Apple and x86?

[SnowBoarder9455]

I'm pretty certain you can run any of the Apple OS's on the standard x86 hardware right?

(Why would you want to?)

but, do you think Apple will ever start making their OS's work with x86?

 

[aswedc]

Only up to Mac OS 8 with an emulator, even then you can only run 68k apps which excludes almost everything recent. Apple will definately not be switching to x86 soon with the introduction of the G5 processor (IBM 970 I think) coming up in a week or two. However, it is widely rumored that Apple maintains a fully functional x86 version of OS X in parallel to the PowerPC version as a backup plan.

 

[Soybomb]

(Why would you want to?)

but, do you think Apple will ever start making their OS's work with x86?

Perhaps you haven't tried osx, its quite spiffy. And no don't count on seeing osx on x86 hardware anytime soon, thats a large part of their leverage to get you to buy their hardware.

 

[drag]

Yep, Apple is a hardware manufacturer/reseller. They sell apple computers, if they sell cheap x86 hardware they will just end up being another Dell or HP, then they won't make enough money to develope the nice OS's that most apple users enjoy. if they sold OS X outright to run off of x86 I think it would cost 400-500 dollars at least to make a profit and then that would put them at a even larger disadvantage to MS, but that's just pure speculation.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

I'm pretty certain you can run any of the Apple OS's on the standard x86 hardware right?

No.

but, do you think Apple will ever start making their OS's work with x86?

Again..No

(Why would you want to?)

Haven't used Mac OSX much have we?

P.S. This post is being brought to you via OSX right now.

 

[DeadMilkman]

Off course if you wanna run Darwin (www.Darwin.org)(Darwin the the base of OSX with out all of Apple's own stuff like its frameworks or GUI) THAT's x86 compatible... and AFAIK that's the only x86 compatible Operating System for anything Apple's done.

Do not count on OS X ever running on x86 except as a last ditch to save the company because no one else can make processors sorta thing. (They do keep an interal build of OSX on x86 but then again they did this with MacOS 8 as well with no intention of practically releasing it)

 

[iam29a]

{FLAME-SUIT=ON}

Yeah, don't buy a PC, it contains PCI, AGP, SDRAM, IDE, ATAPI, and, and ...

Apple == Hypocrite

And when they had competition up until c.1997 (September) that stirred business via Apple-clones, Steve Jobs pulled a Bill Gates and crushed the competition. Where was the DOJ, then?

The quickest way to steal Microsoft's customers is to utilize the pre-existing hardware environment out there and get Apple software (and their brand name) into more homes by subversion on the x86 platform.

Either Apple is making a considerable amount of profit on the hardware (>20%) or they are still running Jobless (ahem, clueless) by not broadening their business in their software division. Heck, Apple could go a long way in capturing from of the Linux community by porting OSX onto the x86 platform. Too bad Apple isn't in it for the money, and obviously neither are their investors (Microsoft included).
{/FLAME-SUIT}

BTW, I'm living proof of my willingness to pay-for and try OSX on my pre-existing hardware, just like I do with Microsoft and Linux.

 

[mosco]

Also posting this from mac os X on my powermac MDD next to my Athlon XP 2500...

Until recently i wanted to see apple move to x86 hardware but with all this talk off the PPC 970 from IBM i chnaged my mine. i just really hope it will bring some competition back. Even if you don't like Apple, i think we can agree that more competition is a good thing.

 

[iam29a]

Sorry, I see Linux as being more of a competitor to Microsoft, a software company, than Apple could ever be to the unwashed (and some washed) masses. Let's face it, when Dell can sell Joe 6-Pack a Windows box with monitor for $600 then Apple is has lost that market. When it comes to true geeks (those that build computers, tweak computers, and especially overclock computers) and IT staff, Apple's presence in every company I've worked for is either on the x86 platform of something from SUN.

Now, I am not saying that there is nothing of value in Apple, or its products. I simply stating that Apple could make long strides in capturing customers by being a 'software' company as well as a hardware company. Apple cannot beat Microsoft or Dell, let alone Microsoft AND Dell. And, this is just an example that Apple needs to recognize.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

iam29a, you just sound bitter about something. Apple is doing fine how they are, they don't need to switch to x86, you're acting like you know more about their business than them and I don't see that being the case.

 

[Nothinman]

Apple switching to x86 would be suicide, but then again they're not exactly selling a ton of their current hardware.

 

[iam29a]

Originally posted by: BingBongWongFooey: iam29a, you just sound bitter about something. Apple is doing fine how they are, they don't need to switch to x86, you're acting like you know more about their business than them and I don't see that being the case.

Not bitter, just disappointed. I see so much more potential than Steve Jobs sees. But, I can recognize his handicaps as plainly as I recognize my own (different handicaps). Apple needs to segregate the hardware and software businesses on a strategic aspect. There are people that would consider using OSX but only on the x86 platform--I know, because I'm living proof as one of those people.

Instead, people like myself stick to what is available for the x86 platform we love so much. I like building my on computers, having the abaility to swap every single component at will, and not be tied to something that someone else thinks I should have. It makes no sense to treat your customers like your children if you are a harsh parent--and Jobs would not make a good parent, hehe.

BTW, you can belittle my comments as much as you want, but I am a prime example of a potential customer Steve Jobs would prefer not to have, and I'd go even further to say Apple is too scared to have people like myself as customers. And if doing 'fine' was all that mattered then I know of someone selling their Hot Dog cart in NYC where Jobs could also do 'fine'.

 

[iam29a]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Apple switching to x86 would be suicide, but then again they're not exactly selling a ton of their current hardware.

Who said anything about switching? I proposed to 'add' the x86 platform in their coded releases. The wealth of 3rd party applications would be tremendous as those other s/w manufacturers can play ball with someone else other than Microsoft and on a hardware platform they are already familiar with.

 

[drag]

Apple is a hardware manufacturer/redistributer. They sell Apple computers, that's how they make their money... If they sold their OS to work on x86, they would have to compete head to head with the likes of Dell and HP to make money ('cause they make money on the hardware, they don't from OS X). HP/Dell don't have to deal with the overhead of making their own OS.

So basicly if they sold OS X as a seperate entity that can be run on different platforms, it will probably cost quite a bit more then Windows... Something on the order of 500-1000 dollars. MS can afford to sell there OS at such a lowly price because it is a cut-rate product and they have the economy of numbers on their side. Apple just can't hope to compete head to head in that fasion, they woud get eaten.

Anyways if you want to there is realy know reason why you can't customize a Apple, If you were to score a Power PC you can use regular PC componates in it. Like a video card/memory/and drives and such. Of course it won't be nearly as easy or cheap to do this as it is on a x86, but sometimes it's nice to be different.

Personally I like Apples, but right now I think linux/x86 is were "its" at. If I was to recommend a computer to someone who isn't as computer-literate, or somebody who just wants a computer to use with out a whole bunch of hassle I'd tell them that Apple is more then worth the extra price.

Hopefully Apple will team up with IBM's power PC (haha remember the freaky lady with the sledge-hammer in those apple commercials?) line of proccessors and get some nice powerfull ones and get out of the current train-wreck that is poor old motorola...

 

[GL]

Apple will never move to x86. As has been mentioned, they're a hardware company. Steve Jobs is a hardware guy. They only develop software so that it sells their hardware. If they released OS X for x86, nobody would buy their hardware. If they released a special x86 platform a bit different than normal x86 so you still had to buy their computers, a patch would be available on the Internet within a few hours allowing one to install on a standard x86 box (hint: all you'd need to do is replace the underlying Darwin base of the "protected" x86 version of OS X with the open source x86 Darwin base that Apple releases). As a hardware company, Apple is doing quite well. They make a boat-load of real profit off their hardware sales. I heard a statistic that they make in the ballpark of US$350 in profit on average per computer. Dell, HP and Gateway are all involved in a race to the bottom seeing who can make less profit per machine in order to gain marketshare. They would all love to make that much per machine. In fact, there are some machines where Dell essentially makes no profit (instead they rely on trying to sell you warranties and other services/add-ons to make their profit). Don't hold your breath for an Apple based on x86. They just don't have a compelling reason to do that. Sure, Motorola has let them down these past couple of years, but they're ready to join the 21st century with the PPC 970.

 

[GL]

Originally posted by: iam29a

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Apple switching to x86 would be suicide, but then again they're not exactly selling a ton of their current hardware.

Who said anything about switching? I proposed to 'add' the x86 platform in their coded releases. The wealth of 3rd party applications would be tremendous as those other s/w manufacturers can play ball with someone else other than Microsoft and on a hardware platform they are already familiar with.

The vast majority of applications aren't tied to a specific hardware platform, but rather a software platform. These days, it's rare for one to need to program "to the hardware" so to speak. Apple's software platform is in a different league than Microsoft's. If Apple moved to OS X to x86, the developers would still have to start from scratch anyways, in order to develop Apple software. It wouldn't be a simple recompile of their Windows software. Not even close. As a developer, I've recently fallen in love with OS X. Programming for it is just beautiful. But it is much different than programming for Windows. There's a whole slew of philosophically fundamental differences.

 

[Nothinman]

I proposed to 'add' the x86 platform in their coded releases.

Then who would buy a PPC box?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I proposed to 'add' the x86 platform in their coded releases.

Then who would buy a PPC box?

Not me. I would do what all the other close minded, biased little pricks are doing and buy a Dell (because that pothead on their commercials is |<-R4D d00d), hack it, and put OS X on there (illegally downloaded of course).

x86 has 3 things going for it:
1. It's cheap.
2. It has more processor power than the whole of ATOT has had dates.
3. It is what most ignorant children, non-tech folks, and CEOs think of when they hear the word computer.

Just to inform you all, the ones that may not know anyhow, that there are things besides x86 out there.
Sun makes some nifty little machines. I highly recommend their sunfire line. And as far as longevity goes, I still have a SparcStation 10 in working, and usable condition.
HP makes their own processor! Well, they won't be in the near future because of the Itanic, but they had the cajones to make their own platform at one time. That's the high end stuff by the way, I think you can find the smaller stuff on your own. If not, PM me.
HP also makes one of the neatest platforms out there. The link looks funky, but hopefully it brings you to the right place. Before the Pentium 4, before the Athlon, before even the P!!!, there was the Alpha. Once considered one of the best processors for crunching those numbers we know everyone loves to crunch (because Distributed Computing projects are geeky, and geeky is well, not cool, but good enough for some of us). But because of cheap computers and short sighted freaks, and definitely a few problems on the home front, the Alpha has plummeted to an EOL product at best. Thanks, we can continue with close to no innovation as long as you can raise the mhz rating 50 more points by this time next year. And in case you did not know, the EV6 bus the current Athlons enjoy was blatantly licensed from DEC/Compaq/CompaHP/Intel or whoever happened to own the Alpha and its parts at the time. The EV78(?) bus current (or new?) Alphas enjoy is supposed to be pretty kick ass, much to the chagrin of HPompaq.
SGI is another one of those "We make computers too!" companies. I know what you all are thinking, Pixar uses Mac OS X! But SGI made some solid and sexy machines.

Now, what do these higher end machines, and the Mac we have come to know and either hate or love have in common? Yes that's right! They don't play games very well. So when Johnny is at home and he can either study his English Grammar homework or play the latest game (First Person Shooter with no originality, shady graphics, non-existant plot, scantily clad women you must either save or shoot with big guns because you are a manly man and you think backhair is sexy 7!), why would he want to do something other than flip burgers for the rest of his miserable life? Play the game!

Wait, that's not where I wanted to go with this. My point was that these are not just hardware platforms. They are the entire platform. Solaris is free (beer) if you have a small enough machine (and how many of us have 8+ processor Sun machines lying around the house? Atleast, I think its 8+...). HP-UX was designed *around* PA-RISC. IRIX is a champ on SGI's MIPS machines. Tru64 (is that the current name?) takes advantage of quite a bit of the fun parts of the Alpha platform. And Apple's OS X comes with modern Apple Macintoshes. To put it simply, you aren't buying a bunch of parts and throwing them together. You are getting a piece of engineering art, put together and tested laboriously by men and women in bunny suits, while nerdy guys sit in the next room and hack code out all day (except at Apple, they're probably almost normal over there...). But instead of platforms where things have been worked out, tested, and heavily thought out, and not just from the hardware stand point, or just the software standpoint, but from the user's standpoint.

You don't think Steve Jobs is doing a good job at Apple? Buy enough stock to get another moron in there. Maybe we can have more Apple clones so someone can finish the job of burying Apple. Jobs only resurrected the hurting company from the dead (and a little help from Microsoft). He doesn't know squat.

 

[Nothinman]

I would do what all the other close minded, biased little pricks are doing and buy a Dell

Sorry but as much as I like to buy alternative architecture PCs to put Linux on, most of them aren't worth the money in terms of performance these days. It's not closed mindedness but just the fact that you can get an x86 PC with 10x the performance for 1/3 the price.

Solaris is free (beer) if you have a small enough machine (and how many of us have 8+ processor Sun machines lying around the house? Atleast, I think its 8+...)

I thought they changed it to 2+ processors, so you need a UP machine to use it legally free.

To put it simply, you aren't buying a bunch of parts and throwing them together. You are getting a piece of engineering art, put together and tested laboriously by men and women in bunny suits,

But in reality what's that get you other than a higher price? Any benefit that's supposedly had is unimportant to 'normal' people, they want cheap and fast no matter how fragile it is.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I would do what all the other close minded, biased little pricks are doing and buy a Dell

Sorry but as much as I like to buy alternative architecture PCs to put Linux on, most of them aren't worth the money in terms of performance these days. It's not closed mindedness but just the fact that you can get an x86 PC with 10x the performance for 1/3 the price.

Performance how? The processor and video is better. Disk access is probably slower. It might not live as long.

Solaris is free (beer) if you have a small enough machine (and how many of us have 8+ processor Sun machines lying around the house? Atleast, I think its 8+...)

I thought they changed it to 2+ processors, so you need a UP machine to use it legally free.

Its possible. I haven't checked recently. My 8+ processor machines are all taken care of.

To put it simply, you aren't buying a bunch of parts and throwing them together. You are getting a piece of engineering art, put together and tested laboriously by men and women in bunny suits,

But in reality what's that get you other than a higher price? Any benefit that's supposedly had is unimportant to 'normal' people, they want cheap and fast no matter how fragile it is.

Normal people don't need fast either. The only thing they want is for it to do what they need to do, and in many cases the Mac will be the better machine for the task, but not because of speed. The high mhz makes them think they have something they don't.

I should have known you would post a response to mine. I keep forgetting you like the "pull parts from a bunch of unrelated things and try to make something cohesive out of it" method.

 

[Nothinman]

Performance how? The processor and video is better. Disk access is probably slower.

And for things like Word, Quicken and Q3 processor and video are the most important parts.

Normal people don't need fast either. The only thing they want is for it to do what they need to do, and in many cases the Mac will be the better machine for the task, but not because of speed. The high mhz makes them think they have something they don't.

IME 'normal people' either have kids or are kids, and fast is a necessity for games. And with more people ripping things to mp3, ogg, wma, divx, etc speed can be a big factor especially for divx encoding.

I keep forgetting you like the "pull parts from a bunch of unrelated things and try to make something cohesive out of it" method.

Sorry but you posted an essay (ala drag style) and I didn't feel a need to reply to every sentence.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Performance how? The processor and video is better. Disk access is probably slower.

And for things like Word, Quicken and Q3 processor and video are the most important parts.

Normal people don't need fast either. The only thing they want is for it to do what they need to do, and in many cases the Mac will be the better machine for the task, but not because of speed. The high mhz makes them think they have something they don't.

IME 'normal people' either have kids or are kids, and fast is a necessity for games. And with more people ripping things to mp3, ogg, wma, divx, etc speed can be a big factor especially for divx encoding.

I keep forgetting you like the "pull parts from a bunch of unrelated things and try to make something cohesive out of it" method.

Sorry but you posted an essay (ala drag style) and I didn't feel a need to reply to every sentence.

I wasn't referring to that. I was referring to the way x86 machines are a bunch of parts thrown together by someone, much the same way Linux is a bunch of programs thrown together by a group and called a distro.

 

[Nothinman]

I wasn't referring to that. I was referring to the way x86 machines are a bunch of parts thrown together by someone, much the same way Linux is a bunch of programs thrown together by a group and called a distro.

Sure, but there are pros and cons to both situations. Frankly I like the modularity it provides. I have a PC that started out as a dual Celeron 433 ~256M memory and an IDE drive or two that I've slowly upgraded to dual 1.2Ghz Athlons with 4 SCSI160 drives and 1.2G memory, piece by piece because there's no strange dependency or restrictions. I like the fact that when I decide to upgrade to dual Opterons I can just repace my motherboard and use all the rest of my hardware (well, maybe not the memory), I like the fact that Debian lets me choose between like 7 MTAs and when I install one it removes the old one and does anything necessary to make the change transparent to the rest of the system.

Now a days most PCs are all 'standard' parts with just a different motherboard and CPU, even the Sun Blade workstations use IDE drives. Hell a friend of mine bought a G4 a while back and the sh!tty IDE drive in it died in like a week, so much for Apple hardware QA.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I wasn't referring to that. I was referring to the way x86 machines are a bunch of parts thrown together by someone, much the same way Linux is a bunch of programs thrown together by a group and called a distro.

Sure, but there are pros and cons to both situations. Frankly I like the modularity it provides. I have a PC that started out as a dual Celeron 433 ~256M memory and an IDE drive or two that I've slowly upgraded to dual 1.2Ghz Athlons with 4 SCSI160 drives and 1.2G memory, piece by piece because there's no strange dependency or restrictions. I like the fact that when I decide to upgrade to dual Opterons I can just repace my motherboard and use all the rest of my hardware (well, maybe not the memory), I like the fact that Debian lets me choose between like 7 MTAs and when I install one it removes the old one and does anything necessary to make the change transparent to the rest of the system.

Now a days most PCs are all 'standard' parts with just a different motherboard and CPU, even the Sun Blade workstations use IDE drives. Hell a friend of mine bought a G4 a while back and the sh!tty IDE drive in it died in like a week, so much for Apple hardware QA.

You expect 100% working condition on 100% of the systems? Not Dell, nor Sun, Nor HP can do that, let alone Apple.

 

[Nothinman]

You expect 100% working condition on 100% of the systems? Not Dell, nor Sun, Nor HP can do that, let alone Apple.

Of course not, but what are you paying extra for if there's no burn-in at Apple? All it seems you get extra with an Apple PC is OS X, a PPC processor and a fancy case. I just don't think the price they charge is justified.