Mac on PC

thematrix

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Is there any way I can try any version of Mac OS on the PC (Intel) hardware. I wish to try this OS but cannot afford another computer for that.
 
welcome newbie. ur thematrix.

as of yet no. in another week or so maybe, but not likely. at some point in the future, probably.

glad to see you're asking questions. generally you will get more responses if you do searches of the site and determine if a question has been answered before. this is especially helpful advice for potential pc converts as it is annoying to many mac owners how little you guys bother to know about macs. there are lots of threads on the site that spending some time reading should give you some meaningful questions to ask.

but for now, if you want the advantages of a mac, you've got to buy a mac.

ps - thank you for not using numbers as words.:)
 
Hey Ed? Um, were you really offended he didn't "search before posting"?

I doubt you will be running any ppc based OS on x86 (Intel) hardware anytime soon (this includes MacOS X).

And I highly doubt OS X for Intel will be released next week at MWSF . . . So don't get your hopes up.
 
There is no way to directly install a Mac OS on itel hardware but if your machine isn't too old or slow you can run an emulator like

Gemulator http://www.cix.co.uk/~stclub/gemul8r/gem98.htm
SoftMac http://www.emulators.com/

I think there are more but I can't locate them... also most of these emulate older Mac hardware so I doubt you will be able to play with Apple's Mac OS X current system. Find a friend with a Mac or visit an Apple store... that's is going to be the best way to check out the OS.


Good Luck
Happy New Year
Eddie
 
no allen, i wasn't offended. i was just being nice and trying to protect our new friend from the hardcores:p and going thru the posts for the last month or so would be a good idea for anyone new, if for no other reason than to get a feel for the comunity and what to expect. there's good stuff to be learned in some of those threads.

i probably should have used more smilies;)

i think eddie's answer about finding someone with a mac and osx and getting the real experience that way is the best idea. second best might be to find an apple reseller and play with the display machines. this is somethng one would want to do before deciding what mac anyway.
 
Personally I don't like the idea of emulation of anything Mac related on an Intel platform . . .

I should also note, Gemulator is only used to read Mac written floppy's on a Win9x machine.

Oh, and SoftMac can only support up to system 8, so I doubt that is of any use either . . .
 
I love products that let you run other OS. My favorite is vmware ( http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/screens_ws.html ).

Unlike Wine (a linux effort to run windows programs) vmware implements an x86 bios. You then install windows, linux, beos, etc. on that virtual machine and whammo, you're running another OS.

Yeah, it's slower but it's faster than dual booting and it allowed me to run Linux at home when I needed windows apps.

If something like this was created that ran anything PPC under x86 it might help people try OSX, then move to PPC when they want native speed. It's just a thought, perhaps a silly one.

As far as the initial questions goes, you need to get your hands on a mac to try it out.
 
I know I saw an emulator at the last MWNY for PC that was running OS X wish I could remember the name,

Emulation is great when used in perspective. You're not going to be able to play the newest games or reneder 3d animations. You will be able to 80 % pf te software on that platform with pretty good results.

Always keep in mind though, it's not the real thing and is not giving you th best representation.
 
Anyone remember "executor" ??
As far as i know that was the first commercial attempt to emulate a 68xx Mac on the PC.
Every attempt to emulate a mac on the PC is futile for now. The MacOS depends on ROMs which are copyrighted by apple and part of apple's hardware only.
WINE can work only on PPC linuxes because takes what it needs from the ROM in the machine in question.
I think MacOSX is completely possible to run on a PC without emulation. If Darwin can do it on intel hardware, quartz can be modified too.
 
I've used Mac emulators on PC they work fine - yes you need a ROM image but that's not hard to find.

Darwin does run native on PC OS X absolutly does but is not available. NextStep ran on intel PC hardware why would you think a new os based completely on that OS wouldn't


Cheers
 
Thanks all of you for your reply. The problem here is that apple stuff is not so popular. Even if it is available we do not get good service support. As I normally assemble computers myself I am not used to waiting for service people from the company. Whenever I need some change or upgrade, I get things from the market and use it. Such convenience is not available for mac users here. So I wished to use Mac OS on my Intel hardware.
 
That's not quite true. You can change out basically anything in the Mac, such as the RAM, HD, video card etc. As long as you don't fry your CPU(which is VERY unlikely), there's really no reason to need someone to fix your Mac.
 
I've done all my own Mac tech work for more than 15 years. in fact I made a few of them myself ground up back in the Mac II days.

I have never ever payed anyone to do any installs that's just plain dumb, RAM, Hard Disk, Power Supplie, MoBo, Processor, Video Card, etc you name it I've installed or swaped it in one machine or another.

The trouble I see all the time is PC users are uninformed or misinformed about Macintosh and very often just beleive what they here without finding out themselves.

Like the no hardware / software myth excluding the millions of garbage pc shareware and freeware apps 99.9 % of ALL major apps are available to the Mac.

Hardware I have yet to find something not available for the Mac and easier to connect and use. PCs Plug and Pray still -STILL sucks I have done some installs on a WinME and Win 2000 laptop recently and it would not detect the hardware... well it knew something was added but couldn't get it working.

I use PCs as well as Macs but I'll take a Mac for my own work ANY DAY.

Cheers
 
How about an intel / linux / osx faq?

People all the time (thematrix, no disrespect) post stuff like "Can I run my linux programs on macosx" and "Is there a version of Mac OS X for intel?" and "Can I run my pc programs on my mac?"

These broad statements deserve an faq in the archive, and I'll write it if nobody else wants to.


Thematrix:
There's a great faq on ram in the faq area... my G4 takes pc133 ram (which I got from otherworldcomputing.com, I think... some people use crucial.com or ramwatcher.com...). Mac ram = pc ram. It has for a while, actually.

And most macs now (sadly imo) come standard with IDE disk controllers (IDE/ATA is what those $100 30gig hard drives use at staples and in most pc's... comare that to $400 for a scsi 30gig elsewhere..).

Your mac can use video cards from pc's if you flash a new rom image to them, if that isn't an option, you can usually get a mac version of the card.. radeon 7200, 8500, voodoo 5, ati rage orion, nVidia GeForce's, etc etc... its all quite similar.

Macs have PCI slots and AGP...

And you can use windows keyboards via the standard USB ports (as well as microsoft intellimouces, although I'd sooner cut off my hand).

Macs can open pc disks as well as networked pc servers using standard windows file sharing. Macs can open PC photoshop files, doc files, mp3's, even wma's. Document sharing is pretty much seamless.

And on the macintosh platform (and *especially* with Mac OS X), there is a huge abondance of freeware, most of which is open source. Remember, with Mac OS X and the free developer kit, you can compile tons of linux programs once you get the display server and gtk installed......

As a side note, you can compile one of those popular mac emmulators on Mac OS X. (yes, it is very redundand). Its funny to see system 7 applications running inside the system 7 finder under an x11 display server on a mac running osx......
 
As I normally assemble computers myself I am not used to waiting for service people from the company

thematrix -

If you want to try out OS X - go to a Apple Store or an authorized dealer (avoid CompUSA, as their machines are usually so ill maintained you won't get a decent demo) and try OS X...

If you like it, look on eBay for a used G3 or G4. They can be had for a song.

You can then do just about any kind of modification you could do to a PC - add a better video card, upgrade your RAM, swap out the CD drive for a CD-RW, even overclock the CPU (at your own peril). The only thing you really can't do is swap out the motherboard. If you needed to replace it, you could get the parts, but usually when the mobo goes, it's cheaper to buy a new machine.

Come on over to the light side... Things are better here....
 
Well I won't tell someone to switch if they don't want to or need to... there are some things a PC may do better as there are things the Mac does better though this gap these daya is extremely narrow.

As for mobo replacement.... It all depends on the machine you are looking to replace.... the more up to date machines you won't even be able to get those... but as they get older they are available and get cheaper the further back you go... I have several 7200 servers I made myself...

You can get parts at

Sun Remarketing
http://www.sunremarketing.com/
or

Shreve Systems
http://shrevesystems.com/


cheers
 
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