OSx86: Are You Serious?

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by MrNivit1

This is a bit of a paradigm shift here; where it does not matter what hardware you run, you will still be able to run OS X on it.

Well, NeXT Computer shut down it's hardware division on February 10, 1993 ("Black Tuesday") and continued to support NeXT hardware until 2001* (when Apple closed down Apple Enterprise, the OPENSTEP area of Apple).

So I would think that Apple will continue to make Mac OS X for PowerPC system for many years to come.

Further, NEXTSTEP 3.3 and OPENSTEP 4.x ran on Motorola 68k processors (in NeXT hardware), Intel (x86) processors in PC Compatibles, SPARC (microSPARC II, SuperSPARC II and SuperSPARC) processors in Sun hardware, and HP's PA-RISC workstations.

As Mac OS X is based on the same foundations, it could (conceivably) run on as many platforms if Apple wanted. So they are in no way stuck with Intel any more than they were stuck with IBM or Freescale.



* Note: Black Tuesday was before the release of NEXTSTEP 3.0 as I recall and OPENSTEP 4.2 (released by Apple in early 1997) still ran on NeXT hardware... some four years after the last NeXT system was made.

[TommyWillB]

Originally Posted by RacerX

...The first Darwin based operating system by Apple was Mac OS X Developer Preview. You can take a look at it here and what you'll find is that it is basically Mac OS X Server 1.x ...

The one thing that I still miss is the OS 9 style Apple Menu that you can add hard drive and folder alises in.

I'm using Fruit Menus to get that back, but it's sort of anoying to see that they actually built that under DR1 and Rhapsody (called Apple Menu Options in your screen shot) but then took it back out before the OS X release.

...I'm sure we all remember that first OS X that had the blue Apple in center of the menubar providing absolutely no functionality. I'm sure this is part of why we lost this in the transition from Rhapsody to OS X.

[TommyWillB]

I remember the first time I saw Preferences Panes in OS X. (See Settings Menu)

After dealing with OS 7-9 (+ Rhapsody) multi-windows Control Panel Applications, this single window/Application UI seemed like a throwback to the pre-OS 7 "CDEV Viewer" Control Panels. (See the General Controls on this page.)

See... Same UI except the CDev Viewer had a vertical list of "CDev's" while the Pref Pane was horizontal.

Anyone else around here old enough that they made that same connection?

[fryke]

Yep, and I did make that connection, but decided that Apple probably correctly did it to create more simplicity. Like this, they forced makers of 'control panels' to stay within certain boundaries - although Microsoft for example just didn't want to do this. Ever seen their Mouse Prefs in OS X? (Dunno if they've changed that by now, never really used them...) The preference panel only has one button that starts an external application. I guess they really only felt comfortable with Carbon from the beginning.

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by TommyWillB

The one thing that I still miss is the OS 9 style Apple Menu that you can add hard drive and folder alises in.

I miss the Apple Menu too (and use Fruit Menu on my systems).

I wrote about the Apple Menu for both Yellow Box and Blue Box here.

[symphonix]

I guess this thread really got off topic quickly. And who would really be surprised.

The real question we ended up asking ourselves with the announcement of the Intel transition was "Why?". How would the transition benefit Apple in the future.

A number of reasons were suggested. One is that IBM simply weren't delivering on promised performance and wattage targets. Another was that the "roadmap" for Intel's processors was in some way better.

DRM was cited as another possibility, though based on Apple's past history and privacy conscious customer-base its not a real likelihood. There are many many ways of using DRM technologies that don't require a processor transition and if DRM were a factor there would be easier ways to go about it.

So what else could it be? The "roadmap" that Intel and Apple must have discussed surely offerred Apple a lot of really compelling and worthwhile new possibilities ... possibilities that they have been working on for at least five years.

Intel's newly released VIIV chips are rumoured to contain many media possibilities, including TV, digital radio and cable interfaces. And rumours I've been getting from Apple sources for the past couple of years have all pointed towards an effort to produce full entertainment-centre type appliances. There have been a lot of companies working in this direction recently, but none has really succeeded. Tivo is the best known, though they've been seeing slowing sales. M$'s next XBox was supposed to come into this area as well ... though it looks like it will launch without meeting the requirements for features and price point (the low end 360 does not have a hard drive, none are likely to have a DVD writer at launch, and the price point for a 360 capable of these tasks is likely to be far too high).

So, I'd conclude that the "Entertainment Centre" is one thing on Apples roadmap that just happened to match up with what Intel was offering. But that is just the beginning of the reasons ...

[symphonix]

The other thing to consider is that Intel also makes other chipsets including networking, wireless and video ... especially when it comes to fully integrated or "on-board" solutions. These are best suited to use in very small devices. Like iPods.

For years, iPodders have been asking for a video iPod, a BlueTooth and Airport Extreme enabled iPod, an iPod with web-browsing and chat capabilities, digital camera interfaces, and so on. With current hardware, most of these are just outside the realm of possibility. Devices like this can be made, but not cheaply, and there is a cost in terms of power consumption and size.

But with access to a chip-maker who specialises in low-end, integrated versions of these chipsets, Apple will be closer to creating this dream device.

There's no doubt that Apple see Sony's PSP as a real threat to iPod sales. Not only is it audio and video capable, but Sony have gone out of their way to make it compete with the iPod. The audio controls on the headphone cable show that Sony really intended to steal back some of the market back from Apple. Apple has to counter, therefore they have to work with Intel.

[symphonix]

The final reason I'd cite for the transition is that its no good being ahead of the game in terms of processor performance, if nobody ever notices. The megahertz myth is a real factor that stop uninformed potential customers from buying Macs. They check out an iMac G5 2.0 ghz, then head down to ma-and-pop computers where he convinces them that a 2.7ghz Celeron will be much faster and better.

When the first PowerMac G5 was released, it was, for about 3 months, the fastest desktop computer on the market. Period. Rendering tests and benchmarks all proved this. However, this news completely failed to reach PC users. It simply went un-noticed.

Finally, putting Mac OS X on a system that can also run Windows will allow people to see for themselves how much slower and more bloated Windows really is.