Leopard Already Hacked To Run On PC Hardware 568
PoliTech passed us a PC World link, noting that the newest version of OS X, Leopard, has already been adapted to run on a PC. "The OSx86 Scene forum has released details of how Windows users can migrate to Apple's new OS, without investing in new hardware -- even though installing Leopard on an PC may be counter to Apple's terms and conditions. The forum is offering full instructions on how to install the system, including screenshots of the installation process. Not all the features of Leopard function with the patch -- Wi-Fi support, for example, is reportedly inoperable. Historically, Apple's likely next move will be to track down and act against those behind the hack."
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
VMWare, here we come! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not hard to do the math: Take their current earnings per Mac and then the projected earnings per copy of OS X. How many boxes of OS X would you have to sell in order to equal a Mac sale?
If they get, average, $250 per Mac, then two copies of OS X at current prices would be required to break even. So if all Mac sales die, overnight, they would need to jump up to something like 16% US or 7% worldwide to make up the difference. To make it a profitable endeavor, therefore, they would need to sell 3 copies of OS X... or 32% US/10% worldwide.
Re:Apple is missing an opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the recent mac converts i know started out with a pirated copy, unsupported with very few drivers, features not working and not as stable as it should be...
They liked the OS, and wanted to run it properly, so they went and bought macs.
Deja vu times infinity (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why you are not running a major corporation, son.
Messing With Success (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
Even with no support included they would be swamped with users complaining that it didn't work or was unstable for any number of reasons.
Quality = Branding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple is missing an opportunity (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, once you take this step, there's no going back-- OEMs will introduce their own OSX machines, subject to their own sometimes dodgy support structures....Honestly, how many instabilities perceived as being "Windows" issues are actually caused by OEM hardware? I can't tell you how many machines I've had to tweak for friends that were overheating/throwing up because of bad system design. OSX would suffer the same issues were that door opened.
Apple's all about control of experience, for good or ill. I'm not going to say you'll never have a non-Apple-branded machine running OSX in a sanctioned manner, but it'd be a huge paradigm shift.
Armchair quarterbacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Insightful)
They are. [apple.com]
Geeks want Apple to put OS X on PCs. Consumers don't give a fuck.
Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
I would love to be able to play with OS X on a couple non-Mac machines I own, but I would never ever request that Apple open the OS for operation on generic hardware.
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is in the buisness of selling all in soloutions, they don't want people running copies of one of the key components of that soloution on other peoples hardware most likely without paying for it at all (or at best paying the upgrade price).
Maybe they should give in to what some geeks want and try and turn themselves into a software company in direct competition with microsoft but such a move would be pretty risky.
minis are $ because they're small (Score:2, Insightful)
Put it this way: my Hackintosh in it's original incarnation had a 2.6ghz Celeron, 1GB of RAM, 160GB of Hard Drive space, a DVD Burner, and a Geforce 7300LE. Now, this was kind of a toss up between a bare-bones Mac Mini at the time. The mini had it in processor speed, but the $599 machine had less ram, less hard drive space (and a slower hard drive), and a slower video card. That and it wasn't really upgradeable.
And a BMW M5 probably costs more than a 20 passenger minibus. What's your point?
The mini is a TINY system. That's why it costs more than a standard, large Dell or HP. Go pick any major manufacturer, and spec out their smallest "SFF" PC. Now put it next to the mini, and laugh at how much smaller and quieter it is. And no 802.11n or bluetooth in that price tag, generally. The mini can be had/comes with both inside (no dongles necessary.)
Now go online and try and build a mini-itx box similarly configured. Not such a drastic price difference anymore, eh?
One big reason your system is a better value is because your "Hackentosh" is running an operating system you did not buy a license for.
Re:Why do it at all?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I'm completely misunderstanding this procedure, the worst case scenario is you have to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows/Linux/whatever.
That hardly qualifies as "bricking" to me.
Re:Shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
Support is not just "Customer Support" (Score:5, Insightful)
Bug in that logic: its not only MS that supports your PC - its also the hardware manufacturers. Every component, peripheral and driver on your PC is compatible with - and has been tested with - one or more flavours of MS Windows by the manufacturer. PC component manufacturers have to do that in order to survive in a MS-dominated market. Their customer support lines may be crap but they've still invested serious dosh ensuring that they work with MS Windows. Unfortunately, the OS monoculture often means that they've eschewed platform-independent interface protocols in favor of cheaper "soft hardware" solutions that depend on windows-specific drivers. Even the mfrs that do support OS X may only bother on their higher-end products (e.g. the cheapest printers that don't have PCL or Postscript on-board are usually WIndows only).
Now, if you try and sell a "minority" OS product then - until you reach a critical mass and convince hardware mfrs to invest in supporting you - all of that behind-the-scenes support becomes your problem. Linux can scrape by because its got a lot of free labour backed up by multiple sources of commercial backing - but even that has had a hard time. You also have the problem that the vast mass of users buy a PC with Windows installed and are pretty much incapable of installing an OS.
So, say you get the hack and illegally install OS X. The motherboard, WiFi card, ethernet, bluetooth, video card, sound card, web cam etc. in your PC may or may not work with OS X and if the answer is "not" then tough titty - who ya gonna call? Pay $200 to Apple for a copy of OS X and you're going to expect Apple to support your hardware.
Basically, its going to cost Apple a lot of money to break into the "aftermarket OS" market - something that Jobs has already tried and failed at once (NeXTStep) and which, even if successful, would risk eroding Apple's hardware sales.
Bottom line - the MS Monoculture means that there is no "aftermarket OS" market (see: BeOS, NeXTStep, Netware). Even the Linux movement is having an uphill struggle giving away a desktop operating system (not so much in the internet server market, but what with the whole Internet being built on free *nix-oriented code its bloody amazing that anybody even considers Windows).
Why Apple won't sell you OS X for your PC... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple isn't a software company. It's not interested in selling you an OS and some tools for a few hundred dollars/pounds/euros. Apple is a hardware company, albeit one which also designs its own software to complete its system. It's interested in selling you a complete experience, one that marries custom-designed hardware with custom-designed software, for several hundred/thousand dollars/pounds/euros.
Selling its software only with its hardware has been very successful for Apple. It has many benefits (eg, it allows it to focus software R&D only on a handful of hardware configurations, which makes post-sales support orders of magnitude easier) and is the backbone of modern Apple.
Your idea of getting the OS out there to as many people as possible was tried by Apple in the mid 90s and failed miserably. Several third party clone manufacturers (APS Technologies, DayStar Digital, Motorola, Power Computing, Radius, and UMAX) quickly gobbled a share of the hardware market... but that share was gobbled from Apple itself, as Apple users bought the cheaper clones to run Mac OS 7.x rather than Apple's comparatively more expensive hardware. The rest of the market (mostly DOS and Windows-based PCs) barely noticed at all.
Rather than gaining it market share (and thus sales) the Mac clone experiment almost became Apple's suicide note. Sure, we can sit around and talk about the "what if..." scenarios and talk about what might have happened had Apple tried it out before Windows had become so entrenched but the simple reality was that by the time that Apple did try it out it was too little, too late for it to capture the market away from Microsoft's baby.
How bad was the cloning? Well, the first thing that Steve Jobs did when he rejoined Apple was sit down with the clone makers and try to renegotiate their licensing terms to raise Apple's per-computer revenues. The clone makers refused and Jobs effectively withdrew their licences (the next version of the MacOS was released as MacOS 8, and the clone makers existing licences only covered 7.x). Apple's hardware sales recovered, eventually, but Apple never once gained any benefit from the exercise in terms of revenues.
Apple today is all about presentation. To that end, it carefully controls every aspect of the user experience. Putting its showcase OS out there in the wild would destroy that simply because for every user that had a good experience installing OS X onto a non-Apple configuration there would be many more that would have nightmares dealing with installation on hardware that wasn't compatible, features that didn't want to work, inconsistent support, etc.
As a technically adept individual, I'd love to run Apple's OS on all my PCs. It would in many ways be a dream come true. However, for the reasons that I've outlined, that will never happen. Apple doesn't want it to happen so it won't happen, and I understand why perfectly.
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah. Cheap(R)Ass(TM) EMachines suck because they include dodgy components and often fail. The mini is not super-fast but it's one of the most reliable Macs Apple has ever made. While it won't play 3D games, a Mini with a modern 7200rpm drive, 3GB of RAM, and (optionally) a faster drop-in C2D provides a highly satisfying experience for nearly everything else. Quiet, tiny, and (somewhat) cheap. For better disk performance many people have modified mini-specific 3.5" disk enclosures to use the mini's SATA port. No one will get a bad impression of OS X from a well-configured mini.
If a mini is not enough, though, I hear you about the giant performance gap between iMacs and drool-worthy but ridiculously expensive Mac Pros.
Re:Shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end it's more about control and the dollar. They are a hardware/solution company, and NOT a Software company. The percentage they make of OS X sales is not their cup of tea, they rely on their hardware sales.
However there are some CR@PPY PCs out there, things that make even a good distro of Linux cringe. Most notably poor components that have poor support for drivers and don't work well with generic drivers, let alone have decent Windows drivers. I've received some of these and tried resurrecting them via Ubuntu or what-not and encountered a lot of problems to the point that I gave up.
Unfortuantely, these are the PCs Joe Sixpack buys at discount: desktop+monitor+inkjet for $150 after rebates. These are the ones that manage to bring down XP and Vista a couple of times per week. And these are the ones Apple wants no part in.
If they open it up, then every Joe Sixpack out there will give it a go to try on their junk-Machine-5000 to see what all of the fuss is about. When it starts dying 10x more than Windows, they start yelling loudly that OS X runs horrible and has poor support, neglecting to add the fact that Windows runs almost as poorly on those rigs.
Then Apple's image for quality products go down the drain. So, might as well do what they can to keep it off everything they can't control.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with Apple's product line-up is that they have no inexpensive desktop product that makes sense for the "enthusiast" class of PC buyer, the person who wants a computer they can tinker with and expand incrementally. Selling something that those people would buy wouldn't shrink sales because they're not buying anything from Apple right now. In fact, you can make a case that it would grow sales. As someone who fits that category, I can tell you that one of the reasons I don't own a Macbook is because Apple has no desktop solution I'm interested in, which prevents me from making a complete conversion to running OS X. I got one of the hacked Tiger builds running on my assembled from parts PC desktop, but the fact that Apple is downright antagonistic toward such hacks means I don't trust that system to run anything. Were they just to shift their position toward neutral, where I knew that they wouldn't ever actively try to lock me out of running on my generic hardware, that would be enough to get me to buy Leopard for that PC and to strongly consider a Macbook for my new portable as well.
Re:Shame... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hogwash. Their OS is internally quite device-independent. As long as your drivers aren't buggy, you're not going to have stability problems. Take a look at Linux or any of the BSDs some time, and you'll see how incredibly common and normal it is, for wide driver availability to not have any stability side-effects. Just get good hardware that has been around for a while so that someone else has gone through the bleeding-edge pains.
I used to run MacOS 7.5.5 on an Amiga (very different hardware than any Mac) under an emulator, which was essentially a driver-driver (i.e. MacOS drivers that called Amiga drivers). No stability problems.
That company and its products are irrelevant.Re:Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Actively supporting third-party hardware
2. Being indifferent to third-party hardware
3. Actively interfering with attempts to run on third-party hardware
Please excuse my ignorance in these matters, because I genuinely don't know. Is Apple doing #2, or #3? It's plausible that, as people claim, #1 interferes with Apple's desire to guarantee quality. But #2 and #3 should be essentially equivalent in terms of the quality that Apple can deliver for its customers, and hobbyists would be a lot happier with #2.
Re:minis are $ because they're small (Score:3, Insightful)
He did buy the license for the OS. He's not using the OS under the terms and conditions that Apple choose to apply to their product, but those terms may or may not be legally binding depending or where the original poster resides.
Re:Shame... (Score:2, Insightful)
what was done to make this hack? (Score:1, Insightful)
A brief look at the osx86 scene suggests that it comprises about half a dozen excellent but secretive hackers and a torrent of relatively clueless followers; there are no individuals interested in studying what's going on with the aim of encouraging auditing/improvement. Add this to the fact that osx86forums appeared to have been created with the aim of being consumed for profit and turned into the InsanelyMac forums, and I feel very uneasy with lack of answers as to who the interested/involved parties are.
Why? I'll tell you why... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I own a Mac - and I'd be happy if the screen was just uniform in brightness and the keyboard was a smidgen larger.
Perhaps that's why people want a hackintosh?
Re:Apple should be THRILLED (Score:3, Insightful)
Every non-Apple hardware box that a user uses instead of Apple hardware box is much more money out of their pocket than the cost of the OS. Plus, last I was aware, there was no DRM, serial numbers, or other such things besides a simple agreement to prevent installing a single boxed copy of the Mac OS on as many computers as you want. Chances are that the people who would hack and install on cheap hardware would also be willing to not pay past the first copy. As a Mac hardware user, I'd rather not have to deal with any extra constraints Apple would have to put on their software even if that plan would work.
Re:Apple should be THRILLED (Score:4, Insightful)
I know people who bought Apple hardware specifically because they wanted the OS X experience and couldn't do it on their existing hardware. For the paltry number of sales Apple would gain in additional OS sales, they would lose many of these customers. And as you said, Apple makes more money on hardware.
The OS X "experience" is also more closely tied to Apple hardware than you might imagine. For example, iChat allows you to video chat with just about anyone with a Mac, why? Because any relatively recent Mac has a webcam built-in, across the entire line from low to high end. This is the kind of no-brainer thinking that Apple users have grown to love - the fact that they don't have to worry about what kind of hardware is under the hood, nor do they have to worry about what hardware the OTHER end has under their hood.
Re:Shame... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple tried allowing Mac clones once, before the resurrection of his Steveness.
The result was a significant loss in Apple hardware sales, and that loss was not even close to made up in OS licensing.
Apple is a hardware company. Sales of Leopard help defray the cost of the OS development that Apple has to undertake anyway in order to sell its hardware.
If Apple were to sell Mac OS X for generic hardware, it would cannibalise hardware sales to the point where the OS sales would have to pay for OS development. Thus Apple would become a software company and be in direct competition with Microsoft. Microsoft can amortise the development of Windows over hundreds of millions of copies sold. Apple would have to amortise Mac OS X development over millions of copies. Would you buy Mac OS X instead of MS Windows if it cost ten times as much? Who would?
Re:If apple had a mid-range head less desktop then (Score:5, Insightful)
Business plan:
Re:Shame... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one but geeks would read the fine print. Joe Sixpack would still try to install on his $150 Wal-Mart PC, run into problems, call Apple, and complain loudly how much Apple sucked when they told him to read the disclaimer.
I agree that hardware sales are the main motivation for Apple not to support non-Apple hardware, but OS X's very good reputation (which helps lead to those hardware sales) would be severely affected if it were allowed to run, whether supported or not, on unstable junk hardware.
A better approach would be for Apple to allow one or two known high-quality boutique PC makers to ship OS X with their systems. At least that way the systems would be as stable as Macs out of the box. (Furthermore, Apple could carefully restrict the types of systems sold, ensuring that the third-party makers only sold in segments where Apple doesn't try to compete.)
Re:Quality = Branding (Score:3, Insightful)
To believe this post, you have to believe in alchemy. Cheap Samsung memory suddenly becomes something quite other when installed in a case with the Apple label on it. A cheap disk drive is transmuted into pure gold. What happens to the core2 is beyond me.
Fact: Apple is using the same mid range components the white box people are using, put together in a fancy case, sold at premium. They are not using better components.
Re:Apple should be THRILLED (Score:5, Insightful)
I know I'll be ripped to shreds for saying this, but my guess is that well over 90% of those that would hack a PC to run OS X would be more likely to get OS X via bittorrent or usenet or whatever rather than thru legal "sales".
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
Regardless, Microsoft dropping Office from the Mac would be a major blow for two reasons:
First, Apple is one again just starting to make headway into the business world. Losing Office, and especially Entourage (Outlook for Mac), would stop any movement in that direction dead in its tracks.
Second, one of the major reasons that Apple is had as much success in the home market has been, once again, Office. Hang around an Apple store, and inevitably the first or second question a new customer asks is "Does it run Office?"
A "no" answer to that question would probably kill a third of those sales.
Hardware Control = Freedom to Innovate (Score:4, Insightful)
If Apple were to become a mainly software company, not only would they be faced with supporting far more models, they'd loose their ability to ensure that new computers contain the hardware they want and would instead have to dictate the software to the hardware the users have chosen. Look at Vista. Faced with the choice of buying new hardware that supports Vista well or sticking with XP, many people choose XP.
To be successful as a purely software company, Apple would have to compete directly with Microsoft and shift their focus to high volume, low margin. This is absolutely contrary to everything that Jobs is interested in. He would much rather have a successful minority company with a disproportionate impact on the market as a whole than a leading manufacturer of a commodity.
Re:Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
I can build a dual socket quad-core w/ 1GB ram and a 250GB hd for a lot less than "$3747". Oh wait, I already have.
I also have a Dual docket quad core Xeon Mac Pro (I use Logic Pro). It is NOT "basically silent". I had to buy/build a special cabinet for both machines to isolate my studio from the noise. So, why shouldn't I be able to run OSX on either machine?
Re:Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
they are one of the few companies on the planet that dont assume their customers are crooks...
See "Apple no longer accepts cash for iPhone"
What I'd really like (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm interested in developing OSX software, and I already own vmware (every developer should), but I don't want to shell out for apple hardware. I've paid for apple hardware in the past, and it tends to be over priced, and there isn't much selection (their current line up of laptops in particular kind of suck compared to my thinkpad x61).
Currently I run linux through vmware on top of vista, which I've found to be superior to dual booting in terms of usability. It lets me avoid linux driver and configuration issues (vmware tends to be better supported than native hardware), play windows games natively, waste less harddrive space on a statically sized partition, manage various linux distros more easily, manage complicated development environments and software configurations more easily (since I can easily make copies of the OS images at any point in development and return to the old version later), etc.
If I could run OSX on vmware (in a supported manner) I could develop OSX guis for the various unix software I write (I've used the cocoa libraries and the interface builder in the past, and they are better than anything in the linux world). This would allow me to give support to the mac platform as a developer in a convenient way. However, at the same time virtualization is off the beaten path, and so it avoids taking a chunk out of apple's bottom line in mac sales.