Slashdot Mirror
PlayStation 3 Could Support Mac OS X
ucahg writes "Sony's website has a press release stating that they will release the PS3 in 2006. The most interesting part about the page, though, is the last sentence which reads: 'The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger).' Is this what Steve Jobs was talking about when he said Apple and Sony looked forward to cooperating more in the future?"
play cool video games and use mac os x cool...dude
McSony or a Macincell?
It would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name
Thank You God for the ultimate gaming machine we are about to recive.......... If this is true about OSX and Linux working on the PS3 Bill Gates is going to really ramp up the XBOX360 as OSX and Sony make bill have bad dreams. Then again it might make bill even madder and he might make the xbox 360 even better
If You can read this sig you are on the internet
What kind of a company would put out a $200 game console running Windows? The Microsoft tax would contitute nearly 50% of the console's cost. Any company unwise enough to try that deserves to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.
For more information, click here.
.. BeOS! .. OS/2! .. iTron! .. ???
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
If this is true, I don't know what the hell Apple is thinking. The word on the street was always that Apples were built to last. You had to accept the higher price and less popular OS to get it, but you did get the increased quality as a trade off.
Sony, in my estimation, is the the new Packard Bell or Gateway. Where quality is job 3, maybe 5. Well, I'm sure they will get around to it sometime.
Seriously, Sony is a company that is renowned for its lax quality control. Why the hell Apple would want to associate themselves with Sony is beyond me.
That's one more reason why ps3 beats the new xbox.. Microsoft can only offer windows but try to get Vista running on a consol while it won't even run on a good computer.
There is a partnership between sony and apple regarding HD Video. Maybe that has something to do with it...
Fleur de Sel
It sounds more like some idiot typing copy for the website didn't realize that OS X is/will always be tied to Apple hardware.
If that IS a little revelation, it's awfully quiet and fanfare-free.
The United States of America: We do what we must because we can.
Dreamcast?
We've known that the integrated Cell processor could support OS X since we learned that it had a full (if relatively slow) PowerPC core. This is not news. Whether the other hardware in the PS3 will be supported by OS X, and whether OS X will be licensed for the PS3 is still unknown.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Perhaps the writer tought that Linux and Darwin would compile fine on the machine but this does not guarantee that Apple will port (recompile) the GUI layers of OS X. Just as Darwin compiled fine on Intel, before Apple ported the closed source party of OSX to the Intel architecture.
If on the other hand, the rumor is true: this would be a great leap forward for the PS3 as well as for Apple / OSX
what are the main reasons people list as reasons they can't/will not buy a mac?
1: No games. not if sony releases PS games for mac
2: No multi-button mouse. weak reason but now with "mighty mouse a non-issue. Not that you couldn't go third party anyway
3: Macs are too expensive. With the mac mini and potential price drops with soon to be intel CPUs - a shrill cry
Looks like all the reasons to not go with mac are evaporating. I won't even mention the traditional windows problems...
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
I would have dismissed this as complete bullshit had it not been on Sony's own PR. What an odd thing to mention. I mean, It's not unknown for PR's to "name drop" in order to more likely appear in search engine listings, Sony doesn't have to resort to that sort of thing because their PR's are widely disssiminated by the media anyway (especially PS3 related stuff).
While Kunitake Ando and Steve Jobs were making complimentary (if somewhat guarded) comments about the two companies early in 2005 (was it at Macworld or something?), steve has been less upbeat about Cell.
If you take the statement at its fact, its really just saying that the cell is general purpose enough to handle any OS. In fact, there's nothing incorrect or even exaggerated about the statement: The cell could certainly support OSX in the same way that PearPC enables a x86 to support OSX (i.e. emulation) but it would be slow as hell. Whether Sony means anything other than that is another question.
Curious, but I'm leaning towards dismissing this as PR hubris. But give it a couple weeks - if the media get's into a froth about it I'm sure Apple will speak up or Sony will clarify one way or the other.
Wow.
Just, wow.
Take an 8-month old report of Apple looking to "work with" Sony. Add marketing speak from the initial burst of info about Cell, and how it is designed to run "multiple OSs".
Add some Sony fanboyism.
Add some "Slashdot Anti-Microsoftism(TM)".
Watch the speculation fly. And watch people make complete asses of themselves.
This is hands down the stupidest, weakest thing I have read here in a long time.
by macworld dude
The Admin and the Engineer
In a lot of ways it kind of makes sence. Although I dislike the concept of a media center pc it apears that both Microsoft and Sony are pushing more and more for it with their next generation platforms. In spite of it being a terible place to do it, many people will want to surf the web on their TV (and what not). For Sony picking Mac OSX as an operating system makes sence because it is easy to use (even for a monkey) unlike most of linux and being 'apple related' makes it kind of cool; for apple it will give them the opportunity to expose many more people to their user interface.
Ultimately, I don't think it is an important feature but who am I to say; after all I actually play games with my gaming system, I don't watch DVDs and I don't surf the web with it.
THe Mac Mini isn't cheap, except as a Mac. It's at least $150 more expensive than a comparably crippled entry-level PC. It's only "cheap" because that's less than half the "Mac Tax" you'd have to pay on anything else.
Why do you think going to Intel is going to make Macs cheaper? The G4 is not a horribly expensive chip - you can't buy it retail but quantity prices are under $100, and comparable Intel chips aren't any cheaper than that.
Haha. Dreamcast. Rotflmao. /me gets back up off the floor and into his chair.
For those that don't get it: Recall that the (Sega) Dreamcast is dead and then go reread the note that the GP and GGP post are hinting very strongly at Xbox (windows NT, DirectX, $200 pricetag).
I really loved the choice quote in the GP: "Any company unwise enough to try that deserves to lose hundreds of millions of dollars."
Yep, but remember that MS has a multi billion dollar warchest funding Xbox to be a loss leader for games.
"Yep, but remember that MS has a multi billion dollar warchest funding Xbox to be a loss leader for games."
No they don't.
The weak 360 hardware they are rushing to get out the door before Sony and Nintendo release their consoles should put to rest any idea that MS is letting the Xbox team blow through another five billion like they did with the first Xbox.
The 360 is the end of the road for MS and console market.
We need to go back to the original real-time multitasking game OS... AmigaDOS!
Since I'm missed out on the PS2 - seems like this would be the thing that justifies the $499 price tag. It would be much better than my mac mini and a playstation.
-- Jay Brewer -- http://www.blogpire.com
Just checking.
One thing's for sure... if you tried to run OS X on a PS3, you'd find out why Apple decided not to come out with a Cell-based computer. The PPC implementation isn't all that hot, and the other cores won't help because they don't run PPC code.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Only some Dreamcast games used WinCE, and those that did included it on the disc; it wasn't preinstalled on the console.
Sorry, I shoulda been more clear. I wasn't trying to say whether it would be fast, slow, or anything else. I dont have any idea until we start seeing it in the "real-world". My point was that the statement "cell can support any os (such as linux or tiger)" isn't all that shocking because virtually *any* desktop-strength processor could make the same claim... it just depends on how much of a hit you will take in duplicating and/or emulating the environment (cpu, chipset, sound hardware, etc) that the target OS expects. MIPS, ARM, x86, Cell, you name it. For x86 it's a pretty big hit (for now at least).
For cell, I imagine it would be easier, but I'm not convinced that you'd get "insanely fast" performance from over, say, a dual-core G5. The central core is (pretty much) a PowerPC processor, surrounded by eight(?) DSP's. However, if I'm not mistaken, these DSP's do not support branch prediction, and can only get instructions fed to them via the main CPU (they can't get it DMA-style from RAM).
So it's not like you've got a 9-way cpu workstation thundering away... you only get benefit when you take advantage of DSP-friendly code like what you see in media players. Alot of people are skeptical that the code mix in your average video game can be efficiently tap Cells architecture. And for something like an OS running a wide range of apps, I'm sure it's an even shakier proposition.
But of course, I have no clue and I could be totally wrong. Personally I'd love to see such a radically different CPU approach turn out to deliver great performance. But nobody knows at this point. Not me, not you, not the media, and not even the game developers (hell, it took 'till the third generation of ps2 games to wrap their brains its Ps2's funky innards).
This is quite a step up for relations between Steve Jobs and Sony... It seems like just yesterday when Steve's approach meant you needed to hide the Sony Rep in the closet
Think about this from a Mac gamer's point of view... If games are coming out on PS3 and running on an OSX based operating system, it's perfectly possible that the Mac will receive lots of these games too...
Microsoft?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
The Cell front end processor is PowerPC. With the right drivers it probably could run OS X. That said, it won't because Apple doesn't want to support OS X on someone else's hardware and Sony doesn't need a general purpose OS.
The OS X userspace is nice but a bit redundant for a machine that only needs a few utilities and games. The OS X OpenGL implementation isn't the fastest, and the spiffy display technologies (and they are spiffy) aren't necessary. Sony just needs a subset of OpenGL but it needs to be fast.
The Darwin kernel isn't the fastest either, and Sony can do a lot better whether or not they're willing to pay for it (Linux or NetBSD on the free side, any number of real-time kernels on the other side).
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
That's it. That's all it said. "The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger)."
The companies (MS, Sony) know their machines are being hacked to run Linux and such. Those two sentences up there are worse than the rumor sites and the speculation is even worse. Of course it could run an OS. That's a no brainer. It could probably run any flavor of Mac OS X (being UNIX-based) and also Linux. So...what's the news? It's speculation, hype, and a bit of marketing to get all the geeks all giddy, wondering what Sony has up its sleeve.
What DOES Sony have in mind? Have you noticed how many commercials for the PSP aren't specific to the gaming platform but more to the video capabilities? Or new videos released "available on DVD and PSP"? Match that with Sony's pissiness about being manhandled by the iPod and it only makes sense that Sony will do what it takes to get itself in the limelight. Mention Apple and heads will turn...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
This is so stupid, it's hard to imagine how it got into that press release. It's so stupid, it's even hard to imagine how it was considered Slashdot-worthy.
Yes, it's a PPC chip, so Apple could release Tiger for it. No, they're not going to do it.
Let's consider the facts:
Sony simply wrote about what their processor could do, not about what they're going to do. Linux? Maybe, they did it before. Mac OS? Definitely not.
Why was this modded Interesting/Insightful? What do people think Windows has been doing for years on SMP (and now dual-core) PCs?
Sony and Apple could benefit from the relationship. Sony could get add extra features without having to develop those in Linux. Apple gets marketing by showcasing OS X to Playstation market (much larger market). Because Apple is moving away from PPC and Playstations are pretty static systems, Apple's hardware will be more faster and offer more features. So, it won't necessarily detract from hardware sales.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
This is why I don't have a Mac desktop now.
I needed dual displays and a few other things, and I wasn't prepared to pay for a PowerMac to get them. OS X isn't worth CDN$1500 to me.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
It's all a ploy to get past the import taxes which some regions have on "gaming devices" but not on "compting devices". It's not like Sony is going to have a version of the Accelerate Framework (altivec functions for doing math faster) that takes advantage of the many vector chips in a stock Tiger install.
Sony has a long tradition in the EU of claiming the PS3 is not a game console, it is a computer. They went as far as including a basic interpreter to the PS2 and hiring a team of crooks in suits to argue a year or two with the European Governments, just to save a few percentage of customs duties. Just imagin what saving 4% on 25 million of units sold during the years means. That's about millions and millions for Sony. No wonder they are speaking Linux now.
Sony has lost an appeal over the classification of its PlayStation 2 for import tax purposes. It is officially a games console and not, as Sony had argued, a "digital processing unit" - a claim which, if successful, would have let Sony off the hook on import duty.
http://www.out-law.com/page-3953
Last time I heard, the PS3 was going to be way more than $200. No official price point yet, but SCEJ president Ken Kutaragi was quoted as saying "I'm not going to reveal its price today. I'm going to only say that it'll be expensive." That doesn't sound like it's going to be cheap to me.
When was the last time you saw any piece of hardware that ran Mac OS have a large library of games available for it?
Remember the early demos of the new Xbox that were running on G5s? Now consider that Playstation might be able to run OS X. Suddenly the two major game consoles are theoretically capable of running OS X. That would rock!
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
This is an overblown misinterpretation of a GAMING CONSOLE. You will not be running the PS3 like a PC or your dumb-assed Mac. It will play games. This is (roughly) how it will go.
Step 1) Insert Game
Step 2) Play Game
Step 3) Realize the OS is of no concern to using a gaming console and return to your pathetic, rumor-mongering existence
Step 4) Masturbate
Step 5) Sleep
Any questions?
Stop complaining, get off your ass, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!