More Mac OS X on Plain Old x86 Boxes

Slashfan writes "It has been widely reported all over the Internet 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 ;)

Comments

The TPM chip

[mmkkbb]

The TPM chip has a very fast SHA-1 implementation on it. Apparently this helps a lot with Rosetta.

Ummm

[jim_v2000]

It seems to me like there would be lots and lots of driver issue with installing on a regular PC...

Re:Ummm

[jericho4.0]

People seem to have it running natively on the right motherboards. I would have no problem building my next PC from a short list of parts if it meant I could run OS X.

Re:Ummm

[ceeam]

Excuse me while I bang my head on the desk... Should _everything_ mention Linux??? WTF - every card you can stick into your PCI, USB (and I guess AGP) slot you can equally well stick into your Mac. And I think they would have drivers for Mac _ready_ then. At least for mediumly popular hardware. I know that many driver disks I've seen had Mac drivers. Or PPC Mac drivers won't work on Intel Macs?

PS: While you are at it - please port ReiserFS to Mac/BSD/NT. I know that it'd be hard.

And how about running OSX programs?

[AlfaWolph]

I have heard good things about iLife and iCalendar..

Obvious market or hacker enthusiasm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple should take note of this surge of interest and really consider selling the OS only. I know I'd line up to buy one.

However, could this be just a hacker interest simply because it's the "latest and greatest challenge"?

Re:Obvious market or hacker enthusiasm...

[Brento]

Apple should take note of this surge of interest and really consider selling the OS only. I know I'd line up to buy one.

If they did, then they'd have to support it on your hardware, and that's a money-losing proposition this early in the game. Even if you publish a very specific set of supported devices, you immediately take a huge support load hit when everybody and their brother starts bringing in their devices that kinda-sorta-but-not-quite made the list. Plus, you get the negative PR that comes with, "I bought the new OSX, but it kept crashing on my Crapposan P4 that I got from Ebay."

Re:Obvious market or hacker enthusiasm...

[sentanta]

My guess is that Bill would drop support for Office on the Mac in about 1 second if OSX ever retailed in Best Buy

Not Surprising

[RumGunner]

I've suspected this was Apple's plan since the Intel announcement. They're going into direct competition with Microsoft.

About damn time.

It's been said before

[digidave]

and I'll say it again: Apple wants OS X to be pirated. First, you pirate OS X and start to like it, then next time you go to buy a computer you choose an Apple because, hey, you get some advantages to running a legit copy and you can still dual boot Windows or Linux if you want.

Apple should start sending out OS X on CD AOL-style. If they really are a hardware company, that will sell them a lot of hardware later on. If they're really smart, they'll send out Panther on CD to everyone. People will pirate Tiger anyway, but that would at least get OS X onto computers that would otherwise have never pirated it, then those people can buy Apple hardware in a year or two when they upgrade.

Re:It's been said before

[Beatbyte]

Who says you're pirating it if you run it on your PC?

Personally if I find out this is a solid platform on white boxes, I'm going to purchase a copy for my home PC and possibly my office laptop.

It's not stealing if you use it for something besides what they intended.

That's like saying a Neon can't legally be a monster truck. Give me a welder and some beer and we'll see about that ;-)

Re:It's been said before

[iminplaya]

I can't argue with that. It worked for Microsoft, Adobe, etc. It works for the ??AA. It's easy to understand how when you get the propaganda out of the way. Capitalism on such a grand scale cannot work without piracy.

This can be a golden opportunity for Apple.

[Spy der Mann]

Just like Microsoft got rich by allowing distribution of pirated windows.

Then, if at the appropriate time (let's say 4 or 5 months from now) they OFFICIALLY RELEASE Mac OS/X for Intel platforms...

The heck, release TWO versions: "Official Mac" (which is obviously going to be cheaper), and "Broad Intel".

And I, for one, would welcome our new Apple Overlords. And no, I'm not kidding.

make me a VMWare image and I will believe it

[mozkill]

If someone can make a simple VMWare i386 image that has OSX installed on it, THEN I will believe this.

If its true, let them make the VMWare image and then I will download it and look.

Re:Congrats

[danheskett]

You speak the truth. "Back in the day", in many vertical markets (and still a lot today), there was "one" platform for any given application. That meant a specific model of a given PC or a line. I worked for a place who originally had the one true platform which was an IBM PS/2 Model 30 with certain revisions only allowed. It was pretty strict. The software checked all over the place to make sure it was being fooled. Really, really, really paranoid about it. But in the end, maybe it was worth. Worked like a charm for 10+ years. When that product was discontinued they went to generic Dell boxes where two apparently identical models will have different video cards, hard drive brands, or even motherboards. Very annoying when you are trying to get a very good idea of what happens with a specific machine over time.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[Reeses]

I dunno, but there are perfectly good nVidia drivers for OS X, since nVidia is an option for graphics cards Doesn't seem like that would be a problem.

What on earth?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does SHA-1 have to do with instruction translation?

restricted hardware set

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, so Apple may not have to implement any DRM type scheme here, AND not have to support all hardware under the sun. They can do like any other x86 vendor does - here's what we sell. Our OS runs on this just fine. If you don't have drivers for YOUR system, that's an awful shame, but not really our problem, since it's not our hardware. We support OS what we sell _on what hardware we sell it_. Now, you may be able to build a system using similar enough hardware to what Apple sells, and that's okay - as long as you've bought a legal copy of the OS. :)

I'm _seriously_ jonesing for a Yonah-based 12" PowerBook. *Homer Simpson drooling sound here*

It's simple psychology really...

[dduck]

You can't give it away.

People are going to wonder what's wrong with it

What you can do is charge for it, if it's good enough to charge for, or else "let" people steal it. The last bit is the really really clever bit of marketing.

I run a rather successful software business (for the niche, mind you), and early on made the decission not to copy protect the software per se, but to personalize each copy sold with a user name. This way, anyone who wants to steal it can, but will have to look at someone else's name every time they start it. If they can live with that, they either can't afford the software anyway, and are welcome to it - it's assistive technology, which no-one sane or normal uses for "fun" - or they are just the kind of people who don't pay for software, and never will, so why bother trying to stop them?

Make it easy for them to steal it: The thrill will make it seem even sweeter to the last category - the people who just have to try stuff - and make them love, and thus recommend, it even more. You can't stop them anyway, and trying is only going to make them mad and negative.

Well if that's the case

[Anonymous Coward]

If what you say is true then that should be extremely easy to test. Disassemble the TCPM driver, see what on earth it's doing. Remove it, and see what breaks. If you want to get really fancy replace the TCPM driver with a dummy driver that just waits for someone to call it, and then logs this so you know what in the OS is using TCPM and why.

Apple should follow SGI's example

[Listen Up]

Like SGI, Apple should have the similarity between common x86 hardware and Apple specific x86 hardware end at the CPU pins. Just because Apple wants to use x86 CPU's does not mean they have to let anything else from the CPU pins back be common x86 compatible. That would easily solve the pirating problem.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[Lothsahn]

Nvidia drivers have full support for 3d, and work very well. Also, Nvidia supports all TNT2+Geforce products in linux, and they have either an installer that's easy to use, or your distribution comes with a patch.

The Nvidia drivers are VERY good and easy to install.

ATI also has linux drivers, but they don't support all of their products, and they support some partially--so you have to be very careful what you get.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[strstrep]

> In the past, these drivers has access to critical
> sections of the kernel and so if for example, they
> had a buffer overrun, it was possible that it
> could write a critical section of the kernel
> space, thus bringing down the machine. With
> Vista, this is going to change.

Wait? Didn't they say that about Windows 95? And Windows NT 4? And Windows 2000? And Windows XP? I've had blue screens on all of those (except NT4, which I've never run).

Buying a Mac

[Eminence]

This whole thing helped me decide to buy a Mac. You see, I have a two year 1.3 Gig Athlon based PC, so to really benefit from this hack I would have to upgrade it. That would mean I would have to spend about a $100 on a new processor, like AMD 64, and a new motherboard, possibly new memory and another hard-disk (to move stuff from my older, smaller drives to make room for the OSx86 image). I think I would reach $500, maybe less, but what I really need at this point is a laptop, not a beefed up desktop. So, I would be looking for laptops with Centrino Pentium 4M, like the Vaio they run it on, that would be at least $1000, but closer $1400 - $1500 I think. Whatever I choose I would be left with a PC while what I really want is a Mac, not a PC, I want to have a stable workstation, Unix based and pleasing to use - that's why I bother at all with OS-X.

So, in the end, I'm just buying a PowerBook next week. Unless I hear a really good rumor that a new major version of these would be coming out in Paris next month.

Re:Congrats

[telbij]

OS X is BY FAR technically and usably superior to Microsoft Windows in every aspect. A hardware driver is a hardware driver. If a company, such as ATI, can make a stable hardware driver for Windows they can make a stable hardware driver for OS X. The simple fact that until OS X Apple has had a small hardware market does not imply that Apple's are only stable because they only have to run on a small market of hardware.

Whoah, tone down the zealotry. Of course Mac OS X is technically superior to Windows, Apple chooses to actually push the technology envelope instead of repeatedly patching the old piece of shit for 25 years in order to maintain compatibility (which coincidentally is one reason some people choose Windows).

The fact of the matter is that, amazing though Windows driver support might be, it's still not perfect. Sure most work on 99% of Windows boxes, but on that last 1% it doesn't, or it jacks your hard drive, or something else horrible happens. You need to come out of your fantasy world and realize that the reason this doesn't happen on Macs is because the hardware is strictly controlled and well-tested. And just to offer some legitimate proof... I had one of those Motorola Mac clones back in the day, a StarMax 3000. That bastard wouldn't even install a Mac OS upgrade that I needed to run a program. The installer just crashed out every time.

When I pay the premium for Apple computers (they're all I've bought in the last 8 years), I do so with a full awareness of the benefits that I'm getting and why. Instead of running around like a chicken with your head cut off spouting unfounded hyperbole, you should get your facts straight. There are plenty of reasons Macs are awesome, divine intervention isn't one of them.

Re:What's the point

[radish]

Apple puts serious time into making their product work, and to making it work, every single time.
Well, then they've failed. Apple's crash. Apple's have hardware failures. Hate to break your rose-tinted bubble but they are JUST COMPUTERS, like all the others. Why do I read so many problems about PowerBook logic board failures if they're perfect? Why the tint problems on their amazingly over priced LCD displays? Why did my girlfriends ibook just need a battery recall? What's with the ipod mini recall from a while ago? Do I even hame to mention the cube?

They put serious effort into making their machines fast (as that's the number one driving force to x86 today)
Again, they've failed. There is not an Apple in production today, for any price, which can beat a decently high end Athlon or P4 based PC.

They put serious effort into making sure the ram your system uses is of quality
Oh please. It's the same (perfectly decent) generic ram everyone else uses, it just costs twice as much.

Look, if you want to buy an Apple go ahead, it's no skin off my nose. But DO NOT give me all this crap about how if I prefer a PC I'm being cheap, or I don't appreciate the perfection of Apple. I don't want an Apple because I think they're too expensive, too slow, I don't really like OSX, and I don't think they look particularly great. I've dealt with their support - it's nothing great (waiting in line for an hour to speak to a "genius" who really doesn't know what he's talking about is not a win in my book). I've dealt with their failed hardware and I've dealt with their insane pricing. When the Intel based Apples come out I'll take another look, but right now I've thought about it and decided no.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[theid0]

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.

Very true. Linux is open source, and it's about the only one that people generally agree is nice to develop on so it has been getting lots of attention (vs the varied opinions on other systems such as Solaris, SCO, AIX, etc). Mac OS X isn't completely open source; most people don't need to hack together drivers to get devices to work because there is "enterprise support" either from Apple or the device vendor. However, with the increasing number of hackers using OS X we'll see a lot more OS development going on. Many of Apple's low-level drivers (kernel extensions) are already open source. I wouldn't be surprised to see a significant shift in development expenditures from Windows to OS X by the time Vista is released, and linux will reap many of the benefits right along with it.

It would be interesting to get the inside history behind it, but I think Apple doesn't want to spend valuable resources making drivers for this, that, and the other thing. They've endured years and years of shitty or absent drivers from companies that really ought to know better (if they'd look at potential sales numbers - printer makers especially). So the Apple dev team decided years ago that they'd rather spend a little more time on their existing drivers and get them to support a wider array of devices, rather than program lots of specialized drivers that'd be buggier and soon outdated. Today you can load up pretty much any USB keyboard, mouse, or storage device, any Firewire camera, hard drive, or midi device. It is what the whole Windows plug-n-play mantra was supposed to be about, except that it actually works and you don't need to click 'next' 6 times in an installer (+reboot) every time you plug in somebody's digital camera.

So what you end up with is a system that's poised to get a lot of development on a really good starting base. Unless Apple really tries hard to tie the whole system down to an encrypted, hardware-checking authentication system, we're only going to see the list of devices supporting OS X grow.

Forget the NetBSD toaster, I want a cell phone with iPhoto.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't heard about the new X.org, have you? Sure, it's not done yet, but the version that will be 6.9/7.0 already runs without a config file. Fascinating, no?

Re:What's the point

[ImpTech]

> 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.

But thats really the whole point... Apple's going to Intel, ergo their motherboard and chipset choices will be the same as everybody else's (I'd imagine they'll use Intel-brand boards and chipsets, but we'll see), and their video card choices are *already* the same as PCs, except they like to give you a low end one. For RAM, well duh, any PC manufacturer that wants to make money in the long run uses decent memory. So, once the Intel move is complete, the only thing separating Apple from Dell will be the case and the software. This, IMO, makes paying the Apple premium much harder to justify.

Re:What's the point

[radish]

I think you and I have different ideas of what generic means. To me, Micron/Crucial is generic. They make good, reliable stuff and it's cheap. It's not Geil SuperDooperProGold Overclockers RAM with LEDs. That's what I meant by generic...

Re:Apple quality is not about the architecture.

[i41Overlord]

A Mac zealot will never accept anything other than a Mac even if you built two identical machines on the same assembly line and took the badge off at the end.

Mac users are emotional thinkers, not logical thinkers. The "reasoning" used in their replies speaks for itself. They believe there is something unable to be measured that makes Macs great. It is a belief... no rationale necessary. Just like how Mac users believed that the G5 was faster than an Athlon64, no benchmark stating the obvious can make them believe otherwise.

Once you pick apart their reasoning and prove their examples wrong, the belief remains. They will always remain a Mac fanboy.

Re:and I bet geeks pirate it more than pay for it

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The OpenGL windowed applications might suffer performance degradation, but that's another story.

That story is interesting in it's own right. My understanding is that CAD and other visualization tools depend on OpenGL, inasmuch as DirectX sucks for 2D, so assuming all that is true:

• Will 2d stop sucking in DirectX?
• Will AutoCAD move to DirectX?
• Or will AutoCAD instead port to Linux and OS X?

I'd be interested in any observations.

Boot parameter to speed up VMware performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Enter boot parameter

platform=X86PC

and MacOSX x86 will be almost usable under VMware (no network support, yet).

Courtesy of

http://www.concretesurf.co.nz/osx86/viewtopic.php? p=2631#2631