Mac OS X on a PC?

[benpatient]

a lot of you guys sound pretty funny.

"nooooooo!!!! don't do this, we'll get viruses!!!!!!!!!!!"

I thought OS X was inherently invulnerable to the security problems that PC users have to deal with? Why this fear?

PC users say "oh, it's just because you have 2% marketshare...otherwise you'd have viruses and spyware, too" and Mac users go on to talk about the kernel and open source, etc. First mention from someone reliable that OS X might gain something more than 2% marketshare and it's suddenly "NOOOOO, Please no! No viruses!!!!!!!"

All I can say is "please yes" because if they get OS X working on x86, I won't need Apple's overpriced hardware anymore, and i ALSO won't need microsoft's under-performing software anymore.

Best of both worlds, for me! OS X and good, reasonably-priced PC hardware. This would force hardware manufacturers to conform to better standards, and before you know it, you'll be playing the latest games, using the latest internet plugins, and downloading the latest programs...on OS X instead of WinXP.

I'd seriously love this.

 

[wwworry]

Wouldn't it be better for Apple to have windows on a powermac then OS X on an Intel box?

Maybe Apple could fix Windows!

 

[Blue Velvet]

lets have it. x86 manufractorers are so much more competetive, and the darn procs have so much more power... look at ibm - they are over half a year late with the 3 gig already. I doubt they will ever make it, really. it's macs are such a small market - they cannot comete to the x86 makers since development costs are just too high.

Why don't you read the thread and find out why it's not going to happen... no matter how much you wish upon a star.

 

[macmax77]

Gut feeling

Microsuck willnot be a force in 12 years, don't ask me why,but i am almost on spot when i have these feelings.

remember the Red Sox winning after been down 3-0, well i knew they were going to win.

Always happens to me in sports and i have this strange gut feeling about Microsoft going down the drain, IBM will be the Huge thing that they are now, just don't ask me why.

I had AAPL at 14.
sosns at .70
siri at 1 and something, can't really recall it now


I just know it.

Wether it happens or not , we will come and talk about it in 12 years, hehheeheheh

 

[billystlyes]

Won't happen! If it does it will be the end of OSX as we know it.

 

[kirk26]

Won't happen! If it does it will be the end of OSX as we know it.

Or a better beginning.

 

[AidenShaw]

There's a lot more 64-bit in Windows than in OSX...

With OS X for PC hardware I might finally have a stable 64-bit OS for one of my home machines. Pretty sad that Microsoft hasn't even released XP Pro 64-bit yet.

Funny comment, considering that 64-bit OSX not only hasn't been released - but at the first iteration will be a lame implementation that only runs in a terminal window (no 64-bit GUI apps, because Carbon and Cocoa are 32-bit only).

Also funny, because XP Pro (as well as Windows Server) for IA64 in fact has been released and has been shipping for a couple of years.

XP Pro and Server 2003 are available in public preview for x64 (AMD64 and EM64T) and have been for a long time. According to CNet:

http://news.com.com/64-bit+Windows+nears+release/2110-1016_3-5568386.html

64-bit Windows nears release

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it has issued a second, near-final version of several Windows updates, including the first desktop version of Windows to support 64-bit chips. Microsoft said it has finished "Release Candidate 2" of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, which also serves as the core for Windows Server 2003 x64 edition and Windows XP Professional x64 edition, with all three products set to be released before the end of June. The first Release Candidate versions were offered in December.

.... Microsoft already has a 64-bit version of Windows for Intel's Itanium chip

And the funniest part of all is that Windows x64 64-bit is full 64-bit - the GUI apps are 64-bit (or 32-bit if the app doesn't need 64-bit).

Apple is *way* behind in all facets of the 64-bit transition - except for its lead with the hype.

 

[BenRoethig]

I suppose there is a thought, but it surprises me to all hell why people would want to buy a rebaged ipod from another company. So why would they rather buy apple hardware (essentially) that is supposedly made by another company? Like HP is going to be able to make the HP equivalent of a powermac for SOOo much cheaper than apple and still have moola lying around to license mac osx?

HP's G5 equivalent is a Dual Xenon personal workstation which is the same price as a dual 1.8 with similar specs. People use the G5 as a desktop since they don't have another choice.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Or a better beginning.

You're hallucinating... step away from the Intel Inside now...

 

[GFLPraxis]

Remember, EMULATORS, people! All current software WOULD RUN on an emulated PPC processor. You'd have a slower OS X and everything would run on it.

Think more along the lines of "Virtual OS X" instead of "OS X for x86".

Then again, IMO the gateway drug is iTunes, and it's a nice show-off for "the Apple experience". I even had a friend (who's not really pro-Apple nor anti-Microsoft) tell me "wow, it just works!".

Have you ever tried PearPC? x86 processors *SUCK* at emulation. My 2.6 GHz P4 is barely even usable (running like a 260 MHz G3 with 256 MB of RAM and no graphics card).

 

[GFLPraxis]

Apple wouldn't be as dumb as the Linux distros. They'd release "Virtual OS X for Windows", the same way Microsoft/Connectix have "Virtual PC" for Mac OS. That way, they bypass all requirements for drivers for the millions of PC components out there (from printers to chipsets on motherboards).

As far as speed is concerned, if Apple were to do it, I don't think it'd be as slow as 1/10 of the speed (just like Virtual PC isn't 10% of the speed either). Of course it'd be slower than a Mac, but it'd still run.

There was a reason for that speed, IIRC it had something to do with either the registers on the processor, or the way it orders numbers, or something.

x86 processors have a MUCH harder time emulating PPC processors than PPC processors have emulating x86. That's why all PPC emulators for x86 suck so bad. Apple isn't just going to magically break that barrier just because they're Apple.

 

[jared_kipe]

HP's G5 equivalent is a Dual Xenon personal workstation which is the same price as a dual 1.8 with similar specs. People use the G5 as a desktop since they don't have another choice.

Hey I meant there equivalent being a PowerPC chip not what they offer now.

 

[Object-X]

Their superior design (and superior price tag) always held 97% of the users. You think they'll magically open their wallets for some reason?

Apple's solution is not to bring OS X to the x86 platform. Their solution is to bring a low-cost Mac to the x86 users. It's called Mac mini. It's the first ever Mac to be priced under 500$US, and it's also the first Mac to ship without a mouse or keyboard.

It's simple, really:
iTunes for Windows (free, amazing, opens your eyes to the "Apple experience") --> iPod (costs more, but you finally "get it", you pay for quality, ease of use, integration with iTunes) --> Mac mini (not too expensive to try out OS X/iLife, which should be as nice as iTunes).

Absolutely they will. Once people (with money) use OS X and experiance how much better it is, they won't feel uncomfortable about spending it on a Mac. Right now buying a $3000 top-of-the-line Powermac might seem a bit much to someone who knows nothing of Apple or OS X. My comments are targeted to these folks who for some reason feel that Apple's hardware business would somehow vanish if they port to x86. That concept completely baffels me. The reason more people don't switch to Apple is ignorance pure and simple, not money. If your willing to shell out three grand for a Dell dual proc workstation then Apple's offering is actually more cost effective. The idea that Apples are more expensive is a MYTH! Until the Mac Mini Apple simply didn't sell into the bargin bin which creates a FALSE impression that their computers are more expensive, and leads unintelligent people to conclude that a G5 iMac is somehow comparable to a $499 Dell. Does BMW sell a buget car that's less than $20,000? Do people compare a 3 Series to a Saturn? So why do people confuse an iMac with a Dell celeron? Ignorance.

So, as more and more people come to understand the superior nature of Apple's OS they will sell more computers because of their quality design, irregardless of what processor is inside. I mean, just take a look at a Gateway or a Dell or an HP; would you spend a little more to buy a beautiful iMac? I think a lot of people would. So if these companies sold a buget PC with OS X and they could undercut Apple by a couple hundred Apple would still sell more computers because people now want the OS X experiance not the Windows experiance, and they would pay a little more for the superior look and feel of the computer.

OS X is Apple's best kept secret. People just don't know about it....yet! An x86 port is the stone in David's slingshot.

 

[GFLPraxis]

x86 processors don't suck at emulation. I can run console and arcade games perfectly, thank you very much.

PearPC is nowhere near finished, is still a work in progress, and they're not even using the GPU.

In this case it's "PearPC sucks", not "x86 sucks".

Granted, a PPC is not a good thing to emulate on an x86 if only for the difference in the number of CPU registers (we won't even get at how limited the x86 is when it comes to use the registers when compared to PPC).

Wow, you can emulate a 2 MHz SNES, so you can definitely emulate a 1 GHz+ Mac Seriously, I remember that it is MUCH harder to emulate a PPC on an x86 than an x86 on a PPC. It would make much more sense for MS to port Windows to Mac with background emulation than for Apple to port OS X to Windows, because of the register barrier.

 

[BenRoethig]

lets have it. x86 manufractorers are so much more competetive, and the darn procs have so much more power... look at ibm - they are over half a year late with the 3 gig already. I doubt they will ever make it, really. it's macs are such a small market - they cannot comete to the x86 makers since development costs are just too high.

The fastest AMD processor runs at 2.6ghz yet it performs better than than a 3.6ghz P4. A lot of the speed issues with the G5 have to do with edian swapping and bad ports.

 

[AidenShaw]

x64 might be better

There was a reason for that speed, IIRC it had something to do with either the registers on the processor, or the way it orders numbers, or something.

x86 processors have a MUCH harder time emulating PPC processors than PPC processors have emulating x86.

Note that the x64 chip (AMD64/EM64T) in 64-bit mode has about 3 times as many usable scalar registers as x86 - and twice as many 128-bit SSE registers.

An x64 port might not suck as badly....

 

[AidenShaw]

careful with apple and pear comparisons

The fastest AMD processor runs at 2.6ghz yet it performs better than than a 3.6ghz P4.

How does it compare with a 64-bit 3.6 GHz Xeon?

Note that an x64 processor in 64-bit mode has many more registers for the optimizer to play with.

It's fair to compare the AMD in 32-bit mode to the Pentium 4, or to compare the AMD in 64-bit mode to the Xeon in 64-bit mode.

If you compare AMD in 64-bit mode to the P4 (in 32-bit mode), you are looking at both the silicon speed and the ISA....

 

[Edge100]

While I think Apple may have issues with their hardware, I don't think it would hurt them that much. I buy Apple products because they look great and preform for the most part excellent. .

Joe Six-Pack doesnt buy a computer for this reason. He buys for the following reasons:

1) Price

2) Perceived performance (i.e. GHz)

3) Price

Apple simply cannot afford to license its OS at this time. If they had done so in 1985, that would have been a different story. At that time, M$ didnt have its stranglehold over the public's perception, and given a superior product (which the Mac OS has always been), the public would have chosen correctly and gone with the Mac OS. That would have been extremely beneficial for Apple, and would have made them an extremely lucrative SOFTWARE company (like M$).

However, licensing the MacOS in 1985 would have also KILLED the Mac (the hardware, that is). Apple wouldnt have been able to compete with five-and-dime hardware makers. As such, Apple wouldnt be producing hardware, and God knows where we'd be now, given that we'd have lost all of the significant innovations Apple has made (or at least pushed forward) on the hardware front.

Apple stands now as an extremely lucrative company, which has excellent brand recognition (probably the best of any brand), excellent software, and decent hardware on which to run it all. Licensing the OS would have two results:

1) Dramatically increased software revenue, which, considering software costs ZERO to distribute, would be mostly profit once the R&D costs were covered, and

2) Complete collapse of hardware sales (minus the few zealots who would still by Apple hardware).

The only way Apple could ensure its long-term survival in this scenario is to make enough money off the software licensing to offset the complete loss of its hardware sales (minus the iPod, of course). This simply will not happen.

There is, of course, a second issue: the fact that the MacOS only operates as well as it does BECAUSE Apple makes the whole package. We all praise the stability and security of OS X, but this only exists because Apple can eliminate all incompatibilities with its own hardware. Once you have every company in the world making logic boards, RAM, hard drives, and whatever else for the MacOS, you've totally lost that stability. I think this is a big part of the problem with Windows right now (though not the only problem!)

The strategy for Apple to be as profitable as possible is this:

1) Keep hold of the OS AT ALL COSTS

2) Invest money into advertising, for God's sake!

3) Use some of those huge cash stores to (a) further improve R&D and (b) continue to purchase professional software packages (e.g. Shake, Motion), which will keep you profitable in the professional sector, and

4) Advertise! Did I mention that???

Mike

 

[archer75]

IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Get used to that idea. Apple is dedicated to the PPC processor. Any porting to x86 would kill their marketing strategy and annihilate their hardware sales. Not to mention that ALL software would have to be recompiled and reoptimized for the new hardware, and that Apple would have the total tech support nightmare of support a bajillion different configurations, none of which they will have control over. One of the reasons OS X works so well is that Apple controls the hardware and the software. Porting to x86 would utterly kill that integration. Apple would only do this as an absolute last-ditch effort. Who wants OS X running on a goddamn CISC chip, anyway?

Apple does'nt have to abandon hardware. They can simply make PC's instead. People would then still buy them. Hell they buy Dell's and they are doing very well. Apple can simply make attractive PC's that are high quality. And they can still do this and make more profit than they are now.

 

[dicklacara]

There was a reason for that speed, IIRC it had something to do with either the registers on the processor, or the way it orders numbers, or something.

x86 processors have a MUCH harder time emulating PPC processors than PPC processors have emulating x86. That's why all PPC emulators for x86 suck so bad. Apple isn't just going to magically break that barrier just because they're Apple.

I think you are on the right track. AIR, it has to do do with the way bit sequences are stored, referred to as BigEndian or SmallEndian from Gulliver's Travels.

In BigEndian (I think) a number (or address) is referenced (and stored) with the most significant digit on the left (just the way we write numbers)

With this format the CPU and registers can access a group of bytes as a single, contiguous, entity (number or address) without having to do any additional processing (CPU Cycles).

One CPU architecture (must be the PPC) has the ability to hardware process both formats-- the other does not.

So it is easier for one to emulate the other in and out of the registers/bus.

In addition, Intel is a CISC (Complex Instruction Set) chip while PPC is RISC (Reduced instruction set).

Stated simply:

Intel has a big complex (CPU intensive) Add command.

PPC has many small commands that are used together to perform the same add.

The RISC architecture has a potential advantage that it can look-ahead and then perform all these small commands in parallel-- yeilding the same results in less time and CPU overhead than the equivalent CISC instruction.

This doesn't always happen, and not for all instructions.

But, these are some of the reasons that you can't just compare CPU speed-- why sometimes a much slower CPU can outperform a faster one.

Whew!

I didn't know I knew that!

Dick

 

[pubwvj]

Joe Six-Pack doesnt buy a computer for this reason.

The funny thing is Joe Six-Pack is willing to spend $5,000 on a wide screen TV or $9,000 on a snowmobile or $29,000 on a truck he doesn't really need. Why? He thinks (non-seq.) that they make him more manly and he can do it on an installment plan - 60 payments of only $400 a month.

Yes, there is a credit program through Apple but it is fairly restrictive and Joe Six-Pack doesn't qualify.

-Water
in rural Vermont
and yes, I do own a real red truck
a 1969 International Harvester dump truck
No snowmobile, no pickup, no wide assed TV.

 

[Phila]

Depends on the license...

Sorry if this point has been brought up already - I read some of the thread, but it has gotten very long rather quickly.

I think that Apple licensing OS X for use on another architecture could be a positive move, depending on how it is done. If OS X were licensed to run on x86, then it why would have to be licensed to run on the same breadth of hardware as x86 windows and linux machines?

Why couldn't Apple license OS X to a vendor on a per platform basis, meaning that the vendor would be able to sell OS X on a specific combination of motherboard, CPU architecture, video cards, hard drive, etc? Apple could then enforce the same strict quality requirements that they have for their own hardware and drivers. As long as the number of vendors receiving this type of license is kept very small - no more than a handful - I don't see any significant drawbacks to such a plan. Anyone see any negatives I'm not seeing?

 

[pubwvj]

Sorry, to me Apple's keyboard and mice are the most disappointing thing about Apple hardware.

I can't comment on Apple mice, haven't used them in this century as all but one of our machines are PowerBooks or iBooks and I greatly prefer the trackpad on them over a mouse any day. The one tower Mac we have uses a Wacom tablet and mouse which is good although not perfect.

On the other hand, Apple keyboards are great. I especially love their notebook keyboards. I'm a very fast touch typist and I can go a lot faster on the Apple notebook computer keyboards with their short travel. They're also quieter and last longer than other keyboards.

 

[oskar]

Funny comment, (snip..)

Also funny, because XP Pro (snip..)

And the funniest part of all is that Windows x64 (snip..)

Apple is *way* behind in all facets of the 64-bit transition - except for its lead with the hype.

Everything seems so funny to you.

I've been reading throughout the thread and everybody seems to be looking at this as a possibility and others as a fact.
It won't happen simply because we wouldn't know about it until the decision was already made. Steve Jobs would never let us know about the possible agreements or partnerships that could be made in the future. If they change their mind at the last second, we wouldn't even know about it until fater that second. If Jobs already gave away this info it's because he isn't expecting to license os x to other companies in the near future.
Apple would stop being Apple the moment you could use MAC OS on an intel based PC, rather than on an Apple Macintosh.
I think Apple's main concern right know is the development of new hardware for the pros which is in what they've fallen a little behind for already focusing too much on the average consumer and PC users. (iPod, Mac mini, iPod shuffle)
They need to get back in line with what they know how to do best and that is photo and video for the pros.

 

[the_mole1314]

For the final time people, Apple makes more off of HARDWARE than SOFTWARE. Get that? Ok, again. HARDWARE = $$$$$. SOFTWARE = $. Unless you want to see Apple forcing people to buy newer, worse versions of their software, Apple will never release an x86 based OSX in a box on the shelf of Best Buy.