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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Software Windows Apple

Cherry OS Claims Mac OS X Capability For x86 1090

jediboytj writes "According to the MacWorld Article, Cherry OS, does what Virtual PC does for Macs, only the opposite. PC Users are now able to run Mac OSX at G4 Speeds (Company claims 80% of the speed of your PC). It also includes full hardware support: hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI, PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem. The software is being distributed through electronic download at $49.99 USD..." Note: it does not come with a copy of any Apple OS. Anyone in Windowsland tried it to provide a thumbs up (or down)?
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Cherry OS Claims Mac OS X Capability For x86

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:51PM (#10505026)
    If anyone has popped the cherry on CherryOS yet?
    • by Triumph The Insult C ( 586706 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505078) Homepage Journal
      well, it would appear as though the OS on their webserver has been popped. does that count?
    • by m_chan ( 95943 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:32PM (#10505600) Homepage
      CherryOS.. run Apple software on Lemon hardware.
    • by GFLPraxis ( 745118 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @05:51PM (#10508546) Homepage Journal
      Reading the article, it says that it claims full hardware support, and lists:
      " It also includes full hardware support: hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI, PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem."

      No graphics card listed. Usually, that's not a big problem, BUT, Mac OS X uses Quartz Extreme to render all the windows in 3d with shadows and fancy coloring. No graphics card = horrid windowing performance.

      So does this use graphics card? Because if it doesn't, we're going to have choppy windows jumping around, performance loss when you move the mouse over the dock, choppy Expose, etc. And graphics card isn't listed.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:52PM (#10505042)
    Wow, there is a recipe for a slashdotting-- let people run OS X on the cheapest ahrdware they can find...
  • by Spackler ( 223562 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:52PM (#10505052) Journal
    They saw us coming around the corner!

    Server Error in '/' Application.

    Just a dot away from a PERFECT error message.

  • Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daimaou ( 97573 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505059)
    I've always wanted to try OS X to see if I'd like it, but I've always thought buying a Mac was an expensive way to "test drive" OS X, and thus have never done so. $50.00 on the otherhand is quite reasonable, I think. Perhaps I'll finally give OS X a try.
    • Re:Finally... (Score:5, Informative)

      by over_exposed ( 623791 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:56PM (#10505133) Homepage
      You still need to buy a copy of OSX. It's gonna run you a *tad* more than $50...
    • Re:Finally... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by krunk7 ( 748055 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:09PM (#10505317)
      I find nothing morally wrong with downloading a torrent if your intentions are to "try before you buy". I do this with every game before I buy. I give it a week, if I like it I buy it.....every time.

      So try osx, just make sure you give it fair shake, the first time I tried it I didn't particularly care for it. But after giving it a thorough try out (e.g. not just fiddling in spare time, but used as my main os for a month) I never put it down.

      cheers,
      -james

  • Oh Boy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux @ g m a i l . com> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505060)
    Now I can have my life-long dream of running a Laserwriter using appletalk!
    • Re:Oh Boy! (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:56PM (#10505116) Homepage Journal
      If you put the laserwriter on an etherprint box of some sort, you can print to it using Linux (or Solaris) with netatalk. Laserwriters speak Postscript so nothing could be easier to support once you get them talking. I did it back in the days when a 486 was a tolerably fast computer and it only took me a few hours to get running including compiling the software and building a new kernel with appletalk support.

      I know you were just being a smartass, a time-honored tradition around here, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to be informative.

  • by Rosyna ( 80334 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505064) Homepage
    The screenshots are missing (last I checked), the site is full of spelling errors and they called it "Apple Install Shield". It being Installer.app, I guess?

    Emulating a G3 at 80% might be within the realm of possibility if I was on LSD. However, saying you can do a G4 (which implies AltiVec) is just not possible. Seriously. That'd be like emulating SSE3 on a G5. Ain't gonna happen.
    • by Datasage ( 214357 ) * <Datasage@theworl ... m ['sgr' in gap]> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:59PM (#10505175) Homepage Journal
      Not only that, but there is no information about the company on the website.

      Its got that feeling of an overnight company. The whois record was only registered in july.

      It wouldnt supprise me if its some company that took pearPC and is trying to sell it.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505067)
    Running MacOS using CherryOS on Windows using VMWare on FreeBSD using Linux binary compatibility.
  • by bpatterson ( 554715 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:53PM (#10505079) Homepage
    What a perversion.... I'm going back to getting my Cuisenart to run Debian. - B
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:54PM (#10505091)
    I'll finally be able to play all those games I can't get for the PC platform.
  • by RangerRick98 ( 817838 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:55PM (#10505110) Journal
    I wonder how this CherryOS would compare with PearPC [sourceforge.net] in terms of speed and functionality. Of course, I don't know much about either product, so I might be comparing apples to oranges (or Cherries to Apples?)
    • by mmusson ( 753678 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:03PM (#10505243)
      Or cherries to pears?
    • by Saeger ( 456549 ) <(farrellj) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:35PM (#10505640) Homepage
      PearPC is really, really, really slow, though it is making progress. For comparison against CherryOS's claim that it runs the guest 80% as fast as the host, it takes PearPC over 5 minutes just to boot MacOSX 10.3 on my 1.2GHz Athlon running Suse9.1 (kernel 2.6.5).

      PearPC is free/FREE, though, and I only use it for Safari compatibility testing, so its speed isn't a major issue for me.

      --

      • by KH ( 28388 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @02:01PM (#10505915)
        I just Xbenched my installation of Mac OS X on PearPC over WinXP.

        It's an AthlonXP 3000 (oced to 2400MHz or thereabout) box with 1GB RAM. I've assigned 512MB for PearPC.

        The overall score is indeed abysmal 2.89. For comparison, my PB 12" (867MHz) gets something in the range of 80, I think.

        But if I look at the score more closely, I notice that major drag comes from vecLib FFT test (scored 0.15!) and all kinds of graphics test (OpenGL test being the worst).

        For other things, it scores about 30 to 60 scores range. Disk test is pretty impressive. I only have a regular ATA drive on my PC. Got the score better than my PB disk.

        These results are quite understandable considering what PearPC is doing. I would say for some tasks, this might even be usable.

        Very impressive, I must say.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:56PM (#10505134)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Cherry Os (Score:5, Funny)

    by null etc. ( 524767 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:57PM (#10505142)
    I tried it today... it crashed when I clicked the right mouse button.
  • Fraud (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr. McGibby ( 41471 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @12:59PM (#10505173) Homepage Journal
    As pointed out on the comments on the article page, this is most likely a fraud. Writing a VM isn't the easiest thing to do. This software would likely cost much more than $50 because of the effort involved.
    • Re:Fraud (Score:5, Funny)

      by hotspotbloc ( 767418 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:40PM (#10505673) Homepage Journal
      Lagos, Nigeria.
      Attention: The President/CEO

      Dear Sir,

      Confidential Business Proposal

      Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Nigerian Chambers Of Software And Emulators, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $50 (fifty United States dollars) into our accounts in exchange for a Mac OS X emulator that runs on your MS Windows PC. Great cost has gone into the research of this software and it must be transferred as soon as possible out of the country.

      While there is no demostration copy available for testing I can assure you that you will be able to run Mac OS X at full speed on any computer with a Pentium III or faster. Screenshots will soon follow after we receive your check (complete with routing numbers).

      Thank You And God Speed,

      Howgul Abul Arhu

    • How is this insightful? Of course the software cost more than $50 to develop. They probably plan on selling more than one copy before getting sued into oblivion by Apple. For all you know Cherry OS hired a bunch of guys in India to write the thing and it did cost $50. In any case prices are governed by the law of supply and demand and not by you.
  • I have no idea (Score:4, Informative)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:00PM (#10505199) Homepage Journal
    if this will work or not, but if it does, Apple legal won't be happy. The EULA states that you have to run OS X on Apple branded hardware(probably to kill clones), now I am willing to bet for the time being anyway, Apple will look the other way on non-commerical projects like Pear PC, but they probably won't be very keen on a commericial product that violates the EULA.
    • Re:I have no idea (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vhold ( 175219 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:18PM (#10505417)
      It's really a double edged sword for Apple.

      Pro: PC users buying Mac OS, PC users buying Mac OS software, PC users going 'Hmm Mac is great, I think I'll just buy a Mac for my next computer'. Basically it way lowers the bar for introduction to the platform, seems like a MASSIVE win for Apple.

      Con: Mac users not really utilizing their macs from a horsepower perspective, they are just browsing internet, email, a few things, they think, hmm, I could buy a cheap Dell, put this on there, and probably have an ok machine... hmm. Or... Mac users with an inclination towards games, it's an obvious win for them to have a real PC for games and use MacOS for absolutely everything else that isn't nearly as performance related. Aka: -Actual- hardware competition for Apple.. That alone will probably drive Apple into a frenzy.

      I personally think the pros outweigh the cons, just simply because there are a ton of people that will never even try Mac simply because of the high cost and risk of introduction. This could lower that bar to almost nonexistant.
  • by TitusC3v5 ( 608284 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:01PM (#10505215) Homepage
    MXS Inc. announces CherryOS 1.0 October, 08 2004

    NEWS RELEASE FOR IMMEADIATE RELEASE Contact: Jim Kartes, 866-661-5699 jim@vx30.com Media contact same.

    Maui, HI (DATE) MXS today announce the immediate availability of Cherry OS software . Cherry OS is a software translator that allows you to install Apple's Operating System on x86 computer architecture. To put it simply you can now run Apple's award winning Panther OS on your PC! This breakthrough in OS development now gives home users, software developers and web designer's ultimate flexibility in both the operating system and hardware platform you use for your personal computer or testing environment.

    Cherry OS runs Panther as a virtual machine on your Windows PC. This virtual machine has full network capabilities including the ability to share folders and access the web. The virtual machine also has complete access to the computer's hardware resources including, Hard Drive, CPU, RAM, Firewire, USB, PCI, PCMIA BUS and RJ45/Ethernet and Modem.

    Arben Kryeziu, Cherry OS inventor and a software developer, got tired of carrying both a Mac and a PC around with him, so he invented Cherry OS. "Think about it," says Arben. "Now about 600 million PC users can have the MAC advantage. One computer to use all software and if PC users would use MAC software to get email, perhaps they would avoid viruses, Trojans and spy-ware." He went on to say that , "You can build and test applications for a Mac on your development PC, test web site design for Mac web browsers without having to buy the hardware, run OS X, the world's best Operating System, on a less expensive hardware platform and use your favorite Mac apps on a PC."

    Pricing and availability
    Cherry OS is now available only on line at www.cherryos.com as a download, for $49.95. (Mac software not included)

    About MXS
    MXS is a software development company specializing in video streaming software. Playerless-streaming.org ranked our vx30 encoder as the best in the world.

    The products of Maui X-Stream can be viewed on www.vx30.com
  • from TFSite (Score:5, Funny)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:03PM (#10505244)
    You can install all your favorite mac applications on your PC like iLife, iTunes and Photoshop ... to name just a few.

    WoW!!! I can finally run iTunes and Photoshop on my PC!!!
  • by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:10PM (#10505324)
    A company has also released a Mac OS X clone for Linux. You can check out their site and download the software for you Linux machine (note: you will need VMWare or similar software to run it.

    The URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp [microsoft.com]

  • I call BS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mdarksbane ( 587589 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:12PM (#10505349)
    There's no way you can emulate even a stripped-down PPC instruction set on x86 at 80% speed, let alone Altivec. The best I've seen any commercial editor come close to is a third, or maybe a half.

    This'd be running an equivalent 2.7 ghz G4 on your top-of-the-line PentiumIV. They can't come close to that in hardware, there's no way they can touch it in software.

    Sounds like a poorly-planned scam to me.
  • by SiW ( 10570 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:20PM (#10505442) Homepage
    ..because 10 bucks says this rips off PearPC wholesale.
  • Download (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:20PM (#10505444)
    The software is being distributed through electronic download at $49.99 USD...

    Oh good. I'm growing really tired of mechanical downloads...
  • by Corrado ( 64013 ) <rnhurt@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:23PM (#10505487) Homepage Journal
    Click here [hardforum.com] for some screenshots and a running commentary.
    • Fraudulent postings (Score:5, Interesting)

      by theolein ( 316044 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @02:45PM (#10506426) Journal
      take a look at the poser in that forum making a big noise about this "wonderful emulator", the guy called DAG33K. Notice his English mistakes. Notice his location, "In da middle of da pacific". The do a whois on cherryos.com, and you get an address in Hawai. The tech contact, who is also the admin contact etc etc, is a guy called Arben Kryeziu, the same guy doing the video "demonstration", which you never get to actually see apart from an installation screen and some supposed OSX desktop, which looks very similar to PearPC. The guy's name is Albanian, and if you listen in that demonstration, he speaks with a thick accent, so my gues is that the poster on hardforum is the very same guy trying to pimp his warez.

      I still think the guy is trying to fuck everyone for their money.
  • by DarkBlackFox ( 643814 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:33PM (#10505615)
    I managed to get to the documentation page by refreshing rapidly. The manual is avaliable online, and hosted on a differant server. It's a 1.7 mb download, but includes screenshots and information.

    Manual avaliable here:

    http://www.vx30.com/documents/CherryOS.pdf

    or as a .doc

    http://www.vx30.com/documents/CherryOS.doc
  • Scam alert (Score:5, Informative)

    by saddino ( 183491 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:48PM (#10505774)
    Hmm, their main page states, under "Screenshots":

    Desctop & Task Manager

    and under "What can CherryOS do?":

    Skin enadled GUI

    But beyond the typos, their "Client Showcase" features a testimonial from "Secnet Q&A Services" which Google doesn't have any information on (hmm, a Q&A company without a web presence?).

    My guess either an out-and-out scam, or a an attempt to pawn off a modified copy of PearPC in an attempt to generate some $ and scram. Ballsy.
    • Re:Scam alert (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Armchair Dissident ( 557503 ) * on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:00PM (#10507386)
      Another posting pointed to this discussion [hardforum.com] where "dag33k" is practically wetting himself over three screenshots.

      A quick nose at the screenshots reveals that the (now dead) screenshots are hosted at: http://www.cotse.net/users/secnet/.

      So that's secnet. Not that you can see too much: "their" bandwidth's been exceeded. Doesn't sound like a particularly particularly good choice for a testimonial.

      I agree with you. I smell a rat.
  • 20% speed? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mukund ( 163654 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @01:53PM (#10505818) Homepage

    Company claims 80% of the speed of your PC

  • by theolein ( 316044 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @02:17PM (#10506070) Journal
    For one thing, I just did a couple of whois on cherryos.com, all of whose contacts are listed as arben kryeziu, whose email is given as arben@bumpnetworks.com. Do a whois on bumpnetworks.com (which is a run of the mill web development company according to its website) and you get all the tech contacts as arben@kryeziu.com, which is a simple holding site, obviously the guy's own.

    Now, this Arben Kryeziu guy is the one in the, of all things, java video player on the video link site.

    So this guy has time to run a web development company, be the tech and admin contacts for all the sites, and run a PPC emulation development outfit on the side? I seriously doubt it.

    Not that it might be possible, who knows, but companies such as Connectix (now owned by Microsoft) spent literally years, getting their x86 emulators up to about 1/4 of the speed of the host PPC CPU. And this guy has done it on his own, with a tiny outfit in no time and with no news announcements, and got it to run at 3/4 the host x86 system? I doubt it again.

    And then, he sells the whole thing for $50????? And only by electronic download???? With a PDF manual that closely resembles the PearPC effort???? Has anyone actually downloaded this and paid the guy his $50???? Has anyone seen it run???

    Even in that weird video (why no wmv, why no real, why no quicktime?) where he supposedly "demonstrates" the application, you don't actually see it running.

    My guess is that, if the application really does run, it is simply a PearPC wrapper and runs at around 1/10th or less of the host speed. (Notice the typical marketing "up to 80% of the host" x86 system?)

    I have nothing against Albanians (Kryeziu is an albanian name, listen to the guy's accent), but I think the guy is trying to make a quick buck off the hopefuls who want Mac OSX but won't or can't buy a Mac.

    We'll see when the first real reports come in of how and if this thing performs, but if it truly is what he claims it to be, which I seriously doubt, then he has one big hurdle and that is Apple's EULA, which states that Mac OSX is only allowed to be run on Apple branded hardware.
    • by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @03:35PM (#10507087) Journal
      I'm actually going to reveal something you may not know...

      Both Connectix and Insignia (the two main companies that produced Windows emulation for the Mac) were actually just venture capital firms. This is why Connectix, at the height of every product launched, would just sell it off as an asset.

      Connectix Quickcam = Logitech Quickcam
      Connectix Virtual Game Station = Sony Buyout
      Connectix Virtual PC ( at an undeniable breakthrough point) = Microsodt VPC

      Insignia was the same:

      Softwindows ... I did an unupublished interview with the head of FWB ... he stated that they simply licensed the code rather than bought it from Insignia. The reason they never released an update after leasing the code was because they didn't see any merit at the time in releasing a new OS X version.

      Insignia is supposedly shopping this around.

      I have found that these two companies were essentially started up by venture capital and paid off their investors, dumped their employees, and the owners got filthy rich.

      Now, as for this software. I find it NEXT to impossible that the software is running a G4 at 80% speed of the CPU. If you were to translate this properly - Apple's CPUs are about 1.2X as fast as the equivalent P4 and P3 (G3 & G4 respectively) - so essentially the claim is saying it will run a 100% equivalent Mhz / speed ratio.

      This means if I had a 3Ghz Pentium 4 with 1 Gig RAM - I would have the equivalent of a 2.4Ghz G4!! There's just NO way!

  • by Eminence ( 225397 ) <{akbrandt} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:08PM (#10507477) Homepage

    The amount of interest this story generated (CheryOS' site is already slashdoted) shows clearly how many people would love to run OS X, but can't afford the hardware. In fact I'm one of those people - I hate Windows, but I'm too old to tweak with Linux. Apple's OS X is the best choice for the likes of me - easy to use, tons of good commercial software for the desktop user, no frustrating tweaking and adjusting to get it working and no Microsoft. However, prices of their hardware are murder when compared to the PC world. I know there are many good reasons for that, but what has bothered me for some time now is why Apple won't release OS X for Intel platform.

    In fact OS X is a really great, consequently designed GUI on top of a robust BSD Unix. It should be rather portable by nature, even if it would have high hardware requirements (like lots of memory and fast graphic boards with again lots of memory). Possibly achieving binary compatibility for software would be a problem, but I don't think it would be necessary. After all on a Unix system porting software between hardware platforms is just a question of recompiling it. Now, why don't they try to do it?

    As much as I hate paying Microsoft for XP I would gladly pay twice the price of OS X for Mac to be able to run it on PC. Why Apple won't do it? Maybe because they don't want to get into Microsoft's gun sight?

    • by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @04:11PM (#10507505) Journal
      Why is $529 for a 17" Monitor, CPU ,and keyboard/mouse + TONS of awesome software - with a one year Apple Warranty too much for you?

      See the Apple Store special deals section.

    • by TheInternet ( 35082 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @05:28PM (#10508318) Homepage Journal
      bothered me for some time now is why Apple won't release OS X for Intel platform

      There was a whole thread about this just a few days ago.

      In fact OS X is a really great, consequently designed GUI on top of a robust BSD Unix. It should be rather portable by nature

      It is. The challenges aren't purely technical.

      Possibly achieving binary compatibility for software would be a problem

      Next solved these problems a while ago.

      Why Apple won't do it? Maybe because they don't want to get into Microsoft's gun sight?

      There are a lot of reasons. Keep a few things in mind:
      1. Next already pursued a strategy like this. If Steve Jobs decided to not do it again, there *might* be a good reason
      2. How many copies would actually be purchased vs pirated?
      3. Some of the desireable features of Mac OS X rely on intergration with underlying hardware
      4. Do you really think you'd ever see an Office for Mac OS X x86?
      There's no question people want everything everything Apple has to offer without actually buying any hardware, but it doesn't make any sense to do if such an action destroys Apple and Mac OS X development in the process.

      - Scott
  • by Zhe Mappel ( 607548 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2004 @05:42PM (#10508464)
    1. Inexplicable urge to download Dance_Monkey_Boy_Dance.avi

    2. Inordinate amount of time spent visiting rumor sites to find out when emulation will be sped up.

    3. Funny, this beige computer case clashes with the drapes; I never noticed that before...

I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.

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