Why won't Apple sell a retail version of Tiger based on Intel

[Luis Ortega]

I'm curious, why can't you install an Intel OS X on any Intel based computer?
Is it for technical or legal reasons?
If I had a PC (without any OS on it) and I formatted all the drives and installed OS X, would it work at all, or is it a legal restriction?
Thanks.

 

[janey]

well if your gna illegal install it why would you pay for a legal copy?

you wouldn't be able to install retail Tiger on a non-Mac anyway even if retail was UB. Not just BIOS/EFI restrictions but stuff just won't work.

I'm curious, why can't you install an Intel OS X on any Intel based computer?...

it's a technical support limitation.
(edit: and legal too, but ignoring the legal issues, it's a support issue.)

 

[uaaerospace]

Dunno....just don't see a reason why they aren't doing it and the piracy argument doesn't fly since Leopard will be UB. Just another wtf were they thinking.

They should not release Tiger for Intel simply because there is no good reason not to do so. It's the other way around. You give us a good reason why they should release it.

The simple fact is that there is no one to buy it. Every potential customer out there already has it on his machine. Doesn't make much sense to make up DVDs and packaging material when you know there is no customer base to sell it to.

 

[decksnap]

There is one obvious reason to sell it- and that would be that I'd rather have a single set of disks instead of a seperate set for every system I administer.

 

[iMeowbot]

So i just looked at the Apple store and apparently the only retail version of Tiger available is the PPC version. Anyone know the reasoning behind that?

That's simple: There aren't yet any Intel-based Macs that need OS X upgrades, they already have the latest.

OS X Server is universal, since it's an upgrade path from plain old OS X.

 

[janey]

Dunno....just don't see a reason why they aren't doing it and the piracy argument doesn't fly since Leopard will be UB. Just another wtf were they thinking.

what do you mean the piracy argument doesn't fly? an unadulterated copy of tiger, regardless of where it came from or what architectures it does or does not run on, cannot run on a non-Apple computer (it won't boot..or at the least, it won't finish booting...that's if it works at all cause of the bios vs. efi difference). i'm assuming this is going to be even more of a case with leopard.

the only versions of tiger that work on non-Apple computers are hacked to do so. even then support is still a tad bit flakey.

 

[whooleytoo]

There is one obvious reason to sell it- and that would be that I'd rather have a single set of disks instead of a seperate set for every system I administer.

The problem is, as soon as you buy a brand new Mac model, that set of disks won't work on every system any more - it won't work on the new Mac.

So in order to always have a 'universally installable' retail version of OSX on sale, Apple would need to ship a new retail version of OSX after every single Mac release, which simply isn't feasible.

 

[myjellyass]

what was the first version to support intel ?

Every version of OS X supports intel, cause if you watch the keynote when intel was officially announced, Jobs pointed to a building that had housed an intel machine running as a mac since version 10.1. He seemed very proud, and is well worth the watch, but basically in answer to your question, all of them.

 

[decksnap]

The problem is, as soon as you buy a brand new Mac model, that set of disks won't work on every system any more - it won't work on the new Mac.

So in order to always have a 'universally installable' retail version of OSX on sale, Apple would need to ship a new retail version of OSX after every single Mac release, which simply isn't feasible.

Not saying you're wrong, just curious what you mean... I have a single set of Panther disks to administer to multiple systems. You simply have to run software update after you do a reinstall. What are they releasing on new macs now that isn't brought up to speed with software update?

 

[whooleytoo]

Not saying you're wrong, just curious what you mean... I have a single set of Panther disks to administer to multiple systems. You simply have to run software update after you do a reinstall. What are they releasing on new macs now that isn't brought up to speed with software update?

Those Panther disks will work fine on any Mac released before the Panther release; and they *might* work on Macs released after Panther (particularly if it's a minor speedbump model) but they would never have been tested within Apple.

However, most new Mac models will be developed with and require a custom OS build, the changes in which are incorporated into the next reference OS release. Since Apple is continuously releasing new models, it's impractical to be constantly re-incorporating these changes into the retail OSX disks.

 

[Cromulent]

Every version of OS X supports intel, cause if you watch the keynote when intel was officially announced, Jobs pointed to a building that had housed an intel machine running as a mac since version 10.1. He seemed very proud, and is well worth the watch, but basically in answer to your question, all of them.

All internal builds of OS X supported Intel but that does not mean that the commercially released product supported Intel. The only available version of OS X that supports Intel processors is the one that comes with Intel macs.

 

[Halcyon]

Slight twist to the running thread...

I bought my intel Mac last year and have gone through the proper updates all the way to 10.4.9. Question is: If something went wrong with my system and I would have to reinstall it, do I have to install Tiger from my original disks and then go through all the updates again? or if I download the latest update (10.4.9) does it include all the previous ones?.

Just curious...

JC

 

[Macky-Mac]

Slight twist to the running thread...

I bought my intel Mac last year and have gone through the proper updates all the way to 10.4.9. Question is: If something went wrong with my system and I would have to reinstall it, do I have to install Tiger from my original disks and then go through all the updates again? or if I download the latest update (10.4.9) does it include all the previous ones?.

Just curious...

JC

usually there's a combo update available so you wouldn't have to go thru the process of installing each update one at a time

 

[mkrishnan]

usually there's a combo update available so you wouldn't have to go thru the process of installing each update one at a time

I've done this on 10.4.8, I think, and I'm pretty sure only one reboot worth of updaters was required. Not like the sort of thing where you have to keep rebooting and updating and rebooting. You'll end up getting the combo updater, the last of the security updates that have come out *since* the updater, and any appropriate updaters for other systems that are not rolled into the combo updater. It's not bad at all.