Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the i-don't-hardly-believe-it dept.
Slashfan writes "It has been widely reported allovertheInternet that it is extremely easy to get the Intel port of Mac OS X to run on regualar PC boxes.
Some of the hackers are running the tweaked version of the operating system on their PCs natively." Pardon my skepticism ;)
I would hope that Apple does not ever release their OS for the standard PC. It would be terrible for their image. Sure the Mac OS works great on Apple's machines, but start throwing it on people custom machines and trying to run all kinds of crazy hardware setups and OS X isn't going to run so swell anymore. The reason the Mac OS runs so well is because it and the hardware it runs on are meant to run together.
Windows, which is really a great OS, gets such a bad rap because it's expected to run with every piece of hardware out there flawlessly. No one stops to think that it's a miracle that it runs as well as it does on so many systems. Not to put down the Mac OS, but compatibilty realy isn't so much of an issue/concern for OS X as much as it is for Windows.
So basically, OS X runs good because it runs on Apple hardware. Start putting it on other machines, and it won't be too long before "OMG this OS suxors! It keeps crashing all the time on my CompuExpress UltraGaming Machine 2000!"
-- Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I hope Steve learns a lesson from this and does not put DRM in the official version
It seems to me the only lesson to be learned is "If we don't make a serious effort to make our x86 macs different enough from vanilla PCs, a bunch of jackassess will just download it off some P2P network, run it on their own boxes, and freeload off our hard work".
Having learned that, why would he not make it harder for people to obtain and use OS X without purchasing their products?
What that dishonest people will lie, violate their NDAs, illegally infringe upon his copyrights, and not pay him a red cent because they have some sense of entitlement? Not exactly model customers for a software company that (usually) prides itself on trusting its customers and does not even require an authentication code to install and run its OS and the majority of its commercial applications.
MS makes you pay when you buy the hardware and does not worry and just tries to annoy you when you pirate. Apple also has not worried about pirates and makes you pay when you buy the hardware. Apple running on commodity PCs would make this situation one where you pay MS when you buy your hardware and then pirate Apple's OS and pay them nothing. And you applaud pirates freely distributing this pirate copy?
I'm sure Jobs has learned a lesson all right, that being PC users are untrustworthy and if there is no DRM locking OS X onto Apple boxes they will all just pirate it without paying one penny.
Re:It's been said before
by
blibbler
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· Score: 4, Insightful
and I'll say it again: people go and install OSX on a cheap machine, realise how great it is, and then when they want a new machine, they get another cheap machine, and install OSX on that one. I can't see any reason why someone would pirate it the first time, then go out and spend extra to get an Apple machine, when can get (or build) a similar (albeit stylistically challenged) machine cheaper.
Your argument might be valid if the final intel version of OSX wasn't (as easily) hackable, so people wouldn't be able to run the final version on non-apple machines.
The same could be said about linux.
by
Reeses
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Alright, I've seen this argument a number of times, and for some reason people forget that OS X is unix-based. It has the same ability to handle hardware that all other unixen do.
In the above statements, if you could substitute the word "Linux" or "NetBSD" for every occurrence of Macintosh, and not sound like some sort of raving lunatic, I'd be surprised.
I don't understand how Linx and xBSDs can be expected to "run everywhere" on everything, yet, for some reason OS X, a very pretty GUI that is supported by the same technology as the other Unixes, is excluded from that. It just mystifies me.
Maybe it's just anti-Mac zealotry.
-- Reeses
Re:The same could be said about linux.
by
timeOday
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Argh, you're making the wrong point with the right analogy.
The truth is, Limited hardware support is precisely the reason Linux cannot become mainstream on the desktop in the forseeable future, and it does not bode well for OSX on general PC hardware.
I use Linux full time every day, and the software, for the most part, is good. But fighting with hardware is the #1 source of frustration. The fact is you just don't know a lot of times whether something you buy will work. There are tons of supported hardware lists out there, and every one is about 50% wrong for a variety of reasons - they're outdated, incomplete, and also people who submit information to them are very liberal in calling devices "fully supported." In practice, very many don't work fully and are unstable. This despite the fact that most of the linux kernel is drivers. To have everything but the drivers is to have very little.
Re:The same could be said about linux.
by
ciroknight
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Parent post is simply ignorance.
Linux or any BSD is hardly a commodity OS. It runs on everything because there is a geek somewhere with every piece of hardware imaginable who has nothing better to do than make that operating system work.
Meanwhile OS X has to run because the people who want to use their computers, aren't the kinds of people who have time to make every single piece of hardware work.
Microsoft's Windows works on a lot of hardware because of the WHQL program they've instituted, and that only works because they're big enough to pressure PC manufacturers to use cheap, standard components, and because they've got the money to buy every single piece of hardware, and code for it. And, if you haven't used Windows lately, there are still hundreds upon thousands of bugs. My P3's audio quality sucks, my mom's P4's disk controller is a serious flake. Both are Dells.
Linux isn't expected to run everywhere. Linux is MADE to run everywhere. This requires effort. This kind of effort isn't economical for a business to support. I'd feel sorry if Redhat or IBM decided to go out and support hardware.. they'd immediately go out of business dealing with the Tech Support alone.
-- "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Re:What's the point
by
m50d
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Not really. These are x86 chips made by Intel themselves, so the only thing your mac hardware premium (and don't try and claim it doesn't exist) is going on is the software and the pretty boxes. It's more like reflashing your video card to behave like a more expensive model, something many of us here applaud.
Having learned that, why would he not make it harder for people to obtain and use OS X without purchasing their products?
Contrary to popular opinion, Windows/PC users aren't all thieves. I'd be happy to be able to purchase an x86 version of OSX.
Sell a "dev kit" version of OS X for x86
by
angryflute
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This way Apple can make money by selling legitimate copies of OS X to the geek/hacker/developer community, and not have to worry about fully supporting the operating system for the average computer user. This version would, after all, be for "development purposes only".
It would also have a legitimate purpose for Apple, too: It would further encourage software development for the company's MacIntel line.
The hacker/geek community gets to build their own gray box OS X systems, and Apple still makes most of its money with average computer users through its hardware. Furthermore, more software is developed by independent programmers. Everybody wins.
Exactly!!
by
snowwrestler
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Any OS will be more reliable, secure, and just plain work better if it can be tweaked carefully for the exact hardware configuration it's running on. Linux and Unix allow anyone, including the end user, to customize their configuration to the exact hardware it's running on. It's not exactly easy though, is it?
Apple takes the opposite tack to achieve the same end result--rather than complete freedom to customize the software, they strictly limit the hardware.
Either way, the end result is a product in which the software and hardware are closely matched. Apple's way produces a much more limited set of final products, but at very little effort to the end user. Linux provides a lot more freedom, but at considerable cost to the user in terms of expertise or time.
But Microsoft tries to have it both ways. In order to realize the vast economy of scale that makes it so profitable, Windows is written once to accomodate a wide variety of hardware configurations. And you can't tweak it or modify it. So the end result is a generic software config running on generic hardware. It will never work as well as a dedicated OS on known hardware.
Finally it's important to understand Apple's approach to computing...they sell computers. Not computer parts. You can't buy a DVD player or a digital TV without its operating system, and you can't buy the operating system without the hardware. It's an appliance--you plug it in and use it. That's how Apple (Jobs) views computers, and it's why they won't license their OS. You might as well ask Sony to licence the OS running on their DVD player.
-- Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's theirs. Get over it.
by
dduck
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Guess I have some karma to burn, so here goes:
To the ones bitching over the (very very low, IMHO) possibility that Apple will NOT release OS-X for generix x86:
It's theirs. They made it. They can do with it whatever they want. They have that right. If you don't like it, go code a better OS yourself or something, but don't bitch at them - that only makes you sound like a kid who can't get his/her way.
Or in playground terms: It is indeed their ball, and they can take it home with them if they feel like it.
Yes, it's software, so you can copy it without taking the original away from someone, but that it still stealing. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that you have a right to have it - no matter how much you want it.
Re:What's the point
by
ciroknight
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· Score: 4, Insightful
You act as if a CPU is all that makes a computer a computer.
Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
Apple puts serious time into making their product work, and to making it work, every single time. They put serious effort into having good tech support. They put serious effort into making their machines fast (as that's the number one driving force to x86 today). They put serious effort into making sure the ram your system uses is of quality. The list goes on.
Most PC vendors are bidding in a market to get the cheapest, working parts they can find, and if you like your machines to run like that, then by all means I won't stop you. But before I went to Apple, I built my machine with premium parts that I raed reviews on and made sure were of quality. After doing the same with Apple's components, and finding out it was, in the end, much cheaper to go with their pre-built machine, I switched.
Besides, if you call a hundred or two bucks a premium, then your really talking bottom barrel parts. Apple doesn't even want your money if you're not willing to spend it.
-- "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
IIRC, Apple's plans for the retail Mactel boxes include a custom BIOS. The reason the existing dev release is so easy to run on generic PCs is that the dev kit boxes use a standard PC BIOS; once the "real" Mactel machines are moved to a custom BIOS, I would make an uninformed guess that getting it to boot on a generic PC with a standard BIOS would be much more difficult.
Can someone who knows more about BIOS foo comment on this? I'm curious myself...
Re:Apple quality is not about the architecture.
by
ciroknight
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· Score: 3, Insightful
And you sir, are mistaken.
You can buy all of that stuff, put it together, and have a PC. You will never have a Mac.
A Mac is the entire machine. It starts with the case, and moves to the (usually Apple designed) motherboard, the Apple designed Bluetooth, the Apple designe Firewire, the Apple designed WiFi modules, then moves on to the placement of fans, the duct work, the attention to details. And you end up with a machine that performs the same function, but is of a much higher quality; a computer that's as much as computer as it is a piece of furnature in the room, and that's the idea of the Mac.
While your machine may run OS X (and that's a long shot; these machines are running a developmental, most likely tagged, build of OS X that may never see the light of day on Macs), it will never match up with the quality, or the design.
If people thought about their computers the same way they thought about their cars, they'd realize exactly what Apple's going for. When you buy Apple you buy a Lexus. When you buy Dell, you buy a Kia.
-- "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
and I bet geeks pirate it more than pay for it too
by
Shivetya
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Apple isn't going to take on Microsoft. First Apple knows better than to waste their time trying to make an OS that supports every damn accessory; card or plugged in; as that only invites frustration on the consumer level.
I believe it is more likely Apple was fully expecting this to happen and have already "written it off". There won't be enough geeks pirating it to matter and they don't have to support anyone who does. If anything it may help them because more people will become familar with how it looks and feel. By that I mean some of these basement dwellers will show it off to coworkers and relatives - bragging that they did it but at the same time spreading the Apple kool-aid without realizing it.
Two markets Apple has to get into. 1. Corporate. How many years has it taken AMD to do it, and they are only trying to sell a product that runs everything their competitor already does!
2. Games. That is going to be the hard sell. The big item in most retail stores are lots of junk software for web related stuff and then GAMES. Lots and lots of games. All of which require "Windows XP". How will Apple convince developers to write for their platform?
No, I don't see Apple competeing with Microsoft. The "Duopoloy" of Apple and Microsoft will continue on the desktop for some time. Just because they run on similar hardware doesn't mean they will compete or want to compete.
-- *
Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The wireless Bluetooth mouse, Bluetooth cellphone, external Firewire HDD's, external Firewire DVD, OEM ATI Radeon video card, external USB printer, Linksys/Cisco wireless network base station, non-Apple LCD monitor, USB pen drive, etc. and EVERYTHING works perfectly with OS X (I am running 10.4.2).
Almost every "standard-based" piece of hardware ought to work. Bluetooth mice and keyboards, external USB or Firewire storage, monitors and many printers (Postscript or PCL, for example) are very standard pieces of hardware and do not need "esoteric" drivers most of the time. Most of the hardware you mention (I'll give you the USB pen drive, I've never used one) is pretty standard and is EXPECTED to work. Am I to praise Apple because an LCD MONITOR works!?!? (unless of course the monitor is some 32" 12-bit grey weird model) Or do you consider an OEM ATI Radeon card a rarity (it doesn't get any more standard than this!)?
Try some video capture cards, some older scanners, SCSI controllers, old (non-realtek or 3com) ethernet cards, maybe a winmodem or a winprinter. Non-PnP peripherals, serial or parallel port hardware, ISA cards (research apparatus that we use at the lab needs an ISA card interface) are even harder to support. This is the kind of crap that Windows or Linux has to put up with. Apple has been intelligent and lucky enough to promote the use of standard peripherals while at the same time keeping a steady hardware base (motherboard/CPU at least). Furthermore, the Apple user will usually tolerate the fact that his hardware and software is obsolete[1] when new models come out, while the Windows user expects full backwards compatibility (hell, even XP includes DOS and Win95 mode for old applications!).
Anyway, the hardware drivers are privileged pieces of code. It is true that Win has a huge disadvantage by running drivers in Ring 0 (kernel privileges). I imagine that the OS X approach is superior, but that doesn't mean that the problems they are facing with hardware are equivalent to the chaos that prevails in the x86 world.
P.
[1] This does not mean that the hardware ceases to work. Several people may work happily with MacOS 9 or very old CPUs. However, they do not expect to carry over their hardware/software.
Moore's Law and the Apple hardware tax
by
anon+coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
A lot has been made of the fact that PC hardware is cheaper than Apple hardware. But Moore's Law degrades that argument at the standard rate.
The 50% Apple hardware tax is significant when computers cost $3000. When computers cost $500, the tax is still 50% but not so significant. And when computers cost $100, even less significant.
At that point, $50 for "looks cool" might be worth it to a lot more people. Like esr said, as the cost of the hardware approaches the cost of the OS, things get interesting.
Re:and I bet geeks pirate it more than pay for it
by
The+Lynxpro
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· Score: 4, Insightful
"2. Games. That is going to be the hard sell. The big item in most retail stores are lots of junk software for web related stuff and then GAMES. Lots and lots of games. All of which require "Windows XP". How will Apple convince developers to write for their platform?"
Your answer, Windows Vista. Thanks to the hubris of Microsoft, Windows Vista will be ignored by gamers just as they ignored Windows2000 and shunned WindowsME. Doing stupid deliberate things like retarding the performance of OpenGL in Vista in favor of DirectX is enough to alienate the likes of id Software. Combine that with the fact that the next generation console of choice will be the Sony Playstation3 (which supports OpenGL), the conversion to the computer platform of choice will be the Macs as long as videocard support becomes equal to the current Windows market and Apple offers some headless desktops that support end user expansion through PCIe cards (including SLI techniques too).
-- "Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Slashdot = site for clueless morons.
by
shippo
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I have never read so much utter crap in my life.
The development version of Mac OS X for Intel has been designed to run on a specific Intel motherboard, which co-incidentally is the same model as support by the PC port of Darwin. It's purely designed for proving that PPC code will run on an Intel chip when the source has been successfully tweaked - nothing more. It's just a quick and dirty hack.
YOU CAN'T READ ANYTHING INTO THIS PRE-PRODUCTION SYSTEM - JUST GET IT INTO YOUR THICK GEEKY SKULLS NOW!
When Apple finally release Intel machines the hardware will be significantly different to a run of the mill PC - some hardware devices appearing in a different place, others being present at all, and so on. The OS will need very specific drivers. Also it's more than likely that there will be some other forms of protection to further limit the hardware it will run on.
Don't bother replying to me as I can't be bothered to read the crap posted to this site any more.
Re:What's the point
by
ltbarcly
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Oh please. It's the same (perfectly decent) generic ram everyone else uses, it just costs twice as much.
Stop, collaborate and listen!
Ram quality is a highly overlooked cause of many many stability problems. I will NOT run generic ram in the debian machine I use for development, nor will I in my powerbook. Many of those hard to track down and intermittent 'software' errors are caused by either poor quality ram or a cheap power supply. With windows it's not so important, as you are less likely to keep it up for long periods of time (apparently it reboots itself to install patches now, without asking).
If you are doing anything serious on a PC, I really recommend ECC. There is a slight cost involved, and a very small performance penalty, but it comes with the total prevention of single bit errors due to cosmic rays or decomposing atoms in solder. You'll avoid a hell of a lot WTF troubleshooting.
Now, if you're a cretin, feel free to get GENERTEC's offering for $5 less, but in the long run you'll bitch and moan about whatever operating system you're using being unstable.
CRETINS STOP READING HERE, AND RECEIVE A GENUINE IMITATION LEATHERETTE WALLET CARRYING CASE
Ok, now that they're out of the picture, check out www.crucial.com. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Micron, and it is high quality stuff.
Two RAM boards with the exact same chips can vary widely in quality. This is because the big 3 ram manufacturers do a great job, but the PCB makers do an often shit job.
As in all things you get what you pay for.
Oh, and parent IS a cretin. Nobody cares about your personal justification for Apple bashing. Apple makes great stuff, it's not everything to everybody. I personally wish that konqueror would be split from KDE so that it could be platform independent. It's fantastic.
Re:and I bet geeks pirate it more than pay for it
by
Pulzar
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Your answer, Windows Vista. Thanks to the hubris of Microsoft, Windows Vista will be ignored by gamers just as they ignored Windows2000 and shunned WindowsME. Doing stupid deliberate things like retarding the performance of OpenGL in Vista in favor of DirectX is enough to alienate the likes of id Software.
There's nothing deliberate about what they are doing. Please try to understand what's going on before coming up with generalizations like "Vista will be bad for Open GL so all games will go to Mac because all games are written by Id Software".
The Vista desktop uses Direct X to render the new desktop features, so it can't run Open GL natively at the same time... so, they provided a wrapper, which causes a performance hit. As far as the full-screen games are concerned, though, they don't use the desktop, hence the aeroglass support goes away and ATI or nVidia native OpenGL driver kicks in.
So, don't be sad. Your OpenGL games will run just as fine as they used to.
The OpenGL windowed applications might suffer performance degradation, but that's another story.
-- Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Re:pardon?
by
Simon+Garlick
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"Fairly respectable"? The guy is one of the greatest vocalists and musicologists of the late twentieth century.
The reason Apple locks the OS in the first place is stability. Apple makes almost no money off of their Mac hardware compaired to iPods and iTunes. They would love to be able to sell their OS to the very large market of people who already have x86 PCs. The problem is, in order to keep with Apple's legendary "it just works" tradition, every part of the OS needs to be highly tested and troubleshot, especially drivers. In the past, that has not been a problem, because there are only about 15 different computer models that can run OS X. That means Apple has to make sure only 15 different systems will run stably. If they released for all x86 machines, they would have no way of testing every machine. Therefore, there would certainly be bugs that were found after release with certain hardware, making the OS no more stable than Windows, if not less so. Also, Apple does not have the clout to get drivers written for its OS by all hardware vendors, and they certainly don't have a large enough staff to write the drivers themselves. It is therefore obvious that Apple's decision to make OS X run only on their special x86 hardware was a move to insure that the stability and quality of use of the OS is consistant, not a cold hearted move to exclude the x86 masses (even though it fits with some of the terrible decissions that Apple made in the past).
Slashdot Mirror
I would hope that Apple does not ever release their OS for the standard PC. It would be terrible for their image. Sure the Mac OS works great on Apple's machines, but start throwing it on people custom machines and trying to run all kinds of crazy hardware setups and OS X isn't going to run so swell anymore. The reason the Mac OS runs so well is because it and the hardware it runs on are meant to run together.
Windows, which is really a great OS, gets such a bad rap because it's expected to run with every piece of hardware out there flawlessly. No one stops to think that it's a miracle that it runs as well as it does on so many systems. Not to put down the Mac OS, but compatibilty realy isn't so much of an issue/concern for OS X as much as it is for Windows.
So basically, OS X runs good because it runs on Apple hardware. Start putting it on other machines, and it won't be too long before "OMG this OS suxors! It keeps crashing all the time on my CompuExpress UltraGaming Machine 2000!"
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
I hope Steve learns a lesson from this and does not put DRM in the official version
It seems to me the only lesson to be learned is "If we don't make a serious effort to make our x86 macs different enough from vanilla PCs, a bunch of jackassess will just download it off some P2P network, run it on their own boxes, and freeload off our hard work".
Having learned that, why would he not make it harder for people to obtain and use OS X without purchasing their products?
I hope Steve learns a lesson from this...
What that dishonest people will lie, violate their NDAs, illegally infringe upon his copyrights, and not pay him a red cent because they have some sense of entitlement? Not exactly model customers for a software company that (usually) prides itself on trusting its customers and does not even require an authentication code to install and run its OS and the majority of its commercial applications.
MS makes you pay when you buy the hardware and does not worry and just tries to annoy you when you pirate. Apple also has not worried about pirates and makes you pay when you buy the hardware. Apple running on commodity PCs would make this situation one where you pay MS when you buy your hardware and then pirate Apple's OS and pay them nothing. And you applaud pirates freely distributing this pirate copy?
I'm sure Jobs has learned a lesson all right, that being PC users are untrustworthy and if there is no DRM locking OS X onto Apple boxes they will all just pirate it without paying one penny.
and I'll say it again: people go and install OSX on a cheap machine, realise how great it is, and then when they want a new machine, they get another cheap machine, and install OSX on that one. I can't see any reason why someone would pirate it the first time, then go out and spend extra to get an Apple machine, when can get (or build) a similar (albeit stylistically challenged) machine cheaper.
Your argument might be valid if the final intel version of OSX wasn't (as easily) hackable, so people wouldn't be able to run the final version on non-apple machines.
Alright, I've seen this argument a number of times, and for some reason people forget that OS X is unix-based. It has the same ability to handle hardware that all other unixen do.
In the above statements, if you could substitute the word "Linux" or "NetBSD" for every occurrence of Macintosh, and not sound like some sort of raving lunatic, I'd be surprised.
I don't understand how Linx and xBSDs can be expected to "run everywhere" on everything, yet, for some reason OS X, a very pretty GUI that is supported by the same technology as the other Unixes, is excluded from that. It just mystifies me.
Maybe it's just anti-Mac zealotry.
Reeses
Not really. These are x86 chips made by Intel themselves, so the only thing your mac hardware premium (and don't try and claim it doesn't exist) is going on is the software and the pretty boxes. It's more like reflashing your video card to behave like a more expensive model, something many of us here applaud.
I am trolling
Contrary to popular opinion, Windows/PC users aren't all thieves. I'd be happy to be able to purchase an x86 version of OSX.
This way Apple can make money by selling legitimate copies of OS X to the geek/hacker/developer community, and not have to worry about fully supporting the operating system for the average computer user. This version would, after all, be for "development purposes only".
It would also have a legitimate purpose for Apple, too: It would further encourage software development for the company's MacIntel line.
The hacker/geek community gets to build their own gray box OS X systems, and Apple still makes most of its money with average computer users through its hardware. Furthermore, more software is developed by independent programmers. Everybody wins.
Any OS will be more reliable, secure, and just plain work better if it can be tweaked carefully for the exact hardware configuration it's running on. Linux and Unix allow anyone, including the end user, to customize their configuration to the exact hardware it's running on. It's not exactly easy though, is it?
Apple takes the opposite tack to achieve the same end result--rather than complete freedom to customize the software, they strictly limit the hardware.
Either way, the end result is a product in which the software and hardware are closely matched. Apple's way produces a much more limited set of final products, but at very little effort to the end user. Linux provides a lot more freedom, but at considerable cost to the user in terms of expertise or time.
But Microsoft tries to have it both ways. In order to realize the vast economy of scale that makes it so profitable, Windows is written once to accomodate a wide variety of hardware configurations. And you can't tweak it or modify it. So the end result is a generic software config running on generic hardware. It will never work as well as a dedicated OS on known hardware.
Finally it's important to understand Apple's approach to computing...they sell computers. Not computer parts. You can't buy a DVD player or a digital TV without its operating system, and you can't buy the operating system without the hardware. It's an appliance--you plug it in and use it. That's how Apple (Jobs) views computers, and it's why they won't license their OS. You might as well ask Sony to licence the OS running on their DVD player.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
To the ones bitching over the (very very low, IMHO) possibility that Apple will NOT release OS-X for generix x86:
It's theirs. They made it. They can do with it whatever they want. They have that right. If you don't like it, go code a better OS yourself or something, but don't bitch at them - that only makes you sound like a kid who can't get his/her way.
Or in playground terms: It is indeed their ball, and they can take it home with them if they feel like it.
Yes, it's software, so you can copy it without taking the original away from someone, but that it still stealing. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that you have a right to have it - no matter how much you want it.
You act as if a CPU is all that makes a computer a computer.
Motherboards, chipsets, video cards, hell even computer cases are all part of the Apple experience. If you want to believe that the only "premium" you're paying for is the operating system, then believe it all you like. But when you run out and try one of the machines, you'll realize there's a lot more to it.
Apple puts serious time into making their product work, and to making it work, every single time. They put serious effort into having good tech support. They put serious effort into making their machines fast (as that's the number one driving force to x86 today). They put serious effort into making sure the ram your system uses is of quality. The list goes on.
Most PC vendors are bidding in a market to get the cheapest, working parts they can find, and if you like your machines to run like that, then by all means I won't stop you. But before I went to Apple, I built my machine with premium parts that I raed reviews on and made sure were of quality. After doing the same with Apple's components, and finding out it was, in the end, much cheaper to go with their pre-built machine, I switched.
Besides, if you call a hundred or two bucks a premium, then your really talking bottom barrel parts. Apple doesn't even want your money if you're not willing to spend it.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
IIRC, Apple's plans for the retail Mactel boxes include a custom BIOS. The reason the existing dev release is so easy to run on generic PCs is that the dev kit boxes use a standard PC BIOS; once the "real" Mactel machines are moved to a custom BIOS, I would make an uninformed guess that getting it to boot on a generic PC with a standard BIOS would be much more difficult.
Can someone who knows more about BIOS foo comment on this? I'm curious myself...
And you sir, are mistaken.
You can buy all of that stuff, put it together, and have a PC. You will never have a Mac.
A Mac is the entire machine. It starts with the case, and moves to the (usually Apple designed) motherboard, the Apple designed Bluetooth, the Apple designe Firewire, the Apple designed WiFi modules, then moves on to the placement of fans, the duct work, the attention to details. And you end up with a machine that performs the same function, but is of a much higher quality; a computer that's as much as computer as it is a piece of furnature in the room, and that's the idea of the Mac.
While your machine may run OS X (and that's a long shot; these machines are running a developmental, most likely tagged, build of OS X that may never see the light of day on Macs), it will never match up with the quality, or the design.
If people thought about their computers the same way they thought about their cars, they'd realize exactly what Apple's going for. When you buy Apple you buy a Lexus. When you buy Dell, you buy a Kia.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Apple isn't going to take on Microsoft. First Apple knows better than to waste their time trying to make an OS that supports every damn accessory; card or plugged in; as that only invites frustration on the consumer level.
I believe it is more likely Apple was fully expecting this to happen and have already "written it off". There won't be enough geeks pirating it to matter and they don't have to support anyone who does. If anything it may help them because more people will become familar with how it looks and feel. By that I mean some of these basement dwellers will show it off to coworkers and relatives - bragging that they did it but at the same time spreading the Apple kool-aid without realizing it.
Two markets Apple has to get into.
1. Corporate. How many years has it taken AMD to do it, and they are only trying to sell a product that runs everything their competitor already does!
2. Games. That is going to be the hard sell. The big item in most retail stores are lots of junk software for web related stuff and then GAMES. Lots and lots of games. All of which require "Windows XP". How will Apple convince developers to write for their platform?
No, I don't see Apple competeing with Microsoft. The "Duopoloy" of Apple and Microsoft will continue on the desktop for some time. Just because they run on similar hardware doesn't mean they will compete or want to compete.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Try some video capture cards, some older scanners, SCSI controllers, old (non-realtek or 3com) ethernet cards, maybe a winmodem or a winprinter. Non-PnP peripherals, serial or parallel port hardware, ISA cards (research apparatus that we use at the lab needs an ISA card interface) are even harder to support. This is the kind of crap that Windows or Linux has to put up with. Apple has been intelligent and lucky enough to promote the use of standard peripherals while at the same time keeping a steady hardware base (motherboard/CPU at least). Furthermore, the Apple user will usually tolerate the fact that his hardware and software is obsolete[1] when new models come out, while the Windows user expects full backwards compatibility (hell, even XP includes DOS and Win95 mode for old applications!).
Anyway, the hardware drivers are privileged pieces of code. It is true that Win has a huge disadvantage by running drivers in Ring 0 (kernel privileges). I imagine that the OS X approach is superior, but that doesn't mean that the problems they are facing with hardware are equivalent to the chaos that prevails in the x86 world.
P.
[1] This does not mean that the hardware ceases to work. Several people may work happily with MacOS 9 or very old CPUs. However, they do not expect to carry over their hardware/software.
A lot has been made of the fact that PC hardware is cheaper than Apple hardware. But Moore's Law degrades that argument at the standard rate. The 50% Apple hardware tax is significant when computers cost $3000. When computers cost $500, the tax is still 50% but not so significant. And when computers cost $100, even less significant. At that point, $50 for "looks cool" might be worth it to a lot more people. Like esr said, as the cost of the hardware approaches the cost of the OS, things get interesting.
"2. Games. That is going to be the hard sell. The big item in most retail stores are lots of junk software for web related stuff and then GAMES. Lots and lots of games. All of which require "Windows XP". How will Apple convince developers to write for their platform?"
Your answer, Windows Vista. Thanks to the hubris of Microsoft, Windows Vista will be ignored by gamers just as they ignored Windows2000 and shunned WindowsME. Doing stupid deliberate things like retarding the performance of OpenGL in Vista in favor of DirectX is enough to alienate the likes of id Software. Combine that with the fact that the next generation console of choice will be the Sony Playstation3 (which supports OpenGL), the conversion to the computer platform of choice will be the Macs as long as videocard support becomes equal to the current Windows market and Apple offers some headless desktops that support end user expansion through PCIe cards (including SLI techniques too).
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I have never read so much utter crap in my life.
The development version of Mac OS X for Intel has been designed to run on a specific Intel motherboard, which co-incidentally is the same model as support by the PC port of Darwin. It's purely designed for proving that PPC code will run on an Intel chip when the source has been successfully tweaked - nothing more. It's just a quick and dirty hack.
YOU CAN'T READ ANYTHING INTO THIS PRE-PRODUCTION SYSTEM - JUST GET IT INTO YOUR THICK GEEKY SKULLS NOW!
When Apple finally release Intel machines the hardware will be significantly different to a run of the mill PC - some hardware devices appearing in a different place, others being present at all, and so on. The OS will need very specific drivers. Also it's more than likely that there will be some other forms of protection to further limit the hardware it will run on.
Don't bother replying to me as I can't be bothered to read the crap posted to this site any more.
Oh please. It's the same (perfectly decent) generic ram everyone else uses, it just costs twice as much.
Stop, collaborate and listen!
Ram quality is a highly overlooked cause of many many stability problems. I will NOT run generic ram in the debian machine I use for development, nor will I in my powerbook. Many of those hard to track down and intermittent 'software' errors are caused by either poor quality ram or a cheap power supply. With windows it's not so important, as you are less likely to keep it up for long periods of time (apparently it reboots itself to install patches now, without asking).
If you are doing anything serious on a PC, I really recommend ECC. There is a slight cost involved, and a very small performance penalty, but it comes with the total prevention of single bit errors due to cosmic rays or decomposing atoms in solder. You'll avoid a hell of a lot WTF troubleshooting.
Now, if you're a cretin, feel free to get GENERTEC's offering for $5 less, but in the long run you'll bitch and moan about whatever operating system you're using being unstable.
CRETINS STOP READING HERE, AND RECEIVE A GENUINE IMITATION LEATHERETTE WALLET CARRYING CASE
Ok, now that they're out of the picture, check out www.crucial.com. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Micron, and it is high quality stuff.
Two RAM boards with the exact same chips can vary widely in quality. This is because the big 3 ram manufacturers do a great job, but the PCB makers do an often shit job.
As in all things you get what you pay for.
Oh, and parent IS a cretin. Nobody cares about your personal justification for Apple bashing. Apple makes great stuff, it's not everything to everybody. I personally wish that konqueror would be split from KDE so that it could be platform independent. It's fantastic.
Your answer, Windows Vista. Thanks to the hubris of Microsoft, Windows Vista will be ignored by gamers just as they ignored Windows2000 and shunned WindowsME. Doing stupid deliberate things like retarding the performance of OpenGL in Vista in favor of DirectX is enough to alienate the likes of id Software.
There's nothing deliberate about what they are doing. Please try to understand what's going on before coming up with generalizations like "Vista will be bad for Open GL so all games will go to Mac because all games are written by Id Software".
The Vista desktop uses Direct X to render the new desktop features, so it can't run Open GL natively at the same time... so, they provided a wrapper, which causes a performance hit. As far as the full-screen games are concerned, though, they don't use the desktop, hence the aeroglass support goes away and ATI or nVidia native OpenGL driver kicks in.
So, don't be sad. Your OpenGL games will run just as fine as they used to.
The OpenGL windowed applications might suffer performance degradation, but that's another story.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
"Fairly respectable"? The guy is one of the greatest vocalists and musicologists of the late twentieth century.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
The reason Apple locks the OS in the first place is stability. Apple makes almost no money off of their Mac hardware compaired to iPods and iTunes. They would love to be able to sell their OS to the very large market of people who already have x86 PCs. The problem is, in order to keep with Apple's legendary "it just works" tradition, every part of the OS needs to be highly tested and troubleshot, especially drivers. In the past, that has not been a problem, because there are only about 15 different computer models that can run OS X. That means Apple has to make sure only 15 different systems will run stably. If they released for all x86 machines, they would have no way of testing every machine. Therefore, there would certainly be bugs that were found after release with certain hardware, making the OS no more stable than Windows, if not less so. Also, Apple does not have the clout to get drivers written for its OS by all hardware vendors, and they certainly don't have a large enough staff to write the drivers themselves. It is therefore obvious that Apple's decision to make OS X run only on their special x86 hardware was a move to insure that the stability and quality of use of the OS is consistant, not a cold hearted move to exclude the x86 masses (even though it fits with some of the terrible decissions that Apple made in the past).