When is Mac OS X coming out for "normal" pc's?

[KevinF]

Inspired by another thread, I set up a Mac emulator to play one of favorite games (Escape Velocity). I'm just amazed out how incredible a version of the Mac OS (7.5.3) that predates Windows 95 is. It's just slick! There are just little things I love. For instance, you can set up a list view with full size icons. The folders in the list view have triangles, and can be expanded, showing their contents. It's just the little things like that I love about the OS.

Now, I love the OS, but the hardware sucks. Imacs suck. $3000 500 megahertz machines suck.

But, I know I remember reading about Apple's eventual plans to bring OS X to PC's. Does anyone have an estimated date, or some heresay?

Oh well, I can't wait until the day when I can dual-boot OS X and XP. It'll happen...

PS: PM if you want info on emulating an older Mac.

 

[Ameesh]

you like eye candy, thats only part of the os, what about premptive multi tasking, or kernel inturppts or Securtiy protected file systems. i think your gonna get flammed for touting features like "the triangle that you can push to make it show stuff"

tannenbum writes a good book on OS's

 

[Martin]

<< It'll happen... >>


as soon as hell freezes over, while pigs start flying.

Sorry, but it ain't comming to the PC ever. Darwin can be ported, but OS X will not be.

 

[Ameesh]

OSX is just Free BSD apple gave up writing their own OS a while ago now they just write the eye candy and lay it over the exsisting OS

 

[GreenGhost]

Talk about bad timing:

Back in 1989 Steve Jobs created the NeXT and the NeXTStep OS, which was very the most advanced OS of its time, and maybe still is today. It was Unix-based, with a good interface based on solid object-oriented concepts, very, very easy to program and develop for.
A couple of months ago, I see a picture of the new Mac OS X interface: it's basically identical to the 1989's NeXT. That was really something that came ahead of its time. What's incredible is the fact that it was more than TEN years ahead. This shows how pitiful the software industry really is (regarding OS development), stalled by a non-demanding market. It's funny to see younger people impressed with old, forgotten stuff, and sad to see how good things get lost in time, and must be rediscovered. Computer renaissance.

What was most amazing, the thing was so much easier to use than any OS today, and the power of Unix was always underneath.
Obviously, the general PC buying population does not even know that these things existed. Although expensive for a home PC, a price tag of $15,000 was not outrageous. The NeXT cube was among the first workstations to come with sound and video support. It came with 17" monochrome screens (yep, no color). At that time, color was really a luxury. Like any Apple, you had to buy everything from them. After the initial jaw-dropping excitement, the thing got slow and expensive, and other companies, although never catching up, stole the market with the introduction of what became popularly known as 'workstations' (Suns 5/10, SGIs Indigos/Indys, and HPs 712/735), which had commonly 8-bit color (yes, eight).

Many people who were exposed to the NeXT, which then start coming in full color, with 21" monitors, continued to use the OS in more powerful and less expensive machines. The HP 712/60 was a popular choice. Keep in mind that at that time, Window 3.1 was still considered a toy in any professional/scientific environment. Aging software later killed the thing, and when win95 came out, everybody wanted Microsoft Office.

So, that's it. Twelve years later, we want the same features that were initially ignored, and later became inaccessible due to short-sighted consumers, and basically greed and poor marketing from the part of developers. PC World magazine put the NeXT in the top ten jokes of the PC industry, showing how misinformed and prejudiced some of those guys really are.

 

[Elledan]

A most impressive post, GreenGhost Ever considered writing a book on this subject?

 

[n0cmonkey]

<< OSX is just Free BSD apple gave up writing their own OS a while ago now they just write the eye candy and lay it over the exsisting OS >>



Uhmmm.... Wrong. It is Darwin, which is a MACH based kernel, unlike FreeBSD. They took the code, integrated plenty of FreeBSD thingies and then packaged it as Darwin.



<< well, I can't wait until the day when I can dual-boot OS X and XP. It'll happen... >>



Fortunately, it will only happen when hell freezes over. x86 architecture (and any OS that caters to only that architecture (and I can only think of one major one right off the top of my head) is outdated and a total POS.

 

[notfred]

Mac hrdware is actually quite nice. Hell, the G4's come with three choices of video card - GeForce2, GeForce3, or radeon.

The MacOS (pre-X) sucks ass though.

And OS X will never be released on X86.

 

[n0cmonkey]

If you really want to have the OS X on x86 feel, find Darwin, and do a search for it on /. There is a WM for XF86 that will look almost exactly like OS X, but it will never be the same

/me hugs his iBook!

 

[GTaudiophile]

OS X.1 is the best OS I've seen, even compared to WinXP. Kudos to Apple.