OS X running on PCs..

Steve Jobs is not really a software man, he is a hardware man, if OSX for Intel came out for windows the hardware sales would plument and thats not was jobs wants!

LONG LIVE OSX FOR THE MAC!

ENsiGn

 

P4 suck they don't have the power to run OS X
my imac 400 mhz does it better than any P4 will

 

not true. they crash much much faster than your imac.

 

i don't understand a lot of people that write in these forums. what part about OSX for Intel does not sound good to anyone? we're all macheads, and as such, we will always buy mac hardware. steve knows that, and whoever follows him down the line probably will to, and apple will always stay faithful to us because we're what makes the great company great. we don't buy macs for the OS, though that's part of it, but we'd all decided to be mac lovers for life long before OSX ever existed. we buy macs for different reasons altogether, and we always will. apple doesn't need to worry about its fanbase swtiching to a PC with OSX just because they'd be cheaper. that said, apple hardware sales will not fall at all. in fact, they'd probably increase. after a computer generation of PC users running OSX on thier intels, a fair amount of them would take the plunge and buy a G5 or G6 for their next computer (thinking way ahead here).

average joe dingus out there using a peecee doesn't really have any kind of OS loyalty, so when he sees that the $900 P4 dell he's about to buy comes with either the evil m$ OS or the "think different, trust us, look how snazzy our OS looks" apple OS, he might just opt for the second, and if he doesn't someone else will. apple could easily cover 25% of the PC OS market, and that'd be plenty to satisfy me, not to mention the wonders it would to for everything apple.

yeah windows is familiar to a great portion of the population, but like a recent windows convert said in another thread on this site, if every windows user just spent a few hours sitting with OSX and learning the way the OS thinks and works, they'd never go back. familiarty is a powerful thing, but so is usability, and if people see that one OS is more user friendly than the other, they'll be willing to grow familiar with the new guy.

think about it: how many times has a friend of yours mentioned that he's thinking about getting a new computer, and you say "ooh ooh ooh get a mac!!!" and they sort of laugh at your suggestion and proceed to the gateway website. that's because people like their pcs and aren't willing to venture out into the great unknown to get an apple, not to mention the extra cash they'd have to throw down for a better machine that they know they won't take advantage of. but now imagine that instead of saying "buy a mac!" you could just say "dude, get OSX on that new dell, you'll love it" and they'd go "eh, i don't know, windoze is familiar to me" and you'd go "dude come over to my house and check out my powerbook, i'll show you OSX, it's easy as hell." sure, dell still gets the sale, but windoze doesn't. apple may not have sold a new tower, but it made at least a small sale where none would have existed before. something is always better than nothing.

so to conclude this rant, i'm tired of people shooting down good ideas because they're sick of seeing them in every forum. an apple PDA is a fantastic idea. you'd buy it, just like you bought an iPod, even though there are better deals on MP3 players out there. why? because they're something about a mac, whatever form it takes. OSXtel would be beneficial in so many ways that most completely elude me. so quit getting turned off to ideas just because you're not the first to think of them or the 9043rd to submit an opinion on them.

 

os x for intel

No one seems to realize...(forget IF Apple could port OSX )...

What software company would write ANOTHER version of their software for OS X on Intel. Apple has a hard enough time getting companies to support Mac stuff, let alone a mac on wintel os. No one would go for it. there would be exactly zero software support except for Apple, and as much as I love Appleworks and the "i" appz, I can't use a computer JUST on those alone.

Sorry guys, but it will NEVER happen...can we put this to rest now?

-Pete

 

OK, a few questions. 1. IF (and I mean IF) apple would port osX to intel, why wouldn't OSX apps work on it? 2. Has anyone thought of Apple making a OSX version for Intel that was trimmed down to show the ease and power of it and then potentally move Intel people to the Mac? They could offer a free download of it and let people try it. Granted an Intel user would not pay $30 to test an operation system (of course those of us who know better did!!), so it would have to be free. I know a lot of windows users that have laughed at me for yeard about my macs, but now they all oh and ah at OSX. I think this would be a smarter move for apple than trying to make OSX as an option for Intel machines. Not to mention, would apple really want to support serial ports? Just my thoughts.

 

hell no the topic's not dead, i want to see this happen and support it to the fullest. it wouldn't be difficult at all to port mac osx software to pc osx. it would be almost the same thing. the os is designed to make all the hardware work in a standardized fashion. make office x work on a pc would be cake. the only difficulty would come from big games that need to take into account all the different possible ways a pc user might have put his computer together. but most of those aren't made for osx anyway, so it wouldn't be an issue. however, if osx lived in 30% of computers, as opposed to its 5% market share now, more games would be made. the difficult task lies in apple's hands, making an os that, like high end games, accounts for all kinds of hardware configurations and architecture. once that burden was handled, developers wouldn't have any trouble porting from mac to pc osx.

 

Cringely

I wrote Cringely trying to express my view that Apple is essentially a hardware vendor. My argument is this:

Sure Apple has the best interface and the REASON people buy Macs is because of the software, but that doesn't change the fact that Apple's business model is such that they make money nearly exclusively from hardware sales. Software is simply the vehicle that drive its hardware sales. Anything that will possibly threaten Apple's hardware sales is not a good thing for Apple. I'm not sure if porting OS X to Intel would hurt their hardware sales, but it certainly would be a huge risk. And the difficulty of changing their business model from a hardware vendor to a software vendor should not be overlooked.

Mr. Cringely did not agree. He wrote me back to express this.

I could provide many, many other arguments, but I think this one is enough to show that at the very least, porting OS X to Intel is a more difficult proposition than Mr. Cringley portrays.

Matthew

 

short memories

we were here before, remember the clones? People will buy cheap if they can get it, PC or Mac. Motorola or Intel clones, the result would be the same, the death of Apple. I like the quality hardware, dont you?

 

What we have here is an excellent example of the typical corporate conflict. You have two jobs when you run a company. You have to satisfy customers, and you have to satisfy stockholders. In the ideal case, you make customers delirious, rake in piles of money, and thereby make your shareholders delerious too. Customers, though (*ahem* particularly APPLE'S customers), have a nasty habit of wanting things companies can't give them without killing themselves. You know, they want a $99 PDA that would cost Apple $999 to make. Things like that.

OS X for Intel is one of those things. As a customer, I would love to be able to replace Windows on my Athlon box with OS X. But as a shareholder, if Apple were to start selling OS X for Intel, I would have to sell, because there is not a doubt in my mind it would be a company-killing mistake.

 

I've read Cringley's article but it's seriously flawed in my opinion.

First off I'm currently a PC user saving to get a Mac (because I'm sooo tired of PC's), and I think OSX on intel is a bad idea as I've stated on Cringley's site, why?

Well Cringley's article goes something like this - Microsoft was forced to compete with borland to produce good compilers, and eventually MS won. MS was forced to compete with Netscape and eventually MS won. MS has run out of people to compete with and now they can't innovate (well boo-hoo for MS I'm just welling up now, this is sooo unfair for MS).

Cringley suggests that Apple should port OSX to intel to make MS innovate. If MS can't innovate on its own then MS is seriously flawed as a technology provider!

Apple doesn't need to port OSX to intel it's doing just great on its own. The problem Cringley is raising is MS's lack of innovation and that's just it; it's MS's problem not Apple's

As far as I'm concerned MS is reaping what its sown, don't ask, or expect Apple to sort out MS's problems. (and if you think XP is a lack of innovation get a mac...I am)

 

This would be very interesting to c lol

lol i would to love to see the look on pc users face when they see they running apple software on their pc. They will be surprised to see how much windows sucks. Service Pack 20 isnt out for windows heehehe.

 

MS were innovating to some degree. They based their products on the most successful aspects of their competitors. Becuase of MS's large user base they could got alot more feedback from users and improved their products.

Early on in OS war when windows was really unstable, people would chose MS products over competitors, the reasoning behind this was if MS made the OS then they should make the most stable apps. That and the fact MS was supposed to have undocumented API's that gave their products and advantage.

Wha does MS do now? How do they innovate?

Luna is their response to Aqua.
C# is their response Java.
.NET is their plan give MS ownership of the net.

I'm not totally anti-MS, office is a great product and they did bring the price of computing down, but Cringely suggesting that Apple port OSX just to make MS try harder is lame.

MS's biggest problem is that it's driven solely by the acquisition of money. It's forgotten that to get that money it has do new and exciting things. It has to empower everyone, even technophobes, with usable computing technology that enriches peoples lives.

MS revenue stream is basically releasing an new improved windows (which is really a few bug fixes and an update to the UI), that it's forgotten what real innovation is.

Apple is driven by money, sure what business isn't. But they realise they have to earn that money. They can't just release a new OS when they feel like boosting profits, so they have to be creative and find ways to make you pay your hard earn cash for something that gives back in some way.

Ranting over

 

bill once worked for apple!

Bill gates once worked for apple a long long time ago. He asked Steve if he could be a part of the apple company. Sadly after a couple of years he left and practically stole apples idea and came out with a real crappy os that no one wanted. Has anything changed? For years ms has been trying to keep up with apple os technology. As PC_convert mentioned ms is always trying to compete with everyone. It sort of hints indirectly that gates wants to dominate the market.

 

I really don't think many people realise that there is an alternative to PC's and MS. I can't comment on this situation in the US but in Europe awareness of Apple is pretty low. Most just don't know about computers and don't want to.

They don't care how they work, they just want them to. They want their kids to be able do homework and be compatible with the computers at school. They simply don't have the time to find the best computer, so they go to a local computer store and the salesman sells them a PC, because it's easy.

When things go wrong and they have to spend money getting the PC repaired or they lose files for some reason, they get a bad impression of computers in general, and when they hear everyone else saying the same thing i.e "yeah that happen to me. It's just part of windows" they assume that this is as good as it gets.

Apple really needs to market itself better out here in Europe. It could pick up alot of business from ill-informed consumers.