Is there ANY way to run OSX on a x86 processor?

By HPMCommander
in Apple (macOS)

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Grand Master

Tim Dorr Veteran

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Apple doesn't care if they sell their OS, what is $129 when compared to several thousand dollars? The OS is not where they make their money. OS X draws users, and sells their hardware. If you'd ever used it, you'd understand why.

$129 for a cd and some packaging? They better HOPE to sell a lot, cause, in terms of manufacturing, they make a lot of money off that one cd. Plus, the ammount of R&D they put into it requires a lot of cash too....

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Grand Master

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Personally, I don't mind PC's at all, matter of fact I think they have their use, games, which seems to be the main point of what 99% of the people on this site use as an argument for why they are better than macs.

However, I think it will be good when AMD comes out with a PPC version of the amd64 chipset.

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Grand Master

threetonesun

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Apple doesn't care if they sell their OS, what is $129 when compared to several thousand dollars? The OS is not where they make their money. OS X draws users, and sells their hardware. If you'd ever used it, you'd understand why.

At that rate, neither of them matter, since what's a $1,000 compared to a contract with a major corporation. If apple could sell an OS and more hardware, than why not?

And I can think of other companies who make their money off of an OS alone. If OSX is such a draw, then why not use it on all computers?

I know Macs have their place, as do PCs, but I think that if Apple wants to be competitive again, they'll have to change their current business model, or else they will remain where they are.

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rocks1985

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daddy los : you said :

rocks1985 over there... it's like trying to run a gamecube game in a ps2, the software doesn't work with the chipset.

Yes. It would be impossible to run a GameCube game on a PS2 but, what if i took apart the PS2 and then reformatted it all and cleaned it out. Then create the BIOS and add any new hardware or take hardware away needed or not needed for the PS2 to be reconized by the mini-DVD as a GameCube. Then couldn't I play a GC game on it? But that isn't even my point.

Asking about running max os X on a personally built computer, couldn't anybody-- if money was no object create a Macintosh Computer just like people build there own PC's or is that impossible? Wouldn't that mean that apple hides something in the hardware in order to block anybody from trying to create a Mac? If they are not hiding something, then this process should work the same way for using mac OS X on a build-your-own computer.

Basically. What I'm asking is...is it possible to build your own Mac? If so, has anybody ever done it? How did it turn out? :cool:

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Grand Master

mAcOdIn Veteran

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Because OSX can't really compete with windows thats why.

Windows has the driver support, and windows has the gaming api support, and OSX will never have that.

While the underpinnings of OSX are unix since it can't even run on all the hardware that the linux distros now can, whats the point?

It's only selling point is useability, it won't be on my gaming system, it won't be on my server/firewall box due to the hardware support.

It just can't compete in the windows market directly like that. Now if apple did wanna somehow get all these hardware developers to support Coqa(or whatever the spelling is) then it might stand a chance, but without that it's nothing more than a pretty skin on unix.

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Grand Master

mAcOdIn Veteran

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Yes you can build a mac. You can buy a G4 processor, mobo, ram, and all that and build a mac just like you would a pc.

But you can't take a pc mobo and make it a mac.

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rocks1985

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Can one person legally build and sell "self built" macintoshes? Maybe they can. However, can a large company mass produce their own version of a Mac and sell it to the masses? Or is that illegal?

If so the answer is yes to the first question, I would think that people could create a nice mac on par with the quality/speed of an old iMac.

If the answer is yes to the second question, I would think that a company could create great products to compete with the mac market and lead to lower prices and better products.

(I have recently heard something about an ibox. this question reminds me of that.)

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Grand Master

Tim Dorr Veteran

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/me explodes

ok, rocks, let's sit you down here and explains to you. When you play a game on a console, or run a program on a computer, you're feeding a set of instructions to a processor inside that system. Between the PC, Mac, GameCube, and PS2, they all accept entirely DIFFERENT instructions. They all have their own "language" of sorts. So, it's not a matter of making the game instructions available to the processor to execute, it's a matter of the processor not having a clue what those instructions mean. And changing the BIOS won't do anything. That's just what's neccessary to start up the hardware in the system and get the OS going. It's OS that controls all the programs on your system.

To address your 2nd post, Apple does not allow people to build homemade macs because they control the BIOS. The BIOS in an apple machine is custom made by Apple to run their OS. They control the rights to it and forbid anyone except them from using it. There used to be a whole clone market for Macs, but they died off when Apple put more restrictions on what they could do.

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Grand Master

mAcOdIn Veteran

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@ timdorr

I was under the impression that the above method I posted would actually allow you to install OSx, is that not true?

Aisde from that everything else you said is dead on, but I thought you could still make a mac capable of running apple software.

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Redestium

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/me explodes

ok, rocks, let's sit you down here and explains to you. When you play a game on a console, or run a program on a computer, you're feeding a set of instructions to a processor inside that system. Between the PC, Mac, GameCube, and PS2, they all accept entirely DIFFERENT instructions. They all have their own "language" of sorts. So, it's not a matter of making the game instructions available to the processor to execute, it's a matter of the processor not having a clue what those instructions mean. And changing the BIOS won't do anything. That's just what's neccessary to start up the hardware in the system and get the OS going. It's OS that controls all the programs on your system.

To address your 2nd post, Apple does not allow people to build homemade macs because they control the BIOS. The BIOS in an apple machine is custom made by Apple to run their OS. They control the rights to it and forbid anyone except them from using it. There used to be a whole clone market for Macs, but they died off when Apple put more restrictions on what they could do.

Mac clones were a great idea, if they didn't kill it back then there would be a lot less Windows users today.

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Grand Master

DerkPY

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There is a project run by mac it begins with 'M' martilck or something which allows you to run mac on a PC but you can't download it any were. Apparently the project has been running since the late 90s but it is unlikely to be launched unless Mac get into financial diffilculty.

I found a news source somewere about it but I can remember the name and so can't search for it. :)

[EDIT] I have just read above someone has posted about the Marklar project (I think that is what it is called)[EDIT]

Found this http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,496270,00.asp

Edited by PigeonHead
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Grand Master

Dazzla Veteran

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There is a project run by mac it begins with 'M' martilck or something which allows you to run mac on a PC...

There is is there? Why do you pass it off as fact?

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Grand Master

the evn show

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Mac clones were a great idea, if they didn't kill it back then there would be a lot less Windows users today.

How were they a good idea? Maybe from the "cheap PC user who wanted a different computer" people's perspective, but from the "Apple shareholders who want the company to be profitable" point of view they were terrible.

The clones didn't generate a significant (if any) number of new Mac OS users for Apple, what happened was Mac users who didn't want pay for Apple's premium hardware bought clones instead. Power Computing and friends ended up taking market share from Apple rather than from Dell/HP/etc like they were intended. Apple's revenue went in the sewer because the bulk of their profits come from hardware sales not software (that's true today too) so she couldn't make enough money through OS licensing to offset the loss in hardware sales.

If the clones were so great for Apple then Steve never would have killed them. Apple is a business, it exists to take your money and transfer it to wealthy shareholder. It turns out the easiest way to do this is to make 2m people a year buy high premium Apple hardware, rather than 100m people/year buy low premium Apple software; until that changes don't expect to see clones any time soon.

Why do people insist that market share is the only criteria to evaluate the merits of an OS?

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macster

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How were they a good idea? Maybe from the "cheap PC user who wanted a different computer" people's perspective, but from the "Apple shareholders who want the company to be profitable" point of view they were terrible.

The clones didn't generate a significant (if any) number of new Mac OS users for Apple, what happened was Mac users who didn't want pay for Apple's premium hardware bought clones instead. Power Computing and friends ended up taking market share from Apple rather than from Dell/HP/etc like they were intended. Apple's revenue went in the sewer because the bulk of their profits come from hardware sales not software (that's true today too) so she couldn't make enough money through OS licensing to offset the loss in hardware sales.

If the clones were so great for Apple then Steve never would have killed them. Apple is a business, it exists to take your money and transfer it to wealthy shareholder. It turns out the easiest way to do this is to make 2m people a year buy high premium Apple hardware, rather than 100m people/year buy low premium Apple software; until that changes don't expect to see clones any time soon.

Why do people insist that market share is the only criteria to evaluate the merits of an OS?

Finally someone who knows Apple history pre-OS X

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wtmcgee

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all these windows kiddies just want apple to release os x for x86 so they can pirate it just like windows - then install it on their overclocked AMD PC.

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Gator

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Whilst I dont want to troll, I've learnt an aweful lot about mac people from this thread. You're a very possesive bunch arnt you!

Hahahahahahah....

Well, you're right (Y)

Why don't you people stop dreaming and go back to hacking .dll's. :rolleyes:

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Grand Master

Redestium

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How were they a good idea?  Maybe from the "cheap PC user who wanted a different computer" people's perspective, but from the "Apple shareholders who want the company to be profitable" point of view they were terrible.

The clones didn't generate a significant (if any) number of new Mac OS users for Apple, what happened was Mac users who didn't want pay for Apple's premium hardware bought clones instead.  Power Computing and friends ended up taking market share from Apple rather than from Dell/HP/etc like they were intended.  Apple's revenue went in the sewer because the bulk of their profits come from hardware sales not software (that's true today too) so she couldn't make enough money through OS licensing to offset the loss in hardware sales.

If the clones were so great for Apple then Steve never would have killed them.  Apple is a business, it exists to take your money and transfer it to wealthy shareholder.  It turns out the easiest way to do this is to make 2m people a year buy high premium Apple hardware, rather than 100m people/year buy low premium Apple software; until that changes don't expect to see clones any time soon.

Why do people insist that market share is the only criteria to evaluate the merits of an OS?

If Apple supported the clone movement they sure would have. What's wrong with making your OS reach a new level of the market? I fail to see how that is a bad thing considering that is what Apple really needs right now. It can't remain as a niche market forever you know if it wants to ultimately succeed. The niche markets are failing, just look at Sun, which used to be a big workstation and server environment, they are now ditching Solaris in favor of Linux and ditching the SPARC in favor of AMD chips (in order to reduce costs to attract more people to buy their machines). In recent news Apple is also working with AMD for some unknown purpose, the writing is on the wall. Hell just look at how Jobs broke the company in two (Mac vs Apple II) and created an "us versus them" mentality among his own employees, how's that for business tactics. I'm not trying to start an argument here, don't misunderstand me but I am trying to look at this objectively. If they don't attract a new user base and continue to do so, they're share will dwindle down to nothing and then where will they be?

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