Can Mac OSX run on I386 hardware?

[Nothinman]

Either it's that open, or someone is signing NDAs again...

Hmph, guess I spoke too soon. It doesn't look like any of the BSDs support the G5, I would have thought one of them would have by now. By quickly looking at the Linux source it appears that a lot of the PPC64 and G5 support was done by IBM employees, I doubt they had to sign any extra NDAs to do that.

OS X works well because it runs on almost standard hardware. Throw and unlimited combination of hardware at it and it will be as unstable as Windows.

It's not the hardware combinations that are a big problem, it's the hardware companies. Stupid companies like Creative who make sound cards that won't share IRQs properly and companies like ATI that couldn't write decent drivers to save their company. Linux runs on more hardware combinations than Windows and has less problems, go figure.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Either it's that open, or someone is signing NDAs again...

Hmph, guess I spoke too soon. It doesn't look like any of the BSDs support the G5, I would have thought one of them would have by now. By quickly looking at the Linux source it appears that a lot of the PPC64 and G5 support was done by IBM employees, I doubt they had to sign any extra NDAs to do that.

Got themselves a ringer.

 

[jhu]

Originally posted by: her209

Originally posted by: notfred

Originally posted by: her209
That's my point. How many people own a $2999 machine?

Enough that Apple is a billion dollar comapny that's been around for 25 years and doesn't show any signs of failing anytime soon.

But apparently that business model is flawed and they would do better if they stopped selling computers, right?

Billion dollar company they may be, but they've certainly been in and out of the red in those last 25 years.

They're actually a $12 billion company (or $6 billion if you go by sales) with revenues and profits increasing for the past 3 years at least.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: jhu

Originally posted by: her209

Originally posted by: notfred

Originally posted by: her209
That's my point. How many people own a $2999 machine?

Enough that Apple is a billion dollar comapny that's been around for 25 years and doesn't show any signs of failing anytime soon.

But apparently that business model is flawed and they would do better if they stopped selling computers, right?

Billion dollar company they may be, but they've certainly been in and out of the red in those last 25 years.

They're actually a $12 billion company (or $6 billion if you go by sales) with revenues and profits increasing for the past 3 years at least.

And no debt, too. They paid it off completely a few months ago.

 

[jhu]

in fact, apple's larger than amd in both market cap and sales

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: jhu
in fact, apple's larger than amd in both market cap and sales

Depends who you talk to and how you measure. Certianly in terms of $ Apple's sales are more impressive. Some places say that Linux has just recently surpassed or will surpass Apple soon, other places say different.

There isn't any orginization that is able to make definate answers, nobody keeps track of the numbers or at least is ABLE to keep track of the numbers.

It also depends on what market your exactly talking about, too.

 

[jhu]

well, financially speaking of course. just look at their respective sec filings.

 

[batmanuel]

Actually for a while Apple was running a little secret project in house called Project Marklar that ported the OS X code over to x86 based hardware. I think it was more of a proof of concept kinda thing, to keep their processor options open a few years ago when they were unsure if IBM could deliver on the G5 technology and the G4 was falling further and further behind the Athlons and Pentiums in terms of clock speed. Now that the G5 is out, and the P4 has hit a clock speed wall that is letting the G5 processors catch up in MHz, I think there is less of a need for an option like Marklar.

They even ported the old Classic Mac OS onto Intel hardware back around 1994 (Project Star Trek), when they were thinking of possibly getting out of the hardware manufacturing business. They could have had it ready to ship sometime in the spring/summer of 1995, which would have stolen a LOT of Win95's thunder and possibly have wooed enough of the folks upgrading from DOS over to the Apple side to have kept the Windows monopoly from coming about, but alas Mr. Gassee nixed the idea because he thought hardware sales were more important. (Gassee, after he left Apple, ironically put out BeOS).

 

[drag]

Apple could if they wanted to make OS X run on x86.

Actually I doubt it would be very hard. Darwin already runs on x86 and many apps that you use in Apple can run on x86 already.

The compiler that they use is GCC, and that was originally designed to work on x86.


However if you don't have access to the source code like Apple does, then you don't have a ghost of a chance to make OS X run on x86.

There are just fundamental differences between the machine/assembly code that is used for x86 vs PowerPC.

Binaries just won't ever work, except thru emulation software.

That's just one of the things that suck about closed source software. You face a similar situation with Windows on PowerPC. It's the nature of the beast.

It's about the money. All commercial OSes, including windows in someways, are designed to run on specific hardware (generic x86 is still pretty specific depending on how you look at it.). So the vast majority of OSes are sold bundled with the hardware. Even Windows is like that in 9 times out of 10 (with Dells and HP and OEM type liscences).

OSes are incredabily complex and a pain to design, write and support. Look at other software that is close to their complexity. Photoshop/3Dmax/Quake Express are all incredably complex and they are sold for 400-2000 dollars depending on how you buy them. OSes are much more complex then that.

I think that OS X could be sold seperately but Apple would have to charge something like 500-700 dollars per copy in order to make some money off of it. They just don't have the same scale of sales that MS enjoys.

Apple could if they wanted to, but they don't, so OS X won't run on x86.