First Hand with Mac OS X on Toshiba Intel (x86)

[PCMacUser]

It takes 3-4 minutes on my 2 GHz Pentium M with 2 GB memory (Dell Inspiron 6000). I really do believe this is because of all the apps I've installed. Boot time increased significantly as more apps were installed. This, however, is not a good sign, but it is understandable given all the Windows Services that have to be loaded.

A colleague of mine has an AMD FX55 machine with two Raptor 10000rpm drives running in RAID 0 and his computer boots into Windows XP in less than 10 seconds. After it's been bogged down with games and apps, bootup slows down to about 20 seconds.

 

[PCMacUser]

I'm apparently the ultimate MS-fanboy who should not be on Macrumors

HA! I knew it!

 

[steve_hill4]

Um, dude, do you realize how absolutely friggin' zero sense you just made, right? A peecee (PC) is nothing more than a machine, okay, hardware, so running OS X on that verses OS X on a MacTel is the same thing. If you really "need a peecee" unless there's some bizarre hardware (which again would need some Microcrap something, ruining your argument) what you say makes absolutely no sense. If you need to be on a peecee, it's 'cause of M$ Windoze, this has NOTHING to do with OS X.

Get it now?

Perhaps they were suggesting that either they want to run OSX on their Windows machine as a dual boot, or perhaps buy a mac which can dual boot Windows for those few apps that need it.

It's certainly something I would consider, that way I could get rid of XP as default on my home computer and run Linux full time. If I needed windows, just boot into it on either machine. If you only have one machine, it would have to be that one. It would however be like buying an expensive sports car and then using it off road in the Peak District. Completely pointless.

 

[ioinc]

Wow, this makes me want to vomit...everywhere.

I don't ever want to see the day when OS X gets put on anything other than Apple Hardware.

Yeah! That would suck to have different options???
As a consumer I think we should have as few options as possible.

 

[ksz]

And it takes about 1 minute on my machine, with tons of stuff installed (it even maps few network-drives). my machine is a desktop, however.

Are you running MS Office? My boot time went up considerably, if I recall correctly, after installing Office.

(Anyway, this is off topic.)

 

[sishaw]

PC Mag (US) columnist John Dvorak in this article predicted that this kind of cracking would be the first step in Apple's march towards selling OSX for PCs.

Excerpt: 1. Apple releases OS X86 as a proprietary system for its boxes. It's immediately pirated and goes into the wild.

2. Apple squawks about the piracy to draw attention to it, thus increasing the piracy, creating a virtual or shadow beta test. The complaining is necessary to assure Microsoft that Apple does not intend to compete with Windows. This keeps Microsoft selling MS Office for the Mac.

3. There are driver issues that get resolved by the hobbyists, and OS X86 now remains in shadow beta, being tested in a process that is apparently outside of Apple's control, but is in fact carefully monitored by the company.

4. Once the system stabilizes in the wild, Apple announces that it cannot do anything about the piracy situation and that it's apparent that everyone wants this OS rather than Windows. It's "the will of the public." Apple then makes the stupendous announcement that it will sell a generic boxed OS, "for the rest of you!" One claim is that it is a solution to spyware.

I dont know that I agree with Dvorak, but he did call the intel switch long before any of us thought it was coming.

Yes, Dvorak got one right. He's been wrong about Apple so many times (generally in predicting the demise of the company) that he was bound to do so at some point.

 

[Alex Cutter]

By the way, has it occurred to anyone else that any novice at Photoshop could make it appear that they have OS X on their computer?

Really? What's "Photoshop"?

 

[ticktick]

Yes!

I think this is great, but only if it leads to OSX on any x86 machines. In the last two years I've spent well over ten grand on Apple hardware, so I'm no PC-lover, but I am sick of paying more for less from Apple.

Power to the people hacking OS X, Apple right now is like the music industry ten years ago--"I can charge whatever I want for this CD because there's no option." Napster changed that, iTunes was a good response. If enough people do hack OSX and get it all working then maybe Apple will "think different" and sell legit OSX for any processor. And maybe their hardware prices will improve, and like the iPod, actually be worth the premium for OSX.

To those who argue that Apple hardware is better, well, great, continue to buy it. That's free enterprise! The iPod is better hardware, and the market pays a premium for it. If Apple computer hardware is better then I and the rest of the market will pay a premium for it. But let the market decide that. I'm sick of getting gouged by Apple for the same bits of plastic and steel in other machines without an Apple on 'em. The Powerbooks are slow, have lousy battery life, very average screens (even the latest rev.), and cost a silly amount of $ for what you get (beyond OS X). The story is the same in desk-top land.

I'm currently running an iBook on the road despite having the $ and desire for a high-end notebook--I refuse to pay twice the $ for half the machine that the Powerbook offers. The iBook works well enough on the road for me, and it's cheap enough that I don't feel too burned by the price (an extra $500 just annoys me, paying an extra $1000 for the current POS powerbooks, no way). It kills me to see the notebooks I could buy for the same $ as a Powerbook in "PC Land." It's the same with desktops, but I need Final Cut so I have to run OSX (which I absolutely prefer anyhow). I'm holding out for a new Intel-based Powerbook, and will even pay a slight premium for an Apple on the lid if the hardware is equal, but if the price/hardware differential is the same as now for notebooks, well, my next notebook will be running Windows--and Apple will have lost me as a notebook customer (as they did for a few years around the 5300 or whatever it was era). But wait, if I can run OSX on any intel machine then yeah! I'll look at the Powerbooks and the others, and buy what I like--plus a copy of OSX if I go non-Apple.


-Written on a $5000 system that would cost $2,500 in PC land...

 

[digitalbiker]

high school and college students whose limited income will make the piracy alternative very appealing. If they can buy fast and cheap PCs and slap a hacked version of Mac OS on it, the money they would have spent on Apple would be reallocated.
A hacked version of Mac OS would significantly cut into Apple's hardware sales just as the old Power Computing clone maker managed to do.

My guess is that OS X on x86 will utilize a hardware protection scheme. This will mean that only very serious hackers will be able to get OS X running on non-apple hardware.

Also hardware protection scheme cracking usually means a hardware mod to the MB or some other equally as dangerous or costly intervention. I don't think you will have to worry about the general consumer making these changes in large numbers.

 

[hayesk]

To those who argue that Apple hardware is better, well, great, continue to buy it. That's free enterprise! The iPod is better hardware, and the market pays a premium for it. If Apple computer hardware is better then I and the rest of the market will pay a premium for it. But let the market decide that. I'm sick of getting gouged by Apple for the same bits of plastic and steel in other machines without an Apple on 'em.

You aren't getting gouged. It costs a lot of money to develop hardware and software.

How does the thought of paying $500+ for MacOS X with product activation sound? Apple's hardware profits subsidize OS development. Without the hardware profits, Apple can't survive. And when you're paying $500 for an OS, your supposed cost savings go right out the window.

Not only that, when someone buys a cheapo PC and run MacOS X on it, and it runs poorly, guess who they're going to blame? Do you want to pay for Apple gets bad publicity for no good reason. Supporting thousands of hardware configuration costs money, again, eliminating your supposed cost savings.

Where are the advantages? There's no savings for you; what you save in hardware, you pay in software.

 

[plinden]

If someone paid 4x more for an apple computer to run OSX ...

Ok, I know you're exaggerating for effect, but why say 4x more? The Apple premium for similar specs tends to be about 20%. You can pay $2000 (and more) for PC laptops as well as $500. It's just that Apple don't have $500 laptops.

 

[ticktick]

You aren't getting gouged. It costs a lot of money to develop hardware and software.

How does the thought of paying $500+ for MacOS X with product activation sound? Apple's hardware profits subsidize OS development. Without the hardware profits, Apple can't survive. And when you're paying $500 for an OS, your supposed cost savings go right out the window.

Not only that, when someone buys a cheapo PC and run MacOS X on it, and it runs poorly, guess who they're going to blame? Do you want to pay for Apple gets bad publicity for no good reason. Supporting thousands of hardware configuration costs money, again, eliminating your supposed cost savings.

Where are the advantages? There's no savings for you; what you save in hardware, you pay in software.

First of all, OS X should run just as well on a cheapo PC as Windows, so that's a moot point. If the hardware is bad then it's bad. Cheapo computer users who can't figure out out a hardware vs. an OS problem will likely think it's all the "computer's fault" anyhow. I've had as many hardware problems with Apple as with Dell or whatever, Apple does not have a lock on getting the guy in Asia to soldier their boards more perfectly than the ones going to El Cheapo or whatever. The idea of "integration" is over anyhow, I buy my drives, memory, mouse, keyboard, etc. after-market, I refuse to pay Apple's prices. It all works just fine despite not coming from the Apple tree.

Second, it costs $129 to buy OSX now. Maybe there's some left-over trickle-down hardware profit margin, but if you're buying OS X you're likely on an older system anyhow. I bet Apple makes $ on OSX at $129, and would make a lot more $ if it ran on any x86 machine out there. Windows Professional is $299--if the missing $170 is the hardware subsidization money then up the price of OSX to $300 and let it run on any x86 machine, yeah!

Third, if you're right that hardware subsidizes software then that subsidy is out of hand. The gap is crazy, and I bet I'm not the only person who reads this board regularly who is waiting for the new powerbooks with mixed emotions. If the new machines are equal to the Pentium M notebooks or better then great, we'll buy if the prices are also roughly comparable. If they aren't then I think we'll see a fair number of high-end notebook users elect to experiment with Windows or Linux or whatever. I'd just love the third option of running OSX on whatever notebook I like.

Last, piracy can be "good" when it changes the system as it did with iTunes. Without piracy we would still be paying $15 for a CD that we wanted one tune from... The industry recognized that people were done with that model, and iTunes and other download sites happened.

 

[plinden]

It takes 3-4 minutes on my 2 GHz Pentium M with 2 GB memory (Dell Inspiron 6000). I really do believe this is because of all the apps I've installed. Boot time increased significantly as more apps were installed. This, however, is not a good sign, but it is understandable given all the Windows Services that have to be loaded.

Not all the services have to be loaded - once again, I provide this link:
http://www.jasonn.com/turning_off_unnecessary_services_on_windows_xp

My 1.6GHz P-M Thinkpad is pretty fast at boot up - I haven't timed it but I'm pretty sure it's < 1 minute.

 

[noreturn]

I doubt a pre-release, buggy-as-hell, developer, and essentially skeleton version of OSX that can, under the right conditions, work on a PC, poses any real threat to Apple. People will not run these full time.

As for licensing helping Apple, I doubt it would. I love Apple as I know it now. You change anything in their current formula, and you risk upsetting the balance of price, quality, and support.

For those that want "options," go fly a kite. If you want to switch, then you can switch on Apple's terms. If you don't like it, then stick with Windows and wear out your Ctrl, Alt, and Del keys. Your "choice," buddy; Apple will do fine without your business.

 

[wnurse]

Last I checked, they very much could be used in legal courts, and for the record, if a license agreement said you had to give up your first born, you wouldn't hit "agree."
Some people don't know that you are also supposed to read them.

I didn't say they couldn't be used in legal courts (of course they can) but a license is not as legally binding as people think (it's not ironclad, that's what i meant). For example, a license cannot violate a law. It doesn't matter if you click the agree button or not, once the license violates law, it is invalid so it becomes immaterial whether the agree button is clicked (for example, in new york city, i believe, it is illegal to distribute spyware). If a spyware company in their license agreement stated that no one can analyse their software to see if it is spyware (the name of the company that did this escapes me at the moment), they would be in direct violation of New York laws. See what i mean?. A license is just an agreement between you and the product maker. IF you break the agreement, they have a right to seek recourse in a court of law but it does not mean they automatically win (see Jack Kent Cooke and his Pre-Nup agreement with Marlene cooke). That is what i mean when i say a license is not legally binding. Of course, one would have to find some fault with the license to escape it.. just not liking a license terms is not good enough.

 

[ScubaDuc]

Perhaps they were suggesting that either they want to run OSX on their Windows machine as a dual boot, or perhaps buy a mac which can dual boot Windows for those few apps that need it.

It's certainly something I would consider, that way I could get rid of XP as default on my home computer and run Linux full time. If I needed windows, just boot into it on either machine. If you only have one machine, it would have to be that one. It would however be like buying an expensive sports car and then using it off road in the Peak District. Completely pointless.

I think that more than programs, people are concerned about drivers for peripherals. Consider my Brother MFC 3820CN: it is a rather new network multifunction printer/scanner. I can print over a network in OSX.3, but I cannot scan...I have to use run a USB wire to the machine and go back to the computer to click the mouse. With Windoze, I can scan over wi-fi from the scanner to any computer in my home network, except the Mac, of course.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Enough with the BS, please. XP does boot pretty fast. Yes, it takes a while for the system to be usable after it gets to the desktop, but it's not 3 minutes in total! I can get to the desktop on this not-so-good desktop-machine in about.... 40-50 seconds (excluding the time it takes me to type the passowrd etc.). After that it takes about 15 seconds for Windows to load all the background-crap it needs to me usable. It takes about 1 minute total, nowhere near the 3 minutes you claimed.

You ain't kidding. My SATA/2.8Ghz (Pentium 4 no less.)/1.5GB of RAM takes about 15 seconds to boot and another 10 to get to the desktop. (I've got my system set to auto login so the distinction is vague.) I think people need to stop talking **** about what they don't know. Windows is a fast OS but suffers from OS **** creep. After two years I redo my system. Not that its crashing or anything. (I can count on one half of my hand how many times my XP desktop has crashed in the last two years.) But because of registry creep. I have read, and I believe with every fiber of my being the registry is the worst idea in computer science. Or at the very least how MS handles the registry it is.
But anyways. I think people need to accept the fact that Windows can be fast. Can be stable. And please. For the love of god. Windows can multitask. I’ve read so many posts about blah blah blah. Windows can’t handle multiple apps as well as OS X. well I’ve never had a problem having about a dozen apps and another dozen TSR’s running while multitasking. Maybe I’m just “special” that way.

 

[SiliconAddict]

As for the article itself. Woah. pre-release software not designed to run on the system it was load on not running spectacularily fast?!?

Holy Duh Batman!

*mutters* I've been waiting weeks to try out that image.

 

[VanNess]

It isn't too surprising that someone puts up an article on the net about running an unsupported hack of OS X on unsupported hardware, but it is surprising when that someone happens to be ZDnet. You would think that a major technology publisher like that would know better, but apparently not.

Bottom line: the article offers nothing in terms of meaningful information for anyone. There is certainly no scoop here. Like everyone else, ZDnet will have to wait for Apple to ship their Intel-based products running OS X. Then they can publish a review, run their benchmarks, compare other operating systems, and so on. But it's beyond silly to do that sort of thing now, like this article attempts to do.

 

[generik]

Ok, I know you're exaggerating for effect, but why say 4x more? The Apple premium for similar specs tends to be about 20%. You can pay $2000 (and more) for PC laptops as well as $500. It's just that Apple don't have $500 laptops.

Definitely not 20%, an equivalent Dull laptop is like 60% cheaper.

Of course.. it is a Dull..

 

[PCMacUser]

Of course.. it is a Dull..

Is that meant to be 'Dell' with a New Zealand accent?

 

[Cloetus]

Mac OS X x86 on a Tablet PC

I got 10.4.1 up on a Motion Tablet this weekend. The pen doesn't work and the trackpad on the external keyboard goes dead, but it's pretty cool and fairly snappy. XP is not that snappy on this machine, BTW. I'm hoping to figure out the pen input as well as update it to the latest crack floating around. It's fun...

 

[ksz]

It isn't too surprising that someone puts up an article on the net about running an unsupported hack of OS X on unsupported hardware, but it is surprising when that someone happens to be ZDnet. You would think that a major technology publisher like that would know better, but apparently not.

Developers who paid $999 for the Apple-supplied Mactel box after WWDC in June and signed the non-disclosure agreement are not at liberty to publish performance specs. I suspect, however, that Rosetta's performance even on Apple-supplied hardware (a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4) is comparable to what ZDNet published.

Transforming an MP3 with the Apple lossless codec (which just seems like a silly thing to do unless I am missing something) may or may not involve signal processing operations such as FFTs. Converting an original WAV into a lossy MP3 or AAC would very likely require FFTs to find and filter out frequencies not deemed audibly significant. Applications that perform heavy number crunching are not recommended for Rosetta:

From developer.apple.com
Rosetta is a translation process that runs a PowerPC binary on an Intel-based Macintosh—it allows applications to run as nonnative binaries. Many, but not all, applications can run translated. Applications that run translated will never run as fast as they run as a native binary because the translation process itself incurs a processing cost.

How compatible your application is with Rosetta depends on the type of application it is. An application such as a word processor that has a lot of user interaction and low computational needs is quite compatible. An application that requires a moderate amount of user interaction and has some high computational needs or that uses OpenGL is most likely also quite compatible. One that has intense computing needs isn’t compatible. This includes applications that need to repeatedly compute fast Fourier transforms (FFTs), that compute complex models for 3-D modeling, or that compute ray tracing.

To the user, Rosetta is transparent. Unlike Classic, when the user launches an application, there aren’t any visual cues to indicate that the application is translated. The user may perceive that the application is slow to start up or that the performance is slower than it is on a PowerPC-based Macintosh. The user can discover whether an application has only a PowerPC binary by looking at the Finder information for the application.

 

[EricNau]

For all those that think OS X on a PC is the bets thing since sliced bread, here's my thinking...

We are all hear because we like Apple, no? And there is more to an Apple computer than just the OS, no?

Part of what makes Apple computers so much "fun" is the appearance. There is no other company out there than can match the look and feel of the iMac, this is what makes Apple so special.

This is part of the reason why I went to Apple, I liked the fact that they had complete control, which may sound like a bad thing, but think about it, why don't Apple's have a lot of the problems windows do? It's because Apple has a better hold on their product than Microsoft.

Why would Apple want to give this up?

 

[ksz]

The same is true with just about every other electronics device. I might love the design of the Moto RAZR V3, but hate the software. I might want to install the Sony Ericsson or Nokia UI in the RAZR, but this is not an option and neither do I feel that my choices as a consumer are limited because of this.

When Apple decided not to OEM the OS, they made it rather plain that Apple is about the total user experience. Jobs has gone as far as to say that Apple is not about making the most obscene amount of money as quickly as possible. To be sure, they will grow their market with the Mac mini and other entry-level machines, but they will do so while remaining true to their ideals.

The iPod, iTunes, and iTunes Music Store integration is often cited by Jobs as an example of delivering a complete user experience. I, for one, do NOT want to see Apple commoditize their operating system.