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 ;)

pardon?

[Madd Scientist (894040)]

skepticism ignored... but emoticons? there is no excuse.

Obligitory Comic Book Guy quote...

[shuufoxie (907008)]

"There's no emoticon for what I'm feeling!"

Call me when

[Winckle (870180)]

they get it running on toasters [slashdot.org]

Duck!

[rapturizer (733607)]

I hear the sound of incoming Apple Lawyers.

Not Surprising

[RumGunner (457733)]

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 (259925)]

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

[blibbler (15793)]

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.

What's the point

[by Anonymous Coward]

Running OS X on a Dell is like putting race car parts in your Yugo. You can, it is sort of funny, but... why?

Re:What's the point

[m50d (797211)]

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.

Dupe?

[JLyle (267134)]

It has been widely reported all over the Internet that it is extremely easy to get the Intel port of OS X to run on regualar PC boxes.

Yes, for example, it was reported [slashdot.org] on Slashdot just yesterday.

Linux in on the act...

[advocate_one (662832)]

ha ha... Linux was used to achieve the feat... basically as the midwife OS used in the copying act before kickstarting the new OSX image...

1. Download "VMWare files for patched Mac OS X Tiger Intel" from your favorite torrent site. (Hint: Use the search function).

2. Copy tiger-x86-flat.img from the archive to an external USB drive (it's 6gb)

3. Download Ubuntu Live CD (link) ... be sure you get the "Live CD"!!

4. Burn the ubuntu iso, stick it in your pc, and boot it! (make sure you have your bios set to boot to CD)

5. Once ubuntu boots and the gui finally comes up, hook up the USB drive you copied the 6gb image to. A window should pop up showing the contents of the drive. Take note of where its mounted. It should be /Devices/Yourdrivesvolumename

6. Open a terminal window and cd to that directory (/Devices/Yourdrivesvolumename). Do an "ls" to make sure you are in the right place (you should see the 6gb img file.

7. In the terminal window type:

dd bs=1048576 if=./tiger-x86-flat.img of=/dev/hda

Replace hda with the correct drive! If you only have one drive, its probably hda. Thats what mine was. You are about to erase this entire drive so make sure youve got it right and make sure you want to do this! Hit enter. It takes a while... took my vaio about 9 minutes.

8. When it's done, remove the ubuntu disc and shut down the pc. Disconnect your usb drive. Thats it! When you power it back on, OS X should boot!

Re:but before you begin...

[whyde (123448)]

This sounds just like a set of open-source bomb defusing instructions I read:

        1. Remove bomb housing

        2. Unscrew blasting cap cover, counter-clockwise

        3. Locate red wire with a white stripe

        4. Cut red wire with white stripe near blast cap connector

        5. Now the bomb should be defused, but before you begin, move the bomb to a remote, secured area and wear appropriate protective gear.

Sell a "dev kit" version of OS X for x86

[angryflute (206793)]

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.

It's simple psychology really...

[dduck (10970)]

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.

It's theirs. Get over it.

[dduck (10970)]

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:Congrats

[jim_v2000 (818799)]

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!"

The same could be said about linux.

[Reeses (5069)]

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.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[happyemoticon (543015)]

Clearly you've never done anything with drivers. We're doing some driver programming at my company, and let me tell you sir, it's a bitch. We have Dell and Gateway boxes with the same OS revision and everything, but (one particular rev of) the driver makes the Gateway box bluescreen and not the Dell. Hell, we've even had cases where two seemingly-identical Dells were tested side-by-side; one consistently bluescreened, and the other did not. It is a very tricky topic.

And moreover, since we're just talking about the OS running on Intels, it's decidedly not the kernel/processor, which is the lowest level of portability and the level at which Linux almost universally succeeds. One Genuine Intel x86 is pretty much the same as the next, a few register extensions aside. It's the devices which might be attached to it which create headaches. I could set up Slackware or Gentoo on almost any system on the face of the earth with very little difficulty. Now, getting sound to work on one of those systems is another matter entirely. Framebuffer devices will always be a pain in the neck. I'm still working on scanning properly. MacOS uses a ton of OpenGL and other chutzpah for its basic functionality; Linux basically just uses the kernel and a few core tools you'd find on the Slackware "a" diskette set.

Re:The same could be said about linux.

[timeOday (582209)]

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.

[ciroknight (601098)]

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.

Re:Congrats

[danheskett (178529)]

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:Congrats

[Senjutsu (614542)]

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?

Re:Congrats

[sundog61 (816978)]

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.

Re:Congrats

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

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.

Re:Ummm

[Klivian (850755)]

So you have no graphics, sound and networking, but other than that it runs just fine? I'd guess that's taking the famous mac usability one step further.