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Mac OS X Running on Non-Apple Hardware
MacBeliever writes "Inevitably, Mac OS X for x86 has been hacked to run on a non-Apple PC. Is this the beginning of the fulfillment of the Dvorak prophecy?" RetrogradeMotion also writes "The OSx86 Project has posted a how-to guide telling how to run OS X on any Windows or Linux-based PC using VMWare." Not 100% corroborated, so ingest with salt.
Seriously. The largest barrier for adoption of OSX has been the high cost of entry (ie buying Mac hardware). This has been slightly reduced with the Mac Mini, but now people can try out OSX without even having to buy new hardware.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, SWEET FUCKING CHRIST!!
Can we postpone these stories until the production runs of both the boxes and OS X comes out? Please? All these stories in the past few weeks have read like the following and have steadily decreased in poster IQ:
Apple: Wild speculation abounds on developer-only releases of software, hardware OMGWTF
Apple: Apple may/may not use DRM, based on developer-only releases of software and hardware OMGWTF!!!1
Apple: Teh interface is pretyOMGWTF!!!!!11eleventyone
Anonymous Coward writes: i am LOVE MY MACCY from BITTTORRRENT!!! I kissed it becos it tastES LIKE CANDY!!
Calm down, people. I'm not saying these things will or won't come to pass, but everybody assuming that a developer-only release will be anything like its comparable production release -- not to mention one that won't be available for a year -- is silly.
Disclaimer: Mac user at home.
People like Mercedes, BMW, Volvo etc sell cars at a premium because they are good quality and have nice design. In fact I bought an older Volvo precisely for that reason. It was a quality vehicle with the luxury and safety I would expect from the manufacturer. Apple is the same. Yes, may be you could run OS-X on a cheap clone PC, or one made of bits, but I bought Apple after years of such machines, because I wanted a quality machine with nice design and nice construction. Anyone who thinks this will hurt Apple's sales to a great extent is sadly mistaken.
Not impossible, but it would be a tricky transition for them.
Apple charges a very very large markup on their hardware, I don't think the margin on their software would be nearly as high.
Beyond that, one of the advantages of them controlling hardware and software is the fact that they can do more rigorous quality control, because they KNOW the configuration your machine will be running. This leads to the disadvantage of having a limited and more costly hardware base, but that is why Apple products "just work".
Personally, I think moving Mac OS to mainstream machines with unpredictable hardware would dramatically lower the quality of the software, and I would hate to see that. I would much rather have an Apple piece of hardware that I know was tested well with the operating system on it.
I suppose that viewpoint will put me in the minority here.
1. Apple would have to support a massively larger amount of hardware. 2. there would be a loss of branding and a lowering of the quality associated with OS X. 3. there are plenty of games on the Mac, but if you want the very latest cutting-edge PC games you'd never be satisfied anyway since you'd need ATI/nVidia making their latest cards in Mac versions too. 4. if you DO want games, why do you want a Mac? if Windows works, use it. 5. what is happening to the PC game industry? is it growing/shrinking? will PC games be so important when the latest generation consoles are out? 6. given PC games makers moves to absurd copy-protection methods (drivers), will either the makers or Apple allow the other to do what they want to "secure" the computers?
Actually, this story is pretty well-established: hard-to-fake handheld videos of systems cold-booting into OS X, screenshots, torrents, reports from all around that installation is tricky but it works...
It was speculation last week then there were a handful of sketchy screenshots taken in VMWare floating around. Now I'd say it's pretty much fact that it's working at some level.
Aside from that, I really don't think Apple cares about the gaming market segment, i.e., teenaged-or-twenty-something males.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Well, take this only as my assumption, but Apple would likely charge the same amount as Microsoft for their OS -- if not more (which I'm sure Jobs could justify with his pretty marketing spin) -- if/when they release OS X for open x86 hardware.
Will Apple do such? I don't think many people have any point of reference to make an educated guess about that. They certainly would not sell OS X to the mass market for $129 though.
A B A C A B B
If I remember correctly, the developer Intel Macs didn't ship with iLife. I'd be interesting to install them anyway and see what happens.
You'd have to be a masochist to run Final Cut Pro on Rosetta. Thank you sir may I have another!
Wouldn't it benefit Apple in the long run to get more of its software into the public's hands?
No. To paraphrase Douglas Adams "Apple may only have 10% of the computer market, but its definitely the top 10%".
Would it benefit Ferrari in the long run to have every ghetto curb filled with Ferrari's?
In looking at the demo movies, it was impressive to some degree to see OS X running on a cheap Windows PC. But looking more closely, I noticed that the image appeared stretched. I saw that yucky BIOS black screen with white text. However, it looked close to a regular Mac experience.
Apple is neither a hardware company nor a software company. What Apple sells is user experiences. Apple users don't buy a computer, or a piece of software, they buy an integrated product that lets them get the things done that they want to get done ("It Just Works"(TM)). Both the hardware and the software are integral pieces of that product, and neither is complete without the other.
Yeah, the hardware support is the killer, and why they won't do it. Where would all the drivers for all the obsolete hardware out there come from? Just getting it to boot on most 3-year old systems would mean having to write tens of thousands of drivers. Not gonna happen.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
That analogy has been abused for years. While it's true that Apple hardware is higher in quality than a lot of no-name Taiwanese stuff, it's not much different from what HP and Dell would sell you in their mid- and high-end ranges.
The reasons I see for Apple hardware being more expensive are:
1) Lower volumes in manufacturing not allowing the economies of scale that a company like Dell can get.
2) Without direct competition (as in no other vendors making Macs), Apple can charge what they want and people will pay it.
And finally, about the hardware company vs. software company: one point I haven't seen mentioned is that when selling only software a company is bound to suffer some losses from piracy. But when it comes to hardware, people who want the product have no choice but to buy it. Can't exactly burn a copy of an iPod to CD...
Apple have approximately 20% margins on hardware. This is quite high for the computer hardware industry. I imagine that these margins will drop a bit after they transition to x86 so people are not able to compare a Mac to a Dell with identical specs and see a hugely overpriced Mac. In contrast, any copy of OS X sold to someone who would otherwise have used Linux or Windows is 100% profit (well, minus the negligible cost of the DVD, box and manual).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But, on my x86, I can choose any ATI Card or Nvidia card and I most certainly will not have XP update issues.
Apple "controlling" their hardware market is unfortunately limiting your choices for no good reason.
OSX offers no compelling advantages, and many disadvantages, as a platform to game developers. Apple has neglected or actively discouraged game developers over a long period of time -- starting with a refusal to produce a joystick standard (so there is still no standard joystick interface after 20 years) through refusing to enable low res graphics back in the early 90s when every hit game (Doom, etc.) relied on them to achieve acceptable frame rates.
Apple's current initiative is actually probably the best move they could make vis-a-vis games.
Currently, a typical Mac gamer owns a PC to play games on. In my case, I upgrade my PC more frequently than my Mac, even though I use my Mac for *paying work*, and the only reason is game performance. Apple can capture a chunk of this money by producing computers that run their OS and the games I want to play.
Whether I have to reboot into Windows or run in a compatibility box, I'd rather upgrade one computer every twelve-eighteen months than upgrade my PC twice and my Mac one every two years.
If Apple released OSX for random PC boxes it would instantly lose its hardware margin, and it might never get significant volume on software. And, frankly, Apple's hardware innovations are as important as its software innovations -- would you like to see Apple out of the hardware market?
???
Microsoft? World's richest guy as the owner?
Software has a fixed cost of creation. You make your money in volume!
Beyond that, one of the advantages of them controlling hardware and software is the fact that they can do more rigorous quality control, because they KNOW the configuration your machine will be running. This leads to the disadvantage of having a limited and more costly hardware base, but that is why Apple products "just work".
Agreed... but it would be entirely possible to only provide support for "approved" hardware.
Agile Artisans
Microsoft would never allow Dell or any of the other major manufacturers to sell their boxes with an Apple OS.
They give Dell, et al, huge discounts on Windows, which I'm sure would disappear the moment Dell started considering an alternative OS. Dell wouldn't be willing to risk the majority of its sales on the off chance of this new alternative OS taking off.
And I'll restate the point others have made: Apple's superiority in terms of user experience is directly attributable to the tight integration between and control of the hardware. There are far less hardware configurations in any Apple system than a commodity x86 box. Go look for Mac video cards and you'll see what I mean. Apple would be gambling with their one real advantage if they actually marketed their OS for commodity hardware, as opposed to just letting a few hackers here and there play with it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
No...you already admit to pirating the OS and building the PCs. I'm not sure how you can recommend buying stock PCs if you build them...but...whatever. It's a lot more likely that it goes like this:
Next month your parents decide they want to upgrade their PC and come to you for advice (because you built their last PC). You tell them to order OS X compatible parts, and you install your pirated copy of the OS on the machine after you build it. Apple gains market share and makes no money.
Your grandfather, a year later, decides to upgrade his PC. He comes to you for advice because you built his last PC. You tell him he should run OS X. He talks to your parents, they tell him they love their OS X compatible PC. He orders OS X compatible parts, and you build the machine and install your pirated copy of OS X. Apple gains market share and makes no money.
Soon your aunt wants to upgrade, repeat above story. Market share continues to grow, but people aren't actually purchasing any Apple products. Rinse and repeat for your entire family. I doubt you build your friend's computers, but if you do...or your friends are similar to you (i.e. technically savy and have copies of OS X) rinse and repeat for them. In 5 years listen to all of the "Apple is DYING" trolls on slashdot because Apple is a hardware company and isn't selling any hardware. In 10 years your son asks you, "What is Apple?" and you tell him, "Oh we're running the last version of their OS on our Dell. Great company, too bad they went under."
Compile aqua without optimizations.
It'd be far harder for a hacker to find a way to optimize the binary than change some constant.
Or it could backfire horribly, like the "experiment" with clones/CHRP did: Apple's overall market share didn't change, but users who previously had bought Apple hardware migrated to Power Computing and Motorola and UMax boxes, giving Apple only a licensing fee instead of the 20% margin they previously did.
If Mac OS ran on commodity hardware, perhaps they'd pick up a few disgruntled Windows users, and Linux users who want something easier to use, but I suspect any positive movement would be greatly offset by the number of current Mac users who would switch to cheaper hardware and deny Apple profit.
I'm sure there are some potential Mac users waiting in the wings, held off by the high cost of Apple hardware, but this is not a market that I suspect Apple really cares about. Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel because they wanted to get faster processors into their current lineup and maintain and increase the number of people buying Apple boxes, not decimate their hardware division's sales overnight.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Apple is a brand that is based on quality. What you're advocating is running the brand through the mud, exactly what the company doesn't want.
Not supporting things is sure-fire way for customer support to decline.
Supporting things that cause it to run like crap is a sure-fire way for customer support to decline.
Apple can only, and should only, release OS X on their own hardware, where the quality of user experience is assured.
This is what will happen.
So you are paying for a complete experience. Which I can get from Dell or something similar.
/. readers can take it from here...
Yeah, I love the full Dell experience. You send them money, then weeks later you get a laptop which comes complete with:
1. A battery which breaks within 3 weeks.
2. A CDROM drive with a dodgy eject button and requires a "right click -> eject".
3. Keyboard marks rubbed onto the screen.
4. A floppy drive which goes out of alignment after you first use it (two weeks after the warrantee ran out, because you don't use floppies that much). They demand money.
5. A trackpad/nipple which have you chanting, "The power of Christ compels you!..."
6. Flimsy build.
7. Poor performance (compared against other x86).
8. Non English speaking support, once they actually answer the phone.
9. An OS made by someone else, with drivers made by yet some other people again. Install media if you are lucky. Roll-your-own if you are not.
11. Anti virus software which takes the performance down by about one hundred annoyance notches. Only to be bothered for money 3 months later.
12. Lots of half baked software which is designed to get you to "upgrade to the pro version which actually works" with yet more money.
13. One hundred and fifty three billion different services installed and set to run by default, with a systray that goes half way across the screen when maximized.
14. A system which could come with any combination of a number of different parts. SOE hell.
15. A lesson in appreciation of quality over barrel bottom scraping "value".
16. I'm sure other
I support lots of Dells. The desktops... work. But the laptops are not built well enough to be used as laptops in my opinion.
My *opinion* is, that there never has been a Dell laptop which could compare with an Apple Powerbook for build quality or overall system quality. The overall Apple experience is nice. I could never say that about Dell. BTW, I say all this typing from a Sony VAIO.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?