Apple's Transition: Apple Partition Map to the GUID Partition Table

摘要

In January 2006, Apple moved from PowerPC processors to Intel processors. This brought with it a number of changes to the way that a Macintosh works. These changes involved the move from the IBM manufactured PowerPC RISC chip to the Intel Core Duo CISC chip, which meant a move for Apple to an X86 architecture. At the same time, Apple chose to make a few other changes. One was the move from Open Firmware, the open source version of Sun Microsystems boot firmware, to Intel's Exstensible Firmware Interface (EFI), previously used on Intels Itanium hardware. Another major change involved a change to the partitioning structure of the disk. Apple moved from its long standing Apple Partition Map (APM) to the Intel-created GUID Partition table (GPT) which is part of the EFI specification. This article will examine these changes to the partitioning structure and assess the impact that this will have on Apple.