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?"
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.
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.
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.
Assuming they did in fact manage to get a version of their OS to run on the Xbox 360, they'd run into the problem that eventually someone will get Linux running on the console. Considering Microsoft can't afford to sink too much money into the console in building a solid OS that runs fast, whatever they manage to port will likely be just as flawed as their regular operating systems are. Given a choice between Linux or Windows, I think that a lot of people would tend to choose Linux. Not all of them, but more than in the computer market considering there are more tech savvy people purchasing consoles.
In short, Microsoft even trying to get Windows onto their new console is most likely going to be the biggest flop they've had in a long while.
by macworld dude
The Admin and the Engineer
Only some Dreamcast games used WinCE, and those that did included it on the disc; it wasn't preinstalled on the console.
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.
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.
I'm guessing with all of its added features that have nothing to do with video games, it will just be a POS.