time. Not so good.

Update

A new certificate was issued by Symantec yesterday, and thus this issues is resolved.

I’ll be waiting for the next Apple certificate to expire – I found one that is about to expire as well. Anyway. Now we know that developing a Calendar.app is anything but helpful… if nobody is using it 😉

ADATA SR1020NP M.2 SSD

I was quite impressed by the two 512GB XP941 SSDs I received from Samsung for testing, leaving me wondering about what is next, but then ADATA upped the ante with their flagship consumer SSD in M.2 form-factor. Enter the SR1020NP

The ADATA SR1020NP PCIe 2.0 x4 (Socket 3 with M key) is based on the LSI-SandForce 3739 and wired to MLC NAND flash, with up to twice the capacity of the Samsung XP941 and transfer rates of up to 1.8GB/s, which is only 200MB/s short of the theoretical 2GB/s limit. Much faster than the Samsung XP941. I’ll start testing/benchmarking it a.s.a.p.

Boot Drive

The Samsung XP941 can only be used as boot drive in a MacPro (not the latest model), with the latest ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard, and Asus motherboards will soon, thankfully, also support the Samsung XP941 SSD with a new UEFI BIOS update – the M.2 socket on the Asus motherboards will only support PCIe x2, but it should also support PCIe host adapters like the Lycom DT-120 to be had for £8.38 including VAT (plus shipping).

Edit: RAMCITY, the Upgrade Experts™ from down under – yeah that is Australia – sells the same card for AUD$25.99 + shipping. Do note that the price for international orders will be 10% lower (NO VAT).

Additionally. You can order your Samsung XP491’s in 128GB, 256GB and 256GB right away. No delay, and they offer an excellent service and warranty I am told.

Other motherboard vendors should soon follow this initiative, so you won’t have to replace the factory AHCI driver with GUID: 8F5A2E02-538C-4D59-B920-C4786ACBC552 in the UEFI BIOS with the one from the MacPro6,1 or ASRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard BIOS – I found a SAMSUNG_M2_DXE Driver* with GUID: 1AC7EE15-1290-402C-80E9-F45A86E43F71 in the UEFI BIOS. Replacing and/or adding a driver is not that difficult in my opinion, but a vanilla solution is preferred here for wide adoption.

Note: I don’t have the new Asus UEFI BIOS (yet) so I don’t know if the ADATA SR1020NP is supported or not. I guess it should work, or not of course. We’ll see when the update arrives here.

* This hack has been confirmed to work by “barren” in this post over at insanelymac.com

System Information

System Information on a MacPro shows the drive under SATA/SATAExpress, as Generic AHCI Controller instead of Apple SSD Controller, which is quite normal since the vendor-id/vendor-id and subsystem-id combo doesn’t match with what AppleAHCIPort.kext is checking for i.e. 0x144d, 0x1600 and 0x9183 (et all). Not to mention that the drive is not connected via Thunderbolt and thus it isn’t showing up as a SATA Express Controller. Not that it really matters, since we hack folks know how to fix the ID’s, by setting them from the DSDT or injecting them as EFI device-properties 😉

Note: The name, “Apple” in the above example, can also be “Generic” or “Thunderbolt” depending on the type of the controller.

AHCI versus NVMe

A next step, in the near future I presume, would be the addition of the nvmexpress driver for UEFI BIOS. That and a port of the Linux client driver would make everything even faster and more power efficient. Like this isn’t fast enough already.

Edit: Samsung has a new product in the pipeline, the SM951 with a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x4 interface. This new product will offer a sequential read speed of up to 1600 MB/s and a sequential write speed of up to 1000 MB/s with current PCIe 2.0 motherboards, and 2150 MB/s and 1550 MB/s respectively when installed in a PCI Express 3.0 x4 Lane Host adapter like the Lycom DT-120.

Pricing and Availability

The ADATA SR1020NP is not yet available and thus a price is yet to be revealed, but that should change during/after Computex Taipei (3-4 june 2014). I’ll start saving, because I want two of them, and since the Samsung 512GB modules are bloody expensive already… this is going to hurt my wallet. A lot more even!

Conclusion

With the old Mac Pro you can upgrade your RAM, Graphics card(s) and (hard)drives. Some even went as far as replacing the processor(s). Now your Mac Pro can get a new second life, with help of a Lycom DT-120 adapter card with a Samsung module. Soon adding ADATA as an alternative. With up to 1TB modules. A pretty sweet deal for your ‘old’ Mac Pro. Which may still be fast enough for what you do with it.

The Catch

The AsRock Z97 Extreme6 motherboard (read this review) and Lycom DT-120 host adapter are currently the two best options to add Ultra M.2 X4 support to a hackintosh, but there is a catch. The Intel Z97 chipset supports 16 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, with help of the (Haswell) microprocessors, and the lane configuration (also) depends on the number of installed PCIe (graphics) cards and other devices. This is not optimal, but it will become less of an issue with Intel’s next generation X99 chipset (getting more lanes). For now we have to accept the (somewhat) reduced bandwidth. Not that I mind, because I use the IGPU only (I’m not a gamer) and thus it does not apply to my setup.

Update

Ok. I installed the ADATA SR1020NP SSD and tried to boot with it in the Lycom DT-120 on a Z68 motherboard. No joy of course. Then I mod the UEFI BIOS and now the good old Intel i5-2500K, with stock frequency settings, boots up in under 10 seconds. But hold on. The same UEFI BIOS mod in the UEFI BIOS of a Gigabyte motherboard, with fast boot enabled, made it in 3 seconds. That is insane fast! I admit that I lost USB support, but that should be fixable 😉

p.s. This is not a review of the ADATA SR1020NP. Nope. I’ll leave that up to other people, happily, when the NDA is lifted 🙂

OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 (Build 13D55) Seeded

Apple seeded OS X 10.9.3 (Build 13D55) to registered Mac developers, made available through their Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store, as well as through the Mac Dev Center.

Focus Areas

– Graphics Drivers
– Audio
– Safari
– Contacts and Calendar sync over USB in iTunes
– Mail

Everyone else interested in testing OS X 10.9.3 (13D55) without being a registered Mac software developer, or member of the OS X Beta Seed Program, can change their App Store URL by entering the following terminal command (all on one line):

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --set-catalog https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.9seed-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

Note: You can verify your change using the following command:

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

You can undo this change using the following command:

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --clear-catalog

Or by using this command:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

Now the CatalogURL should have changed to:

https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

The default one for Mavericks.

OS X Beta Seed Program

Currently this update is not showing up for members of the OS X Beta Seed Program, which as we found out previously, uses a different URL:

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --set-catalog https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.9publicseed-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

Apple may of course still want to add this update, at a later time, but if this is to happen more frequently… then I would suggest you stick to the good old CatalogURL.

Legal Notices

Use of this confidential, pre-release software is subject to the Software License Agreement for Apple Confidential OS X Pre-Release Seed Updates presented upon installation of the OS X Software Update Seed Configuration Utility. The original Software License Agreement that accompanied commercially-available versions of the software being updated does not apply to these pre-release seed updates.

Changes

I had to change a plist to get past a ‘boot hang’ – black screen in single user-mode – like before:

/S*/L*/E*/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/C*/P*/AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/C*/Info.plist

<key>ConfigMap</key>
<dict>
	<key>Mac-F60DEB81FF30ACF6</key>
	<string>none</string>
</dict>

A more permanent solution for this would be to add it to some kext, but I personally don’t care about that. Not right now.

Also. A quick look at /S*/L*/E*/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/C*/P*/X86PlatformPlugin.kext/C*/Resources revealed that all plist are unchanged. Still no plists for the new board-id’s (Mac-C9CF552659EA9913 and Mac-81E3E92DD6088272) which may never happen until new/updated Apple hardware is released.

Edit:

The fact that this update is not available for members of the OS X Beta Seed Program may mean that Build 13D55 is the Golden Master (GM) and that OS X 10.9.3 will soon be released.

Edit-2:

You need to use --set-catalog and/or --clear-catalog (both with two minus signs) but wordpress.com appears to eat one of them!

Over the moon

The last couple of days have been really stressful for me, to say the least, but now I am over the moon. Yes! It is official now!

Someone is going to call me “Daddy” and that person is a beautiful little boy. Now I have two things left to do:

1) Finish his birthday card.

2) Get some sleep and go back to the hospital.

p.s. Yes. I did write up a new blog article about OS X 10.9.3 (build 13D55) and the new MacBook Air’s but who cares.

Piker out!