Jozef Zuzelka jzlka

macOS Internals

Understand your Mac and iPhone more deeply by tracing the evolution of Mac OS X from prelease to Swift. John Siracusa delivers the details.

Starting Points

How to use this gist

You've got two main options:

QEMU Mac OS 9 Instructions

Here is a short guide on how to build QEMU to run Mac OS 9 with working audio. These instructions work for MacOS High Sierra as the host OS, although with some tweaking they may run under Linux/Windows. You should be comfortable compiling software from source before attempting.

Clone QEMU fork

Adapted from instructions from Cat_7

You may need to install XCode and/or the XCode command line tools. If you do not have them, then this process may prompt you to install them (MacOS will do that).

WWDC Tips

In addition to these, Quora also has huge list.

Registration

Since WWDC started selling out every year, Apple instituted a lottery system for tickets. You enter when it's announced, and, if you're lucky enough to get one, you'll be immediately billed for the ticket. If you'll be needing your boss's permission (approval for the expense and/or the week off work), get it early.
If you're a student, Apple usually offers a limited number of free passes through the Student Scholarship.

Travel

If you can get a cancellable flight and hotel reservations at reasonable prices as soon as the WWDC dates are announced, book them. Otherwise, wait until you win the ticket lottery.
If your passport is expiring within three months of departure, renew it now. You may have border trouble otherwise.

OS X terminal tips an tricks

Shell tools

System

sw_vers — Print Mac OS X operating system version information
system_profiler — Reports system hardware and software configuration.
system_profiler SPHardwareDataType — Hardware overview.
hostinfo — Host information.
nvram -p — Print all of the firmware variables.
getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR — Retrieve standard configuration variables
/usr/libexec/path_helper — Helper for constructing PATH environment variable

	#! /bin/bash
	#
	# build-xnu-6153.11.26.sh
	# Scott Knight
	#
	# Based on the script by Brandon Azad
	# https://gist.github.com/bazad/654959120a423b226dc564073b435453
	#
	# A script showing how to build XNU version 6153.11.26 on macOS Catalina
	# 10.15 with Xcode 11.13.1.

	//
	// main.m
	// EndpointSecurityDemo
	//
	// Created by Omar Ikram on 17/06/2019 - macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta 1 (19A471t)
	// Updated by Omar Ikram on 15/08/2019 - macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta 5 (19A526h)
	// Updated by Omar Ikram on 01/12/2019 - macOS Catalina 10.15 (19A583)
	// Updated by Omar Ikram on 31/01/2021 - macOS Big Sur 11.1 (20C69)
	// Updated by Omar Ikram on 07/05/2021 - macOS Big Sur 11.3.1 (20E241)
	// Updated by Omar Ikram on 04/07/2021 - macOS Monterey 12 Beta 2 (21A5268h)

	#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
	#import <EndpointSecurity/EndpointSecurity.h>
	#import <os/log.h>
	#import <bsm/libbsm.h>

	/*
	In the beta 1 seed it's not straight forward to create an EndpointSecurity extension.
	You can use libEndpointSecurity.dylib directly as long as you set the following things:

	1. Disable SIP

	#include <stdio.h>
	#include <stdlib.h>
	#include <sys/stat.h>
	#include <unistd.h>
	#include <mach/mach.h>
	#include <mach/mach_vm.h>
	#include <dlfcn.h>
	#include <objc/runtime.h>

	/* Debug boot-args */
	#define DB_HALT 0x1
	//#define DB_PRT 0x2 -- obsolete
	#define DB_NMI 0x4
	#define DB_KPRT 0x8
	#define DB_KDB 0x10
	#define DB_ARP 0x40
	#define DB_KDP_BP_DIS 0x80
	//#define DB_LOG_PI_SCRN 0x100 -- obsolete
	#define DB_KDP_GETC_ENA 0x200

	#!/usr/bin/python

	# create a "wireless manifest" for Apple pkg installers. for details
	# on the manifest see: http://help.apple.com/deployment/osx/#/ior5df10f73a

	import subprocess
	from tempfile import mkdtemp
	import os
	from xml.dom.minidom import parse, parseString
	from hashlib import md5