1401 Mac 1.0.15 - installation preservation review

Installation notice: Do not use the USB-to-internal OpenCore promotion path in this version or earlier versions. A preservation defect can remove existing Windows and vendor boot files from the active destination EFI partition; a backup alone does not keep Windows bootable. A corrected installer is being validated. This version is marked prerelease pending replacement. Existing hardware-log evidence does not qualify this installation path.

1401 for Mac 1.0.15 adds a bounded hardware map to support logs: registry and HID collection observations, CPU counts, anonymous audio channel and sample-rate descriptors, and reported display modes. Completed registry and CPU data survive optional metadata queries that time out or fail. These observations describe driver-reported state; functional hardware qualification remains specific to each system.

Each log submission uses a fresh temporary batch value shared by that submission's files. The optional diagnostics check reports prerequisites only. Trace capture is unavailable in this version; ordinary support log collection remains available.

The companion requires macOS 15.0 or later. Driver helper package 1.0.10 checks actual payload load-command compatibility before installation; the NVIDIA runtime requires macOS 15.5 or later. All 47 protected GPU, kernel, firmware, compiler and removal files, plus both runtime links, remain unchanged from package 1.0.9. Existing hardware and operating-system qualification boundaries remain unchanged.

Validation: the integrated app and archive pass strict bundle signature verification. Hardware-map metadata, privacy, checkpoint and failure-handling tests pass, including 251 optimized AddressSanitizer assertions and 24 owned-child checkpoint cases. Optional trace capture remains unqualified and disabled.

Additional companion and installer changes:

• Removed the obsolete Tahoe preparation action.
• Require a verified startup OpenCore partition or explicit partition selection; shared machine-model labels no longer choose the installation target.
• Individually sign the bundled runtime compatibility checker.

The 1.1 graphics and per-system functional qualification work remains separate.