14 DAY TRIAL // Intel-based Apple computers that were recently made contain something more than needed in their motherboards. A member of Google's technical staff in Mountain View, Calif., Amit Singh, reported the existence of this chip that, he says, would allow users to take advantage of "trusted computing capabilities". The computer researcher has recently disclosed that there are encrypted binaries in Apple's Mac OS X operating system that are designed to protect the operating system from being pirated.
Singh's book "Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach," contains a chapter about the existence of the chip called a "trusted computing device". The funny thing is that Apple has not included a way for Mac OS X to use the TPM directly, fact that indicates that no digital rights management or other restrictions are tied to the TPM.
Apple simply does not use the TPM hardware, says Singh in his book. eWeek.com reports that Singh told them that "The TPM is an opt-in feature" and "Apple can't just turn it on-nobody can, other than the user."
The TPM itself consists of a small memory chip, a true random number generator, a low-power processor and a few other components, all on one chip. The TPM can have no effect on the system unless the operating system or firmware of the computer equipped with a TPM contains drivers that are aware of the TPM. Singh has determined that Mac OS X and Apple's firmware do not contain these elements and thus cannot use the TPM,eWeek writes.
Singh speculates that the motherboards just came with them as part of the package from Intel and that it is possible for individual users to take advantage of the TPM in their Intel-based Macs as Sighn has written a TPM device driver to serve that purpose.