If Mac OS X Came to x86, Would You Switch?

A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward would like to put this query before you: "I'm not a fan of Windows, and never have been, but I am a fan of the x86 architecture. I really like Linux, but there are still a few issues that are keeping me from switching completely. I really like Mac OS X but I don't want to drop $2000 on a computer that is only as fast as an x86 computer at half the price. Darwin, Mac OS X's unix-ish core, has been ported to x86 and Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn OS seems to be disliked by everyone but Microsoft. If Apple released Mac OS X to compete with Longhorn, would you switch?"

Comments

i wouldnt

[digitalsushi]

i wouldn't switch to it. the instant they switched to x86, they'd lose what they have going for them, and their product would suck. they have such a tight os cause the environment is so tight. they control all the hardware.

at least thats my understanding of how it works. now what if they could promise that stability on x86 hardware? hrmm. i might switch. i'd venture a guess that the people who use linux and friends who also use windows dont have the typical end user problems that vex most windows computers. i'm no world class guru and i find myself on year 2 of a stable XP install with no firewalls or virus scanners, other than being NATted and knowing where not to step on the web. so i'm pretty happy with what i've got, i'd have to say.

Re:i wouldnt

[pcmanjon]

I would definately switch to MAC OS X if it was ported to x86. For sure. Legally even.

I have tried out the darwin core for x86 and it is just the kernel and the utilitys you need to browse the filesystem. About all you can find is

ls
dir
mkdir
rm
touch

and a few other basic commands, no lynx, no wget, no ping, no whois, etc. No x86 drivers for your network card, etc.

I really wish apple would actually do something with the darwin core and create MAC OS X for x86.

This would kill apple however because nobody in their right mind would pay $2000+ for a good mac when they could pay for a PC at $1500 and get mac OS on it as well.

Re:i wouldnt

[Izago909]

i'm no world class guru and i find myself on year 2 of a stable XP install with no firewalls or virus scanners, other than being NATted and knowing where not to step on the web.

Yeah, definately not a guru.

I hate to tell you this, but the problem with x86 has always been Windows. The BSOD was not built in at chip level. I'm writing this on a Linux box that hasn't been rebooted since March.

Re:i wouldnt

[AvantLegion]

>> they control all the hardware.

You mean like the nVidia and ATI graphics chips they use?

Yes, they do control what goes INTO their machines, but it's not like they make it all, and it's not like the hardware they use is so completely unlike what's common on the x86 platform.

I think they could achive a lot by simply not worrying about supporting the kind of legacy hardware Windows always strives to, and focusing on just the common x86 hardware. nVidia & ATI pretty much cover most of the graphics chips out there on modern hardware. USB device support's already there. There's not THAT much to have to support to just work on the average desktop, and support for more exotic hardware can come later. If some hardware's too shoddy or unreliable to maintain the Mac standard, then don't support it!

Re:i wouldnt

[nite_warrior]

I'm writing this on a Linux box that hasn't been rebooted since March.

so you are not running the latest kernel version of linux, shame on you!

Re:i wouldnt

[fymidos]

>This would kill apple however because nobody in
>their right mind would pay $2000+ for a good mac >when they could pay for a PC at $1500 and get mac >OS on it as well

apple is not as expensive as it used to be you know...
today you can buy the (delicious) imac g5 with the 17'' tft screen for $1300 -- and you get a 64-bit machine. An athlon64 with similar specs doesn't cost much lower, and you don't get the all-in-one design.
And $3000 for a dual 2.5ghz,64 bit is a good price. Definetely at the low end of the dual market.

Re:i wouldnt

[foniksonik]

Have you tried installing the GNU-Darwin ports? or FINK?

It's my understanding that they would work just fine with Darwin standalone... not sure about on x86 though...

Re:i wouldnt

[Enrique1218]

...i find myself on year 2 of a stable XP install with no firewalls or virus scanners...

well you know what they say "Ignorance is bliss"

Re:i wouldnt

[keesh]

You're forgetting the tiny cache, the absurdly low number of general purpose registers, the crappy task switching, the lack of register windowing, the insanely long pipeline and all those other design features which aimed for "as cheap as possible" and "higher MHz even if it gives us a terrible per-MHz performance".

Re:i wouldnt

[jericho4.0]

It's the 'as cheap as possible' bit that makes the hardware so attractive, even with all it's shortfalls.

Re:i wouldnt

[drinkypoo]

You could get that kind of stability by only supporting a subset of PC hardware, and it would still be cheaper than mac; For example, you'd only support the most worthy chipsets, like nforce for amd (it may not be the fastest, but it seems to be the most stable) and intel chipsets for their processors, only supporting the big-name video cards, et cetera. Another way would be to publish an API and stick with it so that developers could write drivers that wouldn't explode all over the place.

Re:i wouldnt

[drinkypoo]

Tiny cache? x86 processors have larger L1 caches than most other processors. The L2 cache size is usually pretty puny though, and few PCs support L3 cache (the AMD K6/2+ and K6/3+ had onboard L2 and the system L2 became L3, that's all I can think of in that category just now.) AMD made several very nice x86-compatible processors. The lack of registers is pretty lame but it is addressed in x86-64 and for many programs it is not that big a deal anyway because both intel and AMD (and their assorted competitors, as well) have implemented register renaming and other tricks to improve the speed of context switches and the shuffling of data due to register starvation.

Re:i wouldnt

[jrockway]

You do know that macs use the same RAM, ATA hard drives, CD drives, etc. as PCs right?

Re:i wouldnt

[TheLittleJetson]

if os x did come for x86 and you had windows already, you'd be a fool not to at least give it a try.... however, its NEVER going to happen and here's why:

apple is a hardware company. their OS is a major incentive to use the hardware. releasing for x86 would be stupid. i wouldn't expect this unless it was like a last-stand measure right before going out of biz, and that's not gonna happen. :-)

Re:i wouldnt

[PPGMD]

Hardware failure will bring a Linux box down as quickly as it will a Windows box, the only difference is the screen indication, with Linux, you get a Kernel Panic (in most cases), while in Windows you get a BSOD.

I have found in corporate environment where the user is regulated from doing anything stupid, the most common failure is hardware. One of the sales computers blue screen this morning. Do I blame Microsoft for the BSOD, even though it would give me brownie points here, after reviewing the machine in the lab, I put the blame on the RAM maker, simply replaced the stick and the employee was back working.

Just because a windows box fails doesn't mean it's Microsoft's fault.

Now to answer the article's question, I wouldn't switch to OS X, but I would probably buy a copy and run it in the lab. If I find uses for it, I may deploy it, but in the end, an operating system is a tool to get a job done, you simply use what you deem to be the best tool for the job. Which for me, in most cases is Windows, though I use *nix variants for certain tasks, where Windows is just not cost effective.

Re:i wouldnt

[Biffer4810]

crappy task switching?

The x86 is one of the most ROBUST chips ever manufactured in that respect.

Absurdly low number of general purpose registers?

Fair, perhaps. The only reason to boost the register count is to increase performance -- and if the chip CAN perform well with a lower number of registers, more power to it.

Lack of register windowing?

See above. It's not like you can DO less because the chip doesn't have register windows, it just takes more work. [Although in my head it's straight forward, but not too many write in assembly any more, and for good enough reason].

Tiny cache?

Hardly a part of the x86/IA-32 architecture.

Insanely long pipeline:
I'll give you this one by default, I'm not knowledgable about it.

Design features which aimed for "as cheap as possible":
Not quite: Design features that aimed for "we still have to support stuff that our processors supported 20 years ago." A more NOBLE fault, but most likely still a fault.

And this last point sums up all that IS bad about the x86, or at least the things that are confusing.

Honestly, the x86 was one of the most amazing chips ever built. It had extensive built-in support for task switching, and memory protection. Segmented memory is NOT a bad idea (just ends up that a lot of system software isn't written to use it, some of it even copies the hardware features in software for protability purposes).

I'd be really interested to see an OS on the scale of Windows, Linux, or OSX written SPECIFICALLY for this architecture (read: uses all of the hardware features).

I'd love to hear that I'm wrong on all of the above points if you can back up your arguments.

Re:i wouldnt

[Anonymous Coward]

A G5 is $2000 because of the hardware is comes with.
Go to dell or some other manufacture ( built-it-yourself doesn't count ). Then look at a PC with all the same features as a G5 and see how much it costs. A very close dell is a several hundred more. Secondly. No PC mobo has dual 1.25Ghz system busses.

I bought a G5 for 2K.
I got a "superdrive" ( CD 52x, CD-R 8x, DVD 4x, DVD-R 2x in one )
I got a dual-head geforce FX 5200, it runs UT2004 and my 2d apps nicely.. And no the card isn't the 3D gamers dream. isn't the uber gaming card is a BTO option that I didn't need.

It also came with 80GB 7200rpm SATA Maxtor drive. I added a second in and data striped them.

Not to mention Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB 2.0, Optical audio IN & Out, gigabit ethernet, v.92 modem, AGP 8x Pro, PCI Express.. So on and so on.

I have a 19" NEC running at 1600x1200 @ 75hz and a 17" NEC running at 1280x1024 @ 75hz.

So yes, as cheapo PC mobo with little or none of the above features being cheaper doesn't mean macs are expensive.

If you want a no-frills mac buy an eMac for $700 ( includes 17" built-in CRT ). Or a G5 iMac for $1200. The G5 is made for someone who uses the system for pro multimedia. Hell, the damn case is made of 1/4th inch thick aircraft aluminum. It has 9 fans that run at low speed and are automatically controlled to make it quiet. You might not care about noise but someone using it for multimedia does.

Somehow I really can't compare that to a cheap PC.
The G5 isn't a gaming rig or a cheap system to check your email and browse with, its a full out multimedia system.

Re:i wouldnt

[pegasustonans]

If you can't utilize the full-power in a machine, or if you will not utilize said power in your everyday operations, then all power in excess of what will be utilized is useless power. Now, on a rather different topic, if you're trying to suggest that a $1300 Athlon system (assuming that you're going for the best cost/parts ratio you can find and consequently build it yourself) is comparable to an equivalently priced imac G5, then I'm going to have to strongly disagree. Now, I am not including the price of a monitor, which, assuming you don't already have one, would be an additional cost in the Athlon system. However, in terms of both upgradeability and utilizable performance in currently available consumer-oriented games and applications, I would suggest that the Athlon system as stated above would absolutely kick the teeth out of the imac. If you want to talk about the advantages of the Mac OS, talk about the OS, but don't for a minute suggest the price of hardware for Macs is somehow equivalent to PCs. The upgradeability issue alone shows that PCs win hands-down in this category. An example is in order (fast-forward to this hypothetical future scenario): If I want to do a major hardware upgrade on an imac I purchased a year ago, I'm basically out of luck. Thus, the most cost and time-effective solution is to essentially get a new machine. With a PC that I assembled a year ago, I can easily take whatever component out that I want and replace it with an updated component. This long-term cost factor must also be considered when comparing the differences between the two platforms. Thus, in my estimation, the PC is still the clear winner as far as hardware is concerned in the lower-cost categories.

Re:i wouldnt

[jsvesnik]

You've got Terminal.app running on Darwin x86?

Re:i wouldnt

[__aafkqj3628]

The HUGE GAPING difference is that Solaris is a server operating system, with much less flexibility on hardware.

Solaris x86 is nothing more than a hobbyists operating system (proved when they tried to kill it) and is extremely limited in its hardware support.

Besides, Sun's hardware market power is shrinking so fast anyway.

Re:i wouldnt

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love how Mac zealots try to explain how their $2000 Mac is cheaper than a PC explaining how they saw a $1500 P4 or AMD64 and completely ignore the hundreds of $500 - $1000 PCs out in the market. It's like they're still trying to justify the expense to themselves.

Lol. I spend $1600-$2000 on a Mac about once every 3 years. I also spend at least $800/year on PC gear (usually a new Linux box). Computers are like tires, you just have to buy more of the cheap ones. You get what you pay for. Nothing (no single system anyway) I've used can match the Dual G5 at home for speed. Though, if I get the right deal, I wouldn't pass up some quad Opteron goodness this year. ;)

Call me a zealot if you want, but I use 5 different OSes on 4 different architectures daily. It's like the food pyramid or something. I have friends that spend $4000+/yr on windows boxen, but they probably have some serious gaming disorders and control issues! ;) (1TB mirrored for LAN party tote box? yeah...)

Re:i wouldnt

[csk_1975]

Most Mac users are completely disconnected from the larger PC market. Apple's prices have been the same since the mid-90s, so they assume that's how the rest of the world works.

This is completely wrong. I am looking for something to do digital video on and the new G5 iMac is very competitive. With 1GB Ram, 250GB HDD, DVD burner, 20" LCD and Final Cut it is $2300 and this includes a high end graphics card, TV out and some nice software. For comparison a Dell Precision with 1GB Ram, 250GB HDD, DVD burner, 20" LCD, Adobe Video Collection and graphics card is $3940

Of course the Dell Precision is extensible which makes it more attractive but if you can get a machine with the same spec as the G5 iMac for less, good luck. Its easy to say that Macs are crazy expensive and Apple is still in the '90s but the facts don't bare this out at all.

Re:i wouldnt

[catwh0re]

Likewise my OSX has _never_ crashed, but I did get to visit all those bad sites, treaded all over the shop like a drunk, and didn't have to bother with a NAT, firewall, virus scanner, heck i randomly open attachments full of windows virii, I'm raw on the Internet and nothings gotten in.

Re:i wouldnt

[Mattintosh]

Meanwhile, the PPC almost always has 64K L1 cache (32K instruction, 32K data).

The PPC 750 (the "G3") had 512k or 1MB of L2 cache running at bus speed (66 or 100 MHz). (Source: Apple - Note: This page shows L2 cache to be 512k and 300MHz to be an available option. The 300MHz PPC750 had a 1MB L2 cache).

Early G4's had 1MB of L2 running at bus speed (100 or 133 MHz). (Source: Apple)

Later G4's had 256K of L2 (at processor speed) and 1MB or 2MB of L3 (at 1/4th processor speed). (Source: Apple - 1MB - 2MB)

The G5's have 512k of L2 running at processor speed. (Source: Apple)

And lots and lots of registers...

I can understand why you might like cheap/fast-enough/common x86 processors. I just don't understand why anyone would defend the poor design decisions that bite them in the ass.

Re:i wouldnt

[Boltronics]

Firstly, I think my AMD AthlonXP 2500+ PC with Antec Super LAN-Boy case (with clear side-panel), CoolerMaster Aero 7+ HSF, ThermalTake PSU, 4 SATA hard disks, all rounded cables, etc. make my PC look beastly and very cool. I also know the design is nothing to be sneezed at, since it has excellent airflow and the case is made of aluminum - not cheap plastic like all Macs I've ever seen.

Now this may surprise you, but I haven't purchased a new computer in well over 4 years! I could never afford to fork out so much cash at any one point in time (being a student). I simply upgrade the bits and pieces as I need to when I can afford to. There is not a single component of the original computer (an old early Duron) left in the machine. Now the monitor is a 17-inch Hitachi LCD. The case has changed at least twice. Even the hard disks I originally had have all failed and been replaced.

The biggest upgrade I have ever performed was a simultaneous motherboard and RAM upgrade, and the lovely (almost) never-changing Socket A has let me get away with this.

So seriously... how can a Mac compete for somebody like me. I DO need an upgradable computer. Now take a look around - this is Slashdot! I'm not the only one who works this way.

As for malwares... I run a UNIX-based OS, just like you do. GNU/Linux, thanks.

Re:i wouldnt

[fireboy1919]

$120 DVD-+RW drive (one of the new dual layer capable ones)
$180 Asus Mobo with built-in Optical audio, gigabit, a normal ethernet connection, AGP 8x PRO, pci express, firewire, and USB 2.0 and an Athlon XP 3200 installed
$120 120 GB harddrive
$250 Decent monitor - 19" or higher
$100 512 MB RAM
$20 Modem
$80 video card

Your grand total comes to $890, and I can get almost all of these things at an average of $40 under the price I quoted. This is closer to the "go to CompUSA and pick all of this stuff up" price. I mentioned Asus because they're generally acknowledged as one of the better Mobo manufacturers, and they sell a model that has all of those things I mentioned on it.

So...what features do Macs have that you pay for?
-Faster bus speed
-OSX
-Double the bandwidth of processor (of course, you can always add a few hundred to the price and buy the Athlon 64 equivalent stuff...)

I don't really care how much Dell charges, or about the Microsoft tax, since I use Linux. Apple doesn't have to compete with Dell to get my business, they have to compete with me, and I can build a system to your specs for $900 as an upper limit.

I guess they're more competitive than they used to be, though. They used to charge about three times retail for an equivalent x86 box.

Still, I think it's probably worth it because you get the twin benefits of being able to use esoteric hardware that won't work in linux (a great many of the 96Kbit capable soundcards won't work in linux, for example), while also not having to use Windows. But don't kid yourself into think it's because Apple isn't taking advantage of their market niche to increase prices.

Re:i wouldnt

[bigox]

Why is this moderated as troll? The author makes a very good point. The new macs are very elegantly designed, even when compared to the various aftermarket cases. The iMacs are very quiet. Their self contained quality made setting up a bunch of them a snap. Sure, they are not much use to the home/work power user, but for non technies, they are great.

And another thing. The author makes a good point about the upgrades. Have you tried to buy low density PC100 memory lately? Noticed the price? Being able to upgrade is nice, but as I get older and have less time, I'd rather buy a new machine.

I'm not too biased because my main machine is a x86 running linux.

Re:i wouldnt

[rawg]

Coming from a PC user I can see how you missed the boat on this. Even the LCD screen is replaceable on a iMac. You can upgrade the CPU, hard drive, memory... http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=868 12

Re:i wouldnt

[CrashMan79]

Nevermind that you're comparing an iMac to a corporate-class workstation. If you'd configured a Dimension instead of a Precision, you'd probably not have had anything to post about, sorry to say. I just got done refuting someone else's claims that "Apples aren't any more expensive than similarly equipped PCs" on The Inquirer. Oddly enough, they did the same thing you did: went straight to Dell, picked a corporate class machine. Sadly, the other people made some gross misjudgements to jack up the PC price even more, by configuring the Dell with twice the RAM, more addons, etc... But still, when you get down to it, you're comparing Apples and oranges. Back on topic, even if Apple did release OSX on x86 architecture, it'd likely run poorly (at least as compared to OSX on a Mac). It's just not in their best interests to release a "perfect" version of OSX on x86 architecture, simply because I doubt Apple makes its money selling software. If there's no compelling reason for people to buy the machines (style only goes so far, OS and other software tow the load), there's very little profit potential for Apple in releasing OSX on PC hardware.

Re:i wouldnt

[ArbitraryConstant]

"Who needs an ugradeable computer (other than RAM) anyway?"

um... me?

"I upgraded a supposedly unupgradable, all in one purple iMac with a 120G HD and all the RAM it will hold."

You'd have fun if you tried to install a hard drive larger than 137 gb, as the ATA controllers of the time didn't support drives that big. I popped an SATA contoller in my PC that sounds like it's about as old as your iMac (ca. 1997), and now it has a 160 gb drive. I also popped a gigabit network card in, and now it's great file server.

Installing an SATA controller in an iMac from that time is impossible, the 160 gb drive would be impossible, and the gigabit interface is impossible on any iMac. In addition, the firewalling requirements of my server have caused me to install a total of 3 network interfaces-- this, too, is impossible on an iMac.

It might be 8 years old, but my NFS performance is about 15-20 mb/s. That's about the best you can do with NFS over ethernet. The hard drive performance is about 2% better than my desktop machine because the chipset in the SATA card is better than the on board SATA controller in my desktop machine, despite the fact that it runs a much faster OS with much faster hardware. As opposed to your iMac, which will be stuck at ATA/33 for the rest of time.

And I don't care what it looks like. It's tucked away under my desk where even I can barely see it. It just sits there working perfectly.

"In a few years, even the most upgraded computer will be hopelessly obsolete and will be replaced if you need/want to run the latest and greatest software"

That's odd. I could have sworn my server was running up to date everything. Either you're full of it, or I recall the versions of my stuff incorrectly.

"especially games."

Games on a Mac. Right.

"Not having to worry about any of those 70,000+ known malwares out for wintel may also allow you to sleep better"

My server is a fully patched OpenBSD machine. Everything else is not.

You're mistaking what you find useful from what others find useful. Just because you would derive no utility from an upgradable computer doesn't mean no one else would. You obviously don't feel like operating a server; I can respect that. However, I want a server, and if I hadn't bought an upgradable machine in 1997 I would have to get a new computer now. I knew I'd be doing something like this back then, so I got the upgradable machine. I know I'll be doing something like this 5 years from now, so my new desktop machine is also upgradable.

There are many other reasons to get an upgradable machine.

Apple is good for three things: immutable desktop machines, powerhaus workstations, and laptops. I have an Apple laptop and I'm happy with it. But Apple doesn't want to sell you an affordable, upgradable desktop. So some of us just have to look elsewhere.

Re:i wouldnt

[ArbitraryConstant]

"If you want a PC as quiet as an iMac, you sacrifice speed. You can get a 1.8GHz iMac with display (which will completely obliterate a 3GHz Pentium 4), and have it run so quiet that you can't hear it."

errr... what?

That depends entirely on what you're going to do with it. Pentium 4's have substantial advantages in serveral areas. For example, they have more memory bandwidth than iMacs. Also, while Pentium 4s don't automatically have good video cards, iMacs automatically have bad video cards. If you were doing something graphically intensive, the P4 would likely win.

"I bought my 867 MHz powerbook 2 years ago, and it completely obliterated my 2.26 GHz Pentium 4 (which is *incredibly* noisy), and still does. And it does this all silently."

Again, that depends entire on what you do with it. any G4 computer has a maximum of a 187 mhz bus, which will choke immediately if anything memory intensive is run.

Re:i wouldnt

[phulshof]

I'd love to know where you can get some of these prices, and brands you can buy for that. 250 GB for $125? 20" LCD for $625? What keyboard do you get for $10, and what mouse for $20? Is the 9800 high end still?

Also: where's the case (a nice one please, like the Mac has)? Where's the speakers? How much will you pay for the processor and MB? Now put that on a table, and put the Mac next to it. Does it compare? What's your endprice for both?

I personally still prefer the PC over the Mac, but I think Apple has come a long way in creating a level price field between PC and Mac.

Re:i wouldnt

[weileong]

the instant they switched to x86, they'd lose what they have going for them, and their product would suck. they have such a tight os cause the environment is so tight. they control all the hardware.

I think it's important to be clear what "switching to x86" actually means.

Are we talking about Apple selling shrinkwrapped copies of "Mac OS X x86 Edition!!!" in stores, shopping it to manufacturers/OEMs, etc. etc.?

*OR* are we talking about Apple shipping - in their own housings, their own designed motherboards etc. etc. something that uses an AMD64/Opteron inside?

If it's the latter, then Apple would still have "total control".

I'm thinking that if it happens, it'll be Apple-ships-their-own-x86 hardware, not only because of the "total control" aspect, but also because they'll be able to control pricing (I'd personally forget the idea of super-cheap Macs; it's a conscious decision by them not to compete in that space, I believe. Where margins are low you have to make up for it in volume which carries it's own set of costs/difficulties), and, most importantly, offering shrinkwrapped "can install on any x86 machine" Mac OS X would be a total declaration of war against Microsoft.

Even a company that is not beholden to MS would be chary of doing something like that, and Apple absolutely needs Microsoft Office on their platform.

Re:i wouldnt

[Trolling4Dollars]

Yes. Because everyone knows that stylish brushed aluminum cases with holes in them and blue or white LEDs add at least 5 gigaflops to a system right off the bat. ;P

By that standard PCs with those neon lights and side panels should increase processing power to the "nth" factor!

Ricers with Office Max wastebaskets hanging off the exaust and underside neon and hood LEDs should get 400 miles to the gallon and have a starting RPM of 100,000 with 12,000,000 HP.

Mustbe some, as yet, undiscovered property of neon and LEDs to increase the performance of, well... ANYTHING. By that logic, an old diner with more neon should be a real mean mover.

Ah yes... ;P

Re:i wouldnt

[csk_1975]

Yeah my comparison is somewhat bogus, but no more so than "the Macs are so overpriced" rhetoric. If you can honestly say that comparing a Dell Dimension to an Apple is a fair comparison then you've already blown it. A mid range Dell like an Optiplex maybe, but their low end, crappy, fall to pieces junkbox? In fact an IBM is a better comparison - start spec'ing up one of those and look at the total price.

As I said I am looking for a machine to do video editing on (for home). I purchase PCs at work, I use an IBM Thinkpad at home. I looked at the price our suppliers offer for something comparable to a G5 iMac and it just doesn't stack up. I assumed the Mac would be much more, but its less. You really should do a comparison and see how it stacks up - if the PC was cheaper I'd buy it and I wouldn't bother posting to Slashdot. I was amazed that Apple's price was cheaper.

Re:i wouldnt

[boaworm]

Your calculation doesnt include...

2 x ~2 Ghz 64bit cpus

A great case

PSU

Cabling

Mouse and Keyboard
Add those, and you'll have a different equations..

Re:i wouldnt

[steeviant]

"I also know the design is nothing to be sneezed at, since it has excellent airflow and the case is made of aluminum - not cheap plastic like all Macs I've ever seen."

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any case more obviously made of aluminium or more thouroughly engineered for adequate airflow than the one on a PowerMac G5.

I think they've been around more than long enough for you to have sneaked a peek at one on the apple website.

Re:i wouldnt

[RedBear]

$120 DVD-+RW drive (one of the new dual layer capable ones)
$180 Asus Mobo with built-in Optical audio, gigabit, a normal ethernet connection, AGP 8x PRO, pci express, firewire, and USB 2.0 and an Athlon XP 3200 installed
$120 120 GB harddrive
$250 Decent monitor - 19" or higher
$100 512 MB RAM
$20 Modem
$80 video card

I'm sorry.

Rant mode on.

I too used to think lists like this made some sort of sense. But they don't. The only way this list makes sense is if you are a computer expert who uses Linux (or pirates Windows), AND you are building this computer for yourself, AND you can get the parts all from the same place or inexpensively shipped, AND you somehow managed to get all the right parts out of the dozens of different types of cases, motherboards, and CPUs, AND you know how to put them together correctly AND all the miscellaneous cheap parts you bought all work together and none are faulty and need to be replaced AND etcetera ad infinitum...

Everyone who makes a list like this is just wasting his time. The list only makes sense to you, unless you are in the habit of spending many hours ordering parts and building computers for other people FOR FREE... If you wanted to make any profit at all by selling that particular system to someone, there's this little thing called economics that gets in the way. You'll have to double the cost of all the parts, add compensation for shipping, and then bill for labor. Suddenly you have a machine that costs double the price of a low-end Mac (eMac) and you still haven't even added any software!

And lets be realistic here, 80% of the populace is either not ready for Linux or simply won't be happy with it (in its current state). Even if you do discount the cost of the software, to duplicate the usability of a Mac or even Windows you or someone else will have to spend X amount of hours setting this system up so all the hardware works and all the necessary software is installed to do the same basic tasks that can be easily done on either Mac OS X or Windows.

Just as a little experiment, why don't you go ahead and build yourself one of these systems from scratch. Just be sure and keep careful track of all the time you use from planning to ordering to assembly to installation and configuration of the software. When you're finally done and have a moderately usable system, multiply the number of hours it took you by whatever you get paid at your current job. Even if you don't get paid much you will probably be shocked at the number that comes up. Your time just spent finding each part will probably negate the "$40 less" that you think you can get all those parts for.

If you are a geek who uses Linux and you have free time on your hands then building a computer from scratch can be an entertaining, educational and satisfying experience. It's loads of fun, I've even done it myself a few times. But trying to compare this list to the actual market price of any pre-built computer with all necessary software installed... it's just insane. Another thing, you do not need a $2000 Mac to get the same functionality, usability and apparent speed as a PC half the price, this is a myth today. Macs simply cannot be directly compared to PCs speed-wise for anything but a few specific operations that only a small segment of the population uses their computer for. For most poeple, a Mac that costs $800-$1200 will be more usable, safer to use on the Internet, and more fun to use than any PC in the same price range, no matter if it's running Windows or Linux.

End of rant. I hate older Macs and Mac OS 7/8/9 and have been running Linux at home for years, so don't even think of calling me a Mac zealot. I'm just tired of seeing these BS "cost" lists being taken seriously here. The general reader and the moderaters need to come to the realization that they literally make no sense for anyone besides the original poster, unless the value of your time is zero and you already have all the requisite knowledge.

Re:i wouldnt

[rawg]

This is the same thing that people have said about the Apple Cube. Yet I have upgraded the hard drive, video card, CPU (dual-1GHz), and memory. I also have a 23" monitor on it. This is on a computer that is 4 years old. I still use it as my primary system. So, I don't think that there will be no way to upgrade the iMac.

Re:i wouldnt

[Jucius Maximus]

"CASE: $50 (great? who cares. FCC compliant. Your computer won't run faster with a better case, and it won't last longer)"

Firstly, your system will last longer with a better case. Better cases allow for better cooling and heat dissipation. Higher temperatures and temperature variations will kill your chips and hard drives more quickly.

And 50 Dollars? I suggest you try working with high end cases from Lian Li, Antec, Thermaltake and Coolermaster. They typically start around $120. You will never go back to working with cheap $50 cases again. The high end ones feature far better design, ease of installation of parts, fan control and placement and precision craftsmanship. (I mean really, have you ever opened up a Power Mac and worked with it? It puts standard PC cases to shame. Everything is much more accessible and well placed. Even compared to what's in my Lian Li PC-6070. And did you know that the G5's have a liquid cooling system? Try finding a complete liquid cooling system for PCs and figuring out the cost of all the peltiers, piping, pumps, etc. Of course installing it requires voiding your mobo and CPU warranty by modding them. Try not to damage them during the H20 cooling install either, OK?

"Mouse and Keyboard: $20"

For what? A low quality no name mouse and POS lightweight keyoard? The keyboard and mouse are the actual parts of the computer you touch and you want to get high quality of both. Get a proper logitech MX series mouse and logitech, fujitsu, or keytronics keyboard (though nothing replaces my Model M) and there's $100 to spend.

"Power Supply: $30"

For $30 you can get a POS low quality power supply that won't nearly power a dual CPU machine and will then crap out and fry your hard drives. Try an Antec TruePower 550 for $100+ with thermal fan control that does not have the per-fan fine tuning that the G5 has.

Meaningless question

[Have Blue]

Because it is not ever, ever going to happen.

If AMD and Intel sprayed all their CPUs with anthrax, would you buy a Mac?

without a doubt

[sirmalloc]

i'd switch without a doubt. however, i wonder if this would severely hurt apple's hardware sales.

Corporate switch

[herberts]

AS I already own Macs I would not switch, but I would try to make my company switch...

Re:Corporate switch

[ccoakley]

I'm of the same opinion as the grandparent, so I will respond to your question. I would most likely buy a P5 OSX over a G6 OSX. Here's my reasoning:

1. Right now I favor my dual G5 over my dual Xeon because:
a. my dual G5 is plugged into a 23" display and my dual Xeon is plugged into a poor 19" display. If I upgraded to one of the new displays, ADC support is dropped and a P5 box will likely have hardware that supports the nice DVI display.
b. Most of my commercial software licenses are for my G5. This is actually a strike against switching to the P5 over the G6.
c. The dual G5 box is significantly quieter than the dual Xeon box. Again, this is a strike against switching.

2. Cost of hardware: Umm... my dual Xeon with SCSI hard drives cost 30% less than my dual G5 for approximately the same processor performance (better drive performance). I'll assume the same cost difference applies in the hypothetical scenario.

3. There exist very good compilers for x86. I ran some benchmarks against both of my boxes and the Xeon outperformed the G5 in areas where the Xeon should have lost hands down. Inspecting the assembly code I realized that gcc (for C++ especially, but even for C) generates much better x86 code than PPC code. In fact, the C++ PPC code generation was terrible (particularly for large array/martix math). Intel's compiler is even better for C++ than g++, and the lack of an alternative on PPC makes the gap even larger.

This really irritates me. The PPC architecture *does* have advantages over x86. However, they are almost completely unrealized due to the lack of a decent compiler (metrowerks on PPC is decent, and fares well againt g++ on x86, but doesn't compare to intel's x86 compiler).

If (3) was fixed, I may be willing to accept (2) and then change my answer, particularly because my commercial software licenses more than make up the difference.

I really like OS X. As far as driver support, it works with my wacom tablet, my microsoft mouse, my sandisk usb drive, my iRiver MP3 player, my Canon camera, and my Epson scanner. It failed to work with my Labtec usb headphones/microphone (which doesn't matter since I can't play CounterStrike on it anyway), my Canon scanner (which happened to be one of only two Canoscan models not supported--that irritated me), and my USB wireless adapter (which I tried just to see if it worked. I already have a wireless card. Besides, the USB fucker bluescreened my windows laptop on multiple occasions, so I wouldn't call its windows support great either). I would recommend OSX iMacs to people like my grandmother as and OSX powerbooks to fellow CS students.

The problem with this question...

[the unbeliever]

Is one of "will my hardware be compatible with OS X?" -- if I could be assured that my hardware will work as well under OS X on x86 as it does under Windows XP, then I would switch in a heartbeat, or at least dual boot. Application support is another issue, as is migrating data.

This question does not have a simple answer like "yes" or "no" or "maybe" -- there are a lot of dependencies on each answer.

Sure!

[Kirsha]

You bet, dual booting though. Games are still a Windows domain.

Well..

[chewy_2000]

I would switch in a second. OS X is by far the best OS on so many fronts that I have ever used (interface, ease of use etc, and the Unix core is nice). I'd still have to maintain a Windows boot for games, unless it was so popular most games were released for it.

Never going to happen though, since Apple make their money from hardware, not the OS.

Yep, yep, yep.

[sllim]

I would most certainly purchase and install it.
Doesn't mean I wouldn't still run windows. Possibly do a dual boot or a windows on mac kind of solution.

Ain't never gonna happen though. Apple makes money off there hardware and the OS is why people purchase the hardware. Be a foolish thing for Apple to do.

Please not again

[ravenspear]

I can't count the number of times that I've heard this asked. The obvious answer is that yes a lot of people would switch if OS X was ported to x86. But I also can't count the number of times the people who keep asking this question have been told how irrelevant it is to do so. OS X is not going to be ported, for the simple reason that if it were Apple would go under and then OS X would no longer exist.

If you need to know why that is, just google for "if os x were ported" and you'll find the same explanation on thousands of pages. I don't feel like rehashing it here.

Re:Please not again

[forgoil]

Not to mention that it would be pirated like wildfire...

Re:Please not again

[ravenspear]

Not trying to whore here but if my "google for it" suggestion was too vague for some, here are some articles on why porting OS X would be a very bad idea from Apple's perspective.

No Intel On OS X Part I: Economics 101
Porting Mac OS X to Intel

Re:Please not again

[ravenspear]

The problem with that argument is it is WRONG.

I suppose I shouldn't expect any more intelligence from an AC.

Apple is already turning into a media company b/c of iPod.

What nonsense. The iPod has formed a nice accessory to their core business. That is all. They are by no means a "media company."

Mac sales are not all that great.

You keep sinking further. Last quarter Apple reported total Mac sales of 876,000 units, a year over year increase of 105,000 units. In addition, Mac sales comprise ~90% of Apple's total revenue. Taking any step to cut down their core business would be insanely stupid.

Selling Mac OS to PC owners would be a CASH COW if they kept the price reasonable.

It would not be nearly enough to equal Macintosh hardware sales. Apple grosses about 1.8 billion per quarter selling hardware. To equate that with just selling OS X at $129, they would need to sell 14 million units a quarter. Even if a lot of people would switch, that is an unrealistic expectation.

I suspect the actual reason this hasn;t alredy happened is some hidden clause in an agreemnt with Microsoft.

Ok, I don't even think I need to touch this.

Next time, try bringing more facts to the table.

Re:Please not again

[akorvemaker]

It would not be nearly enough to equal Macintosh hardware sales. Apple grosses about 1.8 billion per quarter selling hardware. To equate that with just selling OS X at $129, they would need to sell 14 million units a quarter. Even if a lot of people would switch, that is an unrealistic expectation.

Yes, it is. But rather than having the expectation to match/replace their hardware profits, they could simply hope to increase their profits somewhat, supplementing them by expanding into a new market. Some people would still pay a premium to get the whole "Mac experience" (hardward and software). Selling OS X for x86 would not kill off all their hardware sales. It would reduce it somewhat, but it would also bring in the potential for many more customers (some of whom may switch to the "one true Mac" at a later date).

Re:Please not again

[ravenspear]

Yes, it is.

Are you insane? M$ doesn't even sell 14 million copies of Windows per quarter. Are you seriously implying that you think just by entering the x86 space OS X will completely surpass Windows immediately?

Re:Please not again

[jcr]

Well, sure it would, but let's do a little thought experiment here...

Supposed fifty million people pirate OS X and install it on their Intel machines. That's now fifty million seats were you have a chance to sell an app like Keynote or iLife, isn't it? Okay, suppose iLife is pirated, too: that's a couple of million people who might order poster-size prints or a photo book through iPhoto, no?

If Keynote is pirated, doesn't that mean that many more people (including those who are scrupulous about buying what they use) are inclined to get Keynote, since more people around them are using it?

What I observe, is that what people pirate in college and high school is what they buy when they graduate.

-jcr

Re:Please not again

[zyridium]

It would not be nearly enough to equal Macintosh hardware sales. Apple grosses about 1.8 billion per quarter selling hardware. To equate that with just selling OS X at $129, they would need to sell 14 million units a quarter. Even if a lot of people would switch, that is an unrealistic expectation.

Although I do not think that it does make sense this is the most ridiculous argument I have seen. 1.8 billion gross for hardware is nothing like 1.8 billion gross for software. Software would cost SFA to produce, apple doesnt magically create the hardware for free...

Re:In a word...

[Stormwatch]

> Windows and OSX on the same machine

It's called "Virtual PC".

Switch?

[tickticker]

I would for all the games.

--
Here siggy siggy siggy... Has anyone seen a small nonsensical sig running around here?

The real question is...

[SetupWeasel]

Would software and hardware companies support OS X more consistantly if it were available on an x86 PC?

The only reason I use Windows is that it is the easiest OS to find games, paripherals, and other things that support it. If Linux or OS X had that, I could consider them.

Yes, but it's not what you think.

[solios]

I'm already a Mac user. I'm in that FUN bracket of having shit for credit and needing expandability to get anything done. I'm stuck on a dual g4 450, and for the price it would take me to buy a processor upgrade (dual 1.25 ghz- JUST SIX HUNDRED BUX!) I could buy a middlish PC with a decent video card.

Oh, and that PC is expandable, has more than two drive bays and one optical bay, and is stupidly cheaper to upgrade in terms of horsepower.

So if OS X on x86 were released and would run native OS X apps without recompiling* at the same speed as a g5 (or faster), yeah. I'd pick one up. I wouldn't completely SWITCH, because I still need Classic, and you can forget about that running on the PC. :P

People like me- Mac users who would jump the hardware boat for a cheaper, faster mac the SECOND they had the CHANCE- are why Apple will NEVER do this. EVER. :|

*It's NeXT. IT. CAN. DO. THIS. Or at least, it could.

Macs aren't particularly expensive anymore

[jralls]

You're out of date. Macs are comparable (the WSJ's Walt Mossberg even claims cheaper) in price/performance to x86 boxes. When you factor in the reduction in neck pain, the lack of truly low-end macs is easily compensated for. OTOH, you can always get a used mac; OSX runs fine on any PPC version. As to your question, one of the main reasons that OSX is able to be so stable and still provide all of the eye-candy is because of a very small HCL. That advantage would be lost by moving to the rather chaotic wintel platform.

Re:Macs aren't particularly expensive anymore

[drachen]

OSX runs like crap on a G3 of less than about 800MHz, and even then there's features you won't get.

So which features are those? I have Mac OS X 10.3.5 running on my iBook 700Mhz (640MB RAM) and it works perfectly. Not slowly. Not like crap. In fact, 10.3 is faster than 10.2 ever was on here.

... my XP system ...

Ok, you say you have an XP system, but you don't mention your OS X system. So uh... you're just another anti-mac zealot, right?

Nothing to see here...

Re:Macs aren't particularly expensive anymore

[eMartin]

I think the main one is that Quartz Extreme doesn't work on many of the machines released just before yours. That has a lot to do with the whole "runs like crap" thing.

Altivec also helps with OS X, and is only a feature on G4s and up.

If it was centrally manageable

[That_Dan_Guy]

I'm a Windows Admin, and live by Group Policy and remote administration tools under Windows 2000/2003 (NT4 had some stuff, but boy did it suck in comparison). I do not know what equivalent things are available under OS X or even unix/Linux. I've only installed Linux on a hobby basis (shrug).

But if I could manage them at least as well as I can with Group Policy, sure I'd switch.

It would also have to be able to run all the shrink rapped stuff we support.

I used to be a big Mac user, back 12+ years ago. So yeah, I'd love to get back to that. It sure seemed like computers were fun back then. But maybe thats becuase it was just a hobby and not my work :)

Re:If it was centrally manageable

[rwoodford]

Compare Mac OS X Server and Apple Remote Desktop to what you work with now. You can do a lot with these packages.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/
http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Since this is likely a marketing test by Apple

[itsNothing]

Let me contribute my 2 cents.

In a heartbeat.

Why switch?

[muyuubyou]

The only "issues" I have with Linux is being forced to use certain windows apps (work mostly and no, I'm not leaving a job I like just so I can delete my windows partition). I also have a Mac and yes, if MacOSX was available, I'd install it, but I wouldn't "switch" - why should I use just one OS?

The whole "switch" thing is for basic users I guess. The rest of us aren't afraid to partition a hard drive.

I would consider it...

[Sanity]

...and that is sad. There is no good reason that free (as in speech) operating systems should not be as good if not better than OSX, but they simply aren't. OSX is great, and Apple has a more open attitude towards their OS than Microsoft, but it is not free (as in beer or speech).

Furthermore, I regret to say that I don't see much prospect of any of the Linux GUI efforts approaching the ease of use and elegance of OS X any time soon - partially due to a lack of imagination, and partially due to being over-wedded to X which is evolving way too slowly and is over-wedded to a basic design that is simply outdated.

Re:I would consider it...

[Amigori]

The open source community doesn't have as good of a reason to improve the usability as Apple does. Apple is a business and needs to make money, the various Linux gui maintainers, a community project, do not. Apple's big feature is the usability of their computers; for everyone, not just geeks. Linux vendors don't sell computers to everyday people with everyday needs; they sell to geeks who know what linux is good for. Two different target markets, two different reasons for improvements. Now I'm not saying that Linux developers aren't on the right track, which they are, and improvements can be seen throughout, but they are serving different markets.

If you don't like the way X is moving along, feel free to help. You're a veteran here, so I don't need to tell you where to find X. As a veteran, I'm surprised that you fell for a troll article like this. Although, I'm just as guilty in my response here.

As for paying for the OS, I will gladly pay Apple for their products, hardware and software. Is it more expensive? Not to me. My PBG4 has higher resale value if I ever sell it than a comparable dell/etc., I don't have to recompile and spend hours troubleshooting just to get my soundcard/joystick to work, which it still doesn't on my Suse 9.1 box, and I am more productive on my PB, I get the same things done quicker so I have more time for the things that I value in life, like playing with my dog or reading a non-sci-fi book. If you, as your primary mode of transportation, had the knowledge and resources to build a car versus buying one, what would you pick? Buy the car most likely, I would.

Can the Ask Slashdot topic itself be moderated (-1) Troll or (-1) Flamebait? Please?
Amigori

Re:I would consider it...

[Coryoth]

Furthermore, I regret to say that I don't see much prospect of any of the Linux GUI efforts approaching the ease of use and elegance of OS X any time soon - partially due to a lack of imagination, and partially due to being over-wedded to X which is evolving way too slowly and is over-wedded to a basic design that is simply outdated.

Yes, X11 really sucks. It sucks so bad that Apple packages it for OS X and calls it a significant feature.

Could you explain a little more as to why X11 sucks, or what exactly it is about X11's design that is so horribly outdated? I agree that under XFree86 things were progressin a little slowly, but now that Xorg has geared up we're seeing some significant improvements coming pretty fast.

Sure, right now Linux desktops are not exactly as "easy and elegant" as OS X, but on some levels they are very good indeed, and more importantly, they are improving surprisingly quick. X11 is far from the albatross you seem to think.

Jedidiah.

No apps

[kundor]

There would be NO APPLICATIONS. Mac programs are compiled for the powerpc architecture, so the binaries wouldn't work. Windows programs wouldn't work except through something like Wine, which won't work any better for Mac than it does for Linux.

The only apps you could use would be source-based unix stuff, which you can use on linux anyway, and many of which won't actually run on OS X without a lot of work first.

So no...I wouldn't switch.

Re:No apps

[bahamat]

If you build it they will come.

If Apple ported OS X to x86 software vendors would do the same.

Yes, well maybe...

[bblazer]

For the past several years I have been buying nothing but Apple products for myself, coworkers and family members. I have been willing to pay a higher price for better (more innovative) physical design, less cabling, and an innovative OS. The downside has been limited hardware choices that are generally a few steps behind the curve of x86 machines. That being said, I would seriously consider 'switching' to OS X on a x86 machine if it was produced and supported by Apple and possibly the hardware vendors. At the same time, however, I really like the ever evolving designs that come from Apple. When was that last compelling design change of the ubiquitous x86 desktop or laptop (maybe from Alienware)? So for me to do a pseudo-switch, I would probably also need to see some changes from the hardware vendors (how many cables run across the desk of a typical workstation?). To sum it all up, I think it would be a great thing for Apple to release OS X to the masses. It would certainly send Balmer on another sweaty spin!

x86

[simpl3x]

While there are plenty of advantages to x86 hardware, windows did run at one point on the Power architecture. Perhaps a better question would be, if Microsoft ported Windows to the Power 6, or more interestingly, the Cell, would you switch? I like Mips and Arm also, and for low profile computers, which most people should be using anyway, these other architectures are great. Why the fixation on x86 or Windows for that matter?

I would much rather see a variety of devices and architectures coexisting in an environment where getting something done is the key. I happen to use a Powerbook, So! I can also run just about anything required through a VM of some sort. The general purpose computer should be made more general purpose.

What do they need all that "power" for?

[ShatteredDream]

It never ceases to amaze me how so many people who use their computers for just basic, simple tasks like office functions act like they have this incredible need for powerful hardware. I bought a Compaq Presario with a Sempron 2800, 256MB DDR Ram and a 80GB hdd for only $445 including S&H, and with SuSE 9.1 it does everything I need. It's not a game machine, so uhhh why exactly when it's just going to run Java and C++ programs for class, would I need the latest Athlon64 or Pentium4?

The reason for owning a Mac has never been about power, but utility. Every convert to MacOS X from Windows that I know switched because Macs are actually much more useful in many areas than Windows PCs. The hardest pill for many of them to swallow is that the "Apple way" really is significantly easier and more productive than the "Microsoft way."

The average computer user who could afford one, would actually be much better off with an iMac or iBook than a typical off the shelf PC. It gets the job done, and done well and it is made much better than the usual PC.

Dupe! (kinda)

[adam mcmaster]

A strange coincidence, I'm sure, but I asked a similar question this week:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=124599&cid=104 51087

The replies to my post answer it pretty well, I think.

Re:In a word...

[robbieduncan]

Virtual PC 7.0 was released (and shipped as well) a few weeks ago. It supports the G5 just fine.

FFS!

[xirtam_work]

drop a few hundred dollars (or pounds) on an eMac. If you find out that you don't like it flog it on ebay - mac's have great resale values. If you find that you do like it flog it on ebay and buy a more powerful model... duh!

there's no chance that apple will release OS X for X86.... and the software developers will not stand for another platform, cpu, os change.

also, the apple mac hardware would get left behind which is where apple make the money. unless of course osx86 was a poor cousin that lacked features or support and why bother in that case.

Core Values

[Doc Ruby]

If I can use all the apps that I like, without missing the old MS platform. That's how MS got me to switch from MacOS7 to WinNT. The key to IT decisions starts with "what do I need to do" (in simple human/business transaction terms). Then I ask "what apps do that?", then "what OS runs those apps?", and finally "which HW runs that OS?", and I've committed a basic platform. If the apps available can do what I need to do on MacOS, including work without a hitch with everyone else who hasn't switched, I'll be right there with Apple's otherwise superior OS.

Is Mac OS X really that much more expensive?

[mrdlcastle]

Why reinvent the wheel?

Macs are More Expensive, Right?
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36120.ht ml

But Macs are Slower, Right?
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/But-Macs -Are-Slo wer-Right-36964.html

Carlos

Re:Is Mac OS X really that much more expensive?

[legLess]

You know, I've been laptop shopping twice in the last year, once for me and once for my SO. I'm a serious geek -- I spend 90% of my time in a terminal -- and make my living with my hardware, so I spent a lot of time looking. My SO isn't a geek at all, and I'm her computer slave, so whatever she got had to be easy for me to support.

I'd never used a Mac before and was originally planning to get Thinkpad and run Debian on it. Both times, hands down, we got Macs. I have a 15" Powerbook and she has a 14" iBook. Both times I spent days on every major manufacturer's web sites, comparing every model I could find.

What I found was that there is no laptop, period, that matches anything Apple makes feature-for-feature at a comparable price point. Nothing even comes close. The only way to get the features I wanted in a Thinkpad was to pay $3,500 and gain an extra 2 pounds of travel weight. The only sub-optimal feature of the Powerbook is battery life -- after a year of constant use I get about 2 hours.

This comparison was done OS-agnostic, since I expected to run Debian on the Powerbook, too. After a week, though, I swore I'd never go back. OSX is amazing. It's the first time in 15 years of professional computer use that I haven't had to *think* about the operating system.

In short, Macs rule. if you don't believe me, do the research yourself. Anyone trotting out the "Macs are too expensive and slow" line is living in the past.

Re:Is Mac OS X really that much more expensive?

[toddestan]

Those articles are really only valid if you are stuck between buying an Apple and a Dell. And who wants a Dell?

When it comes to the high end, they may compare. Apple is certainly very competitive in laptops. But when it comes to what I can build myself out of components in the PC world vs. Apple, the Apples _are_ really expensive. The cheapest eMac runs about $800 - for that amount of money I can piece together a pretty nice PC system that's going to be far better than that eMac. Even better, that PC system is going to be exactly how I want it, unlike that eMac which would need a ram upgrade and a new mouse right away.

Just the other day, I was adding together what it would cost for a reasonable AMD64 based system. I think I ended up with a 3200+, Gigabyte motherboard, 1GB of Crucial memory, 250GB harddrive, and an ATI 9600 video card for about $1250 without the monitor. And that was with a nice case, CPU cooler, and an Antec power supply (I was trying to make it low noise too.) Apple simply doesn't anything like that for that price.

Re:Is Mac OS X really that much more expensive?

[Beek]

But for every second you gain in performance, you will lose thirty seconds fighting with your OS.

Re:Is Mac OS X really that much more expensive?

[jcr]

After a week, though, I swore I'd never go back. OSX is amazing. It's the first time in 15 years of professional computer use that I haven't had to *think* about the operating system.

Comments like that warm me from the bottom of my stock options ;-)

-jcr

Bootable Games

[bstadil]

Games are still a Windows domain

Me too I would switch in a heartbeat. however the days of Windows as the pre eminent gaming OS might be numbered.

Latest rumor out of a major games house (Not sure which one as I got the "tip" at the Linuxshow) is that the game companies are working on using LiveCD technology for games. They can tweak the kernel and the ATI / Nvidia drivers (source code issues goes away since they will be supplying binaries only) and presto you have an almost console type platform for their specific needs.

Switsch schwitch

[Schmool]

If, and that's a mighty big "if", Apple would ever choose to release a full-fledged MacOS for x86, I would only consider using it on a custom-built box. To me, the only merit of using x86 is the ability to completely build a system from scratch -- with your own choice of CPU, GPU, cooling and case. This is why Apple notebooks are the best ones equipped on the market -- noone builds notebooks to their own specs, and Dell surely won't fit a notebook with FireWire800, Gigabit Ethernet and 54mbps WiFi unless there's enough demand.

Besides, the argument of Apple computers being more costly than IBM PC's is dated and simply wrong. Try and find any lower quotes (non-refurb or sale articles ofcourse) for brand systems that have similar specs, form factor, and hardware quality to Apple's new iMac or PowerBook series.

It wouldn't go that way

[MarcQuadra]

If Apple switched to x86 (well, x86-64 now), they wouldn't let it run on your commodity boxes. You'd have an expensive (although less so than PPC) x86-64 box with OpenFirmware BIOS and a few Apple ASICs to provide the same functionality that Apple has on the PPC. You'd be buying Apple hardware to run it on, without a doubt.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Apple makes a lot of money on their hardware.
2. OS X has limited driver support, opening up to all breeds of hardware would slow the development of the OS down and reduce stability.
3. There's stuff you have on Macs that just doesn't exist with your typical PC BIOS, stuff like target-mode and netboot (much better implmentation than PXE).
4. Apple are about the total experience of the platform, putting OS X on your Dell with it's rat's-nest of cabling is something that makes Steve Jobs cry. Steve has a VISION, and a huge part of it is massive reduction in cabling.

Don't hold your breath for OS X on commodity x86 boxes, it'll NEVER happen. Apple might switch to x86-64 someday if the PPC architecture hits a dead-end, but I find it more likely that the opposite is true.

I will also venture to say that the submitter of this story has something wrong with him if he prefers x86 over PowerPC. The PPC architecture is beautiful, simple, and clean. And Apple isn't the only company selling PowerPC hardware.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[Firehawke]

You were doing fine, if stumbling, until that last line. I think you let your bias show too clearly. OS X having limited driver support isn't necessarily a good thing, firstly. Secondly, the 'total experience' of the platform seems to include a "Well, now where do I find *software* for the damn thing?" right out of the box as well. Thirdly any platform that can thrive despite having a flawed architecture is doing pretty well on software, hardware, and experience.

Lastly, Intel is making steps towards fixing the major architecture issues (real mode, for one thing) through a next-generation replacement for the BIOS. In a few years, we'll be past that point.

As for the rat's nest of cables, I really don't see it being as bad as you say. There are pretty much the same level of cables either way. Power, video, keyboard, mouse, audio, external devices like a USB camera. The only time the Mac had a real edge on cables was when you got the system and monitor in one, and then you're screwed if your monitor goes out.

As far as *I* am concerned, the huge price differential outweighs any 'total experience'-- since I have enough common sense to keep my XP box safe (linux-based firewall helps, as does using FireFox) the common reasons for a switch wouldn't apply to me.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[MarcQuadra]

Alright! Round two!

Finding software for OS X/x86 will be just as hard, if not HARDER than it is for PPC. I don't own a Mac, actually, I use x86 hardware at home, but admin about 200 Macs at work. We don't have trouble finding software for them at all. There's good software in almost every category for OS X, and I've found that Apple's free development tools and NeXT-derived libraries lead even shareware apps to be of great quality and usability.

I know that EFI BIOS is coming, but it's still not here. I've been enjoying a 32-bit BIOS with a GUI bootloader, network booting, single-image support, and no hassles since the Blue and White G3 came out in 1999.

Most Mac setups have a LOT simpler cabling than their PC counterparts. I set these things up for a living. Macs typically install in about half the time from 'boxed' to 'bootup'. I've got a G4 on my desk at work, and an ADC monitor. My monitor gets signal, power, and USB on ONE cable to the CPU. The powered speakers get power and signal on one Y-cable, as opposed to a stereo cable, a left-to-right cable, and a power cable on the PCs. I've got ONE cable coming from the back of my screen to my keyboard, which has a built-in hub for the mouse and my flash-reader. Macs have a lot less cables when properly purchased and set up.

As for 'screwed when the monitor gives out', there are NO machines that Apple ships without external video. I just bought an iBook for my sister and she hooked it up to her monitor witht he included VGA adapter. My desktop G4 at work has both ADC and DVI out. Even the iMacs have VGA-out.

Where's the HUGE price difference? I don't buy 'low end' hardware, be it Mac or PC. Once you get to the 'good stuff' with name-brand components, quality hard drives and memory, and all the fixin's the price difference on both sides is close to zero. Apple's iBooks actually beat Dell laptops hands-down on price and value. The $300 difference on desktops like the iMac is easily accounted for in power savings (which also carry to lower AC bills), high-quality LCD screens, and time to setup and maintain. Once again, I sound like a fanboy, but I'm out there doing price/performance comparisons for my work all day.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[legLess]

Secondly, the 'total experience' of the platform seems to include a "Well, now where do I find *software* for the damn thing?" right out of the box as well

That's funny, I got a Powerbook a little over a year ago and I've never had trouble finding software. Ever. For one thing, most of the stuff I use on Debian and FreeBSD runs just fine on OSX. For another thing, there's a large and active OSX development community.

There are, of course, specialized applications that just don't exist for OSX. Many of these run just fine in Virtual PC. Some of them probably don't and yes, that sucks, but how many apps are we really talking about? Go ahead -- reply and list all the things you use regularly that aren't available, or for which good or better substitutes aren't available, for OSX.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[didde]

I agree with you on points 1, 2 and 4 (:

Now, what if Apple was to make a commitment to the OpenSource world it already has so much to thank for? What if they decided to publish some (or even all) of their API's (and I'm talking in UI terms here, not just Darwin), free for anyone to port / implement to a completely different platform?

I'm not claiming that this would ever happen, but perhaps they could create a business model where they charge people for support (i.e. AppleCare) along with licences, but only if you were running OS X on their own, supported, hardware.

Perhaps they could produce (or enable someone else to produce) a limited version of OS X as a teaser for the "real" choice of their own software and hardware - sort of like the initial idea of their iLife package, but on a completely different level.

I'd sure buy the concept of converting a bunch of non-OS X users this way (:

Those are my humble thoughts and ideas...

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[drinkypoo]

What you're saying is that you have a bunch of proprietary hardware with funny cables. Many of us avoided macs in the 68k and early PPC days specifically to keep away from shit like that. Every mac I've seen had about the same amount of cabling as a PC, as the other poster was saying. In fact I have an apple keyboard on my PC because I love it so, even if I do have to open and clean it periodically. I have hair on [the backs of] my hands :) and even that ends up in my keyboard, let alone crumbs and stuff. Yes, they tried to teach me not to eat at the computers in elementary school, but it never took.

Having external video is not enough - if the internal video dies, you're stuck with a big heavy lump of shit in your PC. Of course, they sell all in one PCs these days, and all in one PCs predate the Macintosh, so it's a stupid argument anyway.

EFI BIOS may not be here but you only need to deal with the PC BIOS at boot time if your drivers are good enough. Interfacing with the BIOS much is a sign of a stupid operating system.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[jrockway]

So, uh, use your XP box and quit-yer-bitching.

Any time anyone mentions a platform the same thing always comes up. The people from alternate platforms (like OS X, or Linux) make arguments about why their platform is better. The we get a bunch of cry-baby XP users making posts like yours. My point? WHO THE FUCK CARES WHICH PLATFORM IS BETTER!? Use the one you like! Done!

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[nmk]

Thats funny, I have this HP bluetooth printer, and getting it to work has been a major pain in the ass on two different XP laptops. When I use the bluetooth detection wizard in OS X to setup the printer (default drivers), it just works.

The thing you have to remember about OS X is that things that are supposed to work with it always work, easily. A large number of the things that are supposed to work with Windows are a pain in the ass to set up.

All you have to do is make sure your device is compatible with OS X. With the very large number of printers, digital cameras, digital camcorders, phones, and PDAs that are compatible, that is usually a pretty trivial task. As least with OS X you know that if the thing is supposed to work, its usually just a matter of plugging it in. With Windows its still plug and pray.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[drgroove]

"Go ahead -- reply and list all the things you use regularly that aren't available, or for which good or better substitutes aren't available, for OSX."

OK - here goes:

• Enterprise-class or SMB CRM software, such as Goldmine, ACT, Siebel, or PeopleSoft; non web-based, so you can skip your "well, just use salesforce.com" reply. Outlook has and always will suck eggs, so the Mac Outlook is as much a terrible option on Apple's platform as Microsoft's. Apple never has had and never will have a robust, comprehensive, intuitive contact-management application, which is a huge issue in breaking down the corporate barrier.
• Accounting software. Not home-user accounting software, either, like Quickbooks or something mickey mouse like that; no, I'm talking general ledger, CFO-feels-comfortable-running-a-Fortune-500-compan y's-finanacials-on-it kind of accounting software.
• Altova's XMLSpy. VPC can go jump in a lake on this one, or for use with any other windows-only software, for that matter. The darn thing runs at 1/4 the speed of native or even J2SE apps on the Mac, which makes using VPC a non-starter. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or trying to sell you something, or both. As such, Mac doesn't have a killer XML app such as XMLSpy available for it.
• Rational Enterprise Suite - ClearQuest, ClearCase, RobotJ, TestManager, etc etc. Yes, IBM/Rational is porting the suite to the Eclipse platform sometime this year, but as of now, if you're developing software in a large IT shop and using Rational, Mac isn't an option.
• Microsoft Access. I hate it, of course, but people use it - it's easy to use. Filemaker is probably the straight-off answer to this one, but a ton of people who use or used Access simply hate Filemaker... not to mention that FM is even less of a RDBMS than Access is, if that's even possible.
• Internet Explorer. Again, I use FireFox as my browser of choice, but most folks use MSIE, so if you're building a site, it is critical that you test your work in MSIE. VPC again? For this one, the inherant intolerable slowness of VPC isn't a critical issue, since you're very likely not to be doing anything w/ MSIE save testing your site in it.

That's the short, off the top of my head list. I'm certain if you thought about this for any significant period of time, you'd come up with many more examples. Software availability for Mac has always, always, always been an issue - the aforementioned examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[The Infamous Grimace]

The new iMac ain't the old; many of the components can be replaced by the user.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said of the eMac.

And for what it's worth, one of the reasons we got an iMac in the first place (the original style, lime-colored, been with us for 5 years) was because my wife wanted a computer that I couldn't take apart and mess with :-)

Gonna get a new iMac real soon. They're worth every penny, IMHO.

(tig)

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[alekd]

The Oracle E-Business Suite is available for MacOS X and has both enterprise class CRM and accounting software. While the CRM software might not be in the same league as Siebel, it has other benefits as tight integration with Accounts Receivables and Daily Business Intelligence -- which can save you from implementing costly high-maintenance data warehouses. The accounting software is just about the best there is.

Anyway most enterprises I know choose to run their enterprise wide applications on UNIX-boxes or on Linux -- even though they use Windows for everything else. I should think a Mac is just as capable of connecting to these as any Wintel.

Re:It wouldn't go that way

[Pharmboy]

Please name a web site that you absolutly have to have MSIE for it to work on, and I will show you a better alternative.

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Virtual PC works on the G5

[MauriceV]

Yeah, they have: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/vi rtualpc.aspx?pid=vpcdemo

(You could run it pretty fast if you had enough RAM to put the entire C drive in RAM with a RAM disk.)

Not to OS X but to PPC.

[Gadzinka]

Would you switch?

I would not switch to Mac OS X, Linux+KDE runs just fine for me. But I would gladly switch to PowerPC PC if they were made in volume, like x86 PCs are. The thing is that x86, even in its 64-bit incarnation is a total hack[1]. I'm not running to upgrade to x86-64 any time soon[2].

If I had comparable prices for barebone x86-32 and PPC system/components (up to 50% more for PPC) I wouldn't hesitate a minute. As it stands now, dollar for dollar, I can buy much better x86 machine which "solves" by force most of the architectural drawbacks.

Robert

PS Just don't tell me that I can buy brand X PPC machine for the price of some Dell/Gateway high-end PC: I have never in my life bought a brand name computer, I just buy the parts and build myself whatever machine I need.

[1] luckily, most of that is well hidden behind the C compiler
[2] price is not totally a non-issue ;)

Re:Not to OS X but to PPC.

[WillerZ]

Pure x86-64 (long mode) is a lot less of a hack than i686 -- the memory model is flat and is feels a lot RISCier than any prior x86 architecture. Gentoo for amd64 on my 2GHz Athlon 64 (which cost me less than GBP 500 to build) seems around 50% faster than 32-bit gentoo on the same machine.

I would, however, love a PPC64 machine; I've used a fair few of them recently, in the form of pSeries machines running AIX 5.2 and they seem to be about 50% faster clock-for-clock than my Athlon64. As a side note, Unix on PPC seems like a good idea, I wonder if Apple will try it*.

If I were to buy or be given a Mac, I would replace keyboard and mouse with USB PC components and run Linux on it. The OS X GUI seems to me to be an unconscionable waste of a powerful processor.

Phil

PS: Has anyone tried the IBM PPC compiler for OS X? On AIX it can give you some seriously good code (build with -O5 and link with -qipa=level=2).

* I know. But OS X is not Unix, never has been, and probably never will be. I'll believe it's Unix whe the Open Group tell me it is.

Re:counterintuitive interface

[Dixie_Flatline]

There are reasons for the decisions that Apple makes, and a lot of them are documented. You can look at their Human Interface Guidelines here.

To quickly answer why they have the menus at the top of the screen: Fitts' law, which describes the amount of time that it takes to move a mouse pointer to an object on the screen, indicates that it's easier to get to the menu items at the top, since you can move your mouse pointer up with no regard for missing the menu bar. Because you run up against the edge of the screen, that parameter is effectively infinite, and reduces the amount of fine controlling you have to do to select your item.

You can also do further reading about such user interface decisions in the book 'The Humane Interface' by Jef Raskin, one of the orginal developers of the Macintosh and its interface. Their decisions for dragging disks to the trash, and having a one button mouse really DID make sense at the time, but a lot of those decisions are lost on us now, especially if we don't have a long Mac background.

Yes and no...

[Anita Coney]

If I could install OSX on one of my homebuilt systems I certainly would.

However, one of the reasons Apples are so stable is because the hardware and software is so strictly controlled. Thus, either OSX would be very unstable on the X86 platform or it would not work with most hardware. Either would be a huge disadvantage.

To x86? NO

[RAMMS EIN]

I have a Mac that can run OS X (but runs Linux). If OS X were released for x86, I could start running it on a PC. But I wouldn't. The reason?

I have programmed x86, MIPS, and PowerPC assembly, and studied the instruction formats for these architectures. x86 is a mess.

Ever tried to use ACPI power management under Linux? Chances are it won't work, due to bugs in the BIOS. The USB controller on my old laptop wouldn't work, because the BIOS assigned the wrong IRQ to it (it said it was on 9, but it was hardwired to 11). Ever had PCs crash because of IRQ conflicts? I have.

The PC is so full of kludges it's amazing that it still works. The system starts in real mode (16 bit, 1 MB of addressable RAM). You really want to go to protected mode (32 bit, all RAM addressable). However, certain things need to be done in real mode, because BIOSes don't do protected mode. Does your hard drive use CHS or LBA?

Have you ever compared efficiencies of other architectures with x86? It's amazing how much power goes into supporting the cruft that's in x86. It's too bad the CPUs are so small, or you could use them for cooking.

Anyway, time to quit ranting. x86 is not for me. And oh, I run Linux on my iBook because I know how to customize every part of it, and because it starts applications faster than OS X. It also has more software available (a lot of software uses GNU extensions and thus requires a lot of effort to port to OS X).

Usability and speed and time.

[fermion]

First, one reason MacOS runs so well is because the minimum hardware requirements tend to be more stringent. This cuts out the possibility of cheap computers, but also avoids the issue of cheap components degrading the brand. If MacOS run on the half price computers, we would see many more people complaining that the computer was 'slow', when in fact they were using an underpowered gpu.

Second, as a Mac user I appreciate that, for the most part, computer will last more than a year or two. I have G4s running between 500mHZ and 1Ghz, and they all run great in the latest version of MacOS. OTOH, my 1.2 GHZ compaq is unable to do anything with Windows XP. Now some of this is due to the fact that I have more memory in some of my macs, but I would bench test my 1 gHz mac against my 1.2 gHz compaq, both with 256MB, any day of the week.

Really, this has always been the philosophy of Apple. Make products that last. Even with the design flaws on the Apple ///, I ditched that computer because the Macs came out. Even years later, it still ran like a dream.

So, for cheap office machines, the Windows PC is a fine choice. I often have used on at the office. Windows is a reasonable choice, and I would not see any reason not to run it. On my machines, in which i pay for, and buy so that I can get work done, I buy mac. Not just because of MacOS, but because the package is a useful holistic device created to allow me to do work, not minimize costs to my employer.

I guess what I am saying is that I would not recommend that anyone use MacOS on PC hardware unless that I knew that hardware meet minimum standards. It would just hut the Apple brand. Just like cheap hardware hurts the MS brand. I certainly would be unlike to buy a Compaq, Dell, or Gateway machine instead of a Mac. The price difference for comparable hardware would be like 10-15%. Such discounts would not be worth my time. As MS says, there are things that save you money only if your time is worth nothing.

Fan of x86?!?!

[CaptainPinko]

Who *REALLY* is a fan of x86? BIOS should have died a long time ago. x86 is a hideous architecture with an ISA that makes all assembler code look like vomit etc. I think the only thing people like about x86 is the cost. I think the more important question is can we ever replace x86 with another architecture (I like SPARC and with Intel's R&D I'm sure we could get over any problems) but keep it as open and mix-and-match as x86 is now? Write a decent emulator and legacy code is taken care of. I'm sure OSS and it's upward trend would minimize the transition costs. But really when can we get rid of this turd?!?

Mistaken assumptions

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Here are the mistaken assumptions implicit in this question:

1. Because Darwin runs on x86 (true), most of the work to port Mac OS X to x86 is already done.

False. Darwin is a very important part of Mac OS X, but in size it is only a tiny fraction of the operating system. The entire GUI and all of the hundreds of libraries ("Frameworks" in Mac OS X) that Mac OS X apps depend on would need to be ported, and many of these are only designed to work on PowerPC currently.

2. If Apple ported Mac OS X to x86, you'd be able to run it on a typical PC.

False. Not unless Apple is able to get every major PC hardware manufacturer to release Mac OS X drivers. Apple might have the drivers already for a basic low-end Dell, but what if you have a PC with a third-party sound card? Or a video card that's not a recent nVidia or Radeon? Or a brand-new DVD burner that's only supported on Windows? What if you have a laptop, and you want it to be able to sleep? All of this would require the cooperation of all of these hardware manufacturers, and it's not clear that they'd have any incentive to cooperate.

3. There would be plenty of applications to choose from.

False. Mac applications wouldn't run until they've been ported and recompiled for x86, and it's not clear what incentive Mac developers would have to spend all of that effort with no guarantee of returns. Windows apps wouldn't run just because it's on x86; the operating systems are too different (though porting WINE to Mac OS X on x86 would be slightly easier than on PPC). Linux apps would run the same as they already do - most popular Linux apps already run on Mac OS X natively anyway (see the fink project).

4. PCs are really that much cheaper than Macs anyway.

Sure, they're cheaper sometimes, but not nearly as much as most people think. Yes, you can build a PC yourself for a lot less than a Mac - if you know what you're doing. And yes, you can get a low-end PC without a monitor - while only high-end Macs come headless. But probably 90% of the world buys brand-name PCs with monitors. On the low end, a brand-name PC with a CRT monitor and DVD/CD-RW will be about $600, compared to $800 for the eMac (and the eMac will come with a better graphics card). A brand-name PC with a non-Celeron processor, a real graphics card (not integrated video), DVD/CD-RW, and a high-quality 17" LCD will cost $1200, compared to $1300 for the iMac (and the iMac is a fraction of the size and weight). It only gets better when you start looking at the high-end machines - you'll find that the Power Mac G5 is often cheaper than a dual-Xeon or dual-Opteron workstation.

Re:Mistaken assumptions

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

4) I told my father to buy my mother a Mac. He said no because a PC was 1/6 the cost of a machine at Frys. Any $300 PC will have a better video card than the new iMac. I'm not sure you can still buy PC vidoe cards that suck as bad as what they put in the iMac (and yes apple, thats why there isn't a new iMac sitting on my desk)

OK, you don't know what you're talking about. First of all, point me to a $300 PC. Rebates don't count - they take 6 months to arrive, if they come at all, and you pay taxes on the pre-rebate amount. The cheapest eMachines box is currently $449 before rebate, and guess what? It comes with Intel integrated video (crappy 3D) that uses shared memory - which means it takes away from your system RAM. The eMac comes with an ATI Radeon 9200 and 32 MB of dedicated VRAM, the iMac comes with an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra and 64 MB of VRAM. Are these top of the line video cards? No, but they don't suck, and they're infinitely better than Intel integrated video.

The cheapest eMachines I could find that had a real video card with dedicated VRAM cost $600. The cheapest Dell with a real video card cost $950.

If you have a counterexample, fine. But post a complete spec for a machine, the total price, and a URL.

Re:If it was centrally manageable - oh but it does

[foniksonik]

Just take a look here:

clicky click workgroup management

Ye needs but ask sir...

Project Builder, er, I mean 'XCode'..

[itomato]

Since the day NEXTSTEP was ported to the 486, and possibly before, Project Builder had the ability to compile binaries not only for the Motorola 68040, but also for HP PA-RISC, SPARC, and i486. Quad-fat binaries..
If you look at any of the remaining NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP archives, or search for an old OmniWeb beta, you'll find files with names like this:

Foo_App.1.34b.NIHS.b.tar.gz

That NIHS.b stands for Next,Intel,HP,Sparc-BINARY.
One binary runs on 4 different architechtures. If they could do it then, with most systems (all architectures) running between 25 and 100MHz, they should be able to do it equally well now, with a narrower range of hardware to support (nVidia or ATI, x86/64 or PPC as opposed to 4 totally different approaches in respect to CPU, display hardware, bridge ASICs, etc)

There's the issue of AltiVec/SSE2, etc, but there were challenges 10 years ago, too..

Re:Project Builder, er, I mean 'XCode'..

[AlexCV]

They still do this, With Fat Binaries, you can ship software with G3/G4/G5 optimized binaries in the same package. What's stopping them from shipping G3/G4/G5/Opteron/i386/P4/Itanic/Whatever in a package?

The answer is Nothing. GCC supports the target. The format is built for it (it comes from next after all).

If it became possible, you can bet that Apple would make Xcode cross-compile if there was money in it.

PearPC, $800=too much, apps/device compatibility

[davidwr]

I already dual-boot multiple OSes on my PC and on my Mac, I'd love the flexibility of adding MacOSX to the list on the PC, and MS-Windows to the Mac, without messing w/ emulation environments. Of course, the partition table issue will have to be addressed. Thankfully, PCs can read and write Mac filesystems w/ 3rd-party software, and Macs can read and write FAT. Anyone know if they can read NTFS and FAT32?

Speaking of emulation environments, giving PearPC a whirl is on my to-do list. Anyone have any experience w/ this w/ either OS X or classic MacOS?

The hardware problem w/ the Macs isn't so much the price-performance issue anymore, but the lack of low-end hardware. Cheapest new Mac Apple has is USD$799, and low-end new Intel/Athlon boxes WITH MS-Windows preinstalled start at well under USD$300.

As far as drivers, it'll be not much worse than Windows NT was in the early days. You'll have a lot of things not working at all, but many devices that currently work w/ Mac should work just fine on Intel. For most that don't, it should be just a matter of a little software tweaking by the manufacturer. As far as Apps, I'd hope that Apple would be smart enough to 1) make it relatively painless for software vendors to recompile and work out the inevitable kinks, and 2) include a basic PPC emulation mode for existing apps, similar to the old 68000 emulation mode.

GNOME works for me

[steveha]

I wouldn't switch, because I'm perfectly happy with GNOME running on a Linux kernel.

OSX is really pretty. But GNOME is pretty enough for me. I love the clean, tidy look, and the antialiased fonts. And I have chosen a desktop theme that I like.

OSX is really stable. So is GNOME.

If you want to try out GNOME, the best way is to install Ubuntu Linux on a spare computer. (It doesn't have to be a brand-new computer, but the older and funkier the computer is, the greater the chance of a problem.)

The easiest way to try out GNOME is to get a Gnoppix CD. You boot from this CD and it will run GNOME on a Linux kernel, without touching your hard disk in any way. So you don't risk your data. And by the way, this makes a great disaster recovery tool, even if you are a Windows user and you aren't ready to switch yet.

I'll bet there is someone writing a "KDE works for me" posting right now too. KDE is also a good environment, although I personally prefer GNOME. To try out KDE, you could get a Knoppix CD. This works the same way as Gnoppix (and in fact Gnoppix was derived from Knoppix, not the other way around).

In short, anyone who has already switched to a *NIX desktop (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, whatever) is unlikely to be tempted by an x86 OSX.

steveha

Re:GNOME works for me

[tantalic]

"In short, anyone who has already switched to a *NIX desktop (GNOME, KDE, Xfce [xfce.org], whatever) is unlikely to be tempted by an x86 OSX." This is certainly not true. As a former Linux/BSD user on my desktop/server (respectively) I am now hapily posting this from my Powerbook G4, and it's my *nix background that drew me to OS X. I think the PowerPC archetecture is very attractive to many power users and the BSD background/basis of OS X has attracted many unix users (even Sun executives are known to run OS X at their home). When I first got my Powerbook I wasn't sure I would keep OS X, figuring I may run linux on it or at the least dual boot OS X and Debian. However I am know very happy to run OS X and only OS X. When i need a terminal I can easily access one (and even login to a non graphical environment) but when I want to listen to music, watch movies, edit movies, edit pictures, etc everything "just works!"

Wrong Question

[foonf]

Of course, if it was free, or could be easily pirated, and it worked as well on my computer as Linux currently does, I would switch. But thats not accurate.

First of all, if it ever came to be, it would have to be hideously expensive. Don't think about the $100 cost of OS X upgrades now. Those are for people who have already paid their dues to Apple by buying a Mac. If it was any good, an x86 Mac OS port would wipe out a fair share of Apple's current hardware sales. Even if they could, say, double their current OS market share by running on cheaper commodity hardware, they would still need to make half the profit on each new, non-upgrade copy of x86 Mac OS that they currently make on the average new Macintosh sold. I would be very surprised if they could make this up with a retail price under $400. I definitely wouldn't pay $400 or more for it, as slick as it is, and compared to free Linux and "free" preloaded Windows I doubt many other current PC users would, and it would never be a market success for Apple if only existing Mac users bought it.

And thats all supposing that the product is every bit as good as the current version of Mac OS for Apple hardware. That means that they would have to support seamlessly every possible combination of PC components that could show up on a computer made in the last 3 or 4 years. Darwin x86 certainly can't do that now, and even if they could port over every current FreeBSD driver, plus support every video chipset they support on Macintoshes now, it would be far from universal, although it would be good enough for me. Microsoft spends a lot of money on testing and driver development to ensure Windows works on every wacky system they claim it will run on, and that is even given that most of the device drivers are written by vendors.

Given these constraints, I don't think Apple can bring a viable x86 Mac OS port to market at a price low enough to be successful, so no matter how cool you think it would be to have OS X on your computer, it isn't going to happen.

Shouldn't this be a Slashdot poll?

[haruchai]

But, in any case, I would switch. For one thing, if
MacOS came to x86, I think that a lot of companies
who were abandoning the Mac and are reluctant to embrace Linux, would quickly reconsider.

Why I would change...

[donkstuff]

I would change for the reasons that i like the interface, and the eyecandy is amazing. Also, in my opinion, mac OSX is everything linux wants to be, but can't be.

YES, and here is why:

[muecksteiner]

I'm one of the comparatively few people here to have extensively used NeXTStep (the direct precursor of OS X - the core OS technology is still the same) on Intel hardware, back in the day when Linux was a freaky pile of small-rodent crud, Macs were "Win3.11 with an attitude" abominations and no other alternative to the evil empire existed.

A lot of postings here have tried to make points like "Steven Jobs hates untidy hardware" or "they couldn't make it work as neatly on x86 machines as they do on PPC rigs they build themselves", or even "they can't make it work on x86".

The first is perhaps be true (good for him if it is), the second might just be the case (but I seriously doubt this), and the third is certainly absolute rubbbish.

Granted, a lot of time has passed since then, and OS X is certainly more than NeXTStep 5 (as some diehards like to call it). But the nasty fact remains that the technological foundation of NeXTStep/OS X is enormously more stable, robust and inherently cross-platform than that of Windows in all its assorted versions of degeneracy. The Intel port of NeXTStep was perfectly useable and delivered all the comfort and useability to this new platform (and two more, actually - Sparc and HP builds also existed). You could not use arbitrary hardware (only that which had NeXTStep drivers), but that hardware was rock-solid, and given the availabilty of the excellent DriverKit the only reason other stuff wasn't supported was the lack of device information from the vendors (which is more readily available nowadays, partly due to Linux).

In short: if Apple wanted to pull this off (BIG if), the technological underpinnings would be there, and if it worked half was well as NeXTStep (which is pretty likely) technological issues would be the least of it. It's just not very likely from a marketing perspective, that's all (a shame, really, but what can one do...).

Just my two euro cents

A. W.

Well, not exactly chip level...

[UserChrisCanter4]

Yeah, you're right, with the exception of a few CPU-level bugs along the way, the BSOD hasn't been built into the CPU, but that's not to say that it's always Windows' fault.

Other things that go into the Windows world's instability include:
El-Cheapo hardware du jour. This includes many, many x86 mobo manufacturers, as well as bottom of the barrel RAM and PSU suppliers. Guess what: If you're truly talking about making something the same as a $2,000 Mac for half the price (hyperbole, I know), then you're engaging in some of this, and it is where a lot of the BSODs originate.

As a follow-up to section 1: shitty driver support, particularly in the 9x days when everything, not just video, had an easy chance to cause system-level problems.

When people say x86 in a debate such as this, they generally mean the platform as a whole, not the cost of the chip. A Pentium 4 chip by itself is as useless to me as a G5 by itself. But to say that Linux or some other non-Windows OS is going to be magically immune to the cheap-ass, no-QA hardware that you frequently encounter in the x86 world is completely off base.

Re:Well, not exactly chip level...

[UserChrisCanter4]

No doubt; my Girlfriend's gaming PC (A mac is her primary machine) cost me just over $600 with a very nice video card, although I got the video card for $7 because an old one had died under warranty.

An $800 computer will NOT have dual processors, a DVD burner, optical digital audio output, slots for 8GB of RAM expansion, both forms of Firewire, GigE, etc. I can build a solid, reliable computer for $800, but I'm not going to try and pretend that it's remotely comparable to a dual 1.8Ghz G5 PowerMac. This is the point that everyone misses when they play this game.

Re:Well, not exactly chip level...

[NutscrapeSucks]

Yeah, but the point stands that you can get a good-performing, stable, and expandable x86 minitower for about $1000, and Apple simply does not have a model which compares.

Instead Apple customers are encouraged to spend $2000 for "workstation" machine. If one does not need dualprocs, PCI-X, or a crapload of RAM slots, it is a fair complaint that you shouldn't have to pay for them.

Re:Well, not exactly chip level...

[UserChrisCanter4]

A) I'll assume you're using Linux here, since I don't see a price factored for a windows OS. Nevertheless, if you choose to boot that, you'll want to include it in the price comparo. Of course, the fact that you chose to use an ATI card rather than NVidia points to a plan to use Windows.

I'd also like to know how a single processor system is orders of magnitude better than a G5 (you can certainly argue cheaper here, but not "orders of magnitude better").

DIY? Well, it's not really a fair comparison price-wise, but when I actually compare my DIY costs I include all the stuff. Things like OS cost, keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc. that a lot of people (including your list, apparently) tend to ignore.

Totally independent of that, though, I'd point out that many of the new Mac crew are old Unix-heads who fully comprehend DIY, but recognize the quality inherent in Apple products.

Again, it's not to knock that machine. I'm typing this from a similarly equipped home-brew PC. But you have to ignore a LOT of the things that Apple ships on their units to pretend that your theoretical computeris comparable and not merely "getting the job done."

Fan of the x86 architecture? Ack! Thtpft!

[jejones]

I have a hard time seeing how anyone familiar with the x86 architecture and just about any other recent processor architecture can be a fan of the x86. The x86 architecture is ugly and irregular, the result of decades of backwards compatibility. The performance such CPUs is where it is now because x86 instructions are interpreted on the fly into something decent, and I really wish that AMD and Intel would make those architectures public, so that all that chip real estate could be devoted to something other than backwards compatibility and so that compiler writers would never have to deal with the x86 again.

ObOSX: Yes, I would, assuming that drivers that can make full use of all the hardware I currently have were available. I'd be inclined to set up dual boot (OS X and Linux).

Why degrade to Mac OSX?

[julie-h]

Why on earth should I degrade from Linux to Mac OSX?

Not on the x86 platform

[imckinnon]

Actually after long thought, I started moving the desktops in my house over to G5 iMacs, and just keeping my servers x86 and Linux. I am not sure if Linux will ever make it in any big way on the desktop (though I hope it will) I just not it is not there now, and I am tired of Windows problems and SP2 was the last straw. I agree with several posters I have seen that one of the reasons that OS X has few problems is that Apple does control the main hardware (though the prices could come down). One poster who commented that Apple is twice the price for half the system I agreed with until I figured out the cost of the time I spent in a year cleaning adware, spyware, viruses, ad nauseum off my windows system. Hmmm but I digress... I am not sure that OS-X on x86 platforms would solve much except be a midstep on moving people from Windows to OS X on RISC.

Apple Way Vs. Microsoft Way

[Tibor the Hun]

As a techie, I always get bombarded with "Where can I get a good computer?" questions, and I just tell people either at Best Buy for 500 bucks or a Mac.

A few weeks ago someone answered that they don't like Macs because "they like to have control that Windows gives them".
So, yesterday that person needs help burning pictures off the digital camera to 3 CDs. It took us fourty (40!) minutes to burn 600 megs of data on a well equipped Windows XP machine (3.06GHz P4 HT, 512 MB RAM). This is why:

I drag the first set of files onto the CD, they burn OK (albeit a bit slow).
I drag the second set of files and get an "incorrect function" error. I'm thinking WTF?
I use a new CD and some drag-to-disc program comes up and burns the pictures much faster than the first CD did.
I try to burn the final CD, but get the incorrect function error again. It took me 20 minutes of CD swapping, ctrl-alt-deleteing, and cussing to figure out that I had to right click on the burner icon and enable CD burning for it.
Well, duh, one might say, of course you have to have the CD burning enabled. You might think so, but you'd better not wonder why the first two CDs burned, but the last one required enabling.

What I'm trying to say is that in the time it took me to burn 600 megs of data on a very well stocked Windows XP PC, I could have had the very same pictures sorted into albums, posted on my website (which runs on the same machine), and burned on a cd on a 1.4GHz G4.

Apple way might be more expensive at first, but it doesn't require you to randomly click on things to make them work. (Provided that the PC has a slew of 3rd party applications to keep it working in the first place.)

Re:Apple Way Vs. Microsoft Way

[ptudor]

(To be fair, my Mac can't burn CDs by itself, but at least iPhoto can burn pics, and iTunes can burn music)

Is your Finder defective? Sure, Toast has some extra features but for me Disk Utility and Finder both take care of anything the iApps can't.

Re:Apple Way Vs. Microsoft Way

[HeghmoH]

This is classic PC user blindness.

"OS X makes things so much easier than PCs, see example X."

"X is just as easy on PCs as on Macs, as long as you know which program to use, buy and install said program, and know how to use it."

The whole point is that the Mac Just Works. Stick a CDR in the drive, drag your files over, burn the CD, and you're done. Coming up with a "simple" nine-step process that does the same thing as the two-step process on the Mac is actually proving the Mac-head's point.

If not OS X, then how about ...

[tverbeek]

OK, so what if, say, BeOS was ported to x86? And updated? And was later going to be available as open source software? Any interest?

Linux has to run on *everything* and can be...

[Ayanami Rei]

mmmmm... no... that's not why it's touchy about hardware.

Linux is first and foremost an operating system for x86 and x86_64. Now because x86 isn't the most demanding architecture out there, anything you implement on there easily maps to features of other popular architectures (SPARC, PPC, s390, IA64).

The problem is that the drivers are largely written by kernel developers, and that's about it (with the exception of some lovely folks at Intel, HP, Creative and NVidia). Because of this, you only get what's been tackled. So anything new and shiny is unlikely to be supported unless it so happens to be using an already-tackled chipset, then you've just got to update some PCI or USB ids in some obscure header file to make sure it's going to be detected.

OSX rocks at hardware detection because either it works on OSX, or it doesn't. There is no other more popular OS on that architecture that a hardware manufacturer would write drivers for or test first.
And the oh so helpful OSX compatibility logo on the box of whatever doo-dad you want at Fry's pretty much prevents any confusion.
Get it?

I don't believe they will switch

[KH]

Maybe I missed it, but not many people seem to have expressed what I feel about the issue.

I don't know if the post was an observation balloon from Apple, but I hope they don't listen to /. folks on the issue. They, or Steve Jobs, must remember what happend to Apple when it was still called NeXT.

Everybody was envious and awe-struck by the beauty and ease of use and the power in NeXTSTEP. Everybody who's ever seen it work wanted it on his desk. But the hardware was prohibitively expensive. So, when they figured out that their hardwares were not selling, they stopped selling the hardware and ported the OS (whatever it was called or however it was capitalized at that time). That should have prompted bunch of nerds jumping to the NeXTSTEP, which never happened.

Things may be different these days, PC hardware may be more or less uniform and easier to support. If *BSDs support certain hardware, they may not have to worry about them. The compiler is gcc which is available for ton of architectures. So, softwares available for OS X/ppc should be available for OS X/x86 easily.

On the other hand, the experience you get from Apple hardware in combination with OS X will not be the same as OS X on x86 hardware. Does anybody notice how this brushed metal look in OS X corresponds to their current displays? Do people honestly believe that OS X would look as nice as on a PowerBook when it is on a Dell/Toshiba laptop?

Also, despite the myth, Apple hardware is not much more expensive than those in the x86 world. Still, they are not selling very well.

Considering the above, I highly doubt that those who said they would switch with a heartbeat will actually switch when OS X became available on the x86 hardware. They may as well complain why they have to pay $150 when Windows comes with the hardware or they can get Linux for free. I'm afraid that the momentum that an OS has on people is so much bigger than one would think.

If you listen to the debate about one button mouse or menubar on top of the screen, it's all about which way they learned first :( Most people do have hard time changing habits, and they think their ways is the right way. So, I think very few people would switch even when OS X became available on x86. Those who will switch should have switched by this time or they will switch at the next computer purchase regardless of which architecture the OS runs on. Actually they don't even have to switch. Why not have two or more OSes running on different computers at the same time?

Yes i certainly would!

[anonymous leprechaun]

I would be more than ready to drop 300$ on OS X for x86!I've been saying so for months.

But, honestly, i don't think it will ever happen. Why you ask? Although it really sucks that apple sell hardware monopolistically, it's one of their greatest advantages. Why? well since they don't offer that much hardware, they don't have to bother with all the support. Do you think microsoft appreciates having to support all those stupid OEM devices whose drivers only differentiate on a couple bytes? Hell no. I'm sure microsoft wet dreams about controlling the hardware market as well. Well, more tightly than it already does so it only has to spend minimum amounts on hardware support.

Apple being a small company, cannot put forth all the ressources to support the amounts of hardware there's available for PC. Selling OS X for x86 would force them to, and i don;t think Apple is courageous enough to risk that.

It's a shame, because, i really would buy OS X for PC, and i'd even give them tip.

that was my 3 cents.

Windows integration not only cause for reboots

[mikefe]

It isn't the integration that causes requirements for reboots.

It's the base concept of not being able to move or rename a file once it is open. This is the same whether you are talking about a simple text file, or your system files for the OS.

Most filesystems (fat, ntfs, and of course all unix filesystems) have an abstraction between a directory entry, and a filesystem wide number that identifies a file -- in unix filesystem terminology that is the "inode". The problem is that windows does not use that natural abstraction.

In unix, if a program has a file open, you can "delete" that file -- wait it's not gone yet[1]. What happens under the covers, is that your filename in a directory points to an inode. Each inode has a count of the number of references to itself. When you open the file that reference count for the inode is incremented. So if there is one program with the file open, and the inode is referenced in one directory, the reference count is now two. Once that count goes to zero, the inode is unlinked -- which means deleted, but since "delete" is multi-step in unix, you need more terms.

[1] This is a great way to work with temporary files -- once you open and delete it, nobody else can access the file and many security threats with temp files are completely avoided.

Now you have a system file that needs updating. You delete the file (which just removes one reference from the directory) and the system still holds a reference to the inode and continues operating as before. Then, you write the new updated file to the same directory with the same name, but it doesn't cause a conflict because the new file goes into a different inode. Once the files are replaced, restart the individual application and the update is finished.

On windows, to update a system file that can not be closed during the operation of the system, you put the files in a special location with a script that specifies their desired location. Every time windows boots it runs those scripts that replaces files before they are opened. That is why windows will always require more reboots than unix based OSes.

There is more to updating system files than that of couse. For instance, most unix servers do not run a graphical environment on the server and every version of windows since NT boots into a graphical graphical environment. Most Unix based systems use the Xwindows system for their graphical environment, and an update to that environment only requires a restart of Xwindows not the entire system -- which is important if you are running any services on your computer that people depend upon.

Re:Windows integration not only cause for reboots

[mikefe]

"Thats all fine and dandy, but doesnt' change the fact winodws still needs to be rebooted:)"

I was showing why windows will never be able to catch up in requiring as few reboots as unix OSes. If you didn't catch that, please read my previous post again, it was kinda long...

"And says windows is useing an outdated not so good filesystem."

Why do you say that?

NTFS supports all of the unix sematics natively. In fact, everything is a file -- even directories and "inodes".

You have a combined inode list and journal in the MFT file.

(in fact, the design of ext2 and 3 keeps the inodes close to the data with block groups spread out over the disk. (these block groups also provide a level of backup information that that helps greatly during filesystem recovery on bad disks -- but you have backups, right?)

So, if you implement NTFS so that the MFT file is intentionally fragmented to put the inode data close to the data blocks, you could have the same performance advantages ext2/3 does for reads on large files (I'm not sure what XFS does to get its speed advantages though). Or whatever else might be a better layout. But you wouldn't have the recovery advantages of ext2/3's block groups though.)

If the FLOSS community could just fork NTFS from the specs published before microsoft changed the FS and didn't publish the specs, NTFS could be one of the premiere filesystems in Linux. But alas, NTFS support in Linux and OSX is not about optimizing for production use, but for compatability with windows systems.

Fragmentation can be overcome by a better implementation like Suse's enhancements to ReiserFS does in the 2.6 kernel. (Did that make it in yet? I haven't been following LKML for the last several months.)

Just like ext2/3 for windows might not be as reliable because it might not follow the same integrity procedures that the linux kernel implementation does -- almost by requirement since since Linux's ext2/3 implementation is gpl, and I don't believe the MS FS SDK is gpl compatible.

not quite

[jeif1k]

The entire GUI and all of the hundreds of libraries ("Frameworks" in Mac OS X) that Mac OS X apps depend on would need to be ported, and many of these are only designed to work on PowerPC currently.

Well, no, that's not true. The actual OS X GUI, frameworks, and libraries are largely NeXTStep, and that stuff is quite portable and even ran on x86 at some point.

Of course, OS X also has Carbon and the backwards compatibility stuff in it and that might be harder to port.

Re:not quite

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

The entire GUI and all of the hundreds of libraries ("Frameworks" in Mac OS X) that Mac OS X apps depend on would need to be ported, and many of these are only designed to work on PowerPC currently.

Well, no, that's not true. The actual OS X GUI, frameworks, and libraries are largely NeXTStep, and that stuff is quite portable and even ran on x86 at some point.

The foundation is NeXTStep, but what about Quartz, Quartz Extreme, ColorSync, CoreAudio, I/O Kit, VecLib, developer tools like Shark? These were all built specifically for Mac OS X on PPC, and that's just naming a few.

Of course, OS X also has Carbon and the backwards compatibility stuff in it and that might be harder to port.

Carbon would be tricky, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as trying to port Classic.

The time has passed for these games

[theolein]

Apple cannot do this. For multiple reasons that have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with marketshare and market forces.

If Apple were to switch, it would start at point zero, with no applications, just as it did in 2000 with the Mac OSX public beta. It would not even have the Classic layer to run the old Mac apps, although that is less of a concern these days. These days Mac OSX on x86 would either have to have some very fancy easy to use WINE like environment, so that Windows users could use their current apps until OSX equivalents came along, or run Windows in a VMWare like environment.

Also, you would have to kiss MSOffice for OSX goodbye. You, as an OOo user might think this is insignificant, but it sure as hell isn't to those who use it.

Then, there would be the hardware problem that people like the article author always always forget. Apple makes most of its money from hardware. Do you think Apple would still make as much money and sell as many units if the OS was able to run on x86 commmodity hardware? Obviously not. That would force the price of the OS up. How many newbies would then pay for the OS?

Talking of newbies, how many of the gazillions of windows users who currently have never heard of OSX, or think OSX is still the same crap they used back in 1995, will fork over $100 plus for an OS without Office, without games and without other pro applications? I seriously doubt that Apple's pro apps like FCP and Logic alone are enough to sustain the platform, not to mention the intensely pissed off current users on PPC.

That means that the only people buying OSX on x86 would be geeky types like those here who are so fucking stingy (and I don't mean poor - I'm poor yet I use a Mac because it's so good) that they bitch about a $100 price difference in a computer. The vast majority would not use OSX or even think about switching.

Apple's only recourse in this case would be to make an x86 mainboard, using a special OpenFirmware with no bios, such as current Mac mainboards do, to make it incompatible with other x86 machines so that it would not encroach on Microsoft's Windows territory too much and so that it would keep users from using other x86 hardware.

And the advantage of that over its PPC platform is right around zero, so why even think about it.

Apple could have done this exactly once in the past. Back in 2000 when everyone was started to switch to OSX and there were no OSX applications for the new OS, Apple could have gone with a proprietry x86 motherboard and kept on producing a few last PPC machines until their classic MacOS users had switched and there were enough new OSX apps. That time passed as soon as new apps started coming out for OSX and people started investing money in them.

The only thing Apple could possibly do to make money on x86 these days is possibly port its Cocoa frameworks and devtools over to windows to compete against MS' .Net stuff, but here again, who would actually buy this? .Net is far enough advanced that it is the king of Windows and no big shops would move to Cocoa.

I am so so fucking tired of some one night wonders asking this same stupid question, when it is so obvious that it is just a geek cheapskate wet dream.

Re:The time has passed for these games

[burns210]

Software:
Jobs did it in the past, supply Fat Binaries of the software, that run on(yup) multiple architectures(Nextstep ran on PPC and x86, a single application could run on either system.) the same idea would happen hear, keep OS X on ppc, while selling hardware, but supply to developers(in droves, give it away like CANDY to anyone who has taken a CS class, try and flood the market for the new sytem) the x86 system for development of fat binaries.

Port all inhouse software to fat binaries, and let longtime developers get free advanced copies of the OS to develop on, etc.

Userbase:
Have a long developer-only release... lots of beta and make sure that the x86 version is superior to longhorn, and release BEFORE longhorn.

While handing out OS X86(clever, ay?) to developers and creating a buzz, turn your back on piracy. LET the piracy nuts get copies, let them be beta testers and buzz spreaders.

Apple could make the OS source code compatible with many, if not most/all software for porting. They have done it before with Next, it CAN be done.

How would it work? Well, Apple would need to merge towards a software company. Buy a few more pro apps and secure a nitch. Then, Apple would have to strike pre-announcement contracts with atleast 1, if not 2+ OEMs to sell the systems on... IBM and Sony would be the most obvious. Get them to be able to sell systems when the 1.0 gets released.

My Opinion:
Would it work? Iffy, I would say the Jobs could do it if he took both of Apple's feet and dove 100% into the plan. He would completely gamble the companies 4+ billion dollar savings, and maybe survive. I own a 12" powerbook and I think that owning the hardware makes the system better. Yes, it could(maybe) be done. No, I don't think Jobs would do it. Yes, I would support apple if they actually were that gutsy.

Switch? Oh, you mean to x86?

[jzellis]

I'm a diehard OS X convert, from many years of Windows/Linux use. I've been using free OSes since 1996 and I've never found any package management/GUI combination that makes installing and running apps as smooth as OS X. Plus...and I swear to God this is true...the Quartz rendering subsystem renders text better than any other window manager on the planet. Linux can't touch it, and neither can Windows. For somebody who writes and reads on screen an awful lot, that's pretty important.

I *would* switch if Apple ported OS X to x86; I would start buying x86 hardware again. Not for my primary machine -- I'm waaay too happy with my PowerBook for that -- but for my home server and for an XServe render farm...especially now that Logic can use a render farm to handle audio production (of which I do a lot as well).

As for the CPU clock speed argument...you're comparing RISC to CISC architecture. It's not comparable. My 867Mhz G4 is as fast as any 2Ghz Pentium 4, easily.

What is with the trollish headline?

[Awptimus Prime]

Darwin, Mac OS X's unix-ish core, has been ported to x86 and Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn OS seems to be disliked by everyone but Microsoft. If Apple released Mac OS X to compete with Longhorn, would you switch?"

For starters, OSX is tight because buying a mac is much like buying a console gaming system. All the hardware is pretty much going to be the same across the board. They do not have to worry about compatibility and bugs regarding AMD, intel, SiS, and hundreds of other hardware vendors. This, in my opinion is why Apple's systems are slightly more stable than your average Windows box. I say this with the assumption that both the OSX and XP boxes are unmaintained and run by users who do not keep their systems optimized.

I would not run a x86 Darwin, personally. Linux serves all my non-gaming needs as it is, and in my opinion, is a superior OS compared to Darwin. I don't really feel like typing up the many reasons for this, but I see no point in doing something less with something that costs more.

As for XP versus OSX.. I can't say much, except there is an enormous supply of business software and games. It would take many years for OSX to catch up. As much as people hate to admit, Windows 2000/XP are the standard for business workstations. Save yourself the responses like "I AM A DEVELOPER AND I USE LOONIX", as you are not the standard. I am speaking of the masses who do data entry, clerical, medical, and other types of work.

BTW, if you have not bothered to take into consideration, Longhorn is far from a finished product. Of course people are going to say bad things about it, it's incomplete and very broken at this point. Mind you, if you are going to buy into things that don't even exist yet, does that mean you are the type who is going to decide on your next game console by the preliminary marketing specifications of the console without taking into consideration developer support and the final technical specs of the retail product?

Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[catwh0re]

/. is known for having a few people in the audience with less than up-to-date information. So I'd just like to clear some things up.

- Macs don't have a $2000 start up price tag, they actually start at $799 with the eMac, for portables $1099. Those of which are better spec'ed than low-end PCs.
- The second point is that there are no more G3's from apple, it's been that way for a while, plus no apple computer is spec'd below 1GHz.
- You can not get any apple computer without firewire. (It's an odd one I know, but I sometimes see some rattle about firewire cards and macs.)
- OS X, runs smoothly on a G3 700MHz, it runs smoothly on a G4 400MHz, a G4 1GHz won't leave you waiting in any application including Alias' Maya. Hence you don't need a dual 2.5GHz G5 to 'test' OS X, a second hand mac is usually just fine to try it out. (If you look hard enough, there are people giving away old powermac G4s.)

The final mistake, which is a good one, is that developers have not ignored the 64 bit G5, the reality is that developers have embraced it, and in cross platform apps, it's actually been the PC waiting for 64 bit updates from vendors such as Adobe, this when adobe apps were updated long ago for the G5.

The logic that Apple computers wouldn't sell, if PC's ran their software is also another fallacy. PC's already run iTunes and iPods, this hasn't affected the apple market share (it's actually grown because people aren't taboo to the brand anymore).

Additionally apple don't have any monopoly on the OS market or the hardware market, anyone that doesn't -want- to buy an apple, simply doesn't, it's not like windows software on x86. In a world where large purchases are governed entirely from the bottom line, you'll find that OS X on Intel would have little effect on apple computer sales.

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[AstroDrabb]

OS X, runs smoothly on a G3 700MHz, it runs smoothly on a G4 400MHz, a G4 1GHz won't leave you waiting in any application including Alias' Maya. Hence you don't need a dual 2.5GHz G5 to 'test' OS X, a second hand mac is usually just fine to try it out.

That has not be my experience. Even a dual G5 feels sluggish coming from a _single_ P4. Did you miss the MacDate review yesterday? Here is a quote:

Although the performance of OS X on the dual 2GHz G5 system that I'd been running was definitely acceptable, there is definitely room for improvement. The overall responsiveness of the system was decent, but go back to using a top-of-the-line PC in Windows for a few minutes, and you definitely feel a bit sluggish on the G5.

The reviewer paid $3,000 for the dual G5! A nice top of the line x86 is around $1,200. I built my own x86 for about $700 (not including monitor) and it just feels so much faster then a single G5. Also, to get better performance out of a dual G5 with the latest Mac OS, you need a bunch of memory that further drives up the cost. The reviewer put 4GB, the wimpy 512MB that comes with a $3,000 system is not acceptable.

I would purchase Mac OS for x86 and give it a try. I would not dump Linux for it, buy I would certainly dump MS Windows. Maybe Apple should rethink their business and make software their "cash cow" like MS did (it has made MS billions). I bet Apple would make tons more cash with the x86 market then they could ever dream of. It could also be a selling point for their proprietary hardware. I am sure that if people used Mac OS x86 and really liked it that some of them would make the switch from x86 to Apple.

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[Zarkonnen]

On speed: Having used both OS X and Windows, and having read complaints about the sluggishness of OS X before, I think that the issue is not that OS X is sluggish, but simply that it's programmed to be not as snappy. Apple really likes their pretty animations and fade-in-and-outs, and this all means that the system simply takes its time. This can of course be construed as annoying and wrong, but would likely not change one whit if one were to run OS X on x86.

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[rocketjam]

The overall responsiveness of the system was decent, but go back to using a top-of-the-line PC in Windows for a few minutes, and you definitely feel a bit sluggish on the G5.

It's OS X's quartz rendering. There's going to be a performance hit for all that eye candy no matter what kind of hardware it's running on. If you ran it on x86 hardware it wouldn't be as snappy as Windows. But Windows feels awful clunky after using OS X.

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[Ninja Programmer]

Is Quartz some unoptimized piece of garbage? All graphics rendering (either 2D or 3D) is done by accelerated graphics cards these days. Are you saying that Quartz is more computationally intensive than video games like Unreal Tournament which are very responsive?

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[ian mills]

No, quartz is optimized, but it is also vsync'd and double buffered. It is also completely vector based. Take an explorer window and drag it around really fast. It'll tear. You can't get windows on OS X to tear. Also, because it's completely vector based its trivial to implement things like expose.

OS X is hardly unresponsive, but its not as snappy as running a GUI that was designed for pentium 1 pressors on a 4 GHZ Pentium 4.

Re:Some Falsehoods I'd like to make clear.

[CommandoB]

OS X also has a delay associated with some events, like opening up a new window. This can be configured in the Preferences (change it to zero!), and I think the default setting allows for some significant delay. So, if you're browsing in Finder and you think there's a delay, that could be it.

Already have Mac OS X on Windows XP

[theurge14]

Have both, Mac OS X interface running on Windows.

Click here for screenshot

running on Windows XP SP2

using:
Stardock's ObjectDock Plus on the bottom to replicate Mac OS X's application bar
Starock's WindowBlinds using the OSXP NG skin to replicate the Mac OS X Aqua window interface
Stardock's WindowFX to replicate the shadows and minimize/maximize animations on Mac OS X
Stardock's IconPackager to replicate some of the system icons from Mac OS X, such as the Trash icon and the default blue folder icon.

Re:counterintuitive interface

[Dixie_Flatline]

Not at all. In fact, the problem is seriously and badly amplified with such a large monitor. The elements that you're trying to point to are now even smaller, and you have to go further to get to them. In such an instance, having something that you can throw your mouse pointer up at should be relatively faster, as long as you haven't attempted to eat a rock and set your mouse movement speed or acceleration very low.

An even better system at that point would actually be NeXTStep's implementation of application menus. The application menu sat in the top left corner at all times (though you could move it around, if you wanted to), but right clicking brought a copy of the menu to the mouse pointer. It wasn't contextual - it was a full application menu. Such menus have their drawbacks as well, though.

Yes, definitely

[HangingChad]

My biggest objection to Mac has been the cost and inflexibility of their hardware. Give an HCL and I'd happily give it a try. McSoftware is kind of expensive but I'll give them that.

It'll be a pleausre to consign my last Windows partition to the scrap heap of history.

Apple had proportional scroll bars in 1986

[danieleran]

Apple released the Apple IIGS in 1986, using "Quickdraw II" ( a ported and extended version of the Mac Quickdraw toolbox) which did both color and proportional scroll bars.

Apple did not change the Mac scroll bars because their behavior was already considered standard. Apple released changes to the interface in major upgrades, where a series of changes could be introduced together, avoiding constant change in usability.

One of the principles of Apple's UI guidelines is constancy. The guidelines are a good read. Others i recall off the top of my head are Forgiveness (undo/backstep) and Metaphor (mimic the behavior of real world objects).

Apple guidelines, which seem obvious after reading them, were the result of groundbreaking research that all modern software benefits from, in proportion to how well they are implemented.

Menu bars at the top of the screen is a good example. You don't have to think about where things might be or what the current application is. Your menu choices are always in a consistent place, and are easily targeted being at the top. MS put their Start menu at the bottom not as an improvement, but simply to be different.

Pulldown menus are not difficult to abort because you can just leave the menu and let go. There was no epidemic of users picking the wrong thing. That problem comes from complex submenus of options (such as say, navigating Start/Settings/Control Panel/Printers), which Apple discouraged.

In deep hierarchical submenus, users have to follow a narrow target through a series of menus. That is fairly rare in the Mac interface, but elemental to how Windows works: Start/Programs/Office/Word. Start/Settings/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Blah/Blah/Blah/target.

You can argue about interface differences, but what convinces me that Apple made good decisions is that when I'm tired (or say drinking), its far less frustrating to use a Mac than struggle with outthinking the interface in Windows (which Linux distros have largely copied). I find MDI (document windows inside application windows) particularly retarded.

Re:NO. I can't stand the one button mouse.

[goMac2500]

They do have Linux for the G5 (ydl.com). Mac OS X supports a two button mouse natively with no extra drivers. In fact, it supports up to as many buttons as your mouse has.

Would never be worth it

[Anonymous Coward]

I administer about 200 Macs and 300-400 PCs in the various labs at work.

Give me a Visa, a list of what you need to work, and a few days -- and I can make you an XP PC that's rock solid stable doing what you've told me you want to do. The problem comes when you want to do "other" things with it. You need to retool the system to make it stable doing that. It sucks, but it's job protection for me I guess.

Macs are great because even though you are somewhat limited, it does everything it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it without having to make it do it.

I dream of the day when Microsoft develops a "Performence" version of Windows that follows the Mac ideology -- limited certified hardware, and damn good support of that hardware.

But, alas, it would be shooting themselves in the head. Just like Apple could never change their model now to go back to an "open" system, Windows would never be successful if they changed to a "closed" one.

In the Mac vs. PC debate I like to refer to the example of two first-time computer users I was helping, who each wanted to get a digital camera to use for eBay photos. They both bought the same camera, boasting support of XP and OSX all over the box.

The PowerBook lady took photos of her kids, plugged in the "funny shaped cable into the only hole it would fit in" and voila a few seconds later her pictures were open on her desktop. She dragged them to her mail icon and her entire address book had new kid photos in about 4 minutes from unpacking it from the box.

The XP user required me to come visit, update the USB core drivers, install camera drivers, reboot a few times, patch this and that, work out a bug, and then finally -- she too could just plug it in and voila there were her photos.

In the end, both systems worked flawlessly and easily for the end user -- but getting there wasn't the same.

When you spend all day "fixing" computers to do what they were supposed to do in the first place, sitting down in front of a Mac that does what it's supposed to do without your help is very liberating.

Count me in

[pavera]

if apple released OS X for x86, at anywhere below $200/copy, I'd buy 4 copies the next day. My 2 laptops, and 2 desktops would be running os X from that day forward, and I'd leave linux on my servers...

the people on here saying this would kill apple's hardware division I don't think are right... I'd buy 4 copies of OS X for x86, but the next machine I buy is still going to be a g5 imac, and the next laptop I buy is still going to be a 12" powerbook (I'm waiting til they fit the g5 into one though)

Apple's hardware is sexy and stylish, that is why I would still buy it (I already own a g4 powerbook), it might be a little expensive, but the g5 imac is very reasonably priced for such a nice looking piece of engineering. This fact alone is why releasing OS X for x86 is not the end of the world for their hardware division. They will pick up a bunch of OS market share, and the die hard mac fans (those 1-2% that have always bought their stuff) will still spend the extra ~$500 for the real apple hardware.

I would do it

[rsheridan6]

if it had the same trouble-free interaction with hardware that Macs have, or at least that Windows have. My wife doesn't like Linux, and I no longer have time to fuss over it every time I get a new piece of hardware. Going back to Windows would be like trading my car in for a tricycle. A Mac seems like the best option so she can have her slick GUI and I can have my unix CLI geek toys, but we can't justify spending the money, which is really tight. But we might be able to spend a little bit for an OS.

Why would I switch to x86?

[rhesuspieces00]

I have a powerbook 12 inch, and have never so loved a computer since the the Mac 512 my dad brough home nearly 20 years ago. There isnt a x86 based laptop on the market, at any pricepoint, that I would prefer except for the purpose of resale. I would be sad indeed were Apple to turn the design and manufacture of OS X based computers to anyone less exacting. Having written assembly for both PPC and x86, I cannot imagine why anyone would prefer the latter architecture. Im also a bit confused by sluggishness that is being reported. My laptop is nearly a year old, with a single 1GHz G4 and 768mb or ram, and is hardly sluggish. Perhaps once every 10 minutes a window shows some lag when opening, or the scaling animation jumps when minimizing something, but thats all-even with TexMaker, Photoshop, XEmacs, MatLab, iTunes, and a half dozen smalller xApps and iApps going. None of the PCs (or Suns) I use perform so well. As for software availability, i really dont think its an issue, unless you are a gamer. I dont have much time for games, and prefer a console anyway. I recall the difficulty in finding decent shareware in the OS 8-9 days, but now I cant think of any software category that doesnt have atleast one elegant solution available. Most basic users' needs are met by apps that ship with the computer, the whole world of Unix apps are availible, and many commercial products are better implemented than their windows counterpart. I suspect that most users, if they had the opportunity to run X as their primary OS for a few weeks-long enough to really see all Apple has put into the user experience, customize it, and make it their own, would find themselves quite reluctant to go back to using their current OS.

agreed

[ArbitraryConstant]

The only extensively ugradable Macs are PowerMacs, which are quite expensive. I tend to get Apple laptops because you can't upgrade a laptop no matter who you buy it from, but for desktops it would be crazy unless you knew for a fact you'd never want anything else from it.

My current server/firewall is a P2 ca. 1997. Just about everything in there would have been impossible on an iMac, current or past. It has 3 network interfaces (iMacs are limited to 1 ethernet), one of them gigabit (impossible on an iMac), an SATA controller (impossible on an iMac that wasn't built with it), a 160 gb hard drive (impossible on an iMac from 1997) that I can actually use at full speed (an iMac would have been stuck at ATA/33).

None of the software stuff would be impossible on an iMac (particularly if it were running OpenBSD, as it would be if I used it as a server), but the hardware stuff just couldn't be done. Thus, my return on investment has been increased.

It's not just the ability to keep the hardware in production 8 years later, it's the fact that what was once exclusively a desktop computer that I purchased exclusively for desktop use, and it's now a very capable server doing stuff no iMac from 1997 will ever do. And when my current desktop is a server 5 years from now, it will be doing stuff the iMacs of today will never do.

I'm not saying no one should ever buy an iMac, but I am saying an upgradable computer is worth a lot more to people that actually upgrade them.

Re:agreed

[James McTavish]

Disclaimer: I was a hard core "Mac sucks PC rules" zealot until I was given a G4 with OSX, and I've never lookd back.

I keep hearing arguments like this and I think it ignores one key factor: People generally don't upgrade their PCs. Only a small (geek) fraction do more than upgrade their RAM, HD or videocards, which on a Mac is exactly the same cost/difficulty as a PC (except for video cards which are more expensive). Most people don't have or want 3 NICs.

Once people have a computer they don't really think about upgrading the CPU alone, until it is way too slow. Then they will go for what is current, but the current processor will generally require a new motherboard, which will also require new ram (and possibly more eg: PCI-X video card). When you put all that together then most people forget it and buy a whole new system anyway. This cycle happens every 2-5 years.

So for the geek market, sure iMacs suck for upgradability, but geeks should be looking at a PowerMac anyway. For for the other 95% of the market, they do everything that regular people need. As for pricing, they are a medium to high end system that is priced accordingly. One of the parents said it right, they do compare pricewise to Dell systems with comparable specs. Tack OS X on and I think you end up with the best desktop system on the market of people who don't need the flexability because the won't use it, like 95% of the population.

There is the common comment about "I wouldn't be able to run application X". There are a few apps that I do wish ran on it, but an OSX version doesn't exist. For those I use VirtualPC, which would be MUCH easier and faster if the base system was x86 already. I'm sure that in a matter of weeks someone would create something that would allow you to run windows in a window. This does somewhat defeat the purpose of OS X on the x86 (ie why not just run windows), but i presonally prefer the feel and workflow of OSX for most things, so I would prefer an occasional venture into windows rather than being stuck there.

As for the article question: In a heartbeat. Usability that windows can't touch, with the underlying power of unix when I want a command prompt.

Absolutely hot

[5cameron]

Dont mean to flame, but I feel the burning desire to point out some flaws in your charred logic.

Child windows are not inherently more intuitive. MS utilizes a application-oriented interface paradigm which is a whole different ballgame. You claim the paradigm is 'inferior' when 'attempting to multitask' yet you don't even provide anecdotal evidence to support what you're saying. Application switching can be performed with or without the dock, and the inclusion of Exposé leverages OS X's extremely intuitive document-oriented system. System preferences allows you to tone down or remove the 'endless eye candy' and the 'nix terminal as well as X11 allow you to change your interface as much as you like.

OS X 'aint for everybody. If you're content with Windows, stay cool. I was, and did, for 12 years. Besides, where would you get your 3d progz without Kazaa?

Is it hot in here, or is it just my post?

The Quality Would Suffer

[catdevnull]

If Windows only ran on one configuration built by Microsoft, then it would probably be more stable and perhaps more secure. All the drivers would be fine-tuned, there would be no IRQ conflicts, no hardware incompatibilies, mystery meat drivers, etc.

If Apple were to port their OS for the x86 architecture, they would inherit all the problems that MS has with Windows as they would try to become all things to everyone. Having a standard set of hardware and known combinations thereof is a huge advantage for Apple's ability to keep developing and innovating.

If IBM had never licesnsed the cloning of their PC, the world would have been a much different place and this question would probably be, "If MS ported Windows to run on Apple...."

To address the question: no--I'd stay with my Apple hardware. I rather like the design and they have most of the same basic components save the logic board. I'd rather not be a shady-tree mechanic on my home computers (I do enough of that at work on PCs).

Your mileage and opinion may vary.

--

Geeks === Cheep

[amichalo]

Let's all face it, the reason us geeks don't, in general, buy Macs, music on-line, software, or manuals is that we feel this sort of entitlement that we know how to get around so many things and it becomes a fun game. There was that 'secret' BBS that had all the copyprotection hacks for Kings Quest and if you are 'smart', you can use Linux for FREE and don't have to pay the 'Microsoft Tax'.

It has been engrained in us that we don't HAVE to pay because we can figure out how not to and sub-contiously, paying, and especailly OVER-paying is analogous to being a non-tech who has no other choice and so we reject it with all out beings.

So get the hell over yourselves. You know what, the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and Macs are awesome, 'premium prices' be damned. Take a look at teh 64-bit all-in-one iMac G5 that starts at $1,300 including a gorgeous display. If you've never been to the Apple Store, do yourself a favor and go.

So to answer the question, no, I wouldn't switch because the x86 architecture is a thing of the past living in the present. The best computing experience these days is coming out from Apple and that includes both the software and the hardware.

People don't know what 'architecture' means.

[argent]

People don't know what 'architecture' means, so it's no surprise that someone would come up with that kind of comment.

What they're really a fan of is the market that makes it profitable for Intel and AMD to spend outrageous amounts of resources to make the hoary old x86 run so fast, by building chips with better architectures that emulate the x86.

I don't think it would be useful for AMD to make their internal architecture public. As I understand it, it's VLIW, so you'd need to recompile your code every time a new version came out. Intel is allegedly using a RISC-style vertical microcode, so it may be possible for them to keep compatibility at the microcode level at least within a couple of generations, but since they have the luxury of redesigning the internal architecture with each generation it's likely you'd still need to recompile for performance as you have to on the IA64/Itanium.

What I wish is that when Intel bought their share of the Alpha from DEC they'd done what they did when they bought the StrongARM from DEC. They simply labelled the next generation the "Intel XScale" and everyone's forgotten where it came from. They could have simply relabelled the next generation Alpha the "Intel AXP" or something, and pretty soon everyone would think of it as an Intel chip. Remember that until it got Compaqted it stayed at or near the top of the performance charts pretty much for its whole life, despite having a tiny fraction of the resources the x86 architecture has had to play with.

Duh!

[Falshrmjgr]

I'd be on it like white on rice.

Ok, so, if they did port it to x86,then what apps?

[jedi63]

Mac OS X on x86 does not equal Mac OS X on PowerPC.

Am I missing something here? Any of the applications that runs on top of Mac OS X PowerPC would have to be ported, too. This may not be a substantial effort, however, all of the apps would still need to be recompiled at a minimum. How many would be available at availability? For those thinking that MS Office would be available -- doubt it. You would have to switch office products.

So, unless there is a plan to have all of the great apps that help make an Apple an Apple, there's not much incentive to switch.

I, for one, would love to replace my windows apps that I do use, which are the only ones that keep me using Windows: home movie editing and DVD creation s/w, and, Truepoker.

I still would use Linux, still. But, Windows is a pain because even though I seldom use it, I still have to keep it maintained. So, yes, I would switch MS for Apple, but, not to bare OS for the sake of switching.