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Mac OS X on PC platform
- Thread starter ryanweb
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Go screw your self! I mean would you rather nor hear my opinion, then go to another mac rumors fourms. (By the way I haven't see any around other then this one.) But thank you for your opinion. 
Ultimate OS
OS X has the potential to become the Ultimate OS, why? Because it is so configureable.
Look, as a third party you can basically add any code that you want to OS X. Want to add more support for files? Replace the components of OS X with you own. (That would be Darwin that you replace). Make any changes that you want, add a new GUI for instance, but the most important part is Darwin which i say is perfect.
If you want to build an OS look at Darwin. that code is amazing. It has been refined so many times that it is not funny. Here is the basic list:
Unix came from the basic coding that DOS came from, the original power OS's. This then was added to, much like DOS for many years by many individuals.
FreeBSD was the next step. It was a complete revision of the Unix code. Everything that was good was kept. Everything that was bad was remade.
Next was NEXT software that starting making Rhapsody. This again was a complete revision, of course with new goals, but it made the OS that more stable and reliable, of course with the added bonus of a GUI.
The last step was OS X. The final revision, with the most changes but with the best engineers.
This process has taken a long time with many different individuals which means that making a super-os what take at least that much effort and probably just as long as the process (15 years+).
Dont port OS X. Thats the only reason i bought a mac, for the OS. I knew when i saw the stats that it was fantastic. Remember also that mac hardware is generally of a much higher quality than PC's. They also last much longer.
OS X has the potential to become the Ultimate OS, why? Because it is so configureable.
Look, as a third party you can basically add any code that you want to OS X. Want to add more support for files? Replace the components of OS X with you own. (That would be Darwin that you replace). Make any changes that you want, add a new GUI for instance, but the most important part is Darwin which i say is perfect.
If you want to build an OS look at Darwin. that code is amazing. It has been refined so many times that it is not funny. Here is the basic list:
Unix came from the basic coding that DOS came from, the original power OS's. This then was added to, much like DOS for many years by many individuals.
FreeBSD was the next step. It was a complete revision of the Unix code. Everything that was good was kept. Everything that was bad was remade.
Next was NEXT software that starting making Rhapsody. This again was a complete revision, of course with new goals, but it made the OS that more stable and reliable, of course with the added bonus of a GUI.
The last step was OS X. The final revision, with the most changes but with the best engineers.
This process has taken a long time with many different individuals which means that making a super-os what take at least that much effort and probably just as long as the process (15 years+).
Dont port OS X. Thats the only reason i bought a mac, for the OS. I knew when i saw the stats that it was fantastic. Remember also that mac hardware is generally of a much higher quality than PC's. They also last much longer.
Microsoft would never allow it.
Microsoft would never allow Apple to release a competing OS for generic Intel PC's. Remember what Microsoft did to BeOS? You may not, but Apple sure does.
Microsoft would revoke the system OS vendor licences from any PC maker (such as Dell or Gateway or Compaq or IBM) who tried to sell PC's without Windows installed. The only people selling pre-built Mac OS X86 machines would only be small systems vendors. And why should Apple bother, when they can just make those systems themselves.
Steve Jobs also remembers the nightmare that was NeXTSTeP-x86 and its (ill-)supported hardware list.
Now, you could argue that Apple is a big company that could succeed where NeXT and Be failed. However, Microsoft is a much bigger, more powerful, more evil company. The only reason Microsoft allows Apple to exist is because they play on a completely different playing field.
So how could it possibly work? Well, Apple could create a subsidiary, possibly jointly with a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer who has no worries about losing a Microsoft contract. This subsidiary company could make PC's that would be MacOS X86 compatible. They would probably have a nicer BIOS than ordinary PC's. OpenFirmware for x86 would be cool, by the way. So anyway, you'd then be able to buy an x86 motherboard that could boot Mac OS X86. And Apple would still make money since they'd own (at least partially) the motherboard company.
This way, you'd still be able to buy your own case, power supply, dvd-rom, dvd-r, hard drives, compatible video card, memory, etc.
I think this would be very popular, since people could keep some of their components and still put together a Mac system.
Would this anger Microsoft? Maybe, but certainly less than if Apple were to make a completely compatible-with-everything OS.
Cryptnotic
Microsoft would never allow Apple to release a competing OS for generic Intel PC's. Remember what Microsoft did to BeOS? You may not, but Apple sure does.
Microsoft would revoke the system OS vendor licences from any PC maker (such as Dell or Gateway or Compaq or IBM) who tried to sell PC's without Windows installed. The only people selling pre-built Mac OS X86 machines would only be small systems vendors. And why should Apple bother, when they can just make those systems themselves.
Steve Jobs also remembers the nightmare that was NeXTSTeP-x86 and its (ill-)supported hardware list.
Now, you could argue that Apple is a big company that could succeed where NeXT and Be failed. However, Microsoft is a much bigger, more powerful, more evil company. The only reason Microsoft allows Apple to exist is because they play on a completely different playing field.
So how could it possibly work? Well, Apple could create a subsidiary, possibly jointly with a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer who has no worries about losing a Microsoft contract. This subsidiary company could make PC's that would be MacOS X86 compatible. They would probably have a nicer BIOS than ordinary PC's. OpenFirmware for x86 would be cool, by the way. So anyway, you'd then be able to buy an x86 motherboard that could boot Mac OS X86. And Apple would still make money since they'd own (at least partially) the motherboard company.
This way, you'd still be able to buy your own case, power supply, dvd-rom, dvd-r, hard drives, compatible video card, memory, etc.
I think this would be very popular, since people could keep some of their components and still put together a Mac system.
Would this anger Microsoft? Maybe, but certainly less than if Apple were to make a completely compatible-with-everything OS.
Cryptnotic
Re: Ultimate OS
You're mostly wrong. DOS was a cheap, pathetic UNIX shell clone. UNIX systems had been doing multi-tasking, multi-user, protected memory, virtual memory, etc LONG before DOS (and its single task, no memory protection, no virtual memory, single user system) came around.
FreeBSD is descended from BSD4.4Lite. Essentially it's an x86 port of BSD4.4Lite with some other stuff added on. FreeBSD development started AFTER NeXTSTeP if I recall correctly.
By the way, the "Lite" part of 4.4BSDLite only means that it had the proprietary AT&T things stripped out of it and replaced with things that are now much more standard.
NeXTSTeP was 4.4BSDLite ported to on Carnegie Melon's Mach micro-kernel running on a Motorola 68000 series machine. The Objective C language system and the GUI system (Display Postscript, etc) were the foundation of the new user interface. This was probably the most important feat of OS and GUI system engineering ever. NeXTSTeP was so ahead of its time, it's not even funny.
Mac OS X is basically NeXTSTeP ported to PowerPC with a new style MacOS lookalike GUI, DisplayPostscript replaced with DisplayPDF (Quartz, as they call it now), some extra new graphical interface ideas allowing for transparencies and other things, and an emulation layer for Mac OS 9 ("Classic").
So you're correct in that Mac OS X is the most advanced OS ever created. However, please don't compare it to DOS, as they really have absolutely nothing in common.
Cryptnotic
You're mostly wrong. DOS was a cheap, pathetic UNIX shell clone. UNIX systems had been doing multi-tasking, multi-user, protected memory, virtual memory, etc LONG before DOS (and its single task, no memory protection, no virtual memory, single user system) came around.
FreeBSD is descended from BSD4.4Lite. Essentially it's an x86 port of BSD4.4Lite with some other stuff added on. FreeBSD development started AFTER NeXTSTeP if I recall correctly.
By the way, the "Lite" part of 4.4BSDLite only means that it had the proprietary AT&T things stripped out of it and replaced with things that are now much more standard.
NeXTSTeP was 4.4BSDLite ported to on Carnegie Melon's Mach micro-kernel running on a Motorola 68000 series machine. The Objective C language system and the GUI system (Display Postscript, etc) were the foundation of the new user interface. This was probably the most important feat of OS and GUI system engineering ever. NeXTSTeP was so ahead of its time, it's not even funny.
Mac OS X is basically NeXTSTeP ported to PowerPC with a new style MacOS lookalike GUI, DisplayPostscript replaced with DisplayPDF (Quartz, as they call it now), some extra new graphical interface ideas allowing for transparencies and other things, and an emulation layer for Mac OS 9 ("Classic").
So you're correct in that Mac OS X is the most advanced OS ever created. However, please don't compare it to DOS, as they really have absolutely nothing in common.
Cryptnotic
No comparison there...
I wasnt comparing to dos, i was saying that basically they both appeared at the same time, and were similiar to each other for a while in terms of use and power. After that it was a one horse race.
I wasnt comparing to dos, i was saying that basically they both appeared at the same time, and were similiar to each other for a while in terms of use and power. After that it was a one horse race.
Re: Microsoft would never allow it.
Did you ever try to install BeOS on an x86 box?
I've installed each of the last 3 releases of BeOS on at least 5 different boxes. It was, to put it mildly, finicky when it came to hardware. I have some boxes (and not non-standard relics) it refused to install on at all.
Did you ever try to get BeOS to play nice with other boxes on a network?
To me, a box is useless if it can't be networked. In the last release they finally provided some support for additional NICs, but the prior release only had official support of a couple 3COMs (and not the most common types), a generic NE2000 driver would work on only one of the various (10 or so) generic NE2000 clones I had floating around.
In addition, a multiple user file system was never fully implemented.
BeOS knocked themselves out of the game.
I personally would love to see an OS X port to the PC. I've run BSD on and off for years and would really like to play with a gui front end that is a little cleaner than X.
I seem to recall that there _was_ so sort of MacOS cli only port to the PC.
MS is definitely guilty of playing dirty pool, but they did NOT sink BeOS.
Did you ever try to install BeOS on an x86 box?
I've installed each of the last 3 releases of BeOS on at least 5 different boxes. It was, to put it mildly, finicky when it came to hardware. I have some boxes (and not non-standard relics) it refused to install on at all.
Did you ever try to get BeOS to play nice with other boxes on a network?
To me, a box is useless if it can't be networked. In the last release they finally provided some support for additional NICs, but the prior release only had official support of a couple 3COMs (and not the most common types), a generic NE2000 driver would work on only one of the various (10 or so) generic NE2000 clones I had floating around.
In addition, a multiple user file system was never fully implemented.
BeOS knocked themselves out of the game.
Forced licence payment for every PC sold, regardless of OS, was one of MS's slimier tactics, and they were called on it. Who knows what happens behind closed doors, but this was supposedly remedied in the previous (not current) anti trust action.
I personally would love to see an OS X port to the PC. I've run BSD on and off for years and would really like to play with a gui front end that is a little cleaner than X.
I seem to recall that there _was_ so sort of MacOS cli only port to the PC.
Cryptnotec is right
Apple could never put there OS on a PC, they are not allowed to. M$ would have the right ( contractually ) to pull all products that they currently provide to the Mac world.
It will never happen because M$ has all of the legal cards to play against Apple. Apple thought it was worth giving away at the time ( 1981 ).
Apple could never put there OS on a PC, they are not allowed to. M$ would have the right ( contractually ) to pull all products that they currently provide to the Mac world.
It will never happen because M$ has all of the legal cards to play against Apple. Apple thought it was worth giving away at the time ( 1981 ).
Better research
After deeper research: Apple needn't attack MS yet, China's 3 largest PC makers just got Vendor rights. Correcting earlier posts: Apple HAS been in the 'Suit, just relatively quietly......untill Bill went for the Ed market.
If China gets Windows MS can kiss it's ass goodbye.
After deeper research: Apple needn't attack MS yet, China's 3 largest PC makers just got Vendor rights. Correcting earlier posts: Apple HAS been in the 'Suit, just relatively quietly......untill Bill went for the Ed market.
If China gets Windows MS can kiss it's ass goodbye.
re: porting
glad to see you back, macman
i love this topic because it brings in the topic of business and making money which posting os x to pcs can do, it also brings to the table raw emotion where many mac users want to stay exclusive and not give into a giant like the pc world in general, and it also brings in the technical side with knowledgeable techie people on both sides of this age old argument of porting the superior mac operating system to a pc box
i believe in porting os x to the pc side to show them that os x beats windows and for apple simply making a buck like microsoft has been doing for so long
i don't buy the argument that it cannot be done technically and respect the opinion much more that one would simply like to see apple a more small and down to earth personal company which microsoft and hp-compac definitely are not these days
but when i see the crassness of the pc world and some of the shoddy products that hit the shelves, i do see the charm in apple staying small for the sake of being small where it is safe to cater to a small but reliable market share since apple buyers are more likely to buy apple again where almost every pc user i have seen have no particular brand loyalty (with exception of pc sony users which are almost as loyal and fanatic as us macfolk)
[Edited by jefhatfield on 12-14-2001 at 01:48 AM]
glad to see you back, macman
i love this topic because it brings in the topic of business and making money which posting os x to pcs can do, it also brings to the table raw emotion where many mac users want to stay exclusive and not give into a giant like the pc world in general, and it also brings in the technical side with knowledgeable techie people on both sides of this age old argument of porting the superior mac operating system to a pc box
i believe in porting os x to the pc side to show them that os x beats windows and for apple simply making a buck like microsoft has been doing for so long
i don't buy the argument that it cannot be done technically and respect the opinion much more that one would simply like to see apple a more small and down to earth personal company which microsoft and hp-compac definitely are not these days
but when i see the crassness of the pc world and some of the shoddy products that hit the shelves, i do see the charm in apple staying small for the sake of being small where it is safe to cater to a small but reliable market share since apple buyers are more likely to buy apple again where almost every pc user i have seen have no particular brand loyalty (with exception of pc sony users which are almost as loyal and fanatic as us macfolk)
[Edited by jefhatfield on 12-14-2001 at 01:48 AM]
All right, all right....
I have been a user of windows (9x, NT4.x, W2k and XP), BeOS (R5), MacOS (6.x through 9.x), Mac OSX (10.1.x and Server 10.1.x) and Linux (SuSE 6 or 5, don't remember, Mandrake 7.2 and 8.1). And I have a couple of things to say about all this.
1. Mac OS X is the best OS ever. It has everything, and I would love to see it ported to x86, since it would kick ass Windows and all Microshit products. I guess that it wouldn't be difficult for apple to develop an Office suite far better than MSOffice, since Cocoa is so versatile and easy to program at the same time. It's just they don't want to. They're bussiness has NEVER been software. I mean, they charge money for their os's, but it's merely symbolic. Most people haven't bought their current MacOS.
2. BeOS was good. And I say was, because it was when it was born. It has been abandoned since then. I know there have been five major releases, but, take an example: BeOS was ready for multi-user support, it just hadn't been implemented, but nobody did it. That's what I mean. They didn't care. Just take a look to http://open-beos.sourceforge.net to see what devoted users want to do of it.
3. Windows is the only modern OS not to have OOP deep into its APIs. Programming BeOS or NeXTStep/OpenStep/MacOSX is just as easy as "I want an App that displays a window in which a button makes the caption of the window become 'Hello'". No worry about drawing windows or controls. They are already done, all you have to do is setting the properties.
Thus, we'll never see MacOSX on x86 (unless somebody clones it using Darwin/x86 + a modified GNUStep) because Steve doesn't want to sell mac-os-x. He wants to sell iMacs. That's his business.
I have been a user of windows (9x, NT4.x, W2k and XP), BeOS (R5), MacOS (6.x through 9.x), Mac OSX (10.1.x and Server 10.1.x) and Linux (SuSE 6 or 5, don't remember, Mandrake 7.2 and 8.1). And I have a couple of things to say about all this.
1. Mac OS X is the best OS ever. It has everything, and I would love to see it ported to x86, since it would kick ass Windows and all Microshit products. I guess that it wouldn't be difficult for apple to develop an Office suite far better than MSOffice, since Cocoa is so versatile and easy to program at the same time. It's just they don't want to. They're bussiness has NEVER been software. I mean, they charge money for their os's, but it's merely symbolic. Most people haven't bought their current MacOS.
2. BeOS was good. And I say was, because it was when it was born. It has been abandoned since then. I know there have been five major releases, but, take an example: BeOS was ready for multi-user support, it just hadn't been implemented, but nobody did it. That's what I mean. They didn't care. Just take a look to http://open-beos.sourceforge.net to see what devoted users want to do of it.
3. Windows is the only modern OS not to have OOP deep into its APIs. Programming BeOS or NeXTStep/OpenStep/MacOSX is just as easy as "I want an App that displays a window in which a button makes the caption of the window become 'Hello'". No worry about drawing windows or controls. They are already done, all you have to do is setting the properties.
Thus, we'll never see MacOSX on x86 (unless somebody clones it using Darwin/x86 + a modified GNUStep) because Steve doesn't want to sell mac-os-x. He wants to sell iMacs. That's his business.
Beyond the box - Wes George
Apple has been a "beyond-the-box" company from the very beginning and feels no pressure to reinvent its business model to fit into the so-called post-PC era bearing down upon us. In recent years it's been easy to forget that Apple,unlike the other PC vendors, is a software developer too. But now, with OS X, pundits will argue persuasively that Apple, at its foundation, is primarily an OS company since everything else Apple does depends upon the Mac OS.
Hardware is where the vast majority of Apple's revenue and profits comes from, but Apple's soul has always resided in the Mac OS, that's what truly sets Macs apart from the PC herd. The Mac OS is variously a religion, a franchise, a philosophy, a secret code, an open code, a way of seeing, an abused minority platform, a vision of the future, a legacy of the past, and ultimately The GUI That Changed The World, even if it didn't conquer it. For much of Apple's history hardware has taken a back seat to the Mac OS as the expressive DNA of Apple, even while doing most of the cash-flow heavy lifting.
So let the Mac OS X metamorphosis begin and we can all caterwaul over whether Apple's insanely great hardware is a match for the insanely great paradigm shift OS X will present the industry with. Already, financial analysts realize they underestimated the positive double whammy effect a postmodern, semi-open source OS combined with Apple prescient hardware designs would have on the stock price. Investors love to invest in the future, and Apple has that in spades.
Microsoft is slowly decaying; the open source tribes already occupy the frontier. The Mac tribe, at least partly sympathetic with the open source religion, is more than likely to expand its domain as the decline and fall of Windows progresses towards its inevitable fate. Some day soon we won't be able to tout AAPL's stock as the most chronically undervalued in the PC industry. Of course, Apple's stock price could double and still be below the price valuation assigned to Dell, Compaq and Gateway.
Keep OS X on the Mac, where it belongs!
Apple has been a "beyond-the-box" company from the very beginning and feels no pressure to reinvent its business model to fit into the so-called post-PC era bearing down upon us. In recent years it's been easy to forget that Apple,unlike the other PC vendors, is a software developer too. But now, with OS X, pundits will argue persuasively that Apple, at its foundation, is primarily an OS company since everything else Apple does depends upon the Mac OS.
Hardware is where the vast majority of Apple's revenue and profits comes from, but Apple's soul has always resided in the Mac OS, that's what truly sets Macs apart from the PC herd. The Mac OS is variously a religion, a franchise, a philosophy, a secret code, an open code, a way of seeing, an abused minority platform, a vision of the future, a legacy of the past, and ultimately The GUI That Changed The World, even if it didn't conquer it. For much of Apple's history hardware has taken a back seat to the Mac OS as the expressive DNA of Apple, even while doing most of the cash-flow heavy lifting.
So let the Mac OS X metamorphosis begin and we can all caterwaul over whether Apple's insanely great hardware is a match for the insanely great paradigm shift OS X will present the industry with. Already, financial analysts realize they underestimated the positive double whammy effect a postmodern, semi-open source OS combined with Apple prescient hardware designs would have on the stock price. Investors love to invest in the future, and Apple has that in spades.
Microsoft is slowly decaying; the open source tribes already occupy the frontier. The Mac tribe, at least partly sympathetic with the open source religion, is more than likely to expand its domain as the decline and fall of Windows progresses towards its inevitable fate. Some day soon we won't be able to tout AAPL's stock as the most chronically undervalued in the PC industry. Of course, Apple's stock price could double and still be below the price valuation assigned to Dell, Compaq and Gateway.
Keep OS X on the Mac, where it belongs!
Coding a new OS
What the hell, I am in.
I am a novice programmer (still learning C/C++) but are you guys aware of how much knowledge you gotta have to program an OS? I mean, you gotta know hardware, file types, networking, etc.
So far it looks like you got a student programmer, a retired tester, and a graphic artist on the "team". Not exactly an OS designing "dream team."
My advice would be to design just the interface part of the OS and make use of BSD/ Unix core (which is a free download, from what I understand), which is stable and fast. Another STRONG bit of advice--demand certain hardware profiles in order to support the OS. Otherwise, your OS has to support a 300 MHz K6-2, a P4 2.2 GHz, a PowerPC G5, etc., etc. I deally, we should standardize on a particular architecture, but if you want this OS to run on PC processors and Apple processors, you got your work cut out...
The problem here is to get a Unix-core OS to run Windows or Mac OS software, you either have to run it in emulation and pay M$ (and convince Apple to licence their OS to you--aint gonna happen) OR the much more daunting task of reverse-engineering Apple OS and M$ OS so that your OS can run their apps. This would be really, really, REALLY difficult to do. And it would result in a MONSTER OS--probably on the order of 10 GB, for all the hardware profiles and software translators.
Another problem is divergence. As different as Unix and DOS are (which form the core of Windows and Mac OS X), remember that we would have NO CONTROL over where the dominant OS companies go with their products, and to remain viable (until we get a certain percent of the market share) we would have to follow them and ensure compatibility.
To combat this reality, I suggest standardizing on OSX and Windows 98SE. In other words, we can run apps written for our OS, apps written for OS X (no Classic support) or Windows 98SE (No XP/NT support). This would ensure legacy compatibility (most people still run Win98SE) and give us a future (Mac OS X is generally regarded as the best new OS to ever come out--even David Coursey,a M$ syncophant, admits that OS X is an amazing achievement).
Thoughts? Our first step has to be deciding these basic issues. We need to recruit a Unix guy and a DOS/98SE guy to help plan and code.
Should we exchange email addresses?
What the hell, I am in.
I am a novice programmer (still learning C/C++) but are you guys aware of how much knowledge you gotta have to program an OS? I mean, you gotta know hardware, file types, networking, etc.
So far it looks like you got a student programmer, a retired tester, and a graphic artist on the "team". Not exactly an OS designing "dream team."
My advice would be to design just the interface part of the OS and make use of BSD/ Unix core (which is a free download, from what I understand), which is stable and fast. Another STRONG bit of advice--demand certain hardware profiles in order to support the OS. Otherwise, your OS has to support a 300 MHz K6-2, a P4 2.2 GHz, a PowerPC G5, etc., etc. I deally, we should standardize on a particular architecture, but if you want this OS to run on PC processors and Apple processors, you got your work cut out...
The problem here is to get a Unix-core OS to run Windows or Mac OS software, you either have to run it in emulation and pay M$ (and convince Apple to licence their OS to you--aint gonna happen) OR the much more daunting task of reverse-engineering Apple OS and M$ OS so that your OS can run their apps. This would be really, really, REALLY difficult to do. And it would result in a MONSTER OS--probably on the order of 10 GB, for all the hardware profiles and software translators.
Another problem is divergence. As different as Unix and DOS are (which form the core of Windows and Mac OS X), remember that we would have NO CONTROL over where the dominant OS companies go with their products, and to remain viable (until we get a certain percent of the market share) we would have to follow them and ensure compatibility.
To combat this reality, I suggest standardizing on OSX and Windows 98SE. In other words, we can run apps written for our OS, apps written for OS X (no Classic support) or Windows 98SE (No XP/NT support). This would ensure legacy compatibility (most people still run Win98SE) and give us a future (Mac OS X is generally regarded as the best new OS to ever come out--even David Coursey,a M$ syncophant, admits that OS X is an amazing achievement).
Thoughts? Our first step has to be deciding these basic issues. We need to recruit a Unix guy and a DOS/98SE guy to help plan and code.
Should we exchange email addresses?
Real Different Thinking...
There are a thousand reasons why Apple wouldn't want to port X to Intel - the most significant of which is that they would cannibalize hardware sales, thereby eliminating the most profitable aspect of their business. In many ways. Apple's hardware symbolizes the innovation on which Steve has rebuilt the company. Granted, they could build Intel machines themselves, but the fact that, for all intents and purposes, their machines would no longer be 'different' from Dell's or Gateway's means that the premium price they would likely command would be less palatable to customers from either MacOS or Windows. That simply can not happen.
There is, however, an alternative.
What if Apple could continue to develop OSX in a way that allows them to run Windows applications on mac hardware? I'm not talking about Vitual PC - unless they miraculously find a way to improve performance. Perhaps they should acquire Transitive Technologies (http://www.transitivetechnologies.com/) and incorporate Dynamite (their emulation software layer) directly into X. It would likely have to run on a separate software layer, like Classic, but at near native speed. In the end though, the application runs vitually transparently in X without having to run windows at all. They might not be able to take the same advantage of OSX's protected memory, multitasking, mutiprocessing et al, until they upgarde to a native version of the software.
The implications of this are remarkable: Everyone has to update hardware sooner or later. With USB and Firewire, peripheral compatibility is no longer an issue, so Windows users looking to move to MacOS without tossing out all of their software could run their apps on superior hardware. Hardware sales would actually increase - as would OSX licenses. Ultimately, that is what would prompt developers to write more titles for X.
Any thoughts on this?
There are a thousand reasons why Apple wouldn't want to port X to Intel - the most significant of which is that they would cannibalize hardware sales, thereby eliminating the most profitable aspect of their business. In many ways. Apple's hardware symbolizes the innovation on which Steve has rebuilt the company. Granted, they could build Intel machines themselves, but the fact that, for all intents and purposes, their machines would no longer be 'different' from Dell's or Gateway's means that the premium price they would likely command would be less palatable to customers from either MacOS or Windows. That simply can not happen.
There is, however, an alternative.
What if Apple could continue to develop OSX in a way that allows them to run Windows applications on mac hardware? I'm not talking about Vitual PC - unless they miraculously find a way to improve performance. Perhaps they should acquire Transitive Technologies (http://www.transitivetechnologies.com/) and incorporate Dynamite (their emulation software layer) directly into X. It would likely have to run on a separate software layer, like Classic, but at near native speed. In the end though, the application runs vitually transparently in X without having to run windows at all. They might not be able to take the same advantage of OSX's protected memory, multitasking, mutiprocessing et al, until they upgarde to a native version of the software.
The implications of this are remarkable: Everyone has to update hardware sooner or later. With USB and Firewire, peripheral compatibility is no longer an issue, so Windows users looking to move to MacOS without tossing out all of their software could run their apps on superior hardware. Hardware sales would actually increase - as would OSX licenses. Ultimately, that is what would prompt developers to write more titles for X.
Any thoughts on this?
Re: Coding a new OS
Let me tell you something. You CAN'T do that. It's as simple as that. Be productive and join a team in OpenBeOS or FreeBSD or anything like that, they need people. But four guys cannot do it.
You just can't. Besides, the TOTAL COMPATIBILITY OS you wan't wouldn't work. Reading filesystems is damned easy: MkLinux, for example, reads and writes FAT, FAT32, ext2, HFS and HFS+. Guess that all it does with NTFS is reading: that's whate everybody does, but windows. By the way, and talking about windows: don't be compatible with 98SE, it's a DOS-legacy OS, nothing good in it, unstable, and DEAD. Use NT4, or 2000, or XP, this is, REAL OPERATING SYSTEMS. Being compatible with windows on a PPC implies emulating not only the system, but also the x86. And that's a lot. Seriously. You could try and use Wine+Dosemu but I will tell you the results: ABSOLUTE DISASTER!!!!
Let me tell you something. You CAN'T do that. It's as simple as that. Be productive and join a team in OpenBeOS or FreeBSD or anything like that, they need people. But four guys cannot do it.
You just can't. Besides, the TOTAL COMPATIBILITY OS you wan't wouldn't work. Reading filesystems is damned easy: MkLinux, for example, reads and writes FAT, FAT32, ext2, HFS and HFS+. Guess that all it does with NTFS is reading: that's whate everybody does, but windows. By the way, and talking about windows: don't be compatible with 98SE, it's a DOS-legacy OS, nothing good in it, unstable, and DEAD. Use NT4, or 2000, or XP, this is, REAL OPERATING SYSTEMS. Being compatible with windows on a PPC implies emulating not only the system, but also the x86. And that's a lot. Seriously. You could try and use Wine+Dosemu but I will tell you the results: ABSOLUTE DISASTER!!!!
About that nuetral OS...
..., I can think of two ways of pulling it off (one of which I know nothing about). One is to run a dual processor machine with one x86 chip and one PPC chip. The other, is to run some sort of emulation, I vaguely remember that Transmeta had some sort of code morphing technology to make their Crusoe x86 compatible. Other than that, all we need to do is get Apple to let us build a transparent Windows app layer into OSX, kinda like cl***ic.
Also, this anti swearing thing is getting annoying. I can't type b***, cr***, gr***, anything with a s s in it.
..., I can think of two ways of pulling it off (one of which I know nothing about). One is to run a dual processor machine with one x86 chip and one PPC chip. The other, is to run some sort of emulation, I vaguely remember that Transmeta had some sort of code morphing technology to make their Crusoe x86 compatible. Other than that, all we need to do is get Apple to let us build a transparent Windows app layer into OSX, kinda like cl***ic.
Also, this anti swearing thing is getting annoying. I can't type b***, cr***, gr***, anything with a s s in it.
The same problem as always
That dual x86/PPC computer gets us to the point: the best OSs always run in proprietary hardware. BeOS did, NeXTSTEP did, MacOSX does. So, why building another OS with weird hardware things (BeOS's dual PPC and geekport, NeXTSTEP's funny optical disks) when, after apple, nobody has been able to make a profit out of that? And, I talk about profit because since you start talking of funny hardware, specially designed for you, you have to sell it. If you give it away, poof. Probably poof even if yyou sell it
That dual x86/PPC computer gets us to the point: the best OSs always run in proprietary hardware. BeOS did, NeXTSTEP did, MacOSX does. So, why building another OS with weird hardware things (BeOS's dual PPC and geekport, NeXTSTEP's funny optical disks) when, after apple, nobody has been able to make a profit out of that? And, I talk about profit because since you start talking of funny hardware, specially designed for you, you have to sell it. If you give it away, poof. Probably poof even if yyou sell it
Crusoe
A crusoe provides code morphing to translate x86 commands to it's native format, right? What would be nice is if you could stick a crusoe chip somewhere in your iMac and have it tranperantly provide x86 services to any software which wanted it... have MacOsX detect when you are trying to launch an x86 program and let the crusoe take over, redirecting the output to either the screen or a window or whatever. It could even be an external device, made by a 3rd party. I mean, anyone who says that every single x86 app has a just-as-good alternative on Mac is dreaming (where is fruityloops for mac, huh?), I prefer the OS on Mac but way prefer using PCs on account of the fact that it limits me less in the range of software I can run. I would like to be able to run it all (Mac, x86)from one machine and use OsX as my OS. Also, have a look at www.oqo.com, I would love one of these, and at the moment I would have to run Xp on it if I wanted one... ewww.
A crusoe provides code morphing to translate x86 commands to it's native format, right? What would be nice is if you could stick a crusoe chip somewhere in your iMac and have it tranperantly provide x86 services to any software which wanted it... have MacOsX detect when you are trying to launch an x86 program and let the crusoe take over, redirecting the output to either the screen or a window or whatever. It could even be an external device, made by a 3rd party. I mean, anyone who says that every single x86 app has a just-as-good alternative on Mac is dreaming (where is fruityloops for mac, huh?), I prefer the OS on Mac but way prefer using PCs on account of the fact that it limits me less in the range of software I can run. I would like to be able to run it all (Mac, x86)from one machine and use OsX as my OS. Also, have a look at www.oqo.com, I would love one of these, and at the moment I would have to run Xp on it if I wanted one... ewww.
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