Mac OS X Running on Non-Apple Hardware 962
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.
Random thoughts on Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Dvorak prophecy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That's all good and well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Intentional or Unintentional? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Dvorak just playing the odds (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:VMWare (Score:3, Interesting)
Handy for testing on Safari (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MS better watch their back (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:VMWare (Score:1, Interesting)
Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:1, Interesting)
Example: I finally get around to pirating OSX because it finally works on my home built PC and actually has some use for me (Games). I work with it for a couple of months, and I decide I love it (assuming it's as great as I've been promised). I find alternative applications for all of the "normal" applications I use, such as word processors and browsing the web.
The next month my parents decide they want to upgrade their PC and come to me for advice (because I built their last PC). I have long since decided to tell them to buy stock pcs, as I am through being Tech Support for my family. I say "you know, this mac stuff is much easier and better, buy a mac". Apple gains market share.
My grandfather, a year later, decides to upgrade his PC. He comes to me for advice because I built his last pc. I tell him to buy a Mac. He talks to my parents, they tell him they love their mac (because it's as good as you guys have been promising). He buys a mac. Apple gains market share.
Soon, my aunt, wants to upgrade, repeat above story. Market share continues to grow. Rinse and repeat for my entire family. Rinse and repeat for my friends and their families. In 5 years listen to all of the "Apple is a MONOPOLY" trolls on slashdot. In 10 years my son asks me "What is Microsoft? What is a Dell?"..
Re:So what! (Score:5, Interesting)
Playing it both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
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
'Mactel' good for gamers, just not on Mac OS (Score:2, Interesting)
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:
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
My orginal Mac Plus would not be running today if I hadn't bought an additional fan to cool the power supply--alot of Mac Pluses had this problem.
My Power Mac 6100 blew up a week after the warranty ran out- Apple was nice enough to fix it.
I've had one PC stop working on me- the rest have been retired so quickly they didn't get to die.
The one thing I will say for my macs--they lasted longer. Not longer as in "they were more reliable" but as in "the software didn't get so slow on older hardware it was unusable." That, and I don't remember the old "six months and your computer acts like it's geriatric" thing that windows does so well. I want mac os x... but have nothing but an sse only machine. Gotta go buy a P4 i guess..
james
Re:Why not offer it for all x86 systems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps they like building computers and maybe, just maybe, their legions of aficionados would like them to continue doing so.
In my opinion, the most significant characteristic of Apple, as a company and a culture, is that they clearly love computers and it shows in everything they build - hardware and software.
Very few other technology companies exhibit this same exuberance that has been an Apple hallmark for many years (esp. under the leadership of the norotiously persnickety Steve Jobs).
I rarely walk away from using a Microsoft product thinking that this was created by someone who loves computers as much as I do.
Not every company needs to (or should) try to maximize sales and market penetration like Microsoft - just like every person doesn't need to try to be as rich as Bill Gates, as musical as Mozart, as tall as Shaq, etc.
Is it inconceivable that Apple might have success criteria that are different from Microsoft? Is it impossible that we, as users, can understand and embrace that kind of diversity of thought in the marketplace?
Hey you, Ferrari - why aren't you selling as many cars as Toyota? Slackers!
Re:So what! (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Err.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not the original poster, but games you play on a PC are very different from the ones you play on consoles. If you like MMORPGs (e.g. World of Warcraft), FPSs (e.g. Unreal), RTSs (e.g. Rome: Total War) then having a console does not help you at all.
As for the "rest of your stuff" it very much depends on what kind of stuff this is. For my purposes I am quite happy to have a Windows machine as a gaming/Photoshop/MSOffice box and a Linux machine for heavy lifting. No need for a Mac.
Aside from that, I really don't think Apple cares about the gaming market segment, i.e., teenaged-or-twenty-something males.
The gaming segment by now includes 30-something males and I bet the 20-40 year old demographic has Apple marketers drooling.
NeXTStep Rides Again (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Your so close to what I was going to say, and saying expressing it better then I was going to!
If I was Steve Jobs :-P I would start OpenOSX which would be a bit like OpenSolaris, i.e. where they feel they have to it would be binary only, but wherever they can it is Open. Now everyone can run an OSX on their cpu compatible box (you could keep pre-Intel mac owners happy this way also). To get the real OSX though, with support, you have to buy OSX hardware, which for now means Apple. I would expect that Apple would do deals as and when they felt it was in their best interests to provide an OSX-OEM version for manufacturers.
The sneeky way to get real revenues from those OpenOSX users would be to basically let buy and install a real OSX, but it is unsupported unless it's installed onto an Apple box! Don't cripple their experience in any way. How many people would still buy a copy of OSX to run on their Dell even if it came with no official support? Let OEMs sell their OSX discs to anyone, and let those discs also install anywhere ... but without support :-) Still keep it locked in some way to one copy per machine. So if you want OSX, you can:
Without the OpenOSX, their probably wouldn't be the community support for the unsupported OSXs, but with it Apple could have a community dealing with the problems associated with running OSX on unofficial hardware.
The key is that Apple are extremely unlikely to lose many of their existing sales to this as very few Apple users will be interested in running unsupported. They would probably manage to create many hardware sales though from people who might have some access to a Mac (or even an ipod) and hence an inclination to try running it themslves and then ... They would also likely create lots of software sales, which will have a near zero marginal cost (developing an OEM OSX) leading to money for nothing (support is the killer cost, offloading most of their support to OEMs is why MS has such massive profit margins, what does an OEM sale of Windows cost them).
Perhaps Apple is hoping and expecting that hardware manufacturers will start to support OSX with their hardware, but I doubt they are depending on it in any way.
All part of Jobs' plan... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
White Box vs. Apple Hardware... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dangerous Game... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Due to the lack of formatting (probably not your fault) and because I happen to know quite a bit about the subject, I stopped reading at this sentence..
My nick, pcidevel, comes from the fact that I've spent the last 5 years developing device drivers for pci devices in Windows (as well as Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, etc).. I've never worked for Microsoft that whole time. Microsoft does not develop the device drivers for Windows, the third party manufacturer of the device does. I've written, probably close to a dozen drivers, from niche products to ethernet drivers for Intel (if you use a IBM or Intel ethernet card, you've probably encounterd my code.. yeah it's the shit that made your box BSOD, sorry about that)..
If Apple increases their market share and opens their APIs, hardware manufacturers will flock to OSX with device drivers. Hell I've had companies pay me to develop drivers for HP-UX, and there are probably around 15 people in the WORLD using HP-UX anymore. You can guarantee if there was even a fractional market for OSX using the hardware I've developed for, my boss would have me working on OSX drivers in a heartbeat, i.e. if Apple would let us, we would support them.. hardware manufacturers love cash..
Re:Playing it both ways (Score:5, Interesting)
By letting OSX be pirated Apple is following the winning strategy of Microsoft. The only difference is that the cheapest way to run MacOS is buying a Mac mini and I am notsure whether the cheapest way to run Windows is to buy a PC pre-installed with Windows or to buy a box with a CD inside.
By allowing PC users that would never buy a real copy of Windows, Microsoft used "virtual dumping" to get rid of any competition (by offering an "unsuported" version of its OS for free) and to increase its market share. When MS got rid of the competition in the OS arena, it had a healthy user base software writers were happy to make software available for.
Apple is using exactly the same strategy. By making OSX "unsuported" available to current PC users, Apple increases its user base, making it more attractive to build software for it and, at the same time, makes people try Apple software in the hopes they get the next PC upgrade.
In the meantime, they pretend that's not what they are doing.
Brilliant
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, Dell already sells machines with factory-installed Linux, so i don't know about *never*, although i do concede that they certainly wouldn't appreciate it, especially since the target market would be different (any maybe bigger? hmmm, something to ponder...)
The real question is what would Apple gain by licensing OSX to Dell (or any other manufacturer/assembler)? They already did licensing deals with a number of third parties way back when, and shut them down post haste when it turned out they where cannibalizing their own sales.
And I'll restate the point others have made: Apple's superiority in terms of user experience is directly attributable to the tight integration between and control of the hardware.
I'll go further than that: Apple's superiority in terms of P/E ratio is directly attributable to the surcharge they can get away with because "they're so pwetty"
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
At the time, the alternative was Windows 95 or Windows NT 4. 95 had a UI that, at a passing glance, was as good as a Mac, and NT 4 was a real OS. Both supported pre-emptive multitasking, although you needed NT 4 for protected memory.
Now, compare Windows XP to OS X. OS X is slightly behind in a few kernel areas, and ahead in some others. The UI, however, is significantly better - and it has far less of a virus risk (at least, at the moment). Some users may decide to upgrade to Vista but I'm not sure what compelling features this has that OS X doesn't - and it may well cost more.
Re:Pretty easy solution (Score:4, Interesting)
Then it's time to bust out the dynamic recompiler [mit.edu]
Re:Random thoughts on Apple (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought a Dell Latitude X-1 which is a super slim 2.9 lb notebook with widescreen (a form factor that doesn't even exist in the Apple world).
I mean I shouldn't be feeding the trolls, nor am I saying that Dell doesn't make some crap. They make entire PC's with 19" LCDs that sell for like $450. What the fuck do you expect? But if you spend some money (and by "some money" I mean "half what you'd spend on an Apple"), and buy through Small Business, you can get some very nice machines with 3 years of on-site warranty and exactly zero spam/spyware/adware installed by default with english support. Do a little shopping and quit buying the bottom of the barrel and expecting top quality hardware and support. Duh?
Software vs Hardware (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Return of the clones ? (Score:3, Interesting)
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...