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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.
Wouldn't it benefit Apple in the long run to get more of its software into the public's hands? Sure, it might detract from them selling hardware (short term), but I can honestly say for me (average Joe) I've never purchased a Mac because they simply don't have the software titles I'm interested in and Windows does. I mean sure, they've got great stuff, but they lack in GAMES, yes games... I've said it, gotten it out. I'm a gamer and so are all of my friends. I'd venture to say a good chunk of those purchasing PC's are in the same group as me (surf the web and play games). So if the Apple OS became more popular, wouldn't more developers consider making a version of their game in the Apple OS flavor?
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Oh c'mon.
There are only two possible paths for Apple: continue to keep their OS working only on their hardware, or making it also work on x86.
I'm sure everyone who knows what a Mac is has speculated at one point or another what would happen if Apple made their OS work on x86 hardware, and whether they would, and why they would take that decision. Calling it the Dvorak prophecy seems way too pretentious.
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That works fine until one of Apple's security patches screws things up for those users. The one reason I like Apple is because they can control their hardware market. Lots of times when I did Windows Updates, the patches would be incompatible just because of driver and hardware issues. I know people that still can't installed Service Pack 2 on XP, because of their video cards. I prefer to stick with the hardware Apple is going to sell.
A leaked, cracked version of that OS could quickly become a favorite for non-gaming computers. I have to wonder if this was an intentional leak or not. I dont know if it will supplant 3.11 as the most pirated OS ever, but it will be up there. This could be a market test for Apple to see if the demand is there to sell their OS to the non-Apple hardware crowd.
Eventually he'll be right, and perhaps, once, before he dies, he'll actually have something insightful to say.
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I would disagree with that statement. We're talking about x86 emulation on an x86 system. If properly emulated it should keep between 90-99% of its speed original.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
That would be handy if it worked. I could test web sites for Safari without having to buy a Mac.
I don't agree. As someone that grew up on Windows and decided to try out Apple midway through college, it's not that simple. For us here on Slashdot, we realize the programs are similar in nature and are intuitive enough to figure out. However, I have switched many of my friends to Apple, making sure they knew how difficult it would be to unlearn what they already thought about computers. Most of them don't get very far in learning. That may be okay in a lot of cases, but if you are someone that has to be productive and you've learned to do things certain ways, switching is going to make Apple seem real inferior. Switching is not as easy as it appears.
The point of VMWare is that it virtualises the whole system. Provided there's nothing else competing for processor time on the box, any given OS running in VMWare should run at near-native speeds.
So a couple of nerds will run OSX -sortish- on non Apple hardware. Any non-apple approved component will cause more instability. To get the full experience, (and be legal!!!!) you will still need to cough up the cash. At worst people will try it on their PC, and buy a real Apple as their next PC. How did Excel beet Lotus 123? Simple: Lotus 123 had copy protection. Where Apple will win big on their Intel-switch is servers. Think of them cooperating with Dell. Their market share for servers is marginal, and hardware esthetics doesn't matter for servers so they have nothing to lose. Suddenly a big player like Dell starts offering servers with Intel-like speed, Dell-like reliability, BSD-like stability and Mac-like userfriendliness. Heck, even I would have to think twice before saying no thanks!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I agree. People buy Apple because they want lots of good things, one of which is seamless operation, another top of the line hardware. People who steal the OS likely wouldn't fork over the cost of buying Apple hardware anyway, so the theft will NOT hurt Apple's bottom line while it MAY help Apple advertise their system. Given enough pirating, it is conceivable that Apple could eventually switch to selling the OS separately for cheap and have an immediate and significant boost to their market share. Hopefully, we'll get some real numbers in the next 24 months instead of all of this speculation...
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Apple is clearly a hardware company, and so they make most of their money from selling hardware. Thus it's very unlikely that Apple would want to support generic x86 boxes.
But Apple has an interesting opportunity here. If they simply ignored people running unlicensed x86 copies, but prevented else anyone selling pre-installed Macs, then they probably wouldn't lose much business. The people who are willing to install MacOS themselves are unlikely to be the people who'd buy Mac hardware in the first place.
However, Apple would gain a lot of mindshare with the kids and with the technically savvy who are happy installing their own OS. In the long run, this will bring many more people to Apple hardware, and to influence their parents/family/employers to buy the supported Apple products.
Seems like Apple can't lose here.
-Fzz
When I eventually own an Intel-based Mac I'm sure I'll install Windows on its own partition, just for gaming. After all, when I want to play a game I really don't care about the user experience my OS gives me. When I want to do anything else I'll boot into OS X.
Why would anybody bother to develop or port games for Mac when it will be so easy for Mac gamers to use Windows, and the future of Windows gaming is (sadly) DirectX? As soon as you launch a game the user experience of the OS is gone, and thus so are most of the advantages of OS X from the users' perspective.
Note: my comment about DirectX is not a troll, it is based on the following article from the same site that carries TFA:
NO! Not because they wouldn't sell more copies of OSX, they would...not because they wouldn't ultimately sell more Macs, because they would...but because if they don't sell a version for the PC then they invite (yes invite) piracy. The same way Windows did in the 90's. Imagine if windows was impossible to copy, but every PC in Asia could get a copy of OSX running on it for free. Don't you think Apple would take over 90% of the market at that point? And here in the US, if people could get a pirated copy of OSX, they might like it and just go out and buy a Mac. Who knows. I think piracy is exactly what apple needs.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Nice try.
How about putting it this way: People like Mercedes, BMW, Volvo etc sell cars at a premium because they are good quality and have nice design...Apple, on the other hand, has nice design but generally slower hardware, for a higher price than a more capable machine with similar (or higher) specifications. In addition, the "quality" of their hardware has been less than sound over the years (numerous problems with their laptop series, including some recalls; iPod battery mess and so on).
Your analogy is ridiculous. It's like saying you'd buy a BMW even if it had a lawnmower motor in it, just because it looked nice. Maybe that works if you're vain and arrogant.
Indeed, most of the people running this either have Intel chipsets to run it natively (one person posted some screenshots from their computer that was running a VIA chipset) or are emulating a generic chipset (via VMware).
Audio device support has been spotty (according to reports in the forums, but someone hooked up a Sony USB audio card and it worked flawlessly), along with NIC supprt (it seems 3Com and Intel chips are supported natively) and hardware GUI acceleration.
All of this is from the posts on the forums.
Jobs has made it clear since reigniting the Mac market with the iMac and iPod that the ultimate goal is to reinvent the Mac's mindshare (and marketshare) by resurrecting NeXT and turning it into the platform of the future.
First, he had to get rid of all of the crap that had developed in the Amelio days, including the far-behind System 7/Mac OS 8 and introduce something so radical that Apple would get on the radar again. iMac mania ensues. Introduce some hot new Moto tech from the AIM alliance that rivals and often outperforms other architectures--the G4. Using both of those tools and after wrangling the company into the direction he wants, he begins to resurrect NeXT by launching OS X. (this is rather general and not as impacting as I'd like; I need coffee).
Remember that NeXTStep ran on both proprietary and off-the shelf gear at one point--I'm willing to bet that this paradigm is exactly what he's doing with Apple. Once getting the shambles back together, it's time to continue what failed for him about 10 years ago. Except, in this case, he's learned his lesson and is making sure that his product doesn't get segmented to a particular market like before and is keeping as strong of a grip as possible on it for an indeterminate amount of time.
He'll let it go to Dell, eventually, just wait.
1. Develop OSX for x86, in secret
2. Announce it to a stunned audience
3. Seed dev Intel boxes
4. Wait for image to leak
5. Anticipate hackers discover image will boot on SSE3 procs
6. ???
7. Gain market share
8. Profit!!!
The trick is in step 6:
Insert the following code into Aqua:Thus, OSX runs natively on non-Apple hardware, but the GUI runs at quarter speed. If you want full-speed Aqua, you'll need the branded hardware. It's the crack dealer's approach: your first taste is free. There'll be time enough to get your money once you're hooked.
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I have built maybe 30 or so white box intel/amd hardware computer over the years, starting back with the 386. I have also owned a Dual 500 Mac, and 2 iBooks. At the end of the day, I would pay $400 more for the Apple hardware vs. building it myself. My Apple hardware just works, never breaks (and that goes for my friends that have about 20 Macs between them). I cannot say the same thing for any of the PC hardware. Sure I have had some systems, PC, that just keep working, but in the end the quality of the PC systems (not to mention style!) was just not there.
There's no guarantee that the code in question won't also be hacked, so that would be a bad business move. The risk is too high.
What's more likely is that the hardware compatibily has been completely ignored in the plans, and that the "hacked", freely available OS has been factored in to a certain percentage of lost hardware sales, and it's still deemed to be a profitable move.
It'd be far harder for a hacker to find a way to optimize the binary than change some constant
Then it's time to bust out the dynamic recompiler
Steve Jobs once commented that Apple, like Microsoft, can "print money" in a way that its hardware competitors (like Dell) can't.
.Mac, and then another iBook and then the next version of OS X?
But before you get carried away suggesting that Apple throw away their existing computer company and become a software company, consider this:
1) Microsoft isn't rich and powerful because they deliver the best OS technology, or because they compete in software value, but rather because they own a monopoly in the PC OS Software market, a monopoly they built through predatory marketing and anti-competitive deals with hardware makers that killed rivals. Microsoft does not compete in software sales, they have imposed a tax on every PC sold in the last two decades.
2) Free/OSS software is frequently based upon a support business plan. If the world was ready to pay money for software, this might not have been necessary. Nobody is really excited about buying software, unless it is being expertly sold to them with some handholding. As noted above, Microsoft got around this by making Windows sales invisible to hardware buyers.
3) There is a long list of OS efforts that have failed to survive as software only companies: DR-DOS, NeXTStep, BeOS, OS/2, AmigaOS. They didn't succeed, even though they were "printing money" and enjoying those 'high margin profits' on every unit sold.
4) Apple has sucessfully made money selling their own computers as long as they've been around. They currently make higher margins than PC makers. Risking that sucess to take a shot at a software sales business plan with a very high mortality rate does not sound sensible.
5) While common sense suggests the way to make money is by giving away razor handles and selling blades, Apple has managed to sell Macs (handles) at a good profit, while also selling blades (Mac OS X) to their customers better than Microsoft. In 5 years, Apple has sold 4 paid versions of OS X, compared to 2 paid upgrades of Windows from Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft doens't sell their customers many upgrade copies of Windows, they just collect taxes in the form of site licenses and new hardware tariffs. Hard to compete with that.
So do the math. Will Apple benefit from gutting their low end Mac market, and handing their iBook and iMac sales to HP and Dell, on the gamble that users will buy paid upgrades to OS X, rather than pirate it? They would be likely to lose their high end market as well, to Dell, AlienWare and whoever else. And their XServes. Yeah, that sounds bad.
Why not keep those home Mac buyers at the Apple Store, sell them new iBooks and iMacs, and then show them why they also might want iWork, iLife, a printer, an iPod and a new version of OS X, as well as AppleCare and
Or how about education customers, who buy labs of laptops and Airports and XServes and XS RAIDS, should Apple send their customers to Dell for all that gear, and then try to sell them OS X in place of the Windows they already licensed through Dell?
Fucking Duh, yeah they'd be better off just selling an OS X license to a few schlumps who decided not to bother with the torrent download. Of the 100,000 Slashdotters who'd check out OS X on their PC, how many would pay for it in a retail box? A whole lot less than would consider buying a Mac Mini or PowerBook, if the PC wasn't an option.
You better bet Apple will do everything possible to make OS X run clumsily on PCs, and break hacks with every software update. Do you supose Apple will spare PC pirates the indignation they launched upon Real's for their Harmony AAC copy protection designed to play music on the iPod?
6) Apple recently complimented their sucessful hardware and software sales on the Mac platform with the iPod platform, which similarly sells higher margin hardware along with supplementary software sales (iTMS) and peripherals. In the case of the iPod, free software (iTunes) drives hardware sales. Do you think Apple could have sold iTunes and made as much profit as they do now with the iPod? What if they sold iTunes for all the WMA players out there, would that make them lots of money?
But then, if Apple can make a Macintosh compatible with Windows, why couldn't they quietly create a new platform based on that, with machine specs defined by them, and let other assemblers slowly propose a new breed of clones ? Couldn't integration be as good as in a genuine Apple Macintosh ? And then let start a market for compatible/checked/approved only peripherals and parts ?
Besides the economic model of Apple being a hardware manufacturer with no competition on OS X... I personnaly think Apple hardware division maintains a quality which would assure them to be competitive in the upper margins sections of a more open market.
The first Mac clones were not compatible with Windows, so the market was for MacOS only, to be divided, and Apple lost shares of what was entirely his before. But with Windows and Linux compatibility, the sharing would be on a potentially much larger market...
Perhaps the launch of their Windows compatible Macintoshes is only the first step... Sell them to new users, assuring recognition and new fidelities, creating a larger market for Macintels (with more potential customers, so more demand for compatible peripherals,accessories and parts), and when this growth field is saturated anew, quietly open the platform with such a plan...
Just questionning.
Note : excuse my english, I'm french...