New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X

Worried writes "Pegasos is a new platform based on G3/G4 CPUs and it runs MorphOS and various Linux distros so far. This very interesting review of the platform over at OSNews points out that Darwin can play a significant role attracting new buyers. Another --possibly significant-- point in the article is that Pegasos can run Mac OS X via the Mac-On-Linux runtime kit. This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"

Comments

at some point...

[TomRitchford]

Apple will have to crack down on these "meta-clone" boxes.

Re:at some point...

[nattt]

Nope. They're not macs, they're CHRP, which is totally legal and not Apple infinging at all.

I ue briqs - www.totalimpact.com for a renderfarm ad they are G4 PPC CHRP boxes, running yellow dog linux and custom render management software that Total Ipmact have written. They're great little general purpose computers.

Re:at some point...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as this falls into the "interesting hack" category, Apple won't care.

However, if someone tries to market these things as "Mac clones", they can expect a lawsuit pretty quickly. Apple's EULA restricts OS X to their own hardware, and vendors can not legally preinstall an OS without a written contract.

But, in all likelyhood, this is just Amiga Ressurection Vaporware Project #312, so who cares.

Re:at some point...

[KingDaveRa]

Apple will have to crack down on these "meta-clone" boxes.

And their "meta-clone" websites. Yet another Apple.com-alike. Then again, Steve Jobs said himself 'Great artists steal'.

Maybe he didn't mean it literally.

Re:at some point...

[cruppel]

The article makes mention of Debian (go Purdue!) and MorphOS shipping with the computer, so It may be hard for Apple to come down on them for a EULA violation. Individuals would have to be the target .

Re:at some point...

[ichimunki]

This, of course, assumes that EULAs are valid contracts. Many of us would say they are not.

Re:at some point...

[ncc74656]

As long as this falls into the "interesting hack" category, Apple won't care.

They did say that performance wasn't all that hot...on their 600-MHz G3, clicking a button in Mac OS X took a second or two just to begin to get a response from the computer. My 266-MHz beige G3 runs faster than that (it's not snappy, but it's not dog-slow either).

I somehow doubt that people will be buying these to run Mac OS X...at least not as the primary OS. Apple doesn't have much to worry about here. For a few hundred more, you'll get a faster processor and hardware that'll run X natively.

(Even if all you want to do is just tinker around with non-x86 hardware, a used Mac will most likely be cheaper and better-supported. My G3 only set me back $40.)

Re:at some point...

[Anonymous Coward]

and many of you think you might get laid.

Re:at some point...

[ePhil_One]

Why does everybody assume the only reason to build a PPC computer is to try to run MacOS without buying Mac hardware? Its a fast processor that draws very little power, meaning silent computers are quite possible. And since Linux is readily available for the platform, its not like there isn't a good OS available.

Of course, so far it seems like I'd be far better off buying an iBook or eMac as far as form factor/price/speed/build quality goes and just loading linux on it.

Re:at some point...

[Ryan Amos]

Nothing stops a reseller from selling the system ready to go with a copy of OS X though.

But I agree, this will probably never turn into anything.

Re:at some point...

[Bastian]

Hmm. . if they're CHRP, than doesn't that make the whole comment about not needing an Apple BIOS to run OS X become wrong? I mean, first, Apple computers don't have a BIOS, they have OpenFirmware. Second, the CHRP specification requires computers to boot using OpenFirmware. Sounds like it's probably using pretty much the same boot process to me.

Re:at some point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even CHRP need to have Mac-ROM to run Mac OS. At least with very first CHRP boxes it was so, i had a chance to play with one while ago.

Re:at some point...

[h'biki]

how are they *not* valid contracts?

in consideration of using a vendor's software you agree to their licensing agreement.

that's a contract. consideration. exchange.

(i had a discussion with my IT Law lecturer over EULAs. I used to think as you do. I know realise I was wrong. They are contracts. Whether they're contracts made in good faith or whether they're unconscionable contracts is a different question.)

Re:at some point...

[phyxeld]

But wheres the signature?

Can I put a sign by my door that says "by entering the premesis you agree to be my personal slave for life", and enslave every person who walks in without reading the fine-print sign?

Re:at some point...

[h'biki]

Signatures are not necessary for a binding contract. I don't sign anything when I buy my groceries at a store, but its still a binding contract because something have been exchanged. Your sign would be considered unconscionable and would not be enforced. But its not wrong in principle. Its how ticketed parking works: 'by entering this carpark, you agree to these terms and conditions'.

Re:at some point...

[dadragon]

iBooks are nice, but they also have their problems for linux use.

Their modems are Connexant winmodems (macmodems?) which are not very well supported in Linux, though they can be made to work. Other than that, they're great machines for Linux use.

Re:at some point...

[SmittyTheBold]

No, it assumes Apple thinks EULAs are valid contracts, which it's pretty safe to assume they do. Apple's built a reputation as being a bit lawyer-happy, and I certainly don't want to be the one testing a licenses' legality versus them.

Re:at some point...

[yerricde]

I explained how the Digital Millennium Copyright Act may make click-wrap EULAs binding in this comment.

Re:at some point...

[sbryant]

No, it assumes Apple thinks EULAs are valid contracts, which it's pretty safe to assume they do.

Actually, in this country, EULAs are legally non-binding, according to the courts, as they're post-sale (and not known beforehand). Apple can think they're valid as much as it likes, but it can't do a thing about it.

This country, by the way, is Germany.

-- Steve

Re:at some point...

[toriver]

I don't sign anything when I buy my groceries at a store, but its still a binding contract because something have been exchanged.

That's because there's a law that regulates the purchase, and declares the money to be legal tender and that you own the goods after you have paid for it.

Now, what law talks about EULAs as contracts?

Re:at some point...

[misterpies]

No because slavery is illegal. You can't make an enforceable contract to do anything illegal.

But you could very easily put up a sign by your door that anyone entering the premises has to pay you money. That's what happens at most museums.

Of course, unless you've got something to show them, you wouldn't get many visitors that way.

Re:at some point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. Come back from holiday yet, slacker?

I've had the pleasure of working with German programmers who came to the US to work and German programmerss who worked in Germany. The ones in the US quickly became amazingly productive. The ones in Germany? Couldn't make a milestone to save their life. Strict adherence to time put into work, little thought of being extremely productive while AT work, no concept of busting their ass to save their company OR their job by putting in the work required - traditionally done either by working harder during business hours - OR by (gasp!) staying late/getting in early.

And I swear the bums I talked to took 2-3 hour lunches every day, plus were barely there for 6-7 hours including that spectacular lunches.

And before you think they were avoiding me, the CEO spent 6 months of the year in the US office with us - the other 6 was spent at the German office. During those 6 months virtually all of the slackers ended up given the boot. Turnover was simply astonishing.

Guess that's what happens when you have an entrenched welfare system that's second only to France.

Re:at some point...

[Ed Avis]

in consideration of using a vendor's software you agree to their licensing agreement.

I think this is begging the question. Who is to say that you don't have the right to use the software anyway? If you had that right to start with, then it couldn't form consideration for a contract.

Only if you assume that by default you have no rights to install and run the software you paid for does it become possible to talk about agreeing to conditions in exchange for getting some rights. But it's that assumption that people are challenging. If you bought some software you already have the right to use it, and no further contract with the vendor is necessary.

Re:at some point...

[leandrod]

> if they're CHRP, than doesn't that make the whole comment about not needing an Apple BIOS to run OS X become wrong?

Kinda.

> Apple computers don't have a BIOS, they have OpenFirmware

Yes, but a BIOS isn't a BIOS anymore; I mean, no one uses it anymore as a Basic Input and Output System, as it was used by the original PC-DOS. Nowadays the word BIOS is used to describe just motherboard firmware, of which OpenFirmware is a standard.

> the CHRP specification requires computers to boot using OpenFirmware. Sounds like it's probably using pretty much the same boot process to me.

Yes, your point being?

What can cause the original statement to be construed as misleading is that not needing Apple ROM is a feature of recent versions of Mac OS, not of the motherboard firmware.

Whats the....

[NDPTAL85]

...point?

I mean really. Open sourcers, whats the point?

Want to run OS X? Buy a Mac!

Re:Whats the....

[mschoolbus]

Cause some of us want a decent OS running on fairly priced hardware... A very useful and pretty UI on a very stable OS, thats the point. Aqua I believe is better than anything else available.

Re:Whats the....

[NDPTAL85]

Wouldn't that pretty much describe Windows XP running on cheap PC hardware to a T? Luna compared to Aqua...well there's very little difference to me.

Keep in mind that I'm no Windows Fanboy. I've been a Mac user since I was in the first grade (which would have been 1985) but I have to be honest, using Windows XP Pro is as easy as using Mac OS X. Until someone makes advances in AI technology I don't think either OS will gain that much of a foothold over the other.

Re:Whats the....

[Anonymous Coward]

Cause some of us want a decent OS running on fairly priced hardware... A very useful and pretty UI on a very stable OS, thats the point. Aqua I believe is better than anything else available.

Too bad it only runs on some of the most expensive PC-class hardware available. The lowest end eMac is still far more expensive than a mid-range Pentium 4 system is. They make great (expensive) laptops though.

Non-Apple BIOS

[extrarice]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the second-rev G3 machines (blue and white towers), hasn't the Apple BIOS been unnecessary? Or am I confusing the Software-ROM (that the New World mac architecture introduced, ROM-in-RAM) with something else?

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[JayPee]

If I remember correctly, there's still a small ROM that handles boot information, etc. Most of the higher toolbox functions are now held in RAM.

Here's the technote about it;
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn116 7.htm l

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[transient]

All "New World" Macintoshes use Open Firmware, an IEEE standard which (I think) was originally developed by Sun. You can find more information here.

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[Professor_Quail]

check out the MacOnLinux homepage, I couldn't find any specific info, but it says right there on the main page, "No ROM needed".

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[Elwood P Dowd]

Not only that, but MOL has been running on non-Apple boxes (IBMs) for a long time. The submitted story is so inaccurate that it's as if the submitter was trolling for corrections.

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[CowboyBob500]

From the MacOnLinux homepage - "Mac-on-Linux makes it possible to run Mac OS (including OS X) under Linux/ppc .

Bob

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[stripes]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but since the second-rev G3 machines (blue and white towers), hasn't the Apple BIOS been unnecessary?

With the Apple "new world" machines the OS isn't in the BIOS, but the BIOS is still needed to load the OS into RAM in the first place, and to do some inital set up of the hardware and a few other pre-OS jobs. Much like the BIOS in a PC, or even more like the Sun OpenFirmware (since it is in fact a FORTH boot enviroment maybe licenced from Sun or just extreamly closely modeled after it).

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[Elwood P Dowd]

IBM ships computers that can run LinuxPPC.

Re:Non-Apple BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Much like the BIOS in a PC, or even more like the Sun OpenFirmware (since it is in fact a FORTH boot enviroment maybe licenced from Sun or just extreamly closely modeled after it)."

It IS Open Firmware. I believe Sun opened the kimono to the IEEE almost ten years ago, and AFAIK it's been a standard (#1275 IIRC) since 1994.

Someone else posted that its use began with the New World machines (the first being the original iMac). Actually, all Macs with a PCI bus (pretty much everything after mid-1995 or so) include Open Firmware. But IIRC you couldn't boot into it until New World (you had to use a serial port instead). Check out the three OF technotes somewhere at developer.apple.com for more.

HTH
WM

Perhaps I should RTFA...

[Xaroth]

but, will this mean that it would be possible to port OSX over to an x86 platform via this use?

(RTFA not possible due to /.'ing, go figure)

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think it still depends on PPC instruction sets - it's probably more like Wine, a set of APIs or whatever.

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[PaybackCS]

No, MOL only runs on PPC based Linux distros. It's simillar to Vmware or Wine on Intel/AMD boxes.

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[Junior J. Junior III]

It might, assuming you have access to all the source code. But not all of OS X is OSS. Significant chuncks of it are closed and proprietary. Without the source for that stuff the best you could do is hope to emulate G3/4 hardware on X86, which isn't really an attractive prospect.

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[Daniel_Staal]

No, this is just running OSX on a PPC chip (inside a linux shell). Porting to x86 would require different binarys, which would mean access to the full source code. (Not just Darwin, which already runs on x86.)

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "significant chunks" you mean "the Aqua interface", then sure. That's almost all that's still closed.

In fact, I downloaded a version of Darwin for my computer. Unfortunately, ViA chipsets aren't supported, so it won't run on my main machine.

Re:Perhaps I should RTFA...

[LurkerXXX]

The Aqua interface is *the* significant chunk. Without it, you might as well just install FreeBSD or OpenBSD. The reason OSX is cool is that it finally puts a nice GUI on a *nix. Without the GUI, it's just another *nix and we already have plenty that run fine on cheap x86 hardware, thank you very much.

The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the giant horn that sticks out of the monitor. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to get a closer look at the screen only to have it poke me in the eye. The wings are cool, though.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Big Mark]

I'm just waiting for Hercules to appear and shovel shit for weeks. Might get rid of the smell... or is that the pizza I dropped in the PSU? I'll never know!

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[bracher]

funny, but not entirely accurate. not that one can be completely accurate when discussing mythological creatures, but......

a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Jace of Fuse!]

a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you're right... that's not his horn... that's his penis! Eww!

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[cheezit]

And a Unisys is a cheesy attempt to run a Microsoft OS on a many-proc box.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Also referred to as an Alicorn, a winged equine with a single spiraling ivory horn centered on the upper precranial region. Of course, the mythical but less well known Bicorn also falls under this category. All of these were a favorite prey of Gryphons. (see Gryphon, Bicorn, Unicorn)

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[erikdotla]

So we obviously have a huge problem here. It won't poke you in the eye, but now we risk the computer flying away into the night. While it could create a nice artistic shot as it passed before the moon, at just the right angle so we could see the silouhette, we risk our machines flying away.

This is the problem I've always had with Apple. They're so shortsighted that they don't think about the needs of users - all they care about is artistic aesthetics of their computers. My PC will never fly away, because I can do anything I want to it. I don't have to install wings if I don't want to, and I can put the horn on the back and sides to avoid injury. Once again, Apple screws all of us by creating a pretty machine that doesn't work the way we want - e.g., it flies away without any control by the user.

Steve Jobs is really losing his mind. First the iMac, now this. Seriously, we need to boycott Apple. I think all of the Slashdot crowd should collectively work toward this goal, and make it a priority one item. This is where our focus should be - stop the flying macs. This is absolute absurdity. Once the Slashdot crowd puts their minds together and stops bickering - and we've demonstrated in the past a strong ability to stop the flamewars and put our differences aside to work toward a single goal - there's no telling what we can do! We could get Steve Jobs fired, and all macs returned to their non-flying status!

Let's get to it!

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap - you just won the loser of the day award. Congratulations. For you prize, you can put the following in your sig:

"I'm such a dork I like to talk about winged mythical creatures! No, I've never kissed a girl! Thanks for asking! Do you want to see my collection of dice?"

Again, congratulations.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

pegacorn/unisus....unisys?

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

Pegasus, Unicorn or whatever -- My Roc owns!

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[decepty]

As much as your unfounded anti-Mac sentiment irks me (I am a devout Mac user since elementary school) I am not going to get into the great Mac Vs. PC debate here. Instead, I would like to draw your attention to the the fact that this post makes absolutely no sense. Wow, you got modded 4, great... Personally I would have labeled this as "Offtopic" seeing as how we go from a mythical beast pun to an Apple boycott war-cry. But here's the kicker; the Pegasos (basis of the Pegasus pun that was getting worked on this thread) IS NOT MADE BY APPLE, nor sponsored by Apple. As was stated in a previous post it very well may be in violation of Apple's EULA. So good sir, if your computer sprouts a horn and wings and flies off into the night, I would try to correctly identify the make & model before you use it as a platform to launch an unfounded Steve Jobs/Apple-bashing diatribe. You will only end up looking dumb.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

After Berkeley Systems came out with the flying winged-toasters in AfterDark, it really was just a matter of time until we had flying winged-macs. In fact, I'm surprised it took so long after Apple finally went to a Berkeley OS for it happen.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[suss]

a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.

And then there's ofcourse Unisus, its bastard brother... it tried to sue Pegacorn but is now largely irrelevant and working as a services horse.

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[mtm]

Well, at least 'Pegacorn' sounds better than 'Unisus'

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Foehg]

What does that make Unisys?

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is to wishing I didn't just type Bicorn into Google Image Search....

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[ACKbie]

I couldn't decide if he was kidding or somehow managed to take offense to the flying macs post, so i went to his page and discovered the following. I think I understand now.

Psyrin19: u do know what 420 is ?
Xohnoitsnicox: 420 is the holy number
Psyrin19: it is?
Psyrin19: smoking pot is a holy ordeal?
Xohnoitsnicox: the perfect alignment of the suns of saturn and the elevnth paralel of Nfur Groth Ma'gon
Psyrin19: saturn is my planet =p
Xohnoitsnicox: ah so you are of Ianol Gre'non Asnor?
Psyrin19: i uh guess
Psyrin19: ....
Psyrin19: are you an astrologer kind of person?
Xohnoitsnicox: Tell me.... have you had your Tabaz yet?
Psyrin19: i havent a clue what it is
Psyrin19: =/
Psyrin19: but tell me anyway
Xohnoitsnicox: the rabbit said so too...

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Graf Typo]

a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.

Now that would be an appropriate hacker mascot: an animal that can only be caught by a virgin!

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Interesting? It was a *JOKE* people. You know, the screensaver, AfterDark which was most well known for the flying winged toasters? The company was called "Berkeley Systems" even though they had NOTHING to do with BSD. Geeze-us. It should +1 Funny if anything...

Re:The problem with Pegasos

[decepty]

Wow, isn't that the post where I claimed to be an jailed albino nicknamed "great white" that other inmates poked with a stick, tried to convince the idiot kid that AIM'd me to have a religious sing-a-long where you dig your fingers into your eyes and scream and claimed that I was instant messaging via a Speak'n'Spell glued to a cell phone?
Yes, you can make anyone look like a freak when you selectivly clip their LiveJournal posts out of context. A+ for you!

what slashdotting?

[Neophytus]

Pegasos: A New Interesting & Sexy Platform
By Eugenia Loli-Queru - Posted on 2003-05-19 08:09:54
Genesi was very kind to send us in a fully featured Pegasos-based computer with MorphOS and Debian pre-installed. Here is our review with a number of screenshots of the supported OSes.

The Hardware, MorphOS
The hardware

First of all, we all have to understand what we are dealing with here. Genesi's business is to create a brand new platform. Not just OS software. And not just hardware. But a brand new platform based on the IBM/Motorola PowerPC G3 and G4 CPUs. In fact, the whole point of the Pegasos platform is for users to select the OS(es) that they want to run by buying only the motherboard & CPU and then adding supported hardware on top of it and literally building the system from scratch. Does it sound too geeky? Trust me, it is. And this can be the biggest strength of this platform or its main drawback for wider adoption. It depends how you see it.

The motherboard itself is a slick piece of hardware. It is a MicroATX mainboard (236 mm x 172 mm), 600 MHz PowerPC G3 750 CXe, (scaling up to a Dual PowerPC G4 MPC 7450). Two sockets of PC133 RAM (up to 2 GB), an AGP slot, 3 PCI slots, USB 1.1, Firewire 400, RealTek NIC, AC97 sound card, two ATA-100 channels, PS/2 mouse and keyboard. I was sent a G3 at 600 Mhz and except for the fact that the machine arrived with the CPU card floating around (it didn't have any screws or holders to keep the CPU in the slot during shipping-- so beware if you are moving houses), the CPU did deliver according to the expectations (glxgears -- just as an example -- delivers between 50 and 60 fps in software mode with an ATi Radeon 7500 AGP, while my dual Celeron 533 on Mandrake does between 80 and 90 fps with a 3Dfx Voodoo5).

If I am to pick my favorite feature of the system that would be its noise levels: the system is completely silent. Worse point: It's price. At around $450-500, it is pricey. For this amount of CPU power and motherboard, I wouldn't personally pay more than $250-300. But hey, Pegasos is exotic in many ways and that compensates a bit.

So, the hardware is slick, but what is the hardware without the actual software, right? Currently, with the Pegasos platform you will find two operating systems included and further supported: MorphOS 1.3 and a port of Debian GNU/Linux 3.x.

MorphOS

MorphOS is an interesting little operating system, but it is too little to lead the "platform" idea all by its own. The version I was sent (1.3) was problematic and nowhere near a true 1.0 commercial release, quality-wise. The main reason why someone would want to run MorphOS is to get access to the thousand of AmigaOS software via its emulation "A-BOX" kit, which enables MorphOS to run classic Amiga programs, 68k/PPC that do not depend on the Amiga's custom chips (there are no more than 80-90 native MorphOS applications/ports that I could find in one place). Unfortunately, except for a handful of supported AmigaOS applications, the rest wouldn't just refuse to run, they would completely crash the system (so much for protected memory). Reseting the system left me with an un-initialized keyboard that wouldn't work until I turned off the machine completely and left it off for 10 seconds or so. I presume that one of the ways MorphOS manages to boot in less than 5 seconds is by not initializing the hardware during boot-up. Yes, you read that right, it only takes 5 seconds to boot up to a fully functional MorphOS, and yes, MorphOS feels extremely fast (loading apps, UI responsiveness etc). UAE (Amiga Emulator) runs on MorphOS, but it is not a real solution in this case, as we could run UAE on our Windows too if we need to. The whole point of MorphOS is to load AmigaOS software easily and painlessly interacting normally with the native apps. But that part is not worked out perfectly yet.

The OS came with a media player (Frogger) that can play divx and mpeg, there are three browsers available for it, with similar page rendering

Yeah you can run it but....

[BWJones]

From the article: On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it.

I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you'd absolutely hate this set up http://www.maconlinux.com/sshots/pic10.jpg where Linux is running Mac running Virtual PC running Windows running DOS.

Personally, I don't understand why they leave it at DOS. DOS can run a C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it). Considering the speed of CP/M systems back in 1980, this setup should yield at least twice the performance of those old 1MHz clunkers.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Lane.exe]

Why stop there? Let's see if we can get a Ti-81 emulator to run too! Maybe we can even code an "abacus" program! Woohoo!

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the tester did run MOL with OSX on x11
which is in fact pretty slow.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[gearry]

From the article:
"You can run MacOS or MacOSX via Mac-On-Linux without needing to buy Apple hardware or acquire a BIOS. Yes, MacOSX runs, but don't expect great performance."

It should be noted that the hardware used by the reviewer was not the fastest, and OSX would be slow on it even if it was booted native, and not run in Mac-On-Linux as is being discussed. What is interesting here is not the perfomance, but the fact that it can be done at all. The system may not be usuable now for day to day work, but if the company manages to stay afloat perhaps it would be a workable solution for some people. Of course what I would love to see is cheap, customizable hardware where I can multi-boot OSX and by other OSs of choice.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[LoudMusic]

Strange, I get the same performance out of 600mhz G3 Apple machines as well.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Shadowmist]

The important major difference here is lack of hardware video support for OS X which would account for much of the drag. OS X on a 233mhz rev A Bondi would probably run circles around an MOL implementation but that should not be any real surprise.

MorphOS is an old name from the latter dregs of the Amiga era, along with the infamous "A-Box". The A-Box was a promised Super-Amiga with all sorts of gee-whiz features for the time that sounded great. Trouble was it was nothing other than vaporware.

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and don't forget to run VPC in classic mode, so Mac OS 9 gets emulated as well! It will be the most killer set up ever!

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[istewart]

Unfortunately, Virtual PC does not run under Classic... it needs direct access to hardware which is why they did the OS X port.

Also, Connectix Virtual Game Station won't run under Classic either... which sucks, because then all this could be done, except running off a PlayStation emulator...

Re:Yeah you can run it but....

[Anonymous Coward]

C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it

Yeah fucking bullshit you have, CP/M 2.2+ requires a Z80 and 64K minimum RAM, as well as a standard 80 column display, so that's bullshit for starters. And the Vic20 emulator for the c64 only runs simple basic software without direct register access, so bullshit again.

Go fuck yourself fag.

Note: No US resellers.

[drinkypoo]

Here is the order links page. They say you can purchase online, but if you go there, you find out two things; You have to create a damned account, and they are sold out anyway. (this/A> is the purchase page; Note the IP address in the URL. Classy.)

The SSL certificate is not from one of the "trusted" providers, nor does the name on it match the site name, since they're using an IP.

I decided to go through the rigamarole of creating an account to find out the price when they DO get them in, only to find out that while they are sold out, you cannot even list a price.

In other words, this is a non-product. They made a small run of them apparently, but you might as well just call it a beta test, because that's what it seems to be. They have announced that they're bringing out a G4-based replacement, and a G4 upgrade for the current G3 board. All of this will be neatly swept under the rug by dramatically more powerful systems based on next-generation 64 bit PowerPC.

If you need a cheap system to run MacOSX, buy a used Mac or one of those ATX systems based on Mac motherboards. Both are available now and not very expensive, all things considered, plus faster than this unavailable hardware.

Re:Note: No US resellers.

[Anonymous Coward]

hey did you know, prewiew is good, umkay

Re:Note: No US resellers.

[downix]

Nobody's yet signed up to be a US reseller. If you can recommend
someone, we're always interested.

--
Nate Downes
Genesi SARL

Re:Note: No US resellers.

[Brett Glass]

We'd be glad to become a reseller if you offer a non-GPLed operating system. NetBSD, perhaps?

Hey

[Billly Gates]

Stop stealing idea's from SCO.

Just what I need!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I have been waiting for this! A computer that will run MacOS X and Linux slower than the slowest Apple Macintosh. Now where is my wallet?!?!?

Re:Just what I need!

[warpath]

Heh. Exactly.

Because after countless Slashdot discussions, it's a well-known fact that this community's biggest problem with the Mac platform is that the hardward is too darned fast.

This is the sickest Hack ever!

[ehudokai]

fp!

Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?

It completely defeats the purpose of MOL... and Mac OS X. MOL is designed to allow you to access your mac os x programs when running linux on a dual boot mac, but as far as I know you loose most of the flashy speed that you would get from a standard OS X install.

I say just run linux and be happy.

Re:This is the sickest Hack ever!

[questamor]

If MOL manages to get to the point where it can run OSX as well as it runs OS9, then it's set for some good things.

I run OSX, OS9 and Debian PPC iMac 400. Under MOL, OS9 runs as quickly as it ever did on the iMac. (ignoring for the moment the fucked up networking which is flakey-as).

For running an OSX system on non apple hardware, it may be possible to get a Pegasos board, booting an absolutely minimal Linux install purely for the purposes of bypassing the Apple Hardware Tax.

Re:This is the sickest Hack ever!

[ramzak2k]

totally agree, I too prefer linux for reliability and apple for eye candy.

Thus the system I run - RH 8.0 + KDE with the a theme thats a lot like some OS we know :)

Re:This is the sickest Hack ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

fp!

YOU FAIL IT!

Re:This is the sickest Hack ever!

[axxackall]

Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?

Personally, I run Gentoo Linux PPC and have the best possible performace I can get on the hardware. But from time to time I have to run MOL (with Macos9) in order to run:

• games - there are some good educational games, not ported to Linux (ppc) yet;
• flash - there are some site with good content but with bad design decisions to limit to only flash compatible users;

Also I have to reboot to Macos directly some times for other reasons: scanner, DVD playing.

But b/c I do it very occasionly I don't need OSX - Macos9 is more than enough.

Re:This is the sickest Hack ever!

[Elwood P Dowd]

Architectural differences between OS9 and OSX will mean that MOL will be significantly slower for OSX for a long time.

MOL has to buffer the screen in order to make its graphics drivers glue the two operating systems together. MOL-in-a-window may buffer the screen twice or more. Iduno. OSX buffers each window, composites it, and buffers the resulting screen. Between the two of them, you've got so many layers of buffers that the MOL+OSX GUI is destined to be really tetchy.

If some OpenGL hackers were to spend a while writing a Mac OS X OpenGL driver for MOL, and then MOL were able to pass those OpenGL calls to the Linux OpenGL drivers, QuartzExtreme could give us bufferless graphics for MOL+OSX.

Does that sound like a lot of work? Yes, yes it does. I don't think it'll probably ever happen. That means I don't think the MOL folks will ever be able to get OSX running like they've got OS9 running right now. If some big company threw a couple (good) full time developers at it, then maybe.

Is it really the first?

[Wesley Felter]

Couldn't you run OS X on MOL on an IBM RS/6000, er pSeries? And what about the Briq?

Re:Is it really the first?

[Hungus]

Yes you can run it on any modern ppc based system. As you pointed out it is quite far from being the first.

Woops, I should really use preview.

[drinkypoo]

Oh well, at least you can read it.

Violation of User License

[leinhos]

I believe that running MacOS on anything but Apple-approved HW would be in violation of the MacOS Users License.

Re:Violation of User License

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't follow any licenses other than the GPL. As Ghandi put it, "You can break the law as long as you honestly believe that it is wrong."

Because I reject the Apple license, I have gained the right to liberate as many copies of their software as I want.

Re:Violation of User License

[zakezuke]

Procedure... A

#1> Buy MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple

Procedure B
#1> Buy PEGASOS motherboard
#2> Put Motherboard in old mac
#3> Call it an upgrade (The hardware {case} was approved by apple)

Procedure C
#1> Pirate MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple

I'm not sure about the legal standpoints of running mac software on non-mac systems, but ya know, I don't give a shit. The SIAA isn't likely to go after *me* if I bought the software, no more then I've ever heard a case of mac emulation being pursued provided they bought the required ROMs. I should beable to put MacOS in my toster if I so choose to, dispite it being a violation of my license agreement. The worst thing I can see Apple doing is not support this alternative platform.

Bogus Post! Did you read the marketing blurb?

[crovira]

They don't have a screen shot of Aqua and they only said that their OS sucked through a straw and needed something better like Linux or OS X (and not even Apple would object unless they try to get Aqua running on it. Then they'd feel the wrath of Jobs and his legal minions.)

This was a bogus post.

Re:Bogus Post! Did you read the marketing blurb?

[Anonymous Coward]

well here osnews does show OSX installing inside of a linux enviroment

The first...?

[ikewillis]

Let's not forget that MacOS X can also be run on an AmigaOne through Mac-on-Linux.

From the Mac-on-Linux FAQ:

Q: Does MOL run on the AmigaOne hardware (or in general, on non-Apple hardware)?
A: It does. MOL runs on any PowerPC hardware (except 601-based systems). However, the EULA of MacOS prohibits its usage on non-Apple hardware (it is of course perfectly legal to use MOL to boot a second Linux thoiugh).

Re:The first...?

[eMartin]

Obviously Mac OS has been running on MOL since MOL was created (duh). Your quote doesn't say anything about Mac OS X though.

Re:The first...?

[ikewillis]

I'm sorry, I linked to the wrong /. article. The correct one is here.

Re:The first...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the AmigaOne website hasn't had a news post since Nov. 2002. And they talk about stuff in "early 2003"... Pfffft, whatever.

They're going nowhere.

oh but that price problem

[loomis]

You are paying $500 for a 600MHZ PowerPC G3 motherboard at the entry level. Not exactly a bargain by any stretch. We're talking Celeron-esque performance here for considerably more money, not something that's going to attract a lot of customers in my opinion. This is similar to the problem we saw in an article here awhile ago about building one's own Macintosh: high cost of parts made the project rather unreasonable for anyone other than financially-stable tinkerers. And moreover, judging from the author's conclusions, the OS isn't exactly stable either. Someday, in a happy world, there will be inexpensive Mac clones and we will even be able to build them ourselves from a vast and inexpensive selection of parts.

Loomis

Re:oh but that price problem

[NDPTAL85]

You were right about everything else except the OS not being stable. Mac OS X is VERY stable. Its built on Unix for crying out loud. It gets better uptimes than Windows XP thats for sure.

So make sure you update your Mac knowledge concerning OS X.

Re:oh but that price problem

[questamor]

MacOS X is stable, but the article describes MorphOS - the PPC AmigaOS 'clone' which isn't quite all there yet.

Some small missing things, like say, networking :)

Re:oh but that price problem

[Anonymous Coward]

no no ... don't correct him. Your Mac knowledge is pitifully weak in comparison to that contained in his huge arrogant mind.

Re:oh but that price problem

[Anonymous Coward]

What's different is the markup on additional parts; thrown into a standard cheapo case, with a "BFI*" drive, $20 CD-*... and the somewhat pricey registered/buffered memory these Articia-based boards unfortunately need to be stable*, both the Pegasos and AmigaOne come out around eMaciMac territory. That's new pricing; obviously you can pick up a non-LCD iMac on the cheap on eBay. Price/performance with 'standard' OSes is arguable, and thus a lot does hinge on whether you want to support the underdogs (who, in turn, are supporting useful projects- the AmigaOne developers have put a lot of work into PPCBoot / U-Boot, and Genesi are at least giving a good illusion of supporting the NetBSD port to the Pegasos).

*BFI: Old EFNet #Computers vernacular for "Big F*n IDE."
*CD-*: Recently picked up a wonderful rebadged AOpen/Benq 52x24x52 for this price at Best Buy; it can happen. Do Apple drives support Seamless Link/other advanced underrun protection?
*Yeah, this part sucks, and unfortunately, I think the real issue could've been solved with a few more capacitors on either board design. However, the Pegasos is already EOLed in favor of the Pegasos II, and whether their reasons for switching chipsets (Articia -> Marvell) are right or wrong, the redesign probably implies more robust memory support no matter what.
*'Standard OSes': OS X/BSD/Linux. If you look at the Amiga-scene OSes this hardware was really built for, and the software that runs on them, there's no comparison. MorphOS needs to gain more stability and features, and AmigaOS4 needs to be released- but both are *ridiculously* optimized by modern standards, as are their common applications (though a Mozilla port would be welcome, and far more doable as of Firebird). This does come at a price- the stability will only be as good as MacOS 9 with these first releases- but that never stopped Mac users from being productive under MacOS. OS4 sounds like it'll ship with some process-protection built in, and MorphOS *could* easily best that if they'd develop their native mode instead of hyping the AmigaOS compatibility you people don't care about.

Re:oh but that price problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh go ahead and correct him. Your Mac knowledge might be pitifully weak in comparison to that contained in his huge arrogant mind but since it's positively massive when held up next to the thimble of a brain pan the previous AC is relying on to keep breathing I say fuck it. Correct him all you want.

Not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"

The AmigaOne can run the MacOS through Mac-On-Linux as well, and I'm sure that there are others. Show me a non-Mac platform that can run OS X without the assistance of Mac-On-Linux, and I'll be impressed. But this is not a first.

mac on linux

[swifticus]

Mac-on-Linux makes it possible to run Mac OS (including OS X) under Linux/ppc.

The Mac-On-Linux capabilities of this system with debian would make it a perfect solution for an avid linux user to access Mac new media software without having to purchase two systems. I bet if it was tested with the G4 dual processor systems they discussed, performace would be much enhanced in OS X, and even more enhanced in OS 9.

I would definitely love to be able to run adobe products on my linux box.

Re:mac on linux

[urbanRealist]

Can't you run abobe stuff on linux using code weavers?

Mac OS XP

[DeadBugs]

I'm still waiting for a way to run OS X on an Athlon XP (or other x86) based system. We all know it can be done. I would like to try OSX but the cost of the hardware in addition to the software has been prohibitive. So until there is an x86 version I will have to wait for a cheap sys on EBay.

Re:Mac OS XP

[MyHair]

Don't hold your breath for an x86 OS X that will run on commodity hardware, but that would be cool.

After OS X came out I reasearched the slowest cheapest PPC it would run on--even considering MOL for non Apple platforms--and hunted for good deals on eBay. Old PPC equipment that can possibly run OS X or Linux ain't cheap!! I thought I found a decent deal on some RS/6000 PPC's, but the chip and architecture of that model (I forget which) made it unable to run Linux...only NetBSD and AIX would run on it. Plus it was missing some RAM that turns out to be orders of magnitude more expensive than their PC counterparts, even on eBay.

PPC stuff just isn't commodity hardware; it's expensive, even the old stuff. I just haven't yet been able to justify spending that kind of money on Apple when I see what it can buy in x86.

(I'm speaking for personal use purposes, so none of that "comparable hardware" stuff applies here. Two weeks ago my cheap power supply went out so I ran to the store and picked up another for $45. Not what you want for a production environment, but fine for home.)

Re:Mac OS XP

[GnuVince]

Apple is mainly a hardware company, so don't expect them to release an x86 version of MacOS X. And anyway, what's the big deal? You can get a eMac (w/ a G4 processor) for $749. That's pretty cheap and it's gonna work well: my G3 800Mhz iBook runs just fine. Stop crying about prices: iMacs, iBooks and eMacs are good machines and are pretty cheap (in price). On the other hand, PowerMacs and PowerBooks are power machines, and it's natural that they cost more

Re:Mac OS XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ, why do these comments STILL get modded up on every Mac story? Yes, it might be cool, no it will never, EVER happen. Apple would die for real if they were stupid enough to do that.

Stop talking about it and either buy a real Mac or shut up! Period.

Re:Mac OS XP

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty cheap and it's gonna work well:

Yeah, until you want to upgrade it or change the monitor.

What then, Skippy?

Re:Mac OS XP

[b-baggins]

If you're just buying a box to "play with OS X" on, then pick up a B&W 350 on e-bay for $300. Then you can upgrade your processor/Monitor to your heart's content.

Re:Mac OS XP

[MacDaffy]

Jesus christ, why do these comments STILL get modded up on every Mac story? Yes, it might be cool, no it will never, EVER happen. Apple would die for real if they were stupid enough to do that.

Apple will produce an x86 operating system and they won't die from it. It'll be for a very specific hardware configuration (on a licensed and/or Apple-branded machine). Your statement presumes that everyone will abandon PowerPC in droves.

There is an intrinsic value in buying PowerPC Macs: the tight integration of hardware and software. Most of us are not willing to give that up even if an x86 box is cheaper. The PPC 970 will make the combination even more attractive. That revenue stream will not dry up--indeed, it seems to be on the upswing.

Apple will realize a NEW revenue stream the minute they announce for x86. People with conforming machines will pay the $100 for the software to see if they can get a better computing experience. If the release is good enough, enterprises will be more inclined to take a look. That will engender developer interest. We're already seeing the value of Mac OS X's open source roots in that there's a flood of software that "just works" on the PPC side. This will be true, too, with a predictable, standardized x86 configuration.

The timing of the announcement of "Athens"--the more tightly-integrated PC from Microsoft and HP--is no coincidence. Microsoft doesn't mention Apple when it decries its "open source" competition. But you can bet that Bill Gates knows what's around the corner. It's why "trusted computing" is also a big deal with Wintel now.

Apple could "die", but it's demise would be self-inflicted. The company has everything going for it right now. Things are about to get interesting.

Re:Mac OS XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple stuff has pricedropped a lot, especially as of Quartz Extreme (QuartzGL) in Jaguar. In particular, old iMacs are now on price parity with old Pentium II hardware. (You may need to learn to distinguish the various models of iMac; if you don't know the difference between a DV and a Rev A/Rev B bondi, you'll see a lot of $800 pricetags and miss the real picture.)

The older hardware sometimes fetches *more,* because it was positioned higher in the product matrix (meaning people are trying to get back their $2,000 investments). Compare a Beige G3 to the iMac - both quite capable and comparable in speed, the former more expandable, but the latter much more OS X-ready - and you'll see the prices have only begun to level out. The Beige G3 towers take standard ATX supplies (and the desktop models can be made to do so, with the simple flip of a jumper), though you might need to redesign the cooling solution or switch cases with a swap.

The problem is that all the Apple hardware *previous* to that is suboptimal for desktop use in other ways- it predates SDRAM, and often PCI.

The Pegasos and AmigaOnes *are* a bit pricey now, but if they can get enough early adopters to create a market, there's no reason they can't reach rough price-parity with x86. The move to IBM chips should end the Motorola supply problems that have plagued previous attempts. So if you like PowerPC, the future does look brighter than it's been in years.

Re:Mac OS XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well except that you can get the same thing for like $350 in the PC world. Or maybe you haven't bothered to look... For $750 you could get a machine that is twice as fast as the fastest macs sold at the highest prices.

Apple banks on one of P. T .Barnums immutable laws of human nature: "You can fool some of the people all of the time."

Re:Mac OS XP

[BushLad]

I find that posts with bold text in them are more informative and interesting than posts without bold text.

Remember kids, if you are saying something that is important, use bold! OR ALL CAPS.

Re:Mac OS XP

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple will produce an x86 operating system and they won't die from it.

Christ, you got a crystal ball over there, sparky? You doin' pretty good in the stock market with it?

Oh, really? Sorry to hear that...

People with conforming machines will pay the $100 for the software

Hey, let me look into my crystal ball on this one, wouldja?

Apple will be forced to field tech support calls that cost them between $200-$500 from roughly 50% of the people purchasing their $100 OS. This is due to the dazzling array of incompatible hardware in the PC market.

Some of these people don't even realize they purchased Mac OS X, they thought they bought some new-fangled shiny version of Microsoft Office. Said people are disgusted that their entire hard drive has been wiped out by the installer, because all the Outlook worms they'd gotten in the past day were dutifully sitting in their inbox, and they really wanted to get around to running those after the upgrade.

(the latter bit is coming from someone who told another person to go out and buy Windows XP Professional in the store - since it's damn-near impossible to find Windows 2K Pro retail, and they wanted to stay at least within some kind of legal grey boundary - only to find them walking in the door a short time later carrying Office XP)

Apple Schmapple

[Seehund]

Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

One of the interesting points with the Pegasos is that it's a PPC based consumer-oriented (as in non-workstation/server á la IBM) system that's NOT from Apple, it comes on a nice micro-ATX mobo, and it comes with a rather new non-Apple OS! The POP concept has come to fruition, and hopefully the Teron PX (a.k.a. "AmigaOne XE" when marketed to AmigaOS users) will also do well.

That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system let's you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...

People might be interested in hearing a new Pegasos system has been announced for this autumn(?), which won't be hampered by the currently buggy Articia S northbridge. This will have a Marvell Discovery II northbridge (366(?) MHz DDR, gigabit ethernet...).

Re:Apple Schmapple

[axxackall]

Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

RTFA:

You can run MacOS or MacOSX via Mac-On-Linux without needing to buy Apple hardware or acquire a BIOS.

Does it answer your question?

Re:Apple Schmapple

[MyHair]

Why does Slashdot insist on posting anything "PPC" under the Apple category?

Well, to be annoyingly picky, it's in the Hardware Topic Category. It is in the apple Section, but there doesn't seem to be a PPC section or RS/6000 section or anything closer to appropriate than the Apple section.

Besides, a lot of geeks seem, like me, to be looking for a commodity PPC platform on which to play with LinuxPPC and OS X via MOL. (Yeah, yeah, licensing...tell me you never have anything unlicensed on your systems even temporarily. And some would willingly buy OS X for MOL for 'permanent' use and call it fair use.)

I guess they could've put it in the BSD section, but Books, Ask Slashdot, Developers, Features, Games, Interviews, Radio, Science and YRO seem less appropriate than Apple.

Re:Apple Schmapple

[Seehund]

RTFPost:

That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system lets you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...

[original superfluous apostrophe removed]

Running MacOS on MOL is not news, and even if it were news, IMO it would still not warrant placing this in the Apple section (thanks MyHair). The reviewed system runs several OSes natively, and the primary OS it's delivered with is one called MorphOS.

Re:Apple Schmapple

[bsharitt]

I heard somewhere that the Teron boards could run MacOS X nativley as if they were on real Apple hardware(not with MOL) can anyone confirm this.

Re:Apple Schmapple

[axxackall]

Lemme try one more time: it worth to remind OSX zealots that there is another choice. And it's good to put that reminder in the place where all OSX zealots would look at first. You've noticed it, you even talk to me - so it works :)

Re:Apple Schmapple

[Seehund]

That's not correct. Nothing but Apple Macs run MacOS natively AFAIK.

Actually, the Pegasos would be closer to a Mac than the Teron, as the Pegasos uses Open Firmware (but it still doesn't present itself as a Macintosh to MacOS, should you try to install it natively). The Terons use U-Boot (ex PPCBoot) firmware these days.

Apart from the firmware differences, MacOS doesn't come with drivers for the onboard components of a Teron or Pegasos. You need MOL.

Re:Apple Schmapple

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because any computer that can run a certain os should be put in that os's category. For example, all Dell x86 systems should come with a Linux header, since its possible to run Linux on them. Oh, and its possible to run FreeBSD on them also, guess two headers are now needed. Oh wait microsoft has half a dozen OS's that can be ran on those as well, lets add that to the heading as well. Oh and that BeOS x86 thing, that also can run on those Dells, better put BeOS in there as well, oh and ...

Not the correct issue.

[NDPTAL85]

I think you misunderstand the situation. It makes no difference if Apple makes the Mac or not. If its a 600Mhz G3 running OS X, then it WILL be slow.

Do we not remember how slow OS X ran on the current Macs of the time when it was introduced?

Re:Not the correct issue.

[BWJones]

Actually, I have a 600 Mhz G3 iMac running Webvision on OS X and it is plenty fast. Go ahead click around, it can take it.

Re:Not the correct issue.

[namespan]

I think it's more likely an issue with the emulation and video hardware. It's my understanding that Quartz (OS X's video rendering/compositing layer) is coupled with the specific sorts of hardware that Apple puts in their machine. Mess with that combo, and it's almost certain you're going to take a performance response hit as far as interacting with the UI or anything visual.

I've got a 333 Mhz Powerbook, and it runs OS X (10.1.5) at a sufficiently snappy speed to get plenty of stuff done. I *did* put a boatload of RAM in (320 MB total), which helps quite a bit, but if a 600 MHz machine isn't doing as well with half the RAM, the fault isn't the design of OS X or the hardware... it's gotta be something in how the emulation is done, or more likely, as I said, the integration between the OS and the video hardware.

Re:Not the correct issue.

[Solkar]

I use a 400 Mhz G3 iMac at home. There were times before OSX 10.1 that performance was really pokey, but not since. I'm on 10.2.5 now, and I have no noticeable speed problems. It seems to respond about as well as my work machine (1Ghz P4) running Windows 2000 Professional.

Wal*Mars

[AtariAmarok]

The happy face logo is now seen on the Red Planet? What next? Falling prices on falling stars?

"Wal-Mars. Always low gravity. Always."

not that slow

[stego]

I'm very familiar w/ OS X on a G3 400 iMac, a G3 400 PowerBook, and a G4 450 Cube, and on none of these boxes is performance even close to that bad. The iMac can have its moments, but nothing like that.

Re:not that slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it isn't slow if you're used to running around on a moped, but everyone else will point and laugh at you.

ickest Hack ever! 1 use doesn't induce vomitting

[adzoox]

Running Linux PPC then Mac On Linux allows me to run the Mac OS on my Apple Network Server allowing it's usefulness to be #1 on the list of:

Usefullness

Historical/Collectible value

Coolness factor (one of the coolest enclosures Apple has built

Hardware compliment

I have 5 36 gig 15K RPM SCSI HDs, 1 gig of interleaved RAM, the processor upgrade, a slot load DVD drive, and a CD Burner, + 4 multiport PCI ethernet cards and one I/O card on my ANS.

Linux PPC and Mac On Linux saved this beast from eBay.

*for what's it's worth the ANS at the time it shipped could only run AIX until Linux PPC was able to come out with hacks to make it disregard the boot kernel.

Wait A Minute...

[neildiamond]

Wasn't the Amiga the first non Apple (certified) computer to boot MacOS? Besides, I thought that this would run on any PPC machine under Linux. What's the news here?

Re:Wait A Minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, sorry. It was the first *uncertified* computer to emulate MacOS reasonably (often faster than the Apple hardware itself), though hardware (AMax, Emplant) was required to make legal use of Apple ROMs.

I'm not sure what the first legit Apple clone was, but it probably dates back to the era of the Outbound portables.

Dave Haynie, a prominent Commodore engineer, later went on to work for Pios (later renamed Metabox), one of many companies founded to ride the PowerPC clone-wave. Apple rescinded their licensing contracts with the clonemakers, and that was the end of that. (Metabox went on to some minor success in the Mac accellerator and set-top-box market, but I believe they're defunct now. Dave's certainly moved on to other things.)

Re:Wait A Minute...

[hazydave]

Whoa! My ears are burning!

There actually was a Mac "emulator" for the Atari ST (which everyone called the "Jackintosh" when it came out) first. I didn't agree with the term "emulator" everyone used, since it really wasn't an emulator, but a port of MacOS to the Atari hardware, without Apple's permission. I dubbed this a "Hostile Port".

The early versions for the Amiga worked as well, but eventuall you got versions that ran as a more-or-less well behaved task under AmigaOS. That was pretty cool, if you needed Mac software... you could have Mac and Amiga at the same time. In those days, the Amiga had one of the fastest Mac hard drives, thanks to DMA, available -- dramatically faster than any "real" Mac.

I was a founder of Metabox, along with Andy Finkel (ex-Director of Software at Amiga) and two German businessmen, Stefan Domeyer and Geerd Ebeling. We were originally called PIOS Computer, back in the Mac Clone days. PIOS/Metabox had the first 300MHz Mac Clone shipping -- that should set the coordinated for your way-back machine. We bought the motherboards from UMAX, which also carried the license, and made our own CPU cards (actually designed by Thomas Rudloff).

I was working on a CHRP system, which wasn't terribly easy in the day. It had a separate CPU module, along the lines of what they had planned for the second generation BeBox (not precisely the same, but had they gone forward, it probably would have become so), and we had single and quad processor modules in development, G2 stuff in Apple terms. Future modules could have done G3, G4, or PPC970 for that matter. But Apple did pull the plug before this was finished, and Metabox [rightly] didn't see a viable market in a PPC machine that couldn't run MacOS. Of course, the Mac had over twice the market it has today.

The CPU modules kept selling, and Metabox acquired a US branch, based in Austin Texas, to bring some of this to the US market, but it wasn't expecially good timing, since Apple finally got aggressive with G3 machines.

We had three STBs -- the Metabox 500, based on the PC architecture and OS/2, the Metabox 100, which was an OEM from Teknema/Ravisent, and the never-completed Metabox 1000. That was my design, Thomas joined in later, and we had more people building add-ins for it, like a DVD/DVB decoder. This was roughly DVD-player-shaped. It ran a proprietary, AmigaOS-like OS developed under Andy and one of the Germans, Carsten Scholte(sp), called CaOS. The Amiga coonection was pretty key -- we tapped into numerous, well developed technologies like MUI (OO-graphics), Voyager (a browser), etc. This all ran on a ColdFire 5307/5407, not my top choice for a CPU, but a decent enough CPU if you had hardware for MPEG.

Metabox failed when the management got totally nuts, due to the stock prices rising (my shares, which I couldn't sell then, peaked at about US$5.8 million, but I got out of Metabox in terrible financial shape, with them owing me about $75,000 in salary alone). Basically, they spent money on nutty sponsorships: they tried to create a German basketball league, they sponored Forumla 1 racing, Soccer teams, etc. They bought a small film studio.

Meanwhile, the engineering team wasn't getting paid regularly, as the shares started falling in the fall of 2000. They pulled some maneuvers, probably illegal, that effectively stole all of my and Andy's shares in the company, replacing them with then-worthless, unregistered shares, all without our permission. A year of in-and-out of bankruptcy killed off the positive happenings at the US branch (I was CTO there in late 2000/early 2001, we were getting serious interest in the STB from Blockbuster, Enron, and others... ok, so maybe it was fated, anyway, to fail :-).

They went into another bankruptcy late last year, more of the Chapter 7 than Chapter 11 sort from what I heard, but I don't know the German rules that well. Basically, the management proved, in less successful times, to be a bunch of criminals, stabbing their own partners in the back this way. I'd love to report they're all in jail now, but German law doesn't seem to have much to say unless you're German (they actually have excellent protections for employees - thankfully, most of our crew didn't get hosed).

Re:Wait A Minute...

[samdu]

Wow! Dave Haynie. Haven't heard from you in a while. Mind telling an old-timer Amiga user what you've been up to of late? :)

Re:Wait A Minute...

[hazydave]

What HAVE I been doing lately? Well, in The Work Thing, I'm the principle HW guy at Sizig, Inc; a small startup company, based in Philadephia. Our primary project is a consumer robot, but probably not what you're thinking. If successful, maybe a sort of "C64 of home robots", in most of the ways you could apply that idea. This is the best thing I've been involved with since Commodore. It's a good feeling!

We're well aware of the bad investment environment these days -- you're crazy to do a start-up now, right? But we have, it's been going over a year-and-a-half (I was involved since April 2002, and fulltime since October), so we've kept the development smart, as opposed to BIG, and will not rush this project. I'm still working most days out of my home office/lab (about 1000 sq. ft. in my cellar, more space than I personally had a Commodore).

In the shorter term, we have a spin-off of some elements of this technology into another market, which I won't discuss right now. This is one of those curious markets that's fairly large, not understood to be that large by most people, and totally back in the 40's or so, technology-wise. We think that dragging them into the 21rst century will be well met.

I'm also doing more video than ever... which I really didn't do back in the Amiga days, there just wasn't time for hobbies or any sort of side business. I'm shooting weddings and other events, making DVDs, etc. Not really THAT strange; before I was a computer nerd I was a photography nerd. The DVD is the ideal place to unify all my skills: computers, video, audio, photography, artwork, music, etc. I did a "Deathbed Vigil" re-release last year, as a justification to buy the software needed, and I have a PAL version on the way REAL SOON NOW.

Thanks for the interest, and a chance to write about some of the good stuff [other bad stuff intentionally left out]...

Porting OSX to x86

[dannyweb]

Well, actually, there was a slashdot story a few months ago about just that - Apple Secretly Maintaining x86 Port Of Mac OS X

How's it run?

[siskbc]

In the article linked to this story, it said that Mac-On-Linux ran like crap. Could have been their hardware (they were running MacOSX in debian on a G3 600), but I don't know. Personally, doesn't sound like a great option yet.

RS/6000 Linux Support [ Karma Whoring ]

[MyHair]

Here is a list of how Linux works on various RS/6000 models.

I found this through penguinppc.org/.

I was looking for a cheap (hahahhha) PPC machine for PPC Linux and/or OS X a while back but it cost too much.

Re:RS/6000 Linux Support [ Karma Whoring ]

[Anonymous Coward]

[ Karma Whoring ]

Uh, yeah, real good job there...

No wonder you can't afford an el-cheapo $13k computer.

Breach of OS X EULA...

[The Placid Casual]

The licence agreement on OS X precludes it being used on anything other than Apple licenced/made hardware.

I would think that the manufacturers will be in the clear as they don't supply or load OS X on the system, but the actual owner of the installed copy OS X is in breach of the EULA...

Can't see Apple identifying infringments, and tracking them all down though!

(At least I hope they don't... they should be busy building the 970 Powermacs...)

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[pixelated77]

I can totall see an Apple SWAT squad, led by Steve Jobs, rappeling down a building and breaking through a window to bust a techie toying around with his Pegasos. Then Steve would try to sell him an iPod and a 17" powerbook.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[ePhil_One]

Yes, of course. Because as we all know, the people who enforce Apple's licensing agreements and the people who work on the assembly line in Taiwan are the same group of folks. Every minute spent doing legal stuff is a minute NOT spent producing new and better computers, right?

Yeah, but I bet for the cost of one of those legal nitwits they could employ half the population of whatever south asian country they are building those 970's in.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? It's a freakin EULA. Of absolutely no weight morally, of absolutely no weight in a sane legal system, were one to exist, so the only other reason to worry about it is getting caught by the gestapo, most of whom don't even realise that OSX exist probably...

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that the manufacturers will be in the clear
Nope. They claim it runs OS X -> they tested it -> they installed it -> they are vunerable under the same EULA.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[The Placid Casual]

I refer to Apple's money...

I would prefer Apple's cash go into R&D, than see the 'Fedayeen Steve' chasing down users...

I'm pretty sure a lot of other Mac users would feel the same way...

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

> The licence agreement on OS X precludes it being used on anything other than Apple licenced/made hardware.

So don't agree to the license agreement and figure out how to install OS X anyways. From first sale doctrine, you not only have a legal basis to resell a book, etc (of course destroying any archive copies you've made), but you also have an implicit right to use the copyrighted work (in this case, OS X). This could of course lead to requiring a contract be signed prior to leaving the store with any box containing OS X (simply pre-installing it means nothing because of first sale doctrine--as a side note, them not including a CD wouldn't be relevant, as you could just make an image of the HD and resell it).

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure a lot of other Mac users would feel the same way...

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I would much rather see Apple aggressively and vigorously defend its IP and licenses. If they don't the value of the company disappears, the stock price plummets, and there's no money for EITHER r&d OR legal.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[The Placid Casual]

You have put words in my mouth...

In my original post, I was clearly not discussing Apple's attitude towards IP, Patents and software licenses in general.

I only referred to breaches of the EULA of OS X by users running the OS on Pegasus... BIG difference.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't have one without the other. Anybody who violates the OS X license ought to fucking go to jail, just like those bastards who violate the GPL.

Remember, kids: a license is a license.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't breach a EULA as they are not binding contracts.

Re:Breach of OS X EULA...

[fsbilly]

I think the chips are being fabbed in NY.

I don't think that's Asia, yet.

Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! I just tried this and it really works! I never thought it would be possible, but my mac now works just as well as my x86 box running windows xp!

Not good for MorphOS

[egg troll]

Overall, MorphOS doesn't have the sparkle that a modern OS should have. It feels like a nemnant of another era. A beloved era for many people for sure, but another, older era nonetheless. I don't see MorphOS (in its current shape) as the main attraction for this platform, unless Genesi puts a number of engineers to work hard to bring this OS up to speed and usability levels that other OSes today like OSX, Linux or Windows have.

you know your OS is bad when Linux is considered more usable than it is. :)

That's nothing!

[siskbc]

Personally, I don't understand why they leave it at DOS. DOS can run a C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it). Considering the speed of CP/M systems back in 1980, this setup should yield at least twice the performance of those old 1MHz clunkers.

You keep going until you're running the fucking ENIAC. And don't forget the custom punched-tape reader either there, Nancy

Re:That's nothing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. I haven't laughed this hard since my best friend died...

Illegal

[BitwizeGHC]

From my Mac OS X license agreement:

"This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."

It is illegal to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer. Even machines built from Apple parts are iffy.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

First sale doctrine. Of course, I don't know why anyone would buy one of these if they wanted to run MacOS anyway. It'd be easier, and probably cheaper, to just buy a Mac to begin with.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

>From my Mac OS X license agreement:

Exactly "agreement". You don't have to agree into
this contract to use the software you purcharsed
at your dealer. At least not in Europe.

Besides that would actually concern only the
users (so Apple would have to sue every single
user) because Genesi does not ship the board with
MacOS X.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) "Illegal" and "violation of contract" are two different things.

2) Shrink-wrap licenses have NEVER been held to be valid in court.

Re:Illegal

[VoyagerRadio]

Where does Apple make MOST of its money? Is it the OS? Or the other software. I can see why they wouldn't want to have their software run on more than one computer, if the former is the case. However, the concept seems to fly in the face of reality. Why should anyone have to buy two copies of the same software, if they are going to be using it? It's like requiring someone to buy two monitors to use with two different computers, even if you have an adapter that allows you to use the same monitor. Whether you agree with that analogy or not, I just think it's counter-intuitive to have to go buy another copy of OS X if you have a computer you just purchased on eBay that's ready for an installation of the OS. I think--here's my theory--that this is obvious to Apple, they would simply prefer folks to keep buying up multiple copies of their software. Jobs has his head on straight, and knows that folks are only going to buy what they need. It's one thing to be honest--it's another to go broke just using the technology you want/need to use.

Re:Illegal

[bsharitt]

I bought some apples at the grocery store today and put one of the labels on my box, so I should be safe.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

From my Mac OS X license agreement: [snip]

You can walk into any CompUSA and pay money for MacOS X without signing anything. You can even pay with anonymous cash. The same goes for the Mac computers that come with MacOS preloaded. For a vast majority of MacOS users, there is no license agreement.

If you signed one, that's your problem. Either negotiate better next time, or pay full retail price, or hey, be happy with the deal that you made (most people who run MacOS prefer to run it on a Mac anyway). But remember: this "license" thing you speak of, is part of your purchase transaction; it isn't part of the product.

...Just as the case with every other product on the market. Do your shoes have a license agreement?

Re:Illegal

[Animats]

It's illegal for Apple to try to impose that restriction. It's an illegal tying arrangement. See 15 USC 1.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a peice of masking tape, write APPLE on it, and stick it on your computer - instant Apple Labled computer.

Re:Illegal

[Duck_Taffy]

That's why things like the Mac OS X v10.2 Family Pack exist. It's licensed for up to 5 computers, and costs less than two individual copies of Mac OS X. There are also other higher-volume licenses with lower cost per license.

Re:Illegal

[VoyagerRadio]

I didn't know that. Thanks for the info., but still--why should I buy a "Family Pack" when the only user is me? And I'm pretty honest--I mean, I've been drying to use OS X for the past two years (or is it 3 now?), ever since I bought the beta, but I haven't been able to afford the upgrade, what with all the software I would want to upgrade so as to ensure the best possible compatibility (software like Office, Pro Tools, and other webcasting software)--and I've considered, many times, downloading a pirated copy of OS X to "test it out", but I can't bring myself to do it. I used to download software all the time, but now I use only legal, purchased copies of everything, although I download music from time to time. But it tees me off to think that I would have to pay twice for a product.

Re:Illegal

[Duck_Taffy]

Well, I guess that depends on your morals. All of my computers are properly licensed, and I'm the only user. I belive in paying for software (wether it be me paying for a personal copy, or my work paying for a copy on my work machine), and when I can't afford it, I just don't get it. Of course, if my work purchases an extra license for me to use at home, I certainly won't turn that down. And if I don't have a license to install something on another computer, then I just don't do so. I mean, really, what's the harm of only running it on one computer, if that's all you pay for? If you really need to use it on more than one computer, then you can probably justify paying for it.

Re:Illegal

[reiggin]

Know a teacher? Scam a copy from their available outlet. Is that pirating if they have a free copy waiting for them but they aren't going to use it? I don't think so. But then again, I got 10.2 on my TiBook, so I don't have to concern myself with such things.

Re:Illegal

[bnenning]

1) "Illegal" and "violation of contract" are two different things.

2) Shrink-wrap licenses have NEVER been held to be valid in court.

Ditto. (Just wanted this at +2)

Re:Illegal

[Squidgee]

1) "Illegal" and "violation of contract" are two different things.

Actually, a violation of contract is illegal under US and (I believe) international law.

2) Shrink-wrap licenses have NEVER been held to be valid in court.

Actually, I remember reading about a case involving stock-broking software (Sorry, I forget the name; it was ~1 year ago) where their EULA said "They cannot be held liable for any damages incured as a result of the use of said software". And, due to a bug, someone lost upwards of $50,000.

The lawsuit against the software was thrown out because in order to use the software you had to agree to the EULA's terms, including that clause. The same goes for the use of Mac OS X.

Re:Illegal

[AntiOrganic]

Be careful, or they might stick you with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for that one.

Re:Illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Semi-wrong. It is not criminally illegal. It is civially illegal. A fine is a fine is a fine. Won;t make any difference when theres $5000 gone from your wallet.

2) Dead wrong. There is precident as stated elsewhere.

Apple will come down on this. Though not as hard as if someone had ported it to x86. You'd see apple laywers crawling all over here like ants if that ever happens.

Re:Illegal

[Dun Malg]

1) "Illegal" and "violation of contract" are two different things.

Actually, a violation of contract is illegal under US and (I believe) international law.

Violation of a lawful contract is cause for civil liability, yes. But this contract, being 1) a shrink-wrap EULA , and 2) limiting the use of enclosed product unlawfully, is pretty much unenforceable. Its only purpose, really, is to limit Apple's liability for damages due to "misuse".

2) Shrink-wrap licenses have NEVER been held to be valid in court.

Actually, I remember reading about a case involving stock-broking software (Sorry, I forget the name; it was ~1 year ago) where their EULA said "They cannot be held liable for any damages incured as a result of the use of said software". And, due to a bug, someone lost upwards of $50,000.

Perfect example. The end user was not prosecuted, nor was he found civilly liable for breaking said contract. Rather, this is a completely different situation, wherein the software writers were able to use the EULA to show that they were not liable for losses resulting from use of said software. See the difference? The EULA's status as a contract was irrelevant-- the case had to do with the EULA being valid as a disclaimer. Two very different things, my friend.

Re:Illegal

[samdu]

So just slap an "Apple Label" on whatever you want to install OSX on. Problem solved. :)

Re:Illegal

[VoyagerRadio]

Good question. I do know a teacher, and I considered doing just what you're saying, but I didn't. It also looks like that deal is over now (the free OS X-for-teachers deal).

Re:Illegal

[reiggin]

The deal might be over for now but I'm sure some teachers somewhere have a copy lying around that they've never installed. Plus, I imagine that by this fall, they'll renew the deal for Panther, 10.3.

Re:Illegal

[VoyagerRadio]

(This is not directed toward you) I want my own legit copy, darnit! I want to feel good about the entire thing. Aargh! It doesn't bother me to "test" software--I really like the way shareware works, or most shareware--but once you start using software on a daily basis, or regularly, then I can't help but feel bad about not buying it.

Re:Illegal

[reiggin]

Hope I never have those same kind of moral convictions creep up on me. That must suck. Plus, I can't imagine all the sleep I'd lose over this suite of software sitting in my Dock (**I'm lying about that... just a joke... really**).

Sega

[56ksucks]

I remember reading an article about someone booting a Sega Genesis on a modified version of the 68k MacOS on a cartridge.

Good news, but not great news.

[northwind]

The BriQ http://www.totalimpact.com has been able to run MacOS via MOL for ever so long, so this is in fact not great news itself. Question is: Why do so? Neither machines were intended for this purpose.
However it is nice to see companies supply motherboards based on the PPC processor because of the lower powerconsumption. More Power less Heat.

it runs GREAT

[SHEENmaster]

I have a 500mhz G3 iBook2. Aside from video access, it runs realtime. Hell, I've even used Bryce in it! Just try that with VMWare.

It could be that I run OS 9 in mol and OS X doesn't like the slower graphics functions.

On a sidenote, Amigas can also do this, as can Briqs. The mentioned system is not the first.

Yes you should.

[BoomerSooner]

lol, I did this once myself. The bad thing about that in the preview is in mozilla (at least) it makes the text in the textarea box a link!!! So how the hell do you edit it? (by going back one screen and hoping your browser cached it)

PC?

[SharpFang]

Please, don't mark as flamebait/troll, I'm asking seriously: Is there a chance for release of OS X for PC? (reasons left aside)

Re:PC?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we mark you as moron/retarted? Do you people understand anything about computers?

Apple BIOS

[svenjob]

I have 1 question about this whole 'Apple BIOS' issue. Why hasn't anyone reverse-engineered it legally like what Compaq/HP (I think it was one of those or both) did to the IBM BIOS back in the day? It was legal back then, has it become illegal now? If someone could do that and get a license for the G4/PC970 chipset, we'd have the same Mac computer market as we have with the PC market. It'd be a boon to competition and 'innovation.' Just my 2 cents...

Re:Apple BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Contrary to the article, there is no BIOS in any Apple computer. G3s and G4s use OpenFirmware. I suppose what the poster meant was "Boot ROM", not BIOS.

There is quite a cost issue associated with the method you mention - even if someone were able to successfully reverse-engineer the Boot ROM legally, and get a supply of compatible logic boards and processors, I highly doubt that Apple would license the OS to them. Because of the licensing terms of the OS, they couldn't package it with Mac OS X, so they'd have to leave it to the user to pay an additional $129 to buy Mac OS X.

Back in the mid-90s, Apple did license the OS to several clone manufacturers. It nearly drove Apple out of business, because market share wasn't increasing, therefore the clone manufacturers were taking sales away from Apple. Plus, it becomes an extra expense for Apple to have to support their OS on third-party hardware. Also, there really wasn't any compelling reason to buy a clone - they didn't look as good, the prices weren't much less, and they didn't really offer anything you couldn't get in a Mac. PowerComputing did demonstrate that you could use commodity parts and overseas manufacturing to be able to implement a faster bus and still charge slightly less. If I recall correctly, they had a 180 MHz 604 system with a 66 MHz bus, while the comparable Apple systems still only had a 50 MHz bus. Soon after that, Apple canned the licensing program, acquired PowerComputing and their engineers, and released the G3.

Re:Apple BIOS

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

The clones weren't all bad. PowerComputing had the first multiple CPU MacOS capable machine. Originally the only thing that took advantage of it was some specially compiled Photoshop plugins. Eventually Apple introduced some multi-CPU boxes and the Thread Manager to help get apps for it.

The other the clones did was to help start the big rift between Motorola and Apple. Motorola introduced the StarMax line. Then Apple killed the clones, causing Motorola to take a bit of a financial hit. That was one of the first blows in a now less than amicable relationship. Soon Motorola said they were going to concentrate on embedded chips, not desktop ones. That hasn't helped Apple stand up to Intel-style MHz wars.

Re:Apple BIOS

[proj_2501]

Some really old Mac 'clones' just jacked the ROM chips from discarded Mac Pluses and slapped them in a laptop. This was before the Powerbook, IIRC.

Re:Apple BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Daystar had the first MP MacOS machines. The Daystar architecture for putting multiple CPUs into a Power Surge chipset Mac (and the Daystar API for using a second processor) was later adopted by Apple itself.

(Power Surge was the codename for the chipset Apple developed for the first "pro line" PCI Macs, i.e. the [789][56]00 models. Most of the licensed clones used either Power Surge or the PowerMac 7200 chipset, which I forget the name of. Aside from Daystar's development of multiprocessor support for a chipset that wasn't designed for it, there wasn't much original hardware engineering in the Mac clone world, except for the very end when Motorola's CHRP G3 clones were stillborn.)

OSX Inroads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know why Apple hasn't ported over to x86 yet? Sure, they'd lose some revenue in hardware sales, but it should be more than made up for with people rushing out to get their hands on a non-M$ OS that newbs trust won't give them an embolism just trying to access email. IMHO, I think this would be the biggest, bestest step towards scooping M$'s stranglehold on the true consumer-level (read "Mom", not /.'ers) market. And it's all BSD under the hood now anyway, right? That'll x86 no prob. What gives?

Re:OSX Inroads?

[gilesjuk]

Some clever person should do a dual CPU box with x86 and PPC.

The only problem is the short lifespan of motherboards, real enthusiasts change their boards every 1-2 years.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[Shadowmist]

Apple has been working on an '86 port for quite sometime. In fact the original demonstrations of Rhaposdy, the early version of OS S server were done on Intel boxes. A major sticking point would be the Classic and Carbon applications which are extremely PPC dependent. There were Intel-based emulators that ran Mac OS but were restricted to 8.1 because they only emulated 68k code. The only applications that would make it across easily would be Cocoa-based applications and the big numbers like Photoshop and presumably Quark were/will be done in Carbon. Realistically the only possibility for an '86 port would be on a custom built logic board that would include a PPC chip and support to run Apple's bread and butter apps.

The majority of Apple's revenue is in hardware sales. They lose that, they lose the shirt. It also puts them square in the target sights of the Beast from Redmond, and Apple simply can't play the Microsoft game.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[GrapesForBuddha]

I've been thinking about this, and it seems to me that Apple could sell an x86 version of OS X and just make the price high enough to compensate for the fact that they're not making any cash off the hardware. That's effectively what Microsoft does (albeit at a much larger scale).

The comment about not taking on Microsoft directly is a more compelling reason. However, they could quietly maintain a x86 port until they have an idiot-proof migration path and pull the rug out from under MS when they're not looking.

(Shhh.... don't tell billg)

Re:OSX Inroads?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what does mac hardware cost Apple ?
They build a 1ghz 1 cpu machine and sell it for $1500. What is their cost ?
I've never read anything about that.
For x86 you can price parts and guesstimate.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[Pinback]

While they're at it, why doesn't someone put a Z80 and a 6502 in the same box.

Or maybe someone could put a 68000 in with an 8088.

Fun.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

While they're at it, why doesn't someone put a Z80 and a 6502 in the same box.

Already been done, though technically it was an 8502, not a 6502.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[gilesjuk]

Erm you do realise that the x86 has a hard time emulating a PPC processor?

Even though the P4 and Athlon beat the PPC in benchmarks, it doesn't mean you can simply emulate a RISC like processor at full speed. PPC can reverse its byte ordering in hardware, so it emulates X86 very nicely.

Re:OSX Inroads?

[Shadowmist]

A price high enough to make such a compensation would essentially doom the product to start. Apple unlike MS is simply NOT a software vender, they make software to sell hardware, much of it like the iLife apps given away to sweeten the appeal of the gadgets. People gripe enough about the price of OS X as it is. Who would buy it at double or triple the price? (and that is a very conservative estimate)

Apple is simply not just set up to do the MS thing at this time. Maybe at some point far down the road, but not now.

As to the first part, it's an open secret that Apple has maintained an unreleased port of OS X that runs on the '86 chip. What may be a possible scenario would be the hybrid machine I mentioned, but OS X on commodity hardware? It's not going to happen for the reasons I stated above.

Forgive My Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

... but running OSX on MacOS for Linux sounds rather akin to running Cygwin under Wine.

Seems repetatively redundant.

What's the point?

Re:Forgive My Stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOS for linux?

RTFA Troll.

GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you're happy to assume the GPL is valid, though?

Re:GPL

[ichimunki]

I bet you're happy to assume the GPL is valid, though?

Fairly pathetic troll, but it's Monday so: The GPL gives permission to do things that would otherwise be illegal. So what would be the point of invalidating the GPL? "Please! I'm begging you! I don't want to be able to copy this software. Take these onerous freedoms away!"

Re:GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL covers private sourcecode modification, so strictly speaking it is a Use License, aka EULA.

Had you read the licence rather than propaganda, you would know that.

Re:GPL

[bnenning]

The GPL covers private sourcecode modification

Where it does not attempt to remove any of your existing rights under standard copyright law.

Re:GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Where it says that linked code is also covered by GPL. Under standard copyright law, if I legally acquired code from you, I could link to it without you gaining rights to my code.

Re:GPL

[Nucleon500]

No, you couldn't.

Under standard copyright law, you cannot derive from or create an aggregate work from my code without my permission. This means no linking, period.

Re:GPL

[mabinogi]

The GPL is not an EULA, it's a distribution license...

Re:GPL

[yerricde]

Under standard copyright law, you cannot derive from or create an aggregate work from my code without my permission. This means no linking, period.

Under section 117 of standard copyright law, the owner of a copy can derive from a computer program to a limited extent:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner, or
(2) that such new copy or adaptation is for archival purposes only and that all archival copies are destroyed in the event that continued possession of the computer program should cease to be rightful.

Re:GPL

[ichimunki]

The GPL covers private sourcecode modification, so strictly speaking it is a Use License, aka EULA. Had you read the licence rather than propaganda, you would know that.

Had you taken some time to think, you'd be less of an asshole. I guess the world's not perfect, though.

The GPL does not cover use, it covers distribution. In fact, one of the underlying premises in Free Software is that users may use the software. And privately modifying the source code does not require any sort of a license because that is not illegal. Dumbass.

Re:GPL

[Nucleon500]

That's very limited. It seems to be referring to the process of copying a program into memory to run it, including adaptions such as relocating or debugging it. You still can't link to my modules without my permission, because that's not an essential step in the use of my program. IANAL.

I personally don't think dynamic (not static) linking should be considered deriving, because there are too many grey areas. In my perfect dream-world, you could still control a library's distribution, just not how it's used by people who have a legal copy. This would validate non-GPL use of, for example readline, but it would also validate the GPL use of, for example, WMA codec dlls.

No threat to apple

[goombah99]

This is sort of silly really. People who like apple, dont want a cheap fake apple. they might want cheaper apples, but they want it to work like an apple does. And that means the total experience.

There's no way a mac on linux clone will ever match the quality, ease of maintence, the no-surprises of hardware comaptibility or missing drivers.

Its cute but its not a mac in the ways that attract people to mac.

I think its main utility is for people who run Linux that occasionally need to run mac software

Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

funny. you fucking nerd

oh yea..

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"

You should point out the rest of the review...
"On this G3 600 Mhz, it would take 1-2 seconds for a MacOSX button to respond after pressing it."
you probably need a pretty beefy G4 to run MacOSX.

The average or even above average user probably won't buy this to install MacOSX, although they do say OS 9 is alot faster.

Re:oh yea..

[tomem]

OS X runs fine on what is now a legacy G3 iMac running at 233MHz. Not as snappy as on faster newer hardware, but really, just fine. My kids use them for web surfing and IM'ing, email, word processing, whatever.

Or did I miss your point?

Re:oh yea..

[Anonymous Coward]

OS X runs fine on what is now a legacy G3 iMac running at 233MHz. Not as snappy as on faster newer hardware, but really, just fine. My kids use them for web surfing and IM'ing, email, word processing, whatever.
We call that child abuse. Try looking up the meaning of snappy in a dictionary.

Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, it wouldn't be the first time a non-nerd stumbles upon something like this and actually tries it out.

So, boys and girls, DO NOT RUN THAT COMMAND. It will erase your harddrive.

why bother?

[McAddress]

Why would anybody use OS X if it does not come with a weird shaped colorful case?

Has NetBSD been ported to this hardware yet?

[Brett Glass]

It runs on several PPC platforms already and would provide a non-GPLed option for those so inclined.

[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again)

[eet23]

It's very unlikely that they will. Apple uses their software to sell their hardware, and if you can run OS X on any old PC, people will be less inclined to buy Macs.

Also, if they did this, binaries would be incompatible between the PPC and x86 versions, and fairly quickly most people would only develop for x86, making buying a Mac pointless.

Another thing: If they did this, they would be in direct competition with MS, which would be an insane thing to do.

Slightly more likely is OS X running on an Apple-only x86 system, but the OS 9 -> OS X transition is not totally finished yet, and it would be a major upset.

Re:[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again)

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, if they did this, binaries would be incompatible between the PPC and x86 versions, and fairly quickly most people would only develop for x86, making buying a Mac pointless.

Untrue. Except in the highly unusual case of an app going straight to the metal, every Cocoa app could be trivially recompiled for multiple architectures at the same time, were Apple to enable that feature. Building all the binaries in at the same time is a matter of a single button-click. The primary issue is endianness with regard to storage formats, but Cocoa file and stream wrappers handle that dandily.

Y'see, Cocoa used to be NeXTSTEP. And NeXTSTEP used to run on PA-RISC, SPARC, 80x86, and 680x0 all from the same binary. They're called "fat binaries". Single distribution format, run on any NeXTSTEP platform. Nifty.

Carbon, on the other hand, would have some trouble. But what did you expect from a legacy library? [ducks]

Re:[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again)

[eet23]

Y'see, Cocoa used to be NeXTSTEP. And NeXTSTEP used to run on PA-RISC, SPARC, 80x86, and 680x0 all from the same binary. They're called "fat binaries". Single distribution format, run on any NeXTSTEP platform. Nifty.

Doh! I should have thought of that, at least from the 68k/PPC transition, if nothing else.

Carbon, on the other hand, would have some trouble. But what did you expect from a legacy library?

Quote a large number of Mac programs seem to contain "#import <Carbon/Carbon.h>", so there may well still be problems.

Re:[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again)

[SharpFang]

Could you explain some of these mysterious names to a non-Mac'er?

Re:[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again)

[eet23]

Could you explain some of these mysterious names to a non-Mac'er?

NeXTStep - operating system that Apple bought and based OS X partly on

PA-RISC, SPARC, 80x86, and 680x0 - assorted CPUs. 68k and 680x0 mean the same thing, and is the range of chips that Macs used to be built on, before they changed to the PPC architecture.

Cocoa - the libraries/environment/whatever (informative, eh?) that NeXTStep used, and MacOS X now uses. Cocoa programs are generally written in Objective-C, but I believe Java is possible.

Carbon - legacy library containing a slightly cleaned-up version of the pre-OS X libraries. It's still used a fair bit though.

There are probably errors here (I make errors a lot) but it's probably not too dreadful.

coolest screenshot

[swifticus]

here is a screenshot of virtual PC on Mac-on-Linux on KDE. Very cool.

Re:coolest screenshot

[bcreane]

That is incredible! On the surface, it looks idiotic: run a virtual Macintosh process under the Linux kernel that supports Mac OSX (potentially breaking the Apple license) -- and the whole thing is currently restricted to PPC platforms since there isn't a PPC emulator (yet). However, there might be an application of the technology in cost-sensitive venues, e.g. schools. Fire up a hefty PPC server running virtual machines for dozens of students. use diskless linux boxes running VNC as the terminals. Voila, cheap OS X desktops. This might actually work!

Re:coolest screenshot

[Lord Flipper]

That looks interesting, but after running XP Pro, and win2k in VPC on a tricked-out titanium powerbook, I have to wonder about the speed of processes in the win98 'guest', not to mention the MOL, itself. Although, during a failed attempt to install X11 (don't ask), i did notice a 68k-emulator app that got me thinking how crazy it would be to run ancient 'legacy' mac apps in an emulator ..in an Xfree86 guest...on a New world mac... and the ... back to work

Briq == expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

They are kinda expensive though:

http://www.totalimpact.com/briQ.html

briQ w/PowerPC 750FX 800MHz, 512MB SDRAM, 20GB HDD - $1,399
briQ w/PowerPC G4 (7400) 500MHz, 512MB SDRAM, 20GB HDD - $1,499

Re:Briq == expensive

[nattt]

They're good. You're paying for the custom format - ie very small though. If you need small (and low power / heat), I know of nothing better.

Why so many hacks?

[Stonent1]

Darwin is Open Source. It would seem to me that if someone wanted to get OSX running without MOL (or Xpostfacto) on a non-approved PPC machine, they could compile a darwin kernel that does not exclude non-standard hardware.

For example this board has what appears to be a non-standard north bridge and south bridge (non-standard as far as apples go)but they work under linux. Someone could port the modules over to darwin, I'm sure. From what I can tell, there is not very much of a "community" behind darwin. Most seem content to let the apple guys do the darwin work. If I had any level of programming skill beyond 1 semester of C programming I'd seriously look into this myself.

Where do the major differences exist between darwin and Freebsd? Certainly FreeBSD is written to be portable since it runs on i386, alpha, and 64bit Sparc platforms. I'd think that some of the code could be inserted into darwin to add kernel level support for unsupported hw.

Re:Why so many hacks?

[Tokerat]

Mac OS X is much more than Darwin. The other components of Mac OS X need to be adjusted to work on the non-standard hardware as well, althought I'm sure it's much less of a chore to do it for OSX than say, OS 9, where can we get the source for Mac OS X? Oh yeah...

Oh and FYI, Darwin runs on i386 just fine.

PS Love that sig :-D

Re:Why so many hacks?

[Stonent1]

Well considering that the GUI can run with a hacked boot loader or MOL, it can't be that dependant on hardware other than the basic PPC requirements. Darwin has limited hardware support on Intel but if it were to have the full driver support of FreeBSD then it could be recompiled for PPC and perhaps run on just about any PPC system. I'm not all together sure how the video drivers work on OSX though. That could be a little bit of a problem.

Re:Why so many hacks?

[Tokerat]

The real problem arises now with "Panther", the forthcoming Mac OS X release. Panther will cause a severe kernel panic on any old-world ROM machines, meaning the GUI (along with the rest of the OS, including the supplied version of the kernel) has been changed so as to break older machine support. Of course, these reports come from the rumor mill, but it wouldnt' be a suprise to me. However, I wonder if this would cause any problems with MOL, and it certainly won't work on a hacked boot loader.

Apple BIOS?

[EelBait]

Mac's don't have a BIOS; they use OpenFirmware just like Sun.

Re:Apple BIOS?

[reiggin]

He meant an Apple ROM. New machines (OS X compatible) use what they call a "New World ROM." The information contained in them lets them boot into Mac OS X. Similar to a BIOS yet different. The OpenFirmware is contained in the ROM.

I WANT FLYING MACS!!

[macguiguru]

Macs SHOULD be able to fly!! I want my flying Mac!! Where can I get one??! Flying Macs are better than ANY OTHER COMPUTER!!!!

But they look really cool

[northwind]

and they will probably drop in price like everything else...

Sad

[macguiguru]

Just sad.

iToaster

[commodoresloat]

I should beable to put MacOS in my toster if I so choose to

Actually, Apple used to sell a toaster that runs MacOS.

Been done...

[Karpe]

Check this out. Apple sued the hell out of them, so they eventually gave up. (well, not really them, but threatened, through the US government, brazilian exports, so the government made them give up) My professor have one of these machines in a shelf in his room at uni.

Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

HUR HUR HUR WINBLOW$$$$$$ is teh suck!!!!!1 Give me teh funnay points now!!!!11 LUNIX 4 lief!!!

The SPEED

[porneL]

MorphOS on Pegasos boots in 2 seconds. I've seen it. You can only dream of such quick responsivness on Win.

It's written from scratch, modernized clone of AmigaOS (which ran fine on 7mhz machine).

Its new platform and new os, but its fully usable now. New features show up every day. I find it very good compromise between ease of use of mac and total control of linux.

Platform is easy to develop for, and Genesi supports developers [http://www.phinixi.com/about.php]

Anatomy of a failure: What Killed FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

Discussion

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

Shouts

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It'

Actually that is wrong....

[Anonymous Coward]

AmigaONE does also run MacOSX using mac on linux... It also runs various of ppc linux distros, like yellowdog linux.. For those who dont know, amigaone comes in both g3 and g4 flavors... depending on how much you are willing to pay..

Re:Dear Father O'Day

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but this is one that just doesn't work here. Since it isn't a Mac Computer we are talking about.

600 Mhz G3s not the correct issue either

[tm2b]

If its a 600Mhz G3 running OS X, then it WILL be slow.

Nonsense. I'm writing this an a 600 MHz G3, a white iBook. It's quite zippy, thank you. I can tell the difference between this and my dual 1 GHZ G4 at home, but this is quite acceptable, enough so that I use the laptop most of the time at home when I'm not doing something where I really need the G4s, like running Virtual PC.

The key is to have enough memory, I have 640 MB. I'd bet that the people who complain about 600 MHz G3s just don't have enough memory.

Re: I wonder why nobody has noticed this, but...

[bursch-X]

This is the rebirth of the ever undead Amiga. The website clearly says that MorphOS came into existence when they tried to rewrite the Amiga OS for the PPC and ended up with ... something completely different (Monty Python??)

I guess this will be as all of the other products related to the Amiga, vaporware. Jeezus, the AMIGA is--just as Elvis--DEAD, get over it!

Yes I, too, loved my Amiga when I was young, but this episode of computer history is over once and for all.

Well hey...

[rune2]

At least they didn't name it Firebird or Phoenix.... You're computer suddenly bursts into flame and then reappears out of the ashes.

Re:Dear Father O'Day

[General Sherman]

Howabout a nice cup of shut the fuck up

Serious question...

[Anonymous Coward]

"but the actual owner of the installed copy OS X is in breach of the EULA..."

Does anyone pay attention to EULA's? What I mean is, lets say you have 2 PC's at home, and you bought some software. The EULA probably says you can only load one.

But who buys 2? I mean, at some point, you use common sense and ignore the EULA.

Same here. Who cares what apple *wants* you to do with it. I sure don't. You buy it and use it. End of story.

The Total Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"And that means the total experience"

Presumably, this includes the part where Jobs bends you over an old mouldy barrel and buggers you.

Its a computer, not a religion, loser.

Re:The Total Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Father Pudge! is that you?

Windows XP lets you fly!

[ProfessionalCookie]

Remember those commercials that said the new features of Windows XP? Lets see new things in XP were:

Let you email Lets you do the internet thing Lets you chat Let's you fly around and get really dizzy like the people in the commercials

Actually I think flying might have been the only new feature they advertised.

That takes me back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the story!

actually a 2nd place finish

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!

Do a little research and find out that MOL was running on CHRP IBM RS/6000 workstations as recently as 3 years ago. So congratulations on coming in a distant *second*.

Not even a 2nd place. The briq came before.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I am wrong. The briq from was running MacOS a year ago or earlier.

Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast.

[General Sherman]

You're just mad because you're completely useless troll got turned into a pro-mac joke. I'm just going to sit here and laugh at you.

DMCA trumps first sale law

[yerricde]

So don't agree to the license agreement and figure out how to install OS X anyways.

The installer that displays the EULA can be thought of a device that effectively controls access to the copyrighted Mac OS X computer program and is therefore eligible for protection under 17 USC 1201, enacted as part of the DMCA. And if the DMCA is inconsistent with existing first sale and backup laws, the DMCA takes precedence because it was enacted later.

Re:DMCA trumps first sale law

[Anonymous Coward]

The installer that displays the EULA ... is therefore eligible for protection under 17 USC 1201,

Has this been adjudicated on? I don't remember a DMCA case hanging on a licence agreement click-through as a technological measure.

DMCA makes EULAs binding

[yerricde]

You can't breach a EULA as they are not binding contracts.

According to one interpretation, the EULA has been a binding contract since the DMCA was enacted in October 1998. (See how installers may qualify as copy-protection.)

To make a binding contract, both sides must give something up. You give up the right to reverse engineer the software, sue Apple, run the OS on non-Mac hardware, etc., and Apple gives you "the authority of the copyright owner" under 17 USC 1201 to run the installer that decrypts the computer programs that make up Mac OS X.

Cocoa has been cloned in part

[yerricde]

But not all of OS X is OSS. Significant chuncks of it are closed and proprietary.

And cloned.

If you just want to fly

[yerricde]

If you already have an Internet terminal, and you just want to add magical human flight, get a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo(tm) razor. It's a lot cheaper than a new operating system license, even at volume prices.

After the first sale doctrine was the

[yerricde]

First sale doctrine.

DMCA.

Installers are DRM.

[yerricde]

But this contract, being 1) a shrink-wrap EULA , and 2) limiting the use of enclosed product unlawfully, is pretty much unenforceable.

What about "the Software comes encrypted, and the DMCA prohibits you from decrypting this Software without agreeing to this License"?

Re:Installers are DRM.

[Dun Malg]

But this contract, being 1) a shrink-wrap EULA , and 2) limiting the use of enclosed product unlawfully, is pretty much unenforceable.

What about "the Software comes encrypted, and the DMCA prohibits you from decrypting this Software without agreeing to this License"?

Totally irrelevant. The DMCA is about copyright. Nothing in the DMCA has anything to do with contracts. A click-through contract attached to a decrypting installation program is no more binding than any other click-through EULA. The DMCA ensures that you have to click-through because bypassing it (as part of the decryption) would be illegal, but it doesn't make the EULA any more powerful than any other EULA. What one has to look at here is basic contract law.
1) The legal "strength" of a contract is pretty feeble in the case of shrink-wrap or click-through EULAs. Real contracts are ones which signed and witnessed, preferrably after the advice of legal counsel. EULAs are effectively little more than disclaimers because the end user didn't sign them, thus making it impossible for the plaintiff to produce a signed contract as evidence in court. The Law is pretty clear in that it greatly prefers paper, as it can show the paper to the defendant and ask "did you sign this?"
2) The licensing of OS X allows you to use one installation of it on one machine. That's perfectly legal. The part where they say "one machine of our manufacture" is legally unenforceable. Say, for example, you had a cover band and you wanted to pulicly play a song owned by XYZ Music Corp. They say "sure, that's $100; but you can only play it if your band uses XYZ Corp guitars, drums, etc." That's illegal (see the Sherman Antitrust Act) and unenforceable. Apple can no more force you to install OS X on only Apple-manufactured systems than GM can force you to install GM manufactured parts on your GM car. Doing either will likely void the waranty, but that's about it.

You see, one can put absolutely anything in a contract, and even if someone signs it, they are under no obligation to abide by the illegal parts of the contract.

Re:Installers are DRM.

[yerricde]

The DMCA is about copyright. Nothing in the DMCA has anything to do with contracts.

Without a contract, installing most modern proprietary software is prohibited by copyright law, 17 USC 1201(a) (which seems to have nullified 17 USC 117(a) in part), because the user does not "the authority of the copyright owner" to run the decryption.

making it impossible for the plaintiff to produce a signed contract as evidence in court.

Wouldn't the possession of the decrypted computer program on the defendant's hard drive be evidence that the defendant either clicked "I Agree" or violated the DMCA by going around the installer?

The part where they say "one machine of our manufacture" is legally unenforceable. Say, for example, you had a cover band and you wanted to pulicly play a song owned by XYZ Music Corp. They say "sure, that's $100; but you can only play it if your band uses XYZ Corp guitars, drums, etc." That's illegal (see the Sherman Antitrust Act) and unenforceable.

Many provisions of Title 17 (copyright law) say "Notwithstanding any provision of the antitrust laws". In addition, if federal statutes contradict one another, the courts give more weight to the one enacted later (as the most recent expression of representative democracy), and the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions came into force decades after any Sherman Antitrust Act or Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act.

Re:Installers are DRM.

[Dun Malg]

Without a contract, installing most modern proprietary software is prohibited by copyright law, 17 USC 1201(a) (which seems to have nullified 17 USC 117(a) in part), because the user does not "the authority of the copyright owner" to run the decryption.

Actually, it's a license that is required, and the license is granted through contract. The contract aspect, however, may be anything from a signed piece of paper to an implied contract from the act of purchasing the product. All the DMCA does is ensure that the end-user did indeed click "I agree" when the EULA popped up. This in no way changes whether the contents of the EULA are enforceable. Illegal provisions in a contract are still illegal.

Many provisions of Title 17 (copyright law) say "Notwithstanding any provision of the antitrust laws".

Those sections deal specifically with limitations and scope of exclusive rights and the distribution of royalty payments. They certainly do not give copyright holders carte blanche to violate antitrust law any way they see fit. Essentially, there's no way Apple can force you to use their OS on Apple-made machines only via a click-through EULA. The DMCA does nothing to change this, as only a miniscule percentage of computer users would even be ABLE to figure out a way to install the OS without having to see the EULA click-through. The DMCA here is practically irrelevant.

Later laws override earlier laws

[yerricde]

As far as I know, the courts view more recent acts of Congress as the more recent expression of democracy. If the United States Code is internally inconsistent, then the judge will tend interpret the law so as to follow those sections enacted later more closely than those sections enacted earlier. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which may make click-wrap EULAs binding, was enacted more than a century after the Sherman Antitrust Act.

I am not a lawyer, but I watch a lot of "Law & Order".

Re:Later laws override earlier laws

[Anonymous Coward]

"As far as I know, the courts view more recent acts of Congress as the more recent expression of democracy"

Am I going blind or did I see the words Congress and democracy in the same sentence?

Aside from that, the statement is generally correct. When Congress passes a new law that conflicts with an earlier law, the more recent is considered to be the law of the land unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Re:Later laws override earlier laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I going blind or did I see the words Congress and democracy in the same sentence?

$grandparent =~ s/expression of democracy/expression of representative democracy/;

Re:Later laws override earlier laws

[Animats]

Contracts which contain illegal tying arrangements are invalid as contrary to public policy, as expressed in the Sherman Act. The matter in which those contracts are agreed to does not affect their invalidity.

Apple can, however, create technical roadblocks to interoperability which cannot be bypassed without violating the DMCA. We've seen this in the inkjet cases.

Wine under Cygwin under Wine under...

[yerricde]

running Cygwin under Wine ... What's the point?

For one thing, it's a good test case for both projects.

For those who don't know who this is...

[samdu]

In the Amiga world (the glory days), there were two names. Jay Miner (the father of the Amiga) and Dave Haynie (the godfather of the Amiga). Ahh... if only management types didn't suck ass.

Re:For those who don't know who this is...

[hazydave]

Jay was certainly THE father, but the whole team in Los Gatos was responsible for the Amiga. I was certainly part of the second-wave effort, in West Chester, and sure, as a group WE took on the role of the godparents -- bringing her up right in the absence on the original parents. I don't like to be singled out that way, this was a whole team effort. Some journalist made up that "godfather" thing. I really found it embarrassing.

Of course I worked my ass off on the Amiga, but most of us did. That's way a team of around 50 people, total, could do what most companies didn't when they had hundreds or thousands involved. My name got out, I suppose, because I wrote a lot -- on usenet (I still have those "Boing!" awards on the wall here), in magazine articles, etc.

I love to hear good said of what we did, but keep it as WE if you can. Thanks.

emulation?

[gad_zuki!]

Someone want to clue me in on what kind of performance Mac on Linux would get if it did x86 emulation? Would a nice fast Athlon + emulation + MOL bring Mac to the masses or would there still be major performance hits and hardware issues?

Re:emulation?

[BWJones]

The beautiful thing about the Apple computer experience is that everything simply works seamlessly providing a productive work environment. Sure, you could get OS X running on a different platform, but it would take time. Especially when you consider that Microsofts development expenditure for Windows is an order of magnatude greater than Apple's for OS X. Apple has a small, highly focused team and when all is said, the PowerPC is a pretty nice platform for many things. e.g. How many Athalon powered laptops do you see kicking around? For a while, Apple was/is using the same chip in both the desktop and laptop arenas with good performance. This will change shortly and the performance delta for desktop systems is closing making OS X even more attractive.

Re:emulation?

[billatq]

How many Athalon powered laptops do you see kicking around?

I dunno but I've seen a hell of a lot of pentium based systems running around :-)

Seriously though, running the same processor on both the desktop and laptop doesn't really mean too much to the consumer, aside from the fact that it might lower production costs a bit. That said, I spend a lot of my time on my ibook even though my Athlon-based linux box and my Pentium-based FreeBSD box do a lot of stuff in the background. They do what they do great, but probably the issue with using them is that you have to know how to use them before you can leverage the power. I was somewhat impressed that OS X nicely integrates a lot of the stuff that I'm used to behind pretty GUI wrappers, and that's really what I find nice about it, not necessarily that it just "works" with things. Everything seems to work with things, though I have to admit that a lot of software put out by a certain Redmond based company seems to have a lot more bugs than other vendors, likely related to the sheer number of developers thrown at the project. So, for what I do, MOL seems to be a pretty nifty idea. I wonder how well vanilla Darwin runs on it..

Why does anybody care?

[g4dget]

Why does anybody care what processor is in their box anymore? There is fairly little assembly language programming going on (and most of that is redundant), and beyond that, it's just cost/performance ratios that count, right? Now, however I look at it, a $570 motherboard with a 600MHz G3 just doesn't cut it for me in terms of cost/performance.

And if this is about principle and you don't want to support the Intel "monopoly", you can buy AMD, VIA, or any of a number of other processor and motherboard manufacturers.

first platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw Zeta (the successor of BeOS) run it in BeBochs....
Zeta's gonna be *very* interesting ...

When is a licence not a licence

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, kids: a license is a license.

A licence that takes away your legal rights is an entirely different case to a licence that grants you additional rights. In the first, copyright law protects the rights that the copyright holder is trying to deny the owner. In the second, copyright law protects those additional rights that are not granted to the owner.

There are two potential flaws in this arguement:

1. The DMCA.
   This one is fairly obvious, and fairly contentious - we don't have one of these in the UK yet, but it's coming.
2. Copies in memory.
   Copyright law could be interpreted as prohibiting loading software into memory in order to execute it, and therefore a restrictive licence could be interpreted as granting this additional right, with conditions attached. This should be thrown out of court as being manipulative.

Hey, Go crash your PC.

[D13d]

Someday you will see the light. End of wasted time on this comment...

50% Less Crashes

[macguiguru]

Now you only have to reinstall the entire OS twice a week! LOL!

What we need now...

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to find a way to run Mac OS X on :::drum roll:::
an X-box!

MOL has NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION!

[MarcQuadra]

It's a strange slashdot obsession.

Putting together a system with this board will probably cost MORE than buying a mac, and running OSX under MOL reduces you to unaccelerated graphics anyway. I can understand firing up an OSX session on your pegasos machine to test if an app compiles/runs under OSX, but the usability of OSX under MOL is minimal.

I'd rather pay for Apple's workstation-class hardware than an obscure mobo running a VIA chipset, even if I have no intention of running an Apple OS.

Amen, brother

[Kaneda]

I wanted to run Macos, so I bought a powerbook.
If I had been too cheap for the powerbook, I could have bought an ibook or an eMac.

Apple hardware rocks, it is designed to run Macos, and it does it well. Why pay that much for a motherboard that will not give you the performance that apple hardware will give you? Factor in the cost of macos X + the motherboard and you are in the right ballpark for a complete system from apple. And you don't have to break the eula on the macos that you bought.
Frankly, I don't see why anyone would want to run MOL anyway - I can't think of any regularly used gnu software that doesn't compile and run on macos natively. Why do it in another layer?

He who has the gold makes the rules

[yerricde]

Has this been adjudicated on?

Hanging a click-through agreement on the DMCA's anticircumvention provisions hasn't been at the center of a lawsuit, but until it has, it's safest to rely on the interpretation that favors the party with more assets because the party with more assets stands a grater chance of being able to make its case in a court of law.

Nintendo v. Galoob

[yerricde]

In my perfect dream-world, you could still control a library's distribution, just not how it's used by people who have a legal copy.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I think the decisions in Sony v. Universal (the Betamax case) and Nintendo v. Galoob (the Game Genie case) validate adaptation in private home environments, at least as long as there is no 1201(a) violation involved.

Mod parent, interesting post about Mac On Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

That was insightful. I had forgotten about my trusty old ANS. Was the install smooth? Does it run well/fast?