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Cherry OS Claims Mac OS X Capability For x86
jediboytj writes "According to the MacWorld Article, Cherry OS, does what Virtual PC does for Macs, only the opposite. PC Users are now able to run Mac OSX at G4 Speeds (Company claims 80% of the speed of your PC). It also includes full hardware support: hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI, PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem. The software is being distributed through electronic download at $49.99 USD..." Note: it does not come with a copy of any Apple OS. Anyone in Windowsland tried it to provide a thumbs up (or down)?
I wonder how this CherryOS would compare with PearPC in terms of speed and functionality. Of course, I don't know much about either product, so I might be comparing apples to oranges (or Cherries to Apples?)
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
Even without reading the site. Never mind the shortage of general purpose registers on x86 and the lack of a direct mapping between instruction sets, one has to question any vendor that is running on IIS with debugging enabled and with the .NET framework enabled.
For the reasons why - just look at their site right about now.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
As pointed out on the comments on the article page, this is most likely a fraud. Writing a VM isn't the easiest thing to do. This software would likely cost much more than $50 because of the effort involved.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
There's no way you can emulate even a stripped-down PPC instruction set on x86 at 80% speed, let alone Altivec. The best I've seen any commercial editor come close to is a third, or maybe a half.
This'd be running an equivalent 2.7 ghz G4 on your top-of-the-line PentiumIV. They can't come close to that in hardware, there's no way they can touch it in software.
Sounds like a poorly-planned scam to me.
take a look at the poser in that forum making a big noise about this "wonderful emulator", the guy called DAG33K. Notice his English mistakes. Notice his location, "In da middle of da pacific". The do a whois on cherryos.com, and you get an address in Hawai. The tech contact, who is also the admin contact etc etc, is a guy called Arben Kryeziu, the same guy doing the video "demonstration", which you never get to actually see apart from an installation screen and some supposed OSX desktop, which looks very similar to PearPC. The guy's name is Albanian, and if you listen in that demonstration, he speaks with a thick accent, so my gues is that the poster on hardforum is the very same guy trying to pimp his warez.
I still think the guy is trying to fuck everyone for their money.
Another posting pointed to this discussion where "dag33k" is practically wetting himself over three screenshots.
A quick nose at the screenshots reveals that the (now dead) screenshots are hosted at: http://www.cotse.net/users/secnet/.
So that's secnet. Not that you can see too much: "their" bandwidth's been exceeded. Doesn't sound like a particularly particularly good choice for a testimonial.
I agree with you. I smell a rat.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
The amount of interest this story generated (CheryOS' site is already slashdoted) shows clearly how many people would love to run OS X, but can't afford the hardware. In fact I'm one of those people - I hate Windows, but I'm too old to tweak with Linux. Apple's OS X is the best choice for the likes of me - easy to use, tons of good commercial software for the desktop user, no frustrating tweaking and adjusting to get it working and no Microsoft. However, prices of their hardware are murder when compared to the PC world. I know there are many good reasons for that, but what has bothered me for some time now is why Apple won't release OS X for Intel platform.
In fact OS X is a really great, consequently designed GUI on top of a robust BSD Unix. It should be rather portable by nature, even if it would have high hardware requirements (like lots of memory and fast graphic boards with again lots of memory). Possibly achieving binary compatibility for software would be a problem, but I don't think it would be necessary. After all on a Unix system porting software between hardware platforms is just a question of recompiling it. Now, why don't they try to do it?
As much as I hate paying Microsoft for XP I would gladly pay twice the price of OS X for Mac to be able to run it on PC. Why Apple won't do it? Maybe because they don't want to get into Microsoft's gun sight?
According to the license you cant run the OS on an emulator because its not "Apple hardware".
Then there are those of us that wonder the legality of such statements in license agreements. For example Apple could also put in the license agreement that you need to give up your first born child.
The real legality of such statements is only known after it has been tried in a court of law, which AFAIK it has not.
On top of that, some argue that the entire license agreement is BS. By law, a contract requires two parties to agree. Some argue that this agreement needs to be in place at the time of purchase. With most shrink-wrapped software you've no idea what you are agreeing to at the time of purchase.
Even if the software vendor would argue that you could return the software if you don't agree, there's a simple way to avoid agreeing to the license.
Basically when you open the package to get the CD out, don't read _anything_. I know the envelope may have some disclaimers about agreeing to a license agreement, well better not read that. You bought the software, you've no obligation to read everything that's being presented.
Same goes for the installation; just blindly hit the highlighted button until the installation is done. If it doesn't work, try the non-highlighted button every once in a while.
The point is, that it's very hard for a software vendor to proof in court that you actually agreed to the license agreement. "You have to hit 'I agree' to install. You got it installed, so you agreed!". I have no idea what you are talking about, I thought 'I agree' meant the color of the button was agreeable.
You could say, well, that sounds like saying that you didn't read a contract that you signed.
The difference is that when you sign a contract, you and the other party specifically sit down for the exact purpose of signing a legal document.
When you buy software, you've no idea that you are about to enter into a legally binding contract. So you simply ignore all the stuff that doesn't make sense to you (like you do with most purchases).
Of course, how well this would hold up in court is just as unproven, but there seem to be some lawyers (which IAN) that think that it will.