OS X on Intel Still Not Complete

[alcibiades]

I'm sure Apple can make it impossible, or at least impossibly difficult, to run X on white box hardware. The question is whether this makes business sense. The question is, whether staying in the Mac niche is long term viable. This is what Apple people need to think hard about. It has nothing to do with liking or not liking the company. Nor is it to do with whether you can deliver a better experience by restricting the hardware your OS run on. The question is simply, is it viable to continue selling PCs to 5% or less of the market, and mostly to repeat customers who have been using Macs for years and are buying new ones? Because this is what it means. It means having hardware prices and a cost of entry too great to allow you to get market share greater than niche.

 

And, is this a better strategy than selling the OS on the open market?

 

It is not at all like the clones episode. In that episode, they were making different hardware from the rest of the industry, and they licensed others to make the same hardware. Here, they are using the same hardware as everyone else, but they are seeking to prevent people buying some of that identical hardware and running their OS on it.

 

I doubt its viable. It seems this is the kind of proposition that, over 5 years, takes you below 2% market share. But I have little doubt that its the strategy Cupertino will do its best to follow.

 

And no, it has nothing to do with 'being the best'. It has much more to do with being pyschologically comfortable as a management team, and taking the easy way.

[Cowboy Mike]

Confirmed - downloading it actually - plz wait for more info to come

[optimus]

Well, that's how Apple is going to make money, by not divorcing the OS from their hardware.

 

The ONLY thing that makes Apple shine is USER-FRIENDLINESS. Almost all of the apps written for Apple are easy to use, and it works.

 

I can only hope that more and more developers focus on making and improving GUI apps for Linux, instead of trying to waste coding efforts in dismantling Apple code.

 

The Linux kernel is mature and stable, however, the GUI programs are still far away from the user-friendliness of Apple's. But KDE has matured also to a point where it is now able to spawn excellent GUI atop its elegant code framework and architecture. It now has the potential to provide a stable and robust platform for building apps that will be featureful and easy-to-use.

[darkten]

And, is this a better strategy than selling the OS on the open market?

 

For Apple? Honestly, yes. This isn't fanboy talk here...I *know* what drives Apple. They really, really don't/won't/can't "see it" any other way. That 5% is a "glass ceiling" to Apple and if they are going to get past it, its going to be done the Apple way...not the Microsoft way via White Box OEM'ing.

 

They don't see these people as customers, nor the builders as competitors.

 

It is not at all like the clones episode.  In that episode, they were making different hardware from the rest of the industry, and they licensed others to make the same hardware.

 

Actually...no. Apple even made the logic boards and sold them/licensed them to OEM's.

Here, they are using the same hardware as everyone else, but they are seeking to prevent people buying some of that identical hardware and running their OS on it.

 

Because "some" is not "all". Have you read these boards, seen what people are trying to get running? Very, very "un-Apple" User Experience.

 

I doubt its viable.  It seems this is the kind of proposition that, over 5 years, takes you below 2% market share.  But I have little doubt that its the strategy Cupertino will do its best to follow.

 

No disrespect, but Apple sells *millions* of computers a year. *Millions*. If Apple achieves as little as 10% at Point-of-Sale "Market Share" they are golden. They really really don't care...ESPECIALLY now that they have the iPod business.

 

And no, it has nothing to do with 'being the best'.  It has much more to do with being pyschologically comfortable as a management team, and taking the easy way.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

And that above is where you are so really, truly and utterly mistaken. That all that drives them. Its what is beat into the company at every level.

 

Its what they *do* and how they see "the world".

[gec]

I'm inclined to agree with blkblt. We've been down this road before. People have been too obsessed worrying about Apple going to extraordinary means to combat osx86 hacks. It seems farfetched to me.

 

The vast majority of potential buyers of x86 Apples are the same people who have been buying Apples before. Most of them don't know or care what processor and mainboard is inside the sexy box. They want the sexy box. They want the sexy OS. I'm not saying that in a derisive way. Apple buyers are interested in buying the Apple brand.

 

Everyone likes to think of themselves as the center of the universe, but we -- the osx86 white box enthusiasts -- are way out on the fringe of Apple's solar system.

 

Apple's only real commercial threat in moving to the x86 platform is potential clones. They have already nipped that in the bud with TPM. Even weak TPM is still TPM, and is a legal bar that prevents major retailers -- the Dells, Gateways, etc. -- of the world from selling and supporting Mac "clones."

 

The only people bothering with hacked white box x86 Macs are us -- people who like mucking around with drivers, patches, don't care for support or even perfect stability. We're really no threat to Apple -- if anything, we'll be positive word of mouth, "influencers" who encourage other less hardcore enthusiasts to purchase the real thing.

 

So it seems difficult to fathom that Apple would engage in complex hardware-software contortions just to keep us out. It would cost them more than its worth. As others have said, everything is crackable given enough time and effort. Proprietary hardware solutions are only going to cost Apple more, reduce their opportunity to take advantage of significant economies of scale in the x86 world, and for what? I know Apple is famously paranoid, but it just doesn't add up.

 

The most likely scenario is just as blkblt points out. osx86 updates and releases may need patching, putting the hackers on a delayed upgrade cycle. osx86 will understandably continue to support limited hardware configurations, with some unsupported expansion over time as independent developers write open source drivers.

 

Again -- most people, particularly Apple customers, just aren't going to care about our little hobby. They'll continue to buy Apple branded machines. Apple's happy, Apple fans are happy, and us whiteboxers are happy. Who knows what may come of this 5 or 10 years out. People should be careful about saying "Apple would never...", particularly after this last year. Apple will continue to do what they decide is necessary and sound to grow their business given conditions at the time. But in the next couple of years following the initial osx86 deployment, this seems like a plausible scenario.

 

But, like blkblt said, I could be totally wrong.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

word!

 

 

the reason why MS has the biggest market share is the fact that their sw is so easy to copy.

 

more pirated copyes -> more popularity -> more buyers

[KENNYB]

Some insight for you.

Apple doesn't care about what Microsoft, or you, cares about.

 

At all. It is not in their corporate DNA.

 

Its lke this; Apple isn't concerned with "the most"...not even with the miracle that is iPod. They really, really don't...care. See the end of this for a graphic example of this thinking.

 

What motivates Apple, at the core, and most of the "Apple Universe" is being the *best*.

 

The best built. The best marketed. The whole "needful thing" mentality and world view.

 

See, if Apple thought they *could* make OSX work on anything as well as the OOTB experience that they offer on their own hardware...they probably would.

 

Apple didn't switch to Intel because Intel makes "the most" cpu's; they switched to Intel because there was no way they could make *better* computers on the PPC platform.

 

This whole concept is really out of the reach of most people...they can't wrap their minds around the fact that Apple consistently says "no" to things that could grow their marketshare because it would, for want of a better word, "sully" their brand.

 

To *Apple* if no one else, Apple stands for quality over quantity. Apple is fueled by the madate to make things functionally simple, useful and unique. Apple doesn't *care* that, for example, they could have made the nano 1/8th+1/16th of an inch thicker, with a one 1/16th of an inch gap between the back and front piece, and maybe kept the 6GB disk drive in it.

 

It would have *more* space, but would not have been *better built*.

 

This is *quite* backwards to a great many people, but for that fraction that really appreciates this, there is no equal.

 

Some call it "form over function"...but to Apple, there is no such animal. Lack of form effects functionality, because it is flawed in the Apple book.

 

It wasn't just a joke when they used to say of the Powerbooks that "our assess look better than their faces"...this stuff really matters there.

 

I've worked with Apple a looong time (can't say how) and I gotta tell ya...this really matters to them. I mean they *killed the iPod mini*...the best selling mp3 player *in the world* because it could have been better. Does this resonate at all with you guys?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

SJ really has you. Have you owned a mac made in the last 5 years? Aside from the battery fiasco, the iPod is the best thing Apple has made.

 

SJ guides Apple with an iron fist. Before the G5 was released, and even now that it's grown kinda stale, Apple's real priority is making the best looking computers. The best built? Man, you have never owned a mac!

 

I could go on and on. I've used OS X from the very beginning. I wonder how long it will take pc users to go insane from having to use drag and drop to move files (or the terminal).

[Guest terry]

Apple is fueled by the madate to make things functionally simple, useful and unique.

Do you remember the puck mouse? With the puck mouse Apple made everything wrong that could be done wrong in the ergonomics department, just for sake of the aesthetic effect, and that is, as I would like to call it, deliberately bad design. The newer no-button optical mouses also suck from an ergonomical point of view, although admittedly they are incredibly nice to look at. While I have sympathy for Apple, I have to say that they do such things over and over again. They have a public image of pronounced user-friendliness, but their designs are, in the true sense of the word, in most parts essentially "inhuman", and as a computer *user*, I don't like that at all. Of course such severe ergonomical design flaws can also be found in the GUI of the much-beloved, eye-candy-laden OS.

 

http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

 

http://www.asktog.com/columns/061PantherReview.html

 

I've worked with Apple a looong time

Let me guess: In the marketing or sales department?

[Azurael]

Do you remember the puck mouse? With the puck mouse Apple made everything wrong that could be done wrong in the ergonomics department, just for sake of the aesthetic effect, and that is, as I would like to call it, deliberately bad design. The newer no-button optical mouses also suck from an ergonomical point of view, although admittedly they are incredibly nice to look at. While I have sympathy for Apple, I have to say that they do such things over and over again. They have a public image of user-friendlyness, but their designs are, in the true sense of the word, in most parts essentially "inhuman", and as a computer *user*, I don't like that at all. Of course such severe ergonomical design flaws can also be found in the GUI of the much-beloved, eye-candy-laden OS.

 

http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

 

http://www.asktog.com/columns/061PantherReview.html

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Err, if you say so... Since I've gotten used to OS X, I find it the most productive OS I use day-to-day by a long way. Most people don't need more applications than can fit in the dock, in fact, I find it a much more effective method for keeping apps eay to find than keeping them on the desktop or in the start menu of my windows machine and I have no issues swiching between apps with Expose. There's a good reason my modestly specced Mac mini is my main work machine, not the overclocked Athlon64 X2 running either Windows or FreeBSD, and it sure as hell ain't that it's faster. Admittedly, I have little or no use for the Dashboard or Spotlight, meaning Tiger is only on my Macs for the sake of compatibility with the latest apps (it will happen soon, as it did for 10.0-10.2) and slight speed benefits, but I'm sure somebody needs them.

[Guest terry]

Err, if you say so... Since I've gotten used to OS X, I find it the most productive OS I use day-to-day by a long way.

My criticism was mainly directed against Apple's human interface hardware. I like OS X, too, and by saying that its GUI has some serious design flaws, I didn't mean to question its overall quality. I simply think it's just not true that Apple is all concerned about the general excellence of its products, as the original poster implied. From my (certainly highly personal) point of view more often than not -- and mostly in their hardware business -- they're overemphasizing "style" and eye-candy to the detriment of usability.

[DeathChill]

Confirmed - downloading it actually - plz wait for more info to come

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why do people say stupid stuff like this? If you're downloading it then you can obviously not link it but you can give an idea where it is coming from. I always laugh at the people who say stuff like "OH LET ME DOWNLOAD IT AND THEN I'LL TELL YOU," when these people cannot do anything with it

 

EDIT: Unless of course you are a developer, but I am EXTREMELY used to seeing people saying this exact same thing over and over.

[Hagar]

Quite.. we don't do that here.. carry on discussion if you wish, but leave the downloads for elsewhere.

[johan]

Confirmed - downloading it actually - plz wait for more info to come

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

can't talk about that ?

 

if he is a developer.. he is downloading it legaly

[ghw9132]

Excluding the servers, my department at work has 15+ Macs, and 1 PC. Many are becoming outdated and are soon to be replaced, with new Macs, whether it be PPC or Intel. As long as it works, they don't care whats "under the hood". In my opinion, Apple is not going to lose any market share due to this move, the people that will buy the over priced macs are the same people who have been buying them all along, graphic designers and printers.

 

I personally will never buy a Mac, after being burned by them years ago. However, i would buy OSX for my hackintosh.

[cyrana]

This thread is not about OSX vs. Windows or something similar. Please stop that sort of flamebait discussion. Last I read, the topic was about How OS X for x86 isn't done yet and is still undergoing changes, etc. It's not a thread to talk about 'what if Apple sells OS X standalone', 'which OS rocks', etc.

 

Thank you.

[Guest terry]

This thread is not about OSX vs. Windows or something similar.

True dat.

 

Last I read, the topic was about How OS X for x86 isn't done yet and is still undergoing changes, etc.

Just a minor note: In my view, the question in itself is utterly nonsensical. Of course it isn't "done". No OS will ever be "done", be it OS X for PPC, OS X for x86, Windows, Linux or whatever. Software in general is always evolving, and I'd consider only some very few, highly specialized pieces of programming like TeX as being essentially completed.

[enb14]

Confirmed - downloading it actually - plz wait for more info to come

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Please let us know more about it

[Kintac]

I already knew it, this forum has been started by Apple itself ^^

[Swad]

What? LOL - trust me, as the founder, that is not the case. Now, if they offered me a job...

[bluedragon1971]

Exactly. They've done the same thing to real Mac users in the past, with things like using unsupported CD and DVD burners. It used to be really easy to hack your unsupported drive into the system so it would be supported, but now the best anyone can do is get it supported in iTunes, so you still can't use the Finder to burn data CDs. You can use third party apps like Toast of course, just not the Finder and sometimes iTunes and iDVD won't even work, depending on your drive.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Huh? What the hell are you talking about? PatchBurn works great and allows burning to just about any type of drive in any application.

[llothar]

The kernel is open source.

This doesn't matter in this discussion. It's a BSD kernel with a BSD license. So if apple decides it want stop open darwin and change it they can without a problem. It's not GPL, you can do everything and don't need to publish something.

 

And Apple don't need to care about drivers. USB+Firewire are often so generic that they are easy to write for apple and for VideoCards etc. they only need a few ones for there limited models. So what ?

[llothar]

They would be even more of a success if they released a PC version. It would sell like crazy.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Reminds me that i bought BeOS 4.2 and 5.0, bought 6 books (4 from Be) and spend around 450 US$ for this.

 

I'm crazy, i even own an eMac 350 and a iMac G5.

(But i work 95% with my WinXP and i'm happy, just because the compiler is so much faster then gcc).

 

But i'm not sure if i would by hardware and software from Apple if i don't have to, but for another reason: i find apple hardware to general and not upgradable. I can't find anything in this 2x3 desktop model schema.

 

So for people like me, it makes sense for apple to restrict there operating system.

[cyrana]

Please listen to my prior posts about keeping this thread on topic and not a flamewar.

[johnsmith1882]

People have said one of the improvements with the latest 10.4.2 build is that ATi and nVidia drivers now supposedly work. But how could any developer really know for sure? They can't run it with an ATi card in a custom hackintosh PC, since there're new protection improvements. This makes it presently impossible to run OS X86 10.4.2 on a PC with an ATI or nVidia card.

 

Unless they have some other way of being able to tell. I could be wrong. Anybody know? By "working" do they mean custom resolutions and refresh rates, OpenGL, or the whole nine yards?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Don't the development boxes have a PCIe x16 slot in them? I'm pretty sure they come with that 915 DVI adapter card, but if you bring your own ATI or nVidia PCIe card you could try it out. Of course, this may contravene the license that comes with a developer box (that too, is probably under NDA).

[CFran]

what if apple build it's own mainboard? they allways did it.

 

Look on Pro Tools LE - it's kind of Hardware dongled. Noone ever managed to let it run without the hardware but there is really no need for the hardware in the non TDM version.

 

Apple Logic Audio there are a lot of dongle cracks on the web but none works

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I thought Pro Tools "LE" was the one edition of Pro Tools that could run without any hardware... oh well it's only a detail. If there had been people as motivated and skilled to crack that Pro Tools thing as people are for OSx86, it would have quickly been cracked i guess.

[Takuro]

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