PearPC - PowerPC/Mac OS X Emulation on a PC

[MacBytes]

Category: 3rd Party Software
Link: PowerPC Architecture Emulator, capable of running Mac OS X, Linux, etc. (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040510104242)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[Mudbug]

so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?

[x86isslow]

I think there was an older emulation of Mac OS on x86- for OS 8? This might be interesting.

[wrldwzrd89]

so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?
What this release means is that FINALLY, a viable way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists - a task that was once thought impossible due to internal architectural differences (such as internal registers, which are temporary places to store data that needs to be accessed quickly - x86 has 8 of these registers, whereas the PowerPC has 32). As the site states, this "emulator", as these types of programs are known, is still in early stages of development and is not yet ready for use in, say, a commercial product.

[robbieduncan]

so I looked around the site, and tried to understand...

Can someone put into plain english what this means?

It's like VirtualPC but the other way round. It lets you boot PPC operating systems (like Linux-PPC or Mac OSX) on non-PPC computers (like x86 boxes). Unfortunatly it's really slow!

[backspinner]

... but will it really run OS X or just only the first pages of the installer? I thought that OS X checks the hardware before booting?

[0 and A ai]

... but will it really run OS X or just only the first pages of the installer? I thought that OS X checks the hardware before booting?

So does virtual pc. thats why the program emulates a pc

[Benjamin]

What this release means is that FINALLY, a viable way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists [...]

Actually you should have caps the viable and not the finally since.. this emulator already has a ppc emulation on it. http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SheepShaver.html

x86isslow -- many emulators have emulated 68k for a while.

article -- hurra... but until they have altivec and less then a 1/10 ratio no point in using it. even VPC runs pretty slow for any real use and it years (with money backing it) ahead of this.

[dombi]

How about some benchmarks...why are they always so hard to find? Do any of these solutions have benchmarks to see how quick/slow they are?

[wrldwzrd89]

Actually you should have caps the viable and not the finally since.. this emulator already has a ppc emulation on it. http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SheepShaver.html

Okay, I see your point - you are right. It should read: What this release means is that finally, a VIABLE way to run Mac OS (PowerPC) on Windows (Pentium/x86) exists [...]
Shall I edit my original post?

[gregnacu]

How about some benchmarks...why are they always so hard to find? Do any of these solutions have benchmarks to see how quick/slow they are?

They don't list any benchmarks on the site, but they do mention that it is about 500 times slower by Raw CPU cycle speed. The Harddrive and CDrom access emulation speeds were not nearly this bad though. Basically, if you installed OS X on this version of PearPC, you'd run your mouse over the dock and it would take a significant number of seconds for the magnification affect to draw itself.

That is one more reason why Mac's have a much easier time running Windows through an emulator... their UI is positively simple compared to OS X's. Transparencies, shadows, smooth animations, magnifications, live updating of data changes across multiple applications... All of these things take processing power, and the Mac has a LOT more of them than Windows has. (Mind you with Quartz Extreme, a lot of it is offloaded to the video card) the site didn't mention anything about offloading the graphics to the PC's video card.

I'm interested to see if Apple will try to sue them. They must be using some sort of proprietary Apple ROM technology to allow it to run the Mac OS. A Mac is a comprised of a heck of a lot more than just a PPC Processor.

[Cooknn]

[EDIT]
Disregard my question below. I found the answer here (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/installmacos.html)

How do I get OS X installed on the PC HD?

[Spazmodius]

So, by 500 times slower, are they saying it will run on a 3.2GHz P4 as if that machine were, maybe a 5-10MHz G3? That's absurdly slow. I appreciate the author's candor, but that's so slow I have to wonder if the guy made a mistake or something. Basilisk II can emulate a 68040 on my 1.1GHz PIII machine so fast, it actually runs Sys. 8.5 apps faster than any 680x0 processor ever made. It's faster than some of the early PowerMacs, probably at least as good as a 120MHz 601 or equivalent. That's GOT to be faster than a 5-10MHz G3...if such a thing ever existed (it didn't, obviously). I fail to see how such a slow emulator could tolerably handle even System 9.x's UI, and would probably be renedered completely inoperable for 10.x. Sounds really quite useless, if the speed estimates are accurate.

[Benjamin]

Okay, I see your point - you are right. It should read:
Shall I edit my original post?

no, not at all, it just shows that the other emulator just didn't have the drive to push development to getting os x on to x86 via emulator. no drive no PR. I was just pointing out that others have tired but obviously not hard enough.

[Nermal]

I wonder how much of this is new, or whether it's just a merge of SheepShaver and Mac-on-Linux.

SS allows you run run PPC software up to OS 8.6 on Linux. I've tried it, and it's not too slow, although it's not stable either.
MOL allows you to run up to OS X on LinuxPPC.

I think maybe PearPC is just a mixture of both - the CPU emulator from SheepShaver and the rest of the emulation from MOL.

Sorry about the grammar, I just got up :(

Edit: It specifically states that the video driver is from MOL. However, I suspect there's actually quite a lot of MOL code in it.

[davecomp]

i got it. its running on my AMD 1.3 ghz but it is very slow i will post pictures onece its booted

[Nermal]

i got it. its running on my AMD 1.3 ghz but it is very slow i will post pictures onece its booted

I have it too. I'm going to try it in Virtual PC :eek:

Edit: I gave up waiting for Linux to install in VPC so I'm trying it on the "spare" laptop, a Celeron 2400.

[Blackheart]

Isn't there something in OS X's EULA that prohibits installation on a non-apple computer?

[SPeedY_B]

Interesting, very interesting :)
Will wait to see how this one develops (ie: Gets kiled by Apple, or actually develops into something that works :p)

[Nermal]

Isn't there something in OS X's EULA that prohibits installation on a non-apple computer?

It must be installed onto an Apple-labelled or Apple-licenced computer. You know those two white Apple stickers that come with every Mac? Guess what you do with them ;)

[Frohickey]

Whats the point of all of this, aside from a college project?

[Nermal]

It'll give people a chance to try out the Mac OS without having to invest in a Mac. It needs to be fast enough to show off the Mac OS, but slow enough for them to get frustrated with it and buy a real Mac :)

[iMeowbot]

So, by 500 times slower, are they saying it will run on a 3.2GHz P4 as if that machine were, maybe a 5-10MHz G3? That's absurdly slow. I appreciate the author's candor, but that's so slow I have to wonder if the guy made a mistake or something.

Yeah, that really is what speed you currently get, about 10 MHz. Other than this being version 0.1, there are some other problems that will make it hard to emulate PPC on x86 at good speed. First, PPC has more registers, so the emulator has to shuffle more stuff in and out of memory. Second, there is no automatic endianness conversion available like the one that Virtual PC uses on the Mac (which no longer exists in the G5, the reason VPC broke).

Additionally, the writers of this emulator are trying to keep their program portable, which rules out some of the sleazier optimization tricks, at least in the short term.

[Nermal]

Just letting you all know that I successfully booted Mandrake 9.1/PPC. I didn't actually install it, but successfully booted into the graphical installer. Running on a Celeron 2400, it was a bit sluggish.

[MacRumors]

Several readers have noted a new opensource project that is generating some interest.

PearPC 0.1 (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/) is an early version of a "an architecture independent PowerPC platform emulator capapble of running most PowerPC operating systems". The emulator offers emulation for various PowerPC operating systems including Mac OS X 10.3 (screenshot (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/screenshots/osxbooted.png)).

According to reader reports, the application does appear to work, but is slow and clearly at an early stage of development so of limited use at this time.

[Wonder Boy]

this is kind of cool. if it runs os x well on a pc, maybe it will dawn on people how well it runs on a mac.

[P-Worm]

Finally! The Mac needs some good emulation software in the works. I've always felt that Open Source could do this better, I mean look at Wine. Plus, anything that will get the Mac OS out there more is fine by me.

P-Worm

[1macker1]

About time, but it won't be accepted until it's running faster.

[the_mole1314]

I can't wait, mabey I'll get my friend to come over this weekend and we'll do an all nighter to install the puppy!

[oingoboingo]

If this isn't a hoax, then I guess it puts an end to any technical speculation as to why OS X won't run on x86 hardware...

[benpatient]

finally! i will soon be able to run OS X on REAL hardware!


Apple will probably shut it down when they start to get it running fast...and it becomes apparent that a 500 dollar PC box can roll with a dual G5...

[LANcaster]

I've currently got the Panther release of Darwin for PPC running on my Athlon XP system, so it does work but it is excruciatingly slow at the moment.
I'm just about to install Panther, I'll let you know how I get on! :)

finally! i will soon be able to run OS X on REAL hardware!


Apple will probably shut it down when they start to get it running fast...and it becomes apparent that a 500 dollar PC box can roll with a dual G5...

Not going to happen I'm afraid, at very best this will software will probably emulate a PPC equal to about a 20th of your actual x86 CPU. Bear in mind that it has to emulate absolutely every PPC instruction and function call, there's no way it could be made to be anywhere near as fast as physical PPC hardware.
Oh, and if a G5 isn't "REAL" hardware I don't know what is..... :rolleyes:

[insidedanshead]

there is just too many parameters for normal end users to use something like this effectively. While WINE is a a good open source project it is still emulation.

even if you could get mac os x running on a pc box you still have to deal with hardware issues and compatibility issues.. lots of things wouldnt work quite like they do while running on a mac.

emulation is nice, but it is not an answer by any means.

[snahabed]

If and when emulation comes at an acceptable speed, Apple will sell virtually no hardware. This will lead to them getting out of the hardware business and becoming an OS/Digital Consumer Products company.

If they can survive like that, then fine. But I am reminded of the failed Mac clones attempt.

[Localcelebrity]

this is both really cool and really scary if it runs well enough who knows what it could lead to.

The thing is i don't think it'll have the same appeal that windows emulation does...

the mac os experience is very much tied to the hardware and the cool stuff it can do in conjuncture (isync, bluetooth, iphoto) etc and there iws no way that this thing will really be a viable alternative for graphic or video apps.

But i know a ton of people who think the mac is too expensive and might go for this instead. Which could either hurt sales or give people more reason to buy... i'm not quite sure which is more likely.

If anything it'll force jobs to stay more competitive, and with yearly OS updates, unless this things got a big budget team behind it they are going to constantly be playing catch up to keep the most current software running on it.

[eSnow]

Apple will probably shut it down when they start to get it running fast...and it becomes apparent that a 500 dollar PC box can roll with a dual G5...

Seemingly you forget that this emulator is running 40 to 500 times slower than the real thing...

[insidedanshead]

Seemingly you forget that this emulator is running 40 to 500 times slower than the real thing...


ha!.. so true. the only people who can engineer this to run as fast as it would on a mac are the engineers at apple. and they ain't gonna do it.

[C14ru5]

Let's see how far this project makes it. I've tried Basilisk on both a PC and a Mac, and while the PC version is by far the best of the two, it still lacks certain features (like proper sound implementation). However, I haven't lost my hopes yet :rolleyes:

[mactastic]

Hey, I'd love to be able to run a couple OS X apps on my XP machine at work. I'd like to be able to use Mail at work the way I do at home, I'd like to be able to iSync my Address Book and perhaps a few folders from my PC itself. Even if that's all it did for me, it would be nice to have those couple apps running quietly in a corner of my Wintel world here at work.

[maxterpiece]

Remember folks - this is an emulator, similar to virtual pc. It is built to run powerpc software. It is not the same as building a version of OS X that is native to Intel/AMD chips (as apple is rumored to have done). Because of this, it will never be remotely as fast as the native software.


If and when emulation comes at an acceptable speed, Apple will sell virtually no hardware. This will lead to them getting out of the hardware business and becoming an OS/Digital Consumer Products company.

If they can survive like that, then fine. But I am reminded of the failed Mac clones attempt.

[Apple Hobo]

What about that little part in the OS X license agreement:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

[themadchemist]

finally! i will soon be able to run OS X on REAL hardware!


Apple will probably shut it down when they start to get it running fast...and it becomes apparent that a 500 dollar PC box can roll with a dual G5...

this is the attitude, though fallacious, of which I'm afraid.

[benpatient]

doubters, you should note that this is extremely raw software...in fact WINE and things like it rarely BOOT when their first public release happens...If this guy actually sticks with the project, we could easily have a pretty usable emulator...

You (and the author) say that it's basically running at 1/40th of the 1:1 speed...from my experience, this is about how fast OS X was when it first was released...close to it, anyway.

no, i think this guy will get an extremely effective emulator going eventually. and i'll be using it!

[bryanc]

My only concern about this is that people will install this on their (acceptably fast) PCs and say "hey, this is excruciatingly slow...maybe that's just the way Macs are."

If it makes people who are curious about OS X try it and say 'wow, what a great OS' then great, but if it is a poor implementation that makes OS X look too slow to use, that won't impress anyone.

Cheers

[Mord]

get an apple lable and put it on your pc and your away

[Mord]

What about that little part in the OS X license agreement:

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

read above

[the_mole1314]

If and when emulation comes at an acceptable speed, Apple will sell virtually no hardware. This will lead to them getting out of the hardware business and becoming an OS/Digital Consumer Products company.

If they can survive like that, then fine. But I am reminded of the failed Mac clones attempt.

So, when's Microsoft going under, since you can get Windows on a Mac... :rolleyes:

[markoibook]

Hmmm, something smells fishy here.

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

For this reason, i cannot see how it would be possible to install and run Mac OS on this emulator - unless it contains a copy of a Mac boot rom - which would be illegal.

And as other people have said - emulation is very slow, so there is no way that a non-PPC computer would ever be able to run as fast as a native PPC - so no Apple won't lose sales to people building PCs and running Mac OS on this emulator.

Although, saying that, a computer of the kind of spec that will be needed to run Longhorn(6Ghz, 2GB RAM, 1TB Hdd) might be able to emulate Mac OS X.....

...but only at about the same speed as a G3 5Mhz or something. ;)


Marko

[Mac-Xpert]

ha!.. so true. the only people who can engineer this to run as fast as it would on a mac are the engineers at apple. and they ain't gonna do it.

Actually they can't. As long as the software and system are compiled for the PPC, everything needs to be emulated and therefore work really really slow.

I think everybody should be happy that apple never switched to x86. This emulator will show exactly what would have happened if they did. We would have ended up with a machine without any apps to run on it with decent speed. All your existing software could be thrown in to the trash, and we would have had to wait for year until software company would have caught-up with the new system.

[Megaquad]

Apple has no power to force authors to stop distribution of this software because you can run any PowerPC OS on it you like, such as YDL and some others, and they don't have power over such things regarding whole PowerPC platform, but they could maybe make some modifications to OSX to make it stop running on emulators.
But I don't see any reason Apple would do so because this could only bring more switchers.

[LethalWolfe]

So, when's Microsoft going under, since you can get Windows on a Mac... :rolleyes:

So, do you want to figure out what is wrong w/that statement by yourself or would you like some help?


Lethal

[arn]

Hmmm, something smells fishy here.

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

For this reason, i cannot see how it would be possible to install and run Mac OS on this emulator - unless it contains a copy of a Mac boot rom - which would be illegal.


I thought Apple did away with the boot Roms...

arn

[invaLPsion]

I see no point in buying a mac anymore if you happen to be a mac gamer. This is amazing!

You can use a PC to game and MacOSX for everything else! Sweet.

I wonder if we'll see an legal action from Apple against PearPC? :cool:

[jbrown]

I see the screenshot includes the famous 'spinning beachball of death' so at least we know its for real :D

[virividox]

i dont think most average users will go out and buy this and a copy of osx , its mainly for mac users who need to run stuff on windows machines. thats my take

[eSnow]

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

Not so. The boot rom is on the install CD since the days of the first NewWorld Macs. The Mac "BIOS" is called OpenFirmware and can legally be rewritten.

[ClimbingTheLog]

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

That used to be true, the Toolbox was in ROM. But with the iMac generation they moved the Toolbox to RAM and OSX does not rely on the Toolbox at all. Classic is a ROM-in-RAM machine. There were even some tools to load a real ROM into RAM for better OS9 performance.

There is an Open Firmware boot ROM, but it's, well, Open so that shouldn't be an issue.

With regard to the speed issue, I wouldn't get too comfortable with the Mac performance advantage for the causal user. I use a 350MHz G3 for alot of my work and it runs Panther just fine, even though the G5 2.0 is something like 20 times faster than it. That means an emulator can have a 20X performance hit and still have an OK OSX performance experience. The trouble with Virtual PC on Mac is that Windows XP runs like a dog on a 350MHz Pentium II, so there are some comparative advantages for OSX emulators.

[SiliconAddict]

My only concern about this is that people will install this on their (acceptably fast) PCs and say "hey, this is excruciatingly slow...maybe that's just the way Macs are."



Doubtful. If a person is smart enough to know how to install and config the emulator part and then knows enough about installing an OS they "should" (Note the quotes.) be aware of how an emulator works.

[pjkelnhofer]

I wouldn't think Apple is worried about this. I cannot imagine an emulator ever running FCP or DVD SP at acceptable speeds, and lets face it, those are the programs that sell the high end PowerMacs.

I think there is more a need for a good x86 emulator on the PPC platform than vice versa. The majority of Mac users I know would like to be able to run Windows programs occasionally, but not many Windows users are desperate to run iPhoto on their Dell.

[PaisanoMan]

doubters, you should note that this is extremely raw software...in fact WINE and things like it rarely BOOT when their first public release happens...If this guy actually sticks with the project, we could easily have a pretty usable emulator...

You should note that WINE stands for "Wine is Not an Emulator." It does not emulate any hardware, it does not "boot" at all, and it is (quite obviously) not an emulator.

[jxyama]

My only concern about this is that people will install this on their (acceptably fast) PCs and say "hey, this is excruciatingly slow...maybe that's just the way Macs are."

If it makes people who are curious about OS X try it and say 'wow, what a great OS' then great, but if it is a poor implementation that makes OS X look too slow to use, that won't impress anyone.

Cheers

if you know enough 1) that there are OSes other than windows and 2) to try to install this program (and make it work) on a x86 box, then you certainly know enough to realize it's an emulation and the speed isn't representative.

i think this is not much more than a gimmick - it's just a cool thing to try and implement. but i highly doubt that it will have much of an effect on the sale of Macs or OS X, even if it's made faster.

edit: siliconaddict - you beat me to it. ;)

[pjkelnhofer]

Hmmm, something smells fishy here.

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

This is no longer true, in fact Mac-on-Linux (http://www.maconlinux.com) already allows you to run OS X on non-Apple hardware (PPC only).

But as the FAQ points out, this is technically illegal:
Q: Does MOL run on non-Apple hardware?
A: It does. MOL runs for instance on the Pegasos board, the Teron board and on AmigaOne hardware. In short, MOL should run on any PowerPC hardware (with the except of 601-based systems). However, the EULA of MacOS prohibits its usage on non-Apple hardware (it is of course perfectly legal to use MOL to boot a second Linux though).

[bree]

Alternative approach.
If Darwin is already running on x86, why cant people hack Darwin to trick Mac OS X into thinking its running on a PPC?

much less work that way.
The guts of the OS has already been ported. If people can 'convince' the OS that the chip is the same, everything should work fine.
Of course, its much easier said than done, and I have no clue how to do it. :p

[Spk1]

This is all very nice but where is Virtual PC 7(?) for the G5 that one rumour mill said would be out by February?

[SiliconAddict]

This is cool and about freaking time. A couple problems though. IMHO there are certain pro apps that barely run fast enough on OS X with a G4. Would you really want to run any iApp or god help you Photoshop or FCE on an emulator? I'm not a fan of the PPC architecture but I think its best to stick with the architecture that the OS was designed for. Unless you are a switcher and NEED to emulate it.
That's the only use for this, that I can see. Anyone who is switching to a PC. (Like it or not guys it DOES happen occasionally.) This would allow them to access any key software that is only available for the Mac.
This is a double-edged sword.
Its a good thing in that it could allow users who want to play with OS X (Ewww I just realized that means virus writers too.) the freedom to try it out and see that "hey Apple might be onto something here".
But also it has the ability to further tempt anyone who is eyeing the competition but doesn't want to give up a key app.

:confused: Don't know what to think of this.

[SiliconAddict]

This is all very nice but where is Virtual PC 7(?) for the G5 that one rumour mill said would be out by February?

No one ever said Feb. It was announced to be released first half of 04. Which means no complaining until July. :p

[aricher]

Kinda off topic but this all reminds me of the guy that is running over 60 different operating systemss on his 17' PowerBook.

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/vpc/

Waayyy too much time on his hands:

[jared_kipe]

"if you're a mac gamer you have no more reason to buy a mac" AH ha ha, thats hilarious. Half of the people here say that it will never be fast enough to do any mac related work, and they say everybody should know that. And yet the other half says they're gonna jump ship from mac to PC but still run OSX. The people who say it won't be viable are correct. The reason? Well its the same reason we can't "trick" OSX into thinking it is on PPC hardware. To make an analogy, powered wheels drive a car, but you can't slap powered wheels on an airplane and expect it to fly. We can't run OSX on a PC because PC's don't have the same CPU in it. Meanwhile, this emulator doesn't just ALLOW mac OSX to run on x86, it is its own VirtualPPC. This means that it can run any PPC instruction software (maybe), but it will never run it anywhere near as fast as it does on a native Mac.

[SiliconAddict]

Alternative approach.
If Darwin is already running on x86, why cant people hack Darwin to trick Mac OS X into thinking its running on a PPC?

much less work that way.
The guts of the OS has already been ported. If people can 'convince' the OS that the chip is the same, everything should work fine.
Of course, its much easier said than done, and I have no clue how to do it. :p

Doesn't work that way. You can get darwin to run on a X86 platform but Apple's code, API's, etc are so tied to the PPC that it would require a rewrite of the OS along with every other app created for the OS. This is where the emulator is necessary.

[Krizoitz]

OK, basic computer architecture lesson. Everyone knows (or should know) that when it comes to memory RAM is fast and Hard Drives are slow right? Well it goes beyond that you actually have a couple more layers. Going from slowest to fastest this is what you get:

Hard Drives
RAM
Cache
Registers

The registers are the fastests parts of computer memory, built right into the processor. These are the basic building blocks of a computer. Anything and everything that gets processed goes through the registers.

The PowerPC has 32 General Purpose Registers. This is where the bulk of the processing gets done. The Intel architecture has 8. Only 8. That means that any time you access more than 8 registers on the PPC side you'd have to start swapping information in and out of memory and that is going to be a massive bottleneck.

Think of it this way. Imagine you are at a library doing some research. You find yourself a nice table and start gathering the books you think you'll need. Well you can only fit so many books on the table at a time. Lets 8. You get the 8 books you think you'll need and start working. You find that you need some new info. So you take the least used book(s) and replace them with some new books. Now imagine you only have room for 2 books. (1/4 the space, just like the proccessors). You are going to have to get up and do a LOT more book swapping. This isn't just a 1:4 slow down ratio either. Since you have to swap more often you are spending alot more time in a very time-consuming process. The same is true with processors.

Now its true that the Intel architecture has some specialized registers which is why it doesn't run slow as molasses, but those aren't as large, so the PowerPC code won't be able to use them, the instructions wouldn't fit. So any emulator is going to have to either find a way to recast instructions without losing data (which means storing it on disk or at best in ram) or do a lot of register juggling.

Windows/Linux is fine because it is desgined to use those smaller registers for tasks, but the PPC architecture assumes that all registers (with a few exceptions) are 32bit and that there are 32 of them.

Sorry but this is never going to be a viable emulation standpoint even if they could get the instruction set translated. Its a hardware issue.

[Waragainstsleep]

Surprised no-one has suggested using PearPC to add PC hardware to an Xgrid cluster.
It should be fine in its current state to run simple (but time consuming) calculations. Maybe fourier transforms for SETI, etc, etc...
And if you have a roomful of idle PCs (Many Universities have numerous roomfuls every night), 1/40th or even 1/500th of their real power is still extra power. And of course its bound to get a bit faster.

[3-22]

Will be interesting to watch this project... Can they ever optimize it enough to be useful is the big question? It's (relatively) easy to emulate old processors with the latest high power CPUs, but quite a different story to emulate something like a G4. 500 times slower is awfully slow right now.

[SiliconAddict]

I see no point in buying a mac anymore if you happen to be a mac gamer. This is amazing!

You can use a PC to game and MacOSX for everything else! Sweet.


Er....have you ever used CPU emulation software before? With a fast enough computer you only get irritated at the speed. With a subpar computer with a an older CPU you get qwerty face from slamming your head into the keyboard.



I wonder if we'll see an legal action from Apple against PearPC? :cool:

Not possible. Since there is nothing illegal about creating an emulator. Hell if it did come down to a lawsuit they would throw Virtual PC back in the face of Apple.

[MacStarbird]

OK, basic computer architecture lesson. Everyone knows (or should know) that when it comes to memory RAM is fast and Hard Drives are slow right? Well it goes beyond that you actually have a couple more layers. Going from slowest to fastest this is what you get:

Hard Drives
RAM
Cache
Registers

...

That is a lot of great info. Thanks!

[Delta-9]

For more information see the slashdot.org thread on this subject

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/10/011255&mode=thread&tid=107&tid=162&tid=185&tid=187&tid=99

[jxyama]

if you thought this would enable you to run OS X on a "cheaper" PC hardware, you must also remember to factor in $129 for the OS X.... if you are "honest" ;)

so instead of $799 eMac running panther at full speed, you can run emulated panther ($129) on a cheap dell box ($500) for $170 less! what a bargain! :p

[SiliconAddict]

yada yada yada

The registers are the fastests parts of computer memory, built right into the processor. These are the basic building blocks of a computer. Anything and everything that gets processed goes through the registers.


http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-3.html

When running in 64-bit mode, x86-64 programmers will have access to eight additional GPRs, for a total of 16 GPRs. Furthermore, there are eight new SIMD registers, added for use in SSE/SSE2 code. So the number of GPRs and SIMD registers available to x86-64 programmers will go from eight each to sixteen each. Take a look at a diagram from AMD that shows the new programming model:

16 my friend. 16 potential registers to use depending on if someone is running a AMD and a newer 64-bit CPU.

[cgc]

Actually you should have caps the viable and not the finally since.. this emulator already has a ppc emulation on it. http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SheepShaver.html

x86isslow -- many emulators have emulated 68k for a while.

article -- hurra... but until they have altivec and less then a 1/10 ratio no point in using it. even VPC runs pretty slow for any real use and it years (with money backing it) ahead of this.

SheepShaver? I used this on my old Amiga 3000 to emulate a Mac. It was named ShapeShifter prior to it being renamed SheepShaver. Interesting it's still around.

[gorkonapple]

Alternative approach.
If Darwin is already running on x86, why cant people hack Darwin to trick Mac OS X into thinking its running on a PPC?

much less work that way.
The guts of the OS has already been ported. If people can 'convince' the OS that the chip is the same, everything should work fine.
Of course, its much easier said than done, and I have no clue how to do it. :p

Because you can't. You CAN get Darwin to run on x86 because there is a port. You can't get Mac OS X to run on x86 in any other way because all of the code that is not included in Darwin (Quartz, Finder....etc) is all compiled for PowerPC.

Theoretically, you COULD run PearPC on a Darwin emulating Mac OS X, but if you are running Darwin on the raw PPC hardware, you would not need to emulate Mac OS X. You'd just run it.

[SiliconAddict]

so instead of $799 eMac running panther at full speed, you can run emulated panther ($129) on a cheap dell box ($500) for $170 less! what a bargain! :p

Keep in mind though if you already have a PC this is a deal and like it or not ROMS of OS X will start flying around the net through bit torrent assuming that the emulation speed can be increase. Hell people were and are playing with pre alpha releases of Longhorn simply because its cool never mind that its a buggy at this point and its slow as heck on anything less then 1Ghz with 512MB RAM.

[gorkonapple]

(Ewww I just realized that means virus writers too

Virus writers only work on Windows??? They have just as much a ability to go get a Mac and run it and write viruses on it as well as on Windows.

[bree]

Doesn't work that way. You can get darwin to run on a X86 platform but Apple's code, API's, etc are so tied to the PPC that it would require a rewrite of the OS along with every other app created for the OS. This is where the emulator is necessary.

Theoretically the rest of the OS is on top of darwin, abstracted. Some APIs such as Quicktime may 'hit the metal', but I don't believe most are 'tied' to PPC.
An emulator is likely still needed for some code, but since Pentiums have way fewer registers than PPCs, straight emulation would be dog slow anyway. Using Darwin to load what is more abstracted from the hardware sounds workable to me.
Isn't this what Apple does with their in-house 'Marklar' port?
But what do I know? :D

[SiliconAddict]

Virus writers only work on Windows??? They have just as much a ability to go get a Mac and run it and write viruses on it as well as on Windows.

Ummm no. How much does a Mac, even a used one, generally cost? Virus writers typically aren't going to go out and spend $700-$1,000+ on a platform just to write a virus or if nothing else the average virus writer isn't. Now imagine being able to run OS X on the god know how many PC's that are already out there by simply downloading a ROM. Ya that wouldn't be tempting. :rolleyes:

[omnivector]

ok. let me clear some things up. i'm the guy who made the screenshot (http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/screenshots/osxbooted.png). if you don't believe me, checkout my homepage: http://otierney.net notice tristan o'tierney, and thanks tristan on the pearpc screenshots page.

now, it's about 20-50 times slower with just-in-time compilation and x86 optimizations turned on. the 500 times slower speed is probably worst-case scenarios (i.e. ppc or sparc running the emulator). it's currently only optimized for the x86.

second, it's IMPOSSIBLE for this emulator to EVER get close to the speeds of virtualpc for the mac. virtualpc runs as fast as it does because mac processors (g3 and g4 specifically) have little-endian emulation, when ppc chips natively run as big-endian. this basically means that the bytes inside the memory are in the order 1 2 3 4 5, not 5 4 3 2 1. with ppc's little-endian emulation, this byte-swapping does NOT have to be done in-code, but rather can be done in-cpu. thus this makes it much much faster. on the other hand, x86 cannot do this. this means that for EVERY single mathematical operation (which in computers is almost every single assembly instruction) the bytes have to be swapped (from big endian to little endian) then calculated, then swapped back to big endian before it's put into the ppc cpu's virtual memory store. the other reason this emulator will never be nearly as fast is the ppc architecture has 32 general purpose registers. the x86 only has 16. because of this, the x86 architecture will always be horrible at emulating ppc. without having those additional 16 registers you have to emulate them in-code. which means they will be an order of magnitude slower (try 100 times slower). tricky optimization can fix some of the problems with this speed isu, but most certainly not all of them.

lastly. this screenshot is not fake. if you don't believe me i could send you the 6 gig hard disk image and very precise instructions on how to use it to start it up yourself :P but i'm too lazy.

[bree]

now, it's about 20-50 times slower with just-in-time compilation and x86 optimizations turned on. the 500 times slower speed is probably worst-case scenarios (i.e. ppc or sparc running the emulator). it's currently only optimized for the x86.


so realistically, how fast can the emulator probably get?
10x slower than a real ppc? less?

[nighthawk]

second, it's IMPOSSIBLE for this emulator to EVER get close to the speeds of virtualpc for the mac. virtualpc runs as fast as it does because mac processors (g3 and g4 specifically) have little-endian emulation, when ppc chips natively run as big-endian. this basically means that the bytes inside the memory are in the order 1 2 3 4 5, not 5 4 3 2 1. with ppc's little-endian emulation, this byte-swapping does NOT have to be done in-code, but rather can be done in-cpu. thus this makes it much much faster. on the other hand, x86 cannot do this. this means that for EVERY single mathematical operation (which in computers is almost every single assembly instruction) the bytes have to be swapped (from big endian to little endian) then calculated, then swapped back to big endian before it's put into the ppc cpu's virtual memory store.

What would be ideal is if the little/big endian swapping is handled with the SIMD SSE/SSE2 vector processing. This would significantly improve the performance of the entire system if it is optimized correctly.

[Raidiant]

I'd much rather have a mac running windows fast, then having a windows emulate my mac. Its pretty unrealistic to run opposite structural CPUs at native speed. I'd rather just have a board that supports both types of CPUs and I can have a dual CPU computer that can open both. Whilst the CPU is very different. RAM access, and hard disks plus graphic cards are alot similiar. I don't see why we can't have a computer which can run both. Heck with the shrinkage of components I doubt its diffficult to run two motherboards in a single computer. I won't mind booting up seperately. It be best if I can just run windows games in a mac os x system.

A mac can do everything apart from games, but it seems stupid to have a windows machine to run mac os x to do everything but games. Seems a bit awkward if you ask me. Virtual PC doesn't help cause most people want windows for the damn games. This emulator will probably die out, if it doesn't it won't be as fast as a native mac anyway. The whole point of mac os x is its speed and reliability and looks, running it on an emulator eliminates all purpose of running an emulator.

Either way it doesn't give us much of a solution, it is nothing but an interesting program. Even if it does get completed what kind of idiot would boot up a slow mac os x on a windows machine to get a bit of word processing or photo editing done, when you can all just run it on windows, prolly more stable too :/

too put it into perspective why don't you try photoshopping, listening to music or gaming on "virtual pc". The conclusion is that you only run virtual pc for those minor programs you can't run on a mac. Now reverse it and think of what kind of minor programs you'd run in a "virtual mac os", when you can literally run anything in windows alot faster.

[KingOfPain]

They don't list any benchmarks on the site, but they do mention that it is about 500 times slower by Raw CPU cycle speed.

That's for the interpreted CPU, the JITC (or dynamic recompiler, as Eric Traut of VPC fame calls it) should be roughly 10 times faster, although from a quick glance the at the source code it seems that some of the more complicated instructions aren't translated to x86 code yet.

I'm interested to see if Apple will try to sue them. They must be using some sort of proprietary Apple ROM technology to allow it to run the Mac OS. A Mac is a comprised of a heck of a lot more than just a PPC Processor.

Modern Macs use Open Firmware which is, well, open, and PearPC seems to implement that.

While WINE is a a good open source project it is still emulation.

I guess this myth is never going to die, although WINE already is an acronym for "WINE Is No Emulator".
WINE doesn't emulate a CPU or any other piece of hardware, instead it consist of a port of the Win32 API to Linux, and a PE-loader to run the Portable-Execution-Binaries Windows is using.
Once again, no emulation involved, so WINE is no emulator!

second, it's IMPOSSIBLE for this emulator to EVER get close to the speeds of virtualpc for the mac. virtualpc runs as fast as it does because mac processors (g3 and g4 specifically) have little-endian emulation, when ppc chips natively run as big-endian. this basically means that the bytes inside the memory are in the order 1 2 3 4 5, not 5 4 3 2 1. with ppc's little-endian emulation, this byte-swapping does NOT have to be done in-code, but rather can be done in-cpu.

Actually, I think that trick was part of the memory controller not the processor, which is why VPC6 refuses to work on the G5. Of course there still are the "load/store byte-reversed indexed" instructions, but I doubt you are referring to those.
Anyway, since the 486 the IA-32 has the BSWAP instruction to perform an endian conversion on a 32-bit word, and that takes only one cycle on Pentium and later processors. Since I guess that byte and 32-bit accesses will be the most frequent, I doubt that the endian-conversion is the big performance hit you make of it.

on the other hand, x86 cannot do this. this means that for EVERY single mathematical operation (which in computers is almost every single assembly instruction) the bytes have to be swapped (from big endian to little endian) then calculated, then swapped back to big endian before it's put into the ppc cpu's virtual memory store.

No, those conversions only have to take place when the PPC loads or stores a value to or from a register, because as soon as it is in the emulated register you can assume that the value will be in little-endian byte-order. Since PowerPC is a load/store architecture all instructions apart from these two types only operate on registers, which means no endian-conversion has to be performed while emulating these.
To summarize: When emulating PPC on x86 endian conversions only take place during loads and stores.

the other reason this emulator will never be nearly as fast is the ppc architecture has 32 general purpose registers. the x86 only has 16.

This is the bigger issue, especially since IA-32 only has 8 registers that are sometimes called general purpose (AMD's x86-64 has 16 GRPs). But from my point of few those registers aren't GRPs, eg. variable shifts expect the shift amount in CL (the lower 8 bits of the ECX register), multiplications and divisions use the register EAX implicitly, and some instructions generally prefer the EAX register, which shows that x86 decended from an accumulator machine, to name just a few examples.
Also x86 instructions have two-address code, while PPC has three-address code, ie. in PPC you can have a=b+c, when x86 only manages a=a+b. The emulation will certainly need more instructions per PPC instruction, and register allocation will be quite tricky, with a large part of the register file probably residing in the caches.

because of this, the x86 architecture will always be horrible at emulating ppc. without having those additional 16 registers you have to emulate them in-code. which means they will be an order of magnitude slower (try 100 times slower).

That's rubbish. While the lack of registers in the IA-32 is a big problem, especially when emulating a RISC processor, stack operations have been optimized for that architecture, and most of the emulated register file will be found in the fast caches, not the slow main RAM.
It's true that the emulation won't be faster than the cache, but it certainly isn't 100 times slower. This kind of emulation of RISC processors has been done several times before in Playstation and N64 emulator, which both have MIPS processors with 32 GRPs (in the case of the N64 even 64-bit), and those don't need a 100 times faster PC either.

Will this harm Apple?
No, not unless PCs become at least 10 or more likely 20 times faster than Macs, and I don't see that happening in the near future, especially after the recent speed boost for Apple computers.
I knew that something like PearPC was bound to appear sooner or later, with all the PPC emulation showing up over months and months. But I was never worried about it, because I know enough about the internals of emulation and also about the two architectures involved to be sure that it'll take one hell of a PC to emulate MacOS X at a useable speed, and with such a small performance difference between current PCs and Macs this is going to make the Macs just more powerful.

[dopefiend]

I knew this something like PearPC was bound to appear sooner or later, with all the PPC emulation showing up over months and months.


I'm actually suprized it took so long.

[Xerocs]

so, the os x install is booting but i can't see my virtual harddrive

in my config file:

pci_ide0_master_installed = 1
pci_ide0_master_image = "f:\pearpc.img"
pci_ide0_master_type = "hd"

the fearpc.img is the "pearpc-3gib.img"

got no clue what to do now... tried it several times.

[dontmatter]

Don't see where this is doing much. Very few people out there are complaining that this piece of software is only out there for mac. there ain't that much 3rd party software out there, at least compared to PC's, and very little worth running realy slow and all. the one thing that might make a difference is if apple released an absolutely killer app, but refused to make a PC version. If it became standard for PC users to use this app through the emulator, they might start using all sorts of iapps they can't get for PC, and go, hey, this stuff is cool. Why do I want to be running these on an emulator, though, when I could get the real thing?

my dreaming.

[jxyama]

If it became standard for PC users to use this app through the emulator, they might start using all sorts of iapps they can't get for PC, and go, hey, this stuff is cool. Why do I want to be running these on an emulator, though, when I could get the real thing?

my dreaming.

because the "real thing" costs a lot of money? ;)

[jared_kipe]

Umm a=a+b is true if, and only if, b=0. Thats basic algebra.

[iris_failsafe]

Don't see where this is doing much. Very few people out there are complaining that this piece of software is only out there for mac. there ain't that much 3rd party software out there, at least compared to PC's, and very little worth running realy slow and all. the one thing that might make a difference is if apple released an absolutely killer app, but refused to make a PC version. If it became standard for PC users to use this app through the emulator, they might start using all sorts of iapps they can't get for PC, and go, hey, this stuff is cool. Why do I want to be running these on an emulator, though, when I could get the real thing?

my dreaming.

It is called Final Cut Pro, and is killing every other editing software, even Avid and Discreet. It has crushed everything is it's path and everyone knows that is just a matter of time before it conquers the world. :cool:

[gregorypierce]

Use the awesome register power of the GPUs of a x86 box using shaders and the need to emulate those registers in software goes away. Many emulator authors are overlook a readily available source of CPU power that can actually be programmed to do EXACTLY what you're trying to get the host CPU to do - and with more recent hardware on the market is damn fast at doing these operations.

Think outside the box. The average PC GPU can be programmed to do exactly what you're trying to force the x86 to do.

[chowells]

Alternative approach.
If Darwin is already running on x86, why cant people hack Darwin to trick Mac OS X into thinking its running on a PPC?


Completely impossible. Mac OS X is the collective name for an OpenSource UNIX kernel called Darwin and a propeitary GUI called Quartz.

There is no way to "trick" (well there is, its called emulation, guess what we're talking about here...) Quartz compiled for PPC to run on x86 hardware without getting the source code and compiling it for x86.

[jesaja]

Umm a=a+b is true if, and only if, b=0. Thats basic algebra.


But they're talking 'bout programming:rolleyes: ... and there it means

a(new) = a(old) + b

in some languages it's written a bit another way (e.g. a:= a+b in Delphi) but basically it means the same...

jojo :rolleyes:

[Fukui]

Umm a=a+b is true if, and only if, b=0. Thats basic algebra.
In this case, " = " is an assignment operator, it means move whats on the right into whats on the left, so in the end a does become equal to itself plus b. If it said a == a+b then of course that couldn't be true unless b equal zero or both equal zero.

[bree]

Completely impossible. Mac OS X is the collective name for an OpenSource UNIX kernel called Darwin and a propeitary GUI called Quartz.

There is no way to "trick" (well there is, its called emulation, guess what we're talking about here...) Quartz compiled for PPC to run on x86 hardware without getting the source code and compiling it for x86.

Could you tell me *WHY* this is absolutely true without just dismissing it?
Mac OS X is a descendent of Nextstep, which ran on pentium systems, and was supposedly abstracted more away from the hardware to make it more portable. Apple also claims that the 'guts' of the system is Darwin, and everything else is on top of that. Presumably at least some of the code should work on anything, as long as Darwin works. I understand that much of the code wouldn't work without being recompiled for a new system, but shouldn't it be at least theoretically possible to have a least some of Mac OS X functioning on anything Darwin supports?

[The Ancients]

ha!.. so true. the only people who can engineer this to run as fast as it would on a mac are the engineers at apple. and they ain't gonna do it.

They already have done it - it's called Marklar.

[The Ancients]

Not possible. Since there is nothing illegal about creating an emulator. Hell if it did come down to a lawsuit they would throw Virtual PC back in the face of Apple.

Microsoft produce Virtual PC, and have rights to Windows code (and emulation of) and Apple approval of the software.

[iris_failsafe]

Is Marklar the version of Mac OS X that runs on X.86 processors back when Apple considered switching to X.86? :confused:

[cjc343]

Is Marklar the version of Mac OS X that runs on X.86 processors back when Apple considered switching to X.86? :confused:


Marklar, internal version of X that works on intel processors.... never been released because there is no reason to:


http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2002/08/20020830181129.shtml


edit: I don't think it has ever been confirmed, correct me if I am wrong....

[gorkonapple]

Microsoft produce Virtual PC, and have rights to Windows code (and emulation of) and Apple approval of the software.

What you said made no sense. The only thing different about Microsoft's Virtual PC since it was bought by Microsoft is that they now include the Windows license and do not support any other OS other then Microsoft ones. Virtual PC is able to run any x86 OS. It's emulating a Pentium II chip or something similar. Microsoft may change it such that you can't load anything other then Windows. There's probably not any code in VPC that "emulates" the API. The API runs in a virtual machine that emulates a x86 chip. So you don't really need a special license or anything to run Windows in VPC and VPC technically is capable of running any x86 OS. Microsoft just won't give you phone support.

[gorkonapple]

Ummm no. How much does a Mac, even a used one, generally cost? Virus writers typically aren't going to go out and spend $700-$1,000+ on a platform just to write a virus

No they may not go out and buy one....all they have to do is have access to one. That is easy. Kinkos had them for a while and be realistic....anyone who has a Mac and the know how can technically write a virus. Due to the way UNIX security works, it would not pass to many users, but if there was a local exploit that gave you root access the virus could take take advantage of that and take the OS down. Don't be a fool! JUST because there are not many virii now for Macs doesn't mean it well stay that way! Macs are really no more secure then any other OS. Viruses are not only on Windows easier. What do you think....because it has a Apple on it and it came from Cupertino it's immune to someone who really wants to cause damage??

[SiliconAddict]

Microsoft produce Virtual PC, and have rights to Windows code (and emulation of) and Apple approval of the software.


They didn't originally own VPC. And please show me proof Apple gave their blessing to VPC to begin with.

[SiliconAddict]

No they may not go out and buy one....all they have to do is have access to one. That is easy. Kinkos had them for a while and be realistic....anyone who has a Mac and the know how can technically write a virus. Due to the way UNIX security works, it would not pass to many users, but if there was a local exploit that gave you root access the virus could take take advantage of that and take the OS down. Don't be a fool! JUST because there are not many virii now for Macs doesn't mean it well stay that way! Macs are really no more secure then any other OS. Viruses are not only on Windows easier. What do you think....because it has a Apple on it and it came from Cupertino it's immune to someone who really wants to cause damage??


:p You assume I'm someone who doesn't know what an OS is made of. Its a duh moment that no OS is perfect. My point is that potentially this opens up any would-be virus writer to creating a virus for the Mac. Until now you had to either buy hardware, visit Kinko’s, or use a school 'puter. But really who is going to spend time trying to find a way method to propagate a virus at Kinko's. Ya good plan. Emulation on the x86 platform will allow cheap or in some cases free access to OS X to those who feel they want to find an exploit in OS X. I'm not saying it will happen and I'm not saying something as big as Blaster on Windows will occur but its a possibility.

[The Ancients]

They didn't originally own VPC. And please show me proof Apple gave their blessing to VPC to begin with.

Why show you proof? Apple are aware of the software now (and have been for a long time), and haven't expressed any great level of displeasure at it's existence. VPC does serve it's uses, and is beneficial in many cases to both Apple, and Microsoft.

[The Ancients]

What you said made no sense. The only thing different about Microsoft's Virtual PC since it was bought by Microsoft is that they now include the Windows license and do not support any other OS other then Microsoft ones. Virtual PC is able to run any x86 OS. It's emulating a Pentium II chip or something similar. Microsoft may change it such that you can't load anything other then Windows. There's probably not any code in VPC that "emulates" the API. The API runs in a virtual machine that emulates a x86 chip. So you don't really need a special license or anything to run Windows in VPC and VPC technically is capable of running any x86 OS. Microsoft just won't give you phone support.

No sense? It boils down to each party knowing and accepting (if not appreciating) the existence of the other's products. That's a pretty big difference, as at this stage it is unsure whether Apple are aware of the existence of this software, and it's not clear whether any Apple code has been (illegally) included to enable functionality.

[niar]

beachball talks quite a lot about this project I think..

[KingOfPain]

Umm a=a+b is true if, and only if, b=0. Thats basic algebra.

Either you have no idea of programming or you are trying to be funny.
At least I have been talking about programming. I also could have written:
a += b;
a := a + b
LET a = a + b
(define a (+ a b))
etc.

[PaisanoMan]

Could you tell me *WHY* this is absolutely true without just dismissing it? ... I understand that much of the code wouldn't work without being recompiled for a new system, but shouldn't it be at least theoretically possible to have a least some of Mac OS X functioning on anything Darwin supports?

It's possible ... it's this thing called "emulation." That's really the only way you're going to run code compiled for one architecture on a system with an entirely different one.

Read a little bit about how computers actually work, and I'm sure you'll see why this is the case. (Not trying to be condescending; seriously, look into it.)

[BornAgainMac]

So basically this emulator is too slow to run on a high-end PC running Panther that is running Virtual PC running Windows XP Pro. Or run iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, or even iTunes.

And you can't run Warcraft III or Unreal 2004 or any other nice Mac games under emulation. So people that want this should just buy a real Mac because Intel and AMD are too slow today to emulate the Mac OS X experience.

[thatwendigo]

So basically this emulator is too slow to run on a high-end PC running Panther that is running Virtual PC running Windows XP Pro. Or run iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, or even iTunes.

And you can't run Warcraft III or Unreal 2004 or any other nice Mac games under emulation. So people that want this should just buy a real Mac because Intel and AMD are too slow today to emulate the Mac OS X experience.

Beautiful! Best comment on this thread! :D

[Tegeril]

So basically this emulator is too slow to run on a high-end PC running Panther that is running Virtual PC running Windows XP Pro. Or run iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, or even iTunes.

And you can't run Warcraft III or Unreal 2004 or any other nice Mac games under emulation. So people that want this should just buy a real Mac because Intel and AMD are too slow today to emulate the Mac OS X experience.

Or you could play those games natively on the x86 machine and have it run faster than it would on a comparably priced Mac ;). Also, Intel and AMD are not too slow to properly emulate the Mac OS, they are being fed extremely inefficient code, give it time.

In other news, I have a question for you who have succeeded in getting this working. I have the 6GB drive image setup and it goes through the boot dealy and I actually get the Darwin setup screen, but I left it running to "detect" volumes that it could install for about... 5 hours and it still had nothing after running at max cpu for that entire time. Any suggestions?

[Spk1]

No one ever said Feb. It was announced to be released first half of 04. Which means no complaining until July. :p

Yeah, actually, someone did.

But the complaining can continue anyway:

http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=3406

:p

[nimda]

So, by 500 times slower, are they saying it will run on a 3.2GHz P4 as if that machine were, maybe a 5-10MHz G3? That's absurdly slow. I appreciate the author's candor, but that's so slow I have to wonder if the guy made a mistake or something.

HAHA *I* can run a program at 5-10 MHz. Screw getting some top of the line PC to fake the power and beauty of a real mac at speeds so slow even your parents can't compare them to the good "old days" ^_^

[nimda]

Ok... if you want to run mac PROGRAMS get a mac... there's no real way around it. Mac COULD go to x86, but why? Their products would be so much less stable if they can't know their hardware and optimize for it.

If you want the look and feel of AQUA, however, get OS XP (a windows theme hack for XP to look like OS X) I used to use it when I was still in the closet as a mac lover. I used OS XP's theme after bypassing windows security to change out a system file that checks to make sure your themes are officially M$ approved (dun worry, they have very easy tutorials) and then I used object dock by stardock (it was the fastest one that I'd found at the time). It ran pretty well, but that was on my P4 2.2Ghz... (so sad that it turned into a paperweight the moment the box for my G5 arrived..)

[jared_kipe]

Either you have no idea of programming or you are trying to be funny.
At least I have been talking about programming. I also could have written:
a += b;
a := a + b
LET a = a + b
(define a (+ a b))
etc.

But you arn't really saying a=a+b you're sort of defining a new variable like... the new a = the old a + b. One might go as far as to say a'=a+b or a2=a1+b. It was mostly a joke though.

[amols]

I have it too. I'm going to try it in Virtual PC


Installing emulator inside emulator?? Wow!! May be you should try installing VPC again inside "Emulated" OSX and we'll find new definition of SLOW...

[snooziums]

Note this screenshot of the project: http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/screenshots/kde.png (you may have to copy and paste the address into your address bar).

On the top-layer window, where the specs of the emulated computer are listed, note the "clock" referring to processor speed.

"10MHz"

Oh my gosh, talk about slow! That almost makes me want to UNDERCLOCK my 800 MHz G4 all the way down to 10MHz. I wonder that that would be like? *rolls eyes*

With love, snooziums.

[Rower_CPU]

Another review and instructions at kevinrose.com: OS X is running on my Athlon! (http://kevinrose.typepad.com/kr/2004/05/osx_is_running_.html).

Synopsis: slow, buggy, cool as hell. ;)

[snooziums]

Another review and instructions at kevinrose.com: OS X is running on my Athlon! (http://kevinrose.typepad.com/kr/2004/05/osx_is_running_.html).

Synopsis: slow, buggy, cool as hell. ;)

The person that created that site does not have a clue. He says: "It's slow, very very slow – as in 286 SX slow, as in..."

There was no 286sx ! There was a 386sx and a 486sx, however no 286sx! I should know as I used to build computer control systems based on the 286 processor (and still have a few of those processors around, the best 16-bit chip ever made, however the world has moved past 16-bit).

Geesh! Someone tell him [the creator of that page] to get a clue!

With love, snooziums.

[Efalumps]

As Micro$oft bought virtual pc from connectix,
Perhaps Apple should employ these guys and improve the speed.
And then market it as a Virtual mac.
I know that I would buy it (As the rest of my family own wintel machines) If it were fast enough. :eek:

[Waragainstsleep]

As Micro$oft bought virtual pc from connectix,
Perhaps Apple should employ these guys and improve the speed.
And then market it as a Virtual mac.
I know that I would buy it (As the rest of my family own wintel machines) If it were fast enough. :eek:


Apple never made VPC or anything like it. If they wanted OS X to run on x86 chips, it would run on x86 chips. Then they would sell almost no hardware at all. Which is currently where they make their money.


As for the greatness of the 286, well....we're all entitled to our opinions I suppose.

[itsa]

As Micro$oft bought virtual pc from connectix,
Perhaps Apple should employ these guys and improve the speed.
And then market it as a Virtual mac.
I know that I would buy it (As the rest of my family own wintel machines) If it were fast enough. :eek:

They very well may buy it... Just to shut it down!

It really does not make sense to me. The only thing I miss on my Macs are games (sports games mainly). I run too many pro apps to be running "windonts" and there is no way you would be able to emulate them on a computer and still have enough head room to do anything else on a "pc".
Running a windows emulator on a Mac makes sense only because there are program and more so GAMES (if that ever happens) that you can not run without it.
Why would anyone want to run mac apps on a "pc"? ... just wondering..
If you are running pro apps like FCP or any of the Adobe line, it only makes sense that you would be smart enough to JUST BUY A MAC!


just thinking out loud

[snooziums]

As for the greatness of the 286, well....we're all entitled to our opinions I suppose.

Well, when it comes to 16-bit processors, the 286 is so far, and perhaps forever will be, the best 16-bit processor. It introduced "protected mode" memory addressing, although Microsoft never made an OS that used it very well. It also had seperare address and data lines, and could address more memory than any other 16-bit processor made (an entire 16mb of RAM, yippie!).

So, when it comes to 16-bit processors, it was the best, beating the 68000 and the 65816. However, 32-bit and later 64-bit processors have far more capibilities, and the world had moved past 16-bit for computing.

However, I still use it in designs for microcontroller systems where I want a lot of processing power using 16-bit design for ease and cost.

[davegoody]

Tried to run this - OSX installer just stuck on the initial screen and hung up the application - this just proves three things:

1) The variability of PC hardware makes running anything with any stability a bit of a lottery (THAT INCLUDES WINDOWS ! :) )

2) If you want to run OSX buy a Mac - they are much nicer anyway

3) This is a VERY early build of the software - version 0.1 is not very high up the evolutionary scale for any software - Look at Windows - multiple variants are out there as retail boxed software and even that does not run properly !

4) I know I said three points - just checking ! :confused:

[benpatient]

current uptime on my dual processor G5: 5 days, 10 minutes.

current uptime on my athlon 2500+: 85 days, 4 hours, 42 minutes.

the last G5 restart was due to photoshop hard-locking and ignoring my request for a force-quit.

the last Athlong restart was due to installation of new graphics card drivers that required a restart.

so whatever.

[grapes911]

This guy did it.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7085

[itsa]

This guy did it.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7085


Now what? Sounds like a big waste of time!

[dopefiend]

Now what? Sounds like a big waste of time!

Its not ;)

[Rower_CPU]

Its not ;)

Until it can run more than a single app semi-reliably, it is. ;)

It does have a ton of potential, though.

[denm316]

I would be happy with tbhis software, just for the fact it would let me play with my Madc on my PC at work

[itsa]

Until it can run more than a single app semi-reliably, it is. ;)



This is what I'm saying! :)

[pjkelnhofer]

This is what I'm saying! :)

It may be a waste of time right now, but the project as a whole is quite interesting. It would be fascinating if the could make PearPC run OS X on x86 machines better than MicroSoft can make VPC run on Macs.

I am just too lazy to try it on my fiancee's Dell.

[Romix]

I have installed OSX 10.3 on my Athlon XP 2000 via PPC since version 0.1, who took 7+ hours to install.

Version 0.2 took 4+ hours to install.

Version 0.3 took 1 1/4 hours to install, boots in 2 1/2 minutes. It run slowly, fast enought to brose internet and check e-mail.

Any person who think that is a time waisting, can do other thin than wasting their time reading these forum... for me it`s a new horizon that will do what apple and microsoft coudn´t, or better say woudn´t, to create an open world were any person can use any system in any hardware. That´s freedom, that´s opening horizons...

[thatwendigo]

Any person who think that is a time waisting, can do other thin than wasting their time reading these forum...

It's a waste of time, because this software exists for one reason and one reason alone - to break the law. Installing OS X using this program is a violation of the EULA and thus clearly, blatantly, and remorselessly illegal. It's not even a fair-use issue, since the license state that you're installing on Apple hardware.

Apple Computer, Inc.
Software License Agreement for Mac OS X
Single Use License (http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/MacOSX.htm)


1. General.
The software (including Boot ROM code), documentation and any fonts accompanying this License whether on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the “Apple Software”) are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Computer, Inc. (“Apple”) for use only under the terms of this License, and Apple reserves all rights not expressly granted to you. The rights granted herein are limited to Apple’s and its licensors’ intellectual property rights in the Apple Software and do not include any other patents or intellectual property rights. You own the media on which the Apple Software is recorded but Apple and/or Apple’s licensor(s) retain ownership of the Apple Software itself. The terms of this License will govern any software upgrades provided by Apple that replace and/or supplement the original Apple Software product, unless such upgrade is accompanied by a separate license in which case the terms of that license will govern.

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one computer at a time,and you may not make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple computers at the same time. You may make one copy of the Apple Software (excluding the Boot ROM code) in machine-readable form for backup purposes only; provided that the backup copy must include all copyright or other proprietary notices contained on the original.

...

C. Except as and only to the extent permitted in this License and by applicable law, you may not copy, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works of the Apple Software or any part thereof. THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.

for me it`s a new horizon that will do what apple and microsoft coudn´t, or better say woudn´t, to create an open world were any person can use any system in any hardware. That´s freedom, that´s opening horizons...

One word: Marklar.

Apple has a version of OS X running on x86 hardware in a lab in Cupertino, and they've created prior versions and projects before. Do a little digging before you make allegations like that.

[jared_kipe]

I have installed OSX 10.3 on my Athlon XP 2000 via PPC since version 0.1, who took 7+ hours to install.

Version 0.2 took 4+ hours to install.

Version 0.3 took 1 1/4 hours to install, boots in 2 1/2 minutes. It run slowly, fast enought to brose internet and check e-mail.

Any person who think that is a time waisting, can do other thin than wasting their time reading these forum... for me it`s a new horizon that will do what apple and microsoft coudn´t, or better say woudn´t, to create an open world were any person can use any system in any hardware. That´s freedom, that´s opening horizons...

I can't find 0.3, and what kind of system are you running? Would ichat run well enough to use video, maybe audio?

[PPC970FX]

Can OS X be usebal on a very powerful x86 PC, like 53FX? Or dual Operton.

[macsrus]

Can OS X be usebal on a very powerful x86 PC, like 53FX? Or dual Operton.

This project is ineresting but not very practical....IMHO

But If apple released OSX for the PC they could really Take a large share of the Market...

OSX is evolving into a truly remarkable OS.... if only 1 out of 10 PC users ran it...... It would increase Apples revenues by over 3 billion a year.

OSX in many ways(especially in the desktop & usability) is superior to Linux.
Although still a little behind it from the average Unix users standpoint.
Each new update continues to improve on that though, and I expect Tiger just might overtake Linux from a technical standpoint...
(there really are some fundamental differences between the MACH kernel and the Linux kernel but those parts could be addressed by the open source community)

Linux is so far behind both OSX and Windows in easy of use that it will be years before it will be a true desktop competitor. Regardless of the hype(Grandma cant use it... and she will be long gone before they fix it so she can)


But OSX is PPC/APPLE only.... whereas Linux runs on everything...
So again Please Apple do yourself and everyone but Microsoft a favor and Sell OSX on the PC


I really think Apple is a better Software..... than Computer Company.....
Im not saying MACs aren't great computers they ARE
Anyone who has ever used one knows their design has always been equal to or better than the top PCs out.

But I just believe Apple fundamentally makes such good software that they could make 10 times the revenue they do now if all their energy was concentrated on software

Plus Microsoft has proven that there is way more money to be had in devoloping and selling software than in Hardware....
Heck Bill Gates said it himself, "Microsoft makes more money from each Macintosh sold than Apple does".

And Microsoft software in most cases is mediocre at best.....

So Apple Release a verion of OSX for the PC.... make yourself rich... and finally give us a competitor to Microsoft's monopoly.

[eyepoper]

HEY PEOPLE..WAIT.......
LETS THINK ABOUT THIS. THIS IS MY THOUGHTS
PLAYSTATION 2 NOW HAS hardisk capability and runs Linux.
What i some one or else could compile or convert the PEARPC into linux code...and and so we could Test it on a PS2?

The CPU of the PS2 is way much powerfull than any home CPU now.\\

Let me know about it

[Mord]

HEY PEOPLE..WAIT.......
LETS THINK ABOUT THIS. THIS IS MY THOUGHTS
PLAYSTATION 2 NOW HAS hardisk capability and runs Linux.
What i some one or else could compile or convert the PEARPC into linux code...and and so we could Test it on a PS2?

The CPU of the PS2 is way much powerfull than any home CPU now.\\

Let me know about it

how about no, the ps 2's cpu is not very powerfull it's just that it's dedicated to games even a dreamcasts 200MHz hitachi cpu is faster than the ps2's the game cube uses a g3 and an old ati card but it still looks amazing same for xbox's 733 pIII anyway the ps2 uses some type of weird emotion engine it dose use a risc instruction set but that dose not mean instant compatibility, a much better candidate would be a gamecube with it's g3.

[Mord]

It's a waste of time, because this software exists for one reason and one reason alone - to break the law. Installing OS X using this program is a violation of the EULA and thus clearly, blatantly, and remorselessly illegal. It's not even a fair-use issue, since the license state that you're installing on Apple hardware.

so,

wont stop me

[Littleodie914]

so,

wont stop meLikewise.

[pocketpc2004]

i have downloaded a pre-instaled mac os x from the internet and it work very slow but i think its worth it because when i click somewhere it takes 10-15 seconds to respond and i am just running on a 800 mhz athlon!!!!

but i have see some prog on internet that can boost the performance on p4 systems

[thatwendigo]

i have downloaded a pre-instaled mac os x from the internet and it work very slow but i think its worth it because when i click somewhere it takes 10-15 seconds to respond and i am just running on a 800 mhz athlon!!!!

but i have see some prog on internet that can boost the performance on p4 systems

So you not only broke the Apple license by installing on hardware that they didn't approve, but you also pirated a copy of it? I think that this shows perfectly, and I do mean perfectly, why Apple shouldn't ever get into the x86 world as an operating system provider. Piracy is rampant and there's not much chance they'd be compensated like they ought to be.

[aptmunich]

think that this shows perfectly, and I do mean perfectly, why Apple shouldn't ever get into the x86 world as an operating system provider. Piracy is rampant and there's not much chance they'd be compensated like they ought to be.

And you think people don't pirate mac software?
I'll agree: It doesn't happen as much, as lots of users use their macs professionally and thus are more inclined to buy the software to avoid damage to their business.

However: I think for private users the situation is similar on both platforms:

Private users don't/won't spend hundreds of dollars/euros on 3rd party software like photoshop etc. when they just want to play around with it.

I think the mac community is only more loyal to apple than the pc community is to microsoft. so maybe os piracy is less of a problem?

[P-Worm]

This little argument has been going on for a while and I feel that I should take a side.

I think PearPC is a cool little experiment, but that's it. Even if they did manage to get it up to 100% speed emulation, I think it should just remain an experiment. There's a reason that Apple wants their OS to be on their hardware, they don't want more problems to worry about.

Granted, this thing probably won't get huge, but I think we should respect the terms and conditions that Apple has made AND YOU AGREE TO when you install the OS.

I'm interseted to see how well this can get working, but not so I can trade in my hardware, more along the lines of "Can it be done?"

P-Worm

[Dom]

I don't see much commercial potential for Mac emulation on a PC.

VPC on Mac was handy for the man-on-the-street because it was a handy way around many Mac/PC compatibility problems. And I know our developers started using it to check PC compatibility (as they preferred using Macs). They did however, stop using VPC some time ago because it was easier having a cheap PC dedicated to the task.

There's little in Mac OS on the PC for the average PC punter because they already have access to more stuff than Mac users, and even though it may end up running pretty efficiently, developers etc would probably still be better off on Mac hardware.

It might be amusing to see Mac OS boot on a PC but can anyone else think of a genuinely good (and widespread) use for it?

[milzay]

I think Apple should just let this program develop and then employ the tactics that MS used to become big.
MS allowed their software to be easily copied, then they'd say that their OS was the most popular as there were so many copied versions being used. So really if this program got good and did well then Apple could just say that OSX is almsot as opopular as Windows and then people would think twice about OSX (we all knpow how good Jobs is at putting spin on the situaution). Then when they see the quality of the OS they're k=likely to buy a Mac, after all whats the point of emulating the OS if they can just get the real thing.

[tomjleeds]

Let's face it - Apple aren't going to release an x86 version of MacOS in the near future...but if they did, I'd buy it! Dual-booting Windows and MacOS would be awesome - Windows for games, MacOS for...well, just about everything else.

PearPC is an interesting one. If it worked at a decent speed, I'd investigate it. As it's currently at 1/40th speed, I don't think it's worth bothering with. However, if they got it up to something like 1/10th, I'd be very interested.

And to the person who suggests we run PearPC on a PS2...what are you on?! The PS2's processor is hella slow!!!

[ewinemiller]

It might be amusing to see Mac OS boot on a PC but can anyone else think of a genuinely good (and widespread) use for it?

Not particularly widespread use, but I would like to be able to support both Mac and PC platforms for my customers when on the road. Currently I could use VPC on a Mac laptop, but I much prefer to do development and debug in Visual Studio .NET's C++ environment and compile later on CodeWarrior. With VPC, VS.NET is really too slow to work that way so CodeWarrior becomes the primary development environment. I would love to see and would pay money for a Mac emulator that ran at a reasonable rate so I just needed to carry one machine and could VS.NET as my primary environment.

[wnurse]

Hmmm, something smells fishy here.

All Apple Computers contain a special boot rom - and Mac OS will only install and run on computers containing that boot rom. So, even if you built a clone Mac, it would not run Mac OS because of the lack of a boot rom.

For this reason, i cannot see how it would be possible to install and run Mac OS on this emulator - unless it contains a copy of a Mac boot rom - which would be illegal.

Marko

Amazing how many people have stated this falsehood without any correction.
Apple computers does not contain a boot Rom anymore. It's all software now. There must be people in this forum that knew this. Secondly, how they are installing the software on a PC is illegal. It's illegal because the people who are doing it are using a copy of an OS they have either

1. Obtained from someone who already had it
2. Used the one they have already because they have a mac.

But all software OS license (windows, mac) stipulate that the OS can only be installed on one machine. So unless these people are going out and buying Mac OS (which none has done, as far as i know), they are all commiting software piracy.

[jhu]

Let's face it - Apple aren't going to release an x86 version of MacOS in the near future...but if they did, I'd buy it! Dual-booting Windows and MacOS would be awesome - Windows for games, MacOS for...well, just about everything else.

PearPC is an interesting one. If it worked at a decent speed, I'd investigate it. As it's currently at 1/40th speed, I don't think it's worth bothering with. However, if they got it up to something like 1/10th, I'd be very interested.

And to the person who suggests we run PearPC on a PS2...what are you on?! The PS2's processor is hella slow!!!

you've got to be kidding. what applications would there be for macos x86? i seriously doubt that apple would want to maintain two binary versions of their products (eg final cut pro, garageband, etc.). and i seriously doubt that alias will maintain both a macos ppc and x86 version of maya. the applications that are left would be from the opensource community; in such a case, you might as well dual-boot windows and *insert your-favorite-unix-like-os-that-isn't-macosx*

[tomjleeds]

you've got to be kidding. what applications would there be for macos x86? i seriously doubt that apple would want to maintain two binary versions of their products (eg final cut pro, garageband, etc.). and i seriously doubt that alias will maintain both a macos ppc and x86 version of maya. the applications that are left would be from the opensource community; in such a case, you might as well dual-boot windows and *insert your-favorite-unix-like-os-that-isn't-macosx*

Hence why I said 'they're not going to, but if they did'. And if Apple released MacOS for x86, I'm sure that the software would come with it, else it would be a pointless exercise. However, as I said, it's not going to happen, it's just dreams!

[cslewis]

This is such old news. :rolleyes:

[wrxsti86]

ok
It take 9 hooours to finish installation

and woo 0 Mhz PowerPC G3 born

sure you can eXpose

but slooow easily-catch mouse

[macsrus]

PearPC.... nice idea... fun to play with... but not very useful

[wdlove]

If you really want the enjoyment of a Mac purchase a Mac. Nothing works as well a Mac.

[snuglz]

This may be old news to some of you, but Apple has released an OSX variant for x86 systems called Darwin. It's free for download from the apple website and is very compatible from what I have heard.

[titaniumducky]

This may be old news to some of you, but Apple has released an OSX variant for x86 systems called Darwin. It's free for download from the apple website and is very compatible from what I have heard.

From what I understand, Darwin is little more than an open source shell. It's a unix-based shell that was developed around FreeBSD (another open source shell) and then OS X was built on top of it. It is most definitely NOT an OS X variant.

Amazing how many people have stated this falsehood without any correction.
Apple computers does not contain a boot Rom anymore. It's all software now. There must be people in this forum that knew this. Secondly, how they are installing the software on a PC is illegal. It's illegal because the people who are doing it are using a copy of an OS they have either

1. Obtained from someone who already had it
2. Used the one they have already because they have a mac.

But all software OS license (windows, mac) stipulate that the OS can only be installed on one machine. So unless these people are going out and buying Mac OS (which none has done, as far as i know), they are all commiting software piracy.

They might have bought it...

However, it would still be against the EULA.

[bousozoku]

This may be old news to some of you, but Apple has released an OSX variant for x86 systems called Darwin. It's free for download from the apple website and is very compatible from what I have heard.

Darwin is the base part of Mac OS X (not OSX) and exists in PPC and x86 varieties. It doesn't contain any of the GUI pieces.

There is (supposedly) a full version of Mac OS X running on x86 hardware and I believe that it is called Marklar and it hasn't been released.

[jhu]

They might have bought it...

However, it would still be against the EULA.

and we all know that eulas are pretty much unenforceable.

[millar876]

Darwin is the base part of Mac OS X (not OSX) and exists in PPC and x86 varieties. It doesn't contain any of the GUI pieces.

There is (supposedly) a full version of Mac OS X running on x86 hardware and I believe that it is called Marklar and it hasn't been released.

Wasnt Marklar the name of a race of aliens in "South Park" who refered to all people places and things as marklar and took all the ethiopians in to hide them from Sally Struthers and Christian Misioneries? (Starvin Marvin in space episode) :D

[pianojoe]

So unless these people are going out and buying Mac OS (which none has done, as far as i know), they are all commiting software piracy.

Since you do not know what they did, wouldn't it be fair to assume that they are not breaking the law until you have proof of the contrary?

[pianojoe]

and we all know that eulas are pretty much unenforceable.

The programmers obviously live in Germany, and German law, in fact, renders the Apple EULA useless. More or less.

[Timelessblur]

umm a lot of people are working on this a most of them live in the states.

I see it as a more of a good thing for apple. They are not loosing money on the deal because come on loosing money on it. Even if those people do pirated it (more than likely most of them are pirated copies) it not like any of them would of paid for the software any how so it no real money out of apple pockets. Heck it convences more people to get a Mac than agaist it.

I currently have pear on my computer and it is barely even up to semiusable speeds for web surfing. If you go to the forums you see people cursing Pear because it made them go out and buy a Mac because they like it.

Because of pear a friend of mine plans on getting a mac for his next computer. Because of pear I currently plan on getting a Powerbook or an iBook when I replace my laptop in a year or 2.

Now I never going to switch fully over to Macs because I like computer games and Mac heavily lack in the profection software that I use or will be using when I get out of collage.

I personly think apple should get involved in this project and start helping them out.