Spinrite 7 to support the Mac?

Given Steve’s announcement in show 766 about booting Spinrite, does this mean that the next version (v7?) will support the Mac? In a previous show he said that the next version would not. I hope it does support the Mac because although SN is very heavily Windows-biased, I’m sure a large percentage of its viewers/listeners are Mac users.

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The reason why he was not planning to support the Mac explicitly with 6.1 is because Macs don’t boot DOS any more (if ever) because of missing BIOS. Now that he is planning to target UEFI there is theoretically no reason why Macs wouldn’t work. I presume he basically announced he is skipping over and/or cancelling his efforts for 6.1 in favour of jumping directly to 7 (which was already planned to support UEFI I believe.)

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There is no reason you can’t just fix a Mac drive from a PC than can boot DOS.
Spinrite does not care about the partition type or filesystem.
People use it to fix the drives in their TV recorders.

Except that they are soldered to the motherboard these days and most MacBooks can’t be easily dismantled anyway.

I thought he was going to stop putting new stuff in 6.1 and get that out pronto, then UEFI support in v7 and look at more new features in v8.

I listened the other segment on Spinrite twice and am still confused about what he’s planning to do – other than expedite 7 for UEFI support. :thinking:

Security Now might seem Windows biased however isn’t that because most security issues are in the Windows OS space? With 70-80% Microsoft market share compared to 10-15% Apple it seems logical Spinrite for Mac development would naturally be a lower priority. Security Now is about security not Spinrite.

Aside from your Apple [sic.] numbers being a bit low, you may not be factoring that SpinRite doesn’t really target the entire market. I would say “enthusiasts” and IT professionals are more the target. So there are a lot of PC “users” that would never buy Spinrite (and some Mac users too…).

Beyond that, as Steve said, the UEFI issue is one that effects almost all PC’s going forward, so PC market share is a large reason to get Spinrite off of BIOS anyway.

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I was just listening to the latest episode and I also noted that he only really covers Windows updates. That’s fine with me, the show will be flavoured by the presenter and that’s ok.

I’m not sure about Mac support ever, Macs are quite a bit more difficult to work with and Steve knows PC mostly. I’m not terribly concerned with being able to use it on Mac though even though I use a Mac. If it can scan my NAS drives quickly and properly I’m happy. I’ve got old computer bits kicking around to build a DOS box from.

Hi. It’s not so much Windows updates that I’m commenting on (he does cover iOS updates when they’re newsworthy) but, for example, when he talks about browsers he often forgets Safari and only mentions Chrome, Edge and FireFox. They might be dominant on desktops but there are many iOS users that use Safari because it is the default. I realise that the podcast is really the “Windows Security Now” show (and boy does Windows need the attention) but I wonder how long before Steve throws in the towel and switches to a real OS. :wink:
My original point was that I suspect amongst the show’s listeners (and Spinrite users) there will be a significantly higher percentage of Mac & Linux users than amongst the general population.

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