Slashdot Mirror

You can already have it. Check out: The OSx86 Project

Funny, I didn't remember hearing that Apple software runs on Tablet PCs

Take a look here http://osx86project.org/

It works, but it is very picky when it comes to hardware - mainly due to missing drivers.

It's been done. Where have you been, friend?

Seriously, though, the OS X on PC is a lot further behind Windows on Mac, even though the former has been available in the wild since last summer. Lots and lots of driver issues, limited hardware support. But, my own PC is this close to being my new Mac, though. Just waiting for some enterprising programmers/hackers to come up with fully working NVidia drivers, have working digital output of audio, and it'd be nice to be able to use my mobo's built-in NIC, and my Sony DVD-DL drive too.

But that said, it's pretty amazing they've already got a game working here. Nice.

Drivers and guide here

http://wiki.onmac.net/index.php/HOWTO
http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showforum= 63

That's not an example of Apple threatening people over hacking Mac OS X:

So that's the story. Apple doesn't "have it in" for our site; they were simply concerned with a few links posted by our members. Those links have been removed and we're back." -- osx86project.org

There were links to pirated copies of Mac OS X. That's not the same thing as "threatening anybody".

Congratulations to narf2006 and blanka! Great Job!

From the screenshots available on the osx86project.org website it seems that there's still a bit of work to be done: finding drivers!

Here's the Windows Device Manager on iMac Core Duo - http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?s=ab17121f f41822abd80317ffeafc7788&act=Attach&type=post&id=1 804 (its a 1280x960 JPG image)

The drivers that need to be (and most if not all will be) found are:
- ATI Radeon X1600 PCI Express video driver
- Ethernet 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit) driver
- Airport Extreme driver
- Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR driver
- iSight driver
- IR receiver driver
and possibly 4 other drivers (Bus controller, Chipset, etc.)

I don't know if sound works or not (sound devices aren't expanded in the image). I'm guessing that Firewire and USB 2.0 don't need drivers (Windows XP SP2 supports them out of the box usually)

And then the drivers will have to be found for similar devices on the other Intel Macs (MacBook Pro, Mac Mini)

That's what OSx86Project.org is up to. The difference is, it's quite clear there are no legal issues installing Windows XP on a Mac system. Likewise, the MacOS X licence clearly states that OS X can't be installed on a non-Apple computer.

This link is from Jan 16, 2006.

Not exactly: Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated...

And has anyone tried sticking in a pre-release DVD of Windows Vista, holding down the D key, and seeing what happens?

I tried a few times to compose an answer to that question without being sarcastic, but I couldn't pull it off. In short, yea, pretty much everybody who has spent 2 seconds thinking about Windows on Mac has thought of this idea and/or tried it. I'll just point you to here, here, and here. I'm sorry to be pissy, but the forums where people are actually trying to work on this problem are so cluttered with this "novel" idea that it gets really annoying after a while.

So as not to be a complete rant, I'll explain why this doesn't currently work. The Mac uses the new UGA standard for video cards, and does not support VGA at all. Windows (even Vista) only supports VGA (or UGA with VGA fallback, which Mac doesn't have either). There are also drive partitioning issues, among other problems. Basically, any feature that Apple didn't need for booting MacOS was left out of the EFI, including BIOS-compatibility mode as you noted. No current PC hardware is so legacy-free. However, with a bit of massaging, the Vista install disc does boot, you just can't see anything on the screen. When Vista gets a real UGA driver, we should be able to make quite a bit more progress.

Apple has just released OSX 10.4.5.

According to
http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0602briefly2.html
and
http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic= 9086

Get it at http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

Timing is quite interesting here.

You can get a machine for half the price that runs OS X?

You sure can.

I'd wager that at least the GMA 950 will be enough for the more advanced interface, and even the GMA 900 will be.

An older version of Intel's notebook guidelines for Vista (before the current 945GM chipset was released) said that GMA 900 would run Vista without the new Aero interface.

The key difference is support for Windows Vista Display Driver model (WDDM) drivers, which is required for Aero. GMA 950 has it now, GMA 900 doesn't. I don't know if WDDM support will be added to GMA 900 before Vista's release, but I doubt it.

Note that GMA 900 did a fine job running OS X's Aqua interface in Apple's Developer Transition Kits. Therefore, I think GMA 900 should run Aero if Intel or MS writes the drivers for it.

he could just have it boot osx http://www.osx86project.org/

Dude, sorry if I sound rude, but 4, Informative for that? All you're talking about is legalness of that but don't nobody care. We've been running leaked versions of Mac OS x86 since last summer. http://www.osx86project.org/

This link is all you need http://www.osx86project.org/

Does the "Core Duo" processor include the Vaderpool virtualization extensions.

O.K., prepare to be confused ...

Dmesg on the iMac says the Core Duo supports Vanderpool (the VMX flag is there - http://www.appleintelfaq.com/#10.1 ). However, "terry" in this thread contacted Intel and they say this stepping doesn't contain Vanderpool - http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic= 6700&st=100 . The Register also says "To Be Decided" for T2400 and T2500 chips - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/16/intel_core _duo_vt/ .

But then _why_ is the actual chip claiming to offer VT extensions during the boot sequence ?

lol wtf. I hope you mean you give them minus 6 months to do that, cuz we've been running OS X on normal PC hardware and VMware since like july/august with Mac OS X 10.4.1 leaked from dev kits. http://www.osx86project.org/

That spelling was lifted from the linked site.

In case you didn't know, Apple's Developer Transition Kit PC (which supposedly runs OS X quite well) uses Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (GMA 900).

Intel's newer integrated graphics (GMA 950) performs a little faster, but is not much different architecturally. Since the chipset shares system and graphics memory, the use of dual-channel DDR2 667 should improve performance a bit due to the increase in graphics memory bandwidth.

While I understand these aren't meant to be gaming "powerhouses", I'd still like to do some light gaming on it. (FWIW, I've play World of Warcraft, at around 20fps, on my old iBook G4 800 and my desktop P3 750 (ti4200), which was acceptable. I'd like to see at least this level of performance).

Anandtech has a small gaming performance review of the desktop version of GMA 950. The benchmarks were run with high quality settings at 800x600. The games (and fps) were Doom 3 (14 fps), Far Cry (10.2), Half-life 2 (20.2), Unreal Tournament 2004 (26.5), and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (30.5).

Intel also has a "Game Compatability List" for GMA 950 which "green lights" World of Warcraft as "No known issues with default settings, or all issues resolved." However, this was the same rating given to Far Cry, which only ran at 10.2 fps (high quality 800x600) in Anandtech's review. Also, Half-life 2 is "yellow lighted" as "Game operates with minor issues or workarounds" because of low frame rates, but Anandtech's review had it running at 20.2 fps.

Not anymore, regarding Rosetta. According to an OSx86 Project article and an Apple Insider article, Rosetta now has full G4 support (including Altivec). From the first article:

First, the Rosetta emulation platform in 10.4.3 build 8F1111A has been upgraded to feature full G4 support, including Altivec. This not only adds a new layer of compatibility to Rosetta, but also improved speed for Altivec-equipped applications.

I don't know if Rosetta and a dual-core Yonah will run G4-optimized software fast enough, but it will run.

No, me too. I think we are the only two.

I mean they want to have differentiation between the consumer and pro models. Why not release the ibook with "similar" specs to the current powerbooks with celeron or lowend pentium m processors? This will prevent major cannabalization of the current powerbook lines and allow them to release the yonah based powerbooks as the pro model they really are.

There will be a single single-core version of Yonah at launch and this might be a good candidate for the iBook (with PowerBooks being dual-core). However, at $209, the single-core Yonah seems a bit expensive for a "low end" notebook. In a few months, Intel will likely release Celeron M CPUs based on the Yonah core (single core), but with a lower FSB (533MHz vs 667Mhz) and less L2 cache (1MB vs 2MB). These would be way too late for a MacWorld announcement.

I think there's a very good chance that the current Dothan-based Celeron M will be used in the new iBooks (and maybe Mac minis) that are expected at MacWorld. Based on the current Pentium M core (but with lower FSB and L2 cache), the Celeron M is cheap, fast, and runs cool.

The current Celeron M does lack SSE3 support and many people think SSE3 will be required for the new Intel Macs. However, I think this assumption might be false and is based on the fact that the Dev Kit version of OS X for Intel requires SSE3 (the Dev Kit CPU has SSE3). Since the Dev Kit version was only intended to be used on one CPU, and SSE3 is off by default in XCode, I suspect that SSE2 will be enough for the official release of OS X on Intel.

OK, more a wish than a prediction

Thanks, I forgot about that. However, the current Dothan-based Celeron M does support SSE2 ("Streaming SIMD Extensions 2"). Also, according to the OSx86 Project site, SSE2 processors will work with a patch for Rosetta. Rosetta works best with SSE3, though.

1. OSx86 Project Forum > Technical Work > Hardware > Sticky: SSE2 and SSE3 information PLEASE READ

   *No one with less then sse2 has any chance

   *SSE3 is perferred and will run rosetta the fastest.

   *SSE2 can run os x intel but with patches such as in coregraphics, there now are new patches that will allow rosetta to run.

2. OSx86 Wiki > HCLPart > 1.14 CPU

I'm not so sure about the current Celeron M anymore. It will work, but I don't know if the lack of SSE3 will have a big performance hit.

Thanks, I forgot about that. However, the current Dothan-based Celeron M does support SSE2 ("Streaming SIMD Extensions 2"). Also, according to the OSx86 Project site, SSE2 processors will work with a patch for Rosetta. Rosetta works best with SSE3, though.

1. OSx86 Project Forum > Technical Work > Hardware > Sticky: SSE2 and SSE3 information PLEASE READ

   *No one with less then sse2 has any chance

   *SSE3 is perferred and will run rosetta the fastest.

   *SSE2 can run os x intel but with patches such as in coregraphics, there now are new patches that will allow rosetta to run.

2. OSx86 Wiki > HCLPart > 1.14 CPU

I'm not so sure about the current Celeron M anymore. It will work, but I don't know if the lack of SSE3 will have a big performance hit.

There are so many:

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/X86_so ftware

"First, iTunes is the one application in the developer build that comes as a PowerPC application. That means, it hasn't been compiled for a Pentium, but for a PowerPC, and has to be translated to Pentium code by Rosetta."

This is not the case anymore with 10.4.3/x86 according to osx86project.org. Too bad zdnet used 10.4.1. :-)

Current 10.4.3 Build Includes Intel iTunes

"Many sources have reported that the latest build of Mac OS X 10.4.3 seeded to developers includes an Intel-compiled version of iTunes. Previously, iTunes was the only major non-system application to be PowerPC-only."

yes

works nicely, actually.

These hackers are going to ruin the intel port for everyone. Soon everyone will be complaining at how unreliable OS X is when running on their generic PC box made from spare parts. As soon as that happens all the good OS X press will disappear and Apple will be forced to play on Microsoft's level. The hackers at the osx86 project are just as bad as the warez/serialz distributors at MSJ who pirating everything from professional apps to shareware. Don't these people realize that we developers need to eat too!

Actually, yes... [osx86project.org].

Why not use both?

Well, the poster has one take on this, but perhaps the current release is incompatible because Apple has changed the compiler and some of the dynamic libraries? Perhaps this was not to specifically address pirating, but to fix bugs and to otherwise optimize the system. The OS X 86 project page has a slightly more informed discussion.

http://wiki.osx86project.org is down right now!

http://www.osx86project.org/index.php?option=com_c ontent&task=view&id=27&Itemid=2

"I don't think Apple however will ever gain the control that Windows has, simply because it can't install on normal PC machines."

You were saying?

"Even though they're going to x86 it still can't install on a white-box computer. That's the reason Windows won originally, and that's the reason Windows still wins over."

And lets completely ignore the findings of the court in the MS trial.

Plus having the world hasn't been a complete win-win for MS. So no need for Apple to feel inferior.

---
"The "are you a script" word for today is forcast.