Leopard Stability?

[PYR0M310N]

I have heard from a few places that it will be possible to install Leo on Pc's. But the reason that windows is so unstable is that it has to support so many types of hardware, whereas OSX is made for very specific computers.

So if leo was able to run on pc's would this make it just as unstable as windows?

 

[theman5725]

Leopard isn't going to run on PCs. Technically you could hack and install it, but it would run incredibly poorly and be illegal.

 

[JDN]

I have heard from a few places that it will be possible to install Leo on Pc's. But the reason that windows is so unstable is that it has to support so many types of hardware, whereas OSX is made for very specific computers.

So if leo was able to run on pc's would this make it just as unstable as windows?

Where did you get this info? It seems very unlikely.

 

[jmsait19]

something someone said once to me seemed logical... but they said that a possible cause of windows instability is the fact that they continue to make it backwards compatible with older systems, such as 98 and maybe even some 95 applications. (I'm guessing that having to keep this code around is throwing some stuff off.) They said that a reason OSX is so stable is that Apple ditched OS9 and started from scratch and gave backwards compatibility the ole heave-ho (left us with classic)... I didn't use OS9 much, but wasn't it slightly unstable itself?

If Microsoft did what Apple did, they could probably have a pretty decent OS. More stable, less bloaty. It would take some serious balls, but look what it has done for Apple...

 

[ebow]

something someone said once to me seemed logical... but they said that a possible cause of windows instability is the fact that they continue to make it backwards compatible with older systems, such as 98 and maybe even some 95 applications. (I'm guessing that having to keep this code around is throwing some stuff off.) They said that a reason OSX is so stable is that Apple ditched OS9 and started from scratch and gave backwards compatibility the ole heave-ho (left us with classic)... I didn't use OS9 much, but wasn't it slightly unstable itself?

If Microsoft did what Apple did, they could probably have a pretty decent OS. More stable, less bloaty. It would take some serious balls, but look what it has done for Apple...

That's probably true to some extent, but I think a bigger factor is the limited set of hardware on which Mac OS X is supported. If Microsoft only developed Windows for a few specific configurations of hardware, it could be a lot more stable (theoretically--they are MS after all ).

 

[epochblue]

If Microsoft did what Apple did, they could probably have a pretty decent OS. More stable, less bloaty. It would take some serious balls, but look what it has done for Apple...

Perhaps, but Apple enjoys a greatly reduced install base when compared with Windows. If Apple had MS's install base, I think you'd find OS X to be bloaty and unstable as well. It's a little harder to change direction when you have 90% of the market behind you...

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Having used OS X on not-so-apple-ish PC's, I can tell you that the stability of OS X has everything to do with a UNIX belly, and nothing to do with hardware. If the sound card doesn't have drivers, it isn't initialized. If it has crap drivers, the sound can be crap, but it won't bring down the whole OS. That's where Apple's succeeded and MS's failed.

P.S. It's funny I decided to use soundcard drivers as my example... because the ONLY driver problem I've ever had with my mini has been with an external soundcard, and it's managed to bring down the whole OS, kernel panic and everything, more then once...

 

[ebow]

Having used OS X on not-so-apple-ish PC's, I can tell you that the stability of OS X has everything to do with a UNIX belly, and nothing to do with hardware. If the sound card doesn't have drivers, it isn't initialized. If it has crap drivers, the sound can be crap, but it won't bring down the whole OS. That's where Apple's succeeded and MS's failed.

P.S. It's funny I decided to use soundcard drivers as my example... because the ONLY driver problem I've ever had with my mini has been with an external soundcard, and it's managed to bring down the whole OS, kernel panic and everything, more then once...

But... wait, bad sound card drivers can or cannot bring down OS X? Your first and second paragraphs seem to contradict each other. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.

 

[Soulstorm]

That's probably true to some extent, but I think a bigger factor is the limited set of hardware on which Mac OS X is supported. If Microsoft only developed Windows for a few specific configurations of hardware, it could be a lot more stable (theoretically--they are MS after all ).

If that's the case, then why Linux is so stable on PC's? Hardware isn't as tied up to the software as it was some years before.

Microsoft has released many programs for OS X and Windows that are total crap, and do not rely on any particular kind of hardware to run. Then why do they still suck? If Microsoft wanted to release a decent OS, they would have done it. It's true that they have a much larger market share that they should take into consideration before they start writing drivers, but it's also true that they have the money to make decent drivers.

As mentioned before, OS X's stability and flexibility is due to the UNIX codebase. And nothing more.