Cringely Predicts Apple to Ship OS X for Any PC

boosman writes "In his current column, and in a similar op-ed piece in The New York Times, Robert X. Cringely predicts that Apple 'will announce a product similar to Boot Camp to allow OS X to run on bog-standard 32-bit PC hardware.' I dissect why this is unthinkable and challenge Cringely to a public bet on the subject."

Comments

Re:I want OSX on my Dell

[NutscrapeSucks]

And is the MacBook Pro the perfect laptop?

Obviously it has the look, and it's got great specs. But it's also hobbled by a terrible keyboard that's missing a lot of standard keys and a single mouse button. And there's no docking station available. Bottom line is that it's kick-ass laptop with a totally luser-style keyboard/mouse setup (for no reason other than that's what Apple came up with 10 years ago). Hard thing to over look for my $two grand.

But that's all personal choice, which is the key here. Apple only offers a handful of laptops, and they're all limited in one way or another, and fairly pricey to boot. Which might be fine for *some people*, but if you can't find an Apple model that you want to buy, you really have no choice but to not run OS X. Which is why people want "OSX on Dell" -- because Dell and the rest of the PC world offers a lot more choice in terms of size/feature/price than Apple does.

(Personally, I want "OS X on ThinkPad" -- but I know I'll probably never get it legally.)

Re:They may have to

[acidblood]

it's an unreleased product which they were unable to buy

Sorry, you misspelled `too cheap to get an Apple'. Now with Boot Camp they don't even have the wold excuse that it won't run their warezed games in their warezed copy of Windows.

At first, Apple would sell fewer Macs, but many, many more copies of OS X.

Yeah, right. Again: those who are actually willing to pay for OS X are willing to pay the so-called `Apple premium' and get a real Apple.

A side issue: a version of OS X for generic PC is still going to need drivers, and lots of them. Where are these going to come from? I don't think we can count on OEMs to produce them, especially for even slightly older product, and it would be a monumental task for Apple to do it.
Not my problem

Not Apple's problem either that you're too cheap to buy a Mac.

"I tried OS X on my old emachine and it failed to see my scanner, didn't work with the e-button on the case to launch internet explorer, and sleep never worked properly either -- no way I'm buying a crappy apple computer..."
Why would they think the Apple computer is crappy, when it's their eMachine that sucks?

Maybe you should pay a visit to the real world some day and see how users actually behave, instead of how you think they should behave.

Re:Not any time soon, but eventually this will hap

[acidblood]

for me gnome is definitely more user friendly (...) have the menu bar where I expect it

Sure, anything you're not used to will be unfriendly at first sight. Give it a week before you issue an opinion. That was about the time it took me to get used to the new menu bar placement when I switched to OS X. Now, being experienced with both menu bar styles, I can state that I find OS X's approach superior.

Indeed. Just compare Eclipse with XCode, OpenOffice with the toy application(s) that apple offers.

I can't even try out Eclipse, I only have a meager 512 MB of RAM which can't accomodate wasteful Java applications (running Azureus is enough of a chore). Xcode is good enough for my needs. Also, some believe iWork to be superior to the bloat of OpenOffice, and those that don't can always run it on OS X. And then there's the non-cheap types, which instead of using MS Office clones like OpenOffice, would rather run MS Office directly. Both of these options (iWork and MS Office) are available on OS X but not Linux.

But these weren't the applications that I was thinking of. How about Safari vs. Konqueror (or even the bloat of Firefox? I keep Firefox here for the couple of sites which don't work correctly with Safari, but I'd really hate to use it as my main browser), how about iTunes vs. XMMS or Amarok or whatever, Quicktime vs. MPlayer/Xine, and then there's the iLife suite (Garageband, iPhoto, iDVD, ...) mostly without competitors in the Linux space. I've used KMail and Mail.app and I prefer Mail.app. Also, can you run Photoshop on Linux? I know that was a discussion about bundled applications, but it deserves mention. And no, hacks like Wine don't count.

Until OSX ships with a package manager that handles package dependencies, it is impossible to produce and ship system components for this OS

There's lots of shipping software for OS X... maybe you're just too incompetent for the task?

No java 1.6, even 1.5 is still beta.

Ah, I see, Java programmer. It makes sense now.

Re:They may have to

[quakeroatz]

My transition has been like this:

- Age 8 to 17, hardcore PC user and mac "hater"
- Age 18 to 23, hardcore PC user and ambivalent mac spectator
- Age 24-26, PC user and occasional Mac user (to help friends and family)
- Age 26-28, iPod owner several times over, and fan of Mac OS X technology (still PC user)
- Age 29, PowerMac G5 and Mac Mini user, and an Apple sticker on the back of my car.

THEY'VE WON.
THEY'VE WON = They may use my ass as they please. I am now part of the different collective and will assimilate all other life forms. Resistance is futile. I am Steve Job's personal whore.

At least you're somewhat aware of your transformation from objective tech user (Age 24-26) to Apple whoreboy.

Re:More likely than Apple dropping OS X for Window

[TheNetAvenger]

It would solve some of their security and stability problems,

Oh, if it were only that simple. Drop OSX on 50 million desktops and watch it crumble like the once mighty NT did...