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Big Time Rumor: Apple to Give PC Users the Green OS X Light


gazzanova
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This could have both a good and bad effect on Apple completely...

 

The good part, Os X would be available for anyone to use, and not restricted by having to get a Mac. The bad part, this could cause problems with the OS.

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As much as I would love to see it, I think apple make too much money selling overpriced hardware to particular types of people.

 

They would have to entice an extremely large number of people to adopt OSX to break even when you consider the mark-up on their hardware and the gigantic raise in support costs that a generic PC version would create.

 

Plus, I would have expected information leaks from major hardware vendors by now if Snow Leopard was going to be generic. So many hardware manufacturers would have been primed to start working on OSX drivers that preventing a leak would have been near-impossible.

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I'm going to break rank and say it's less of a leap than it used to be. I don't know any regular here who doesn't own a supplemental piece of Apple hardware that they plug into their non Apple box. I think having OS X on other computers would expand Apple's hardware sales vastly. A lot depends on the definition of the words 'Apple hardware'.

 

I have spoken with people who have worked with and for Apple and these guys are very, very good at keeping secrets secret.

 

No, I doubt it's going to happen just yet but... if you were Jo Public and had OS X on your beige box, would you be more or less likely to buy other Apple hardware?

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makes sense to me....

 

The fact they haven't gone after Psystar is what makes me feel this is a possibility...

The fact that Snow Leopard is supposed to be intel only....

 

Seems to me apple is making more money from software these days instead of hardware.

The iphone APPS are projected to make 1.2 billion dollars in 2009!

 

Majority of people getting mad about this are the mac veterans who loved their PPCs and some who still have them they were the ones who denied mac would ever even use intel...and then it happened..... as a newcomer to the mac scene I won't miss PPC. But i do know one thing....If 2 out of 3 computers had a mac platform we'd all have to break out the Norton and that would suck.....

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There are three other big points that would speak for a platform opening:

 

1. It already runs on PCs :D

2. Apples asset was to build their own machines. But now we are already on X86 and Apple is doing good with the iPhone so they have something other to fall back on.

3. They prevent to share their market with clones

 

For me it would look like a classic win-win situation :)

 

I have a dream :D The keynote has started... Steve unveils the new Mac... and it is a Dell.

 

"At first we thought: Viruses, hardware problems, security issues. But then we stopped and thought - hey, this is not Windows. And - we realized it already runs on PCs..."

 

Hmm, very possible for me. I just can't believe it now. But who could believe the Intel switch.

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IMHO,

Steve and Bill sitting in a bar.... thinking about the IBM days and wondering what would happen if they joined forces, again.

They probably have a masterplan in which they unify Windows and Apple OS into one operating system called 'Wapple'. And ofcourse the rest of the world has no choise but buying it (or DLing it for some of us :) 'cause all the third party software is only compatible with Wapple, ofcourse.

So, bring it on, and be aware that Steve and Bill are still long time friends...making money :cp

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As the owner of a G4 powerbook it's really about time to dump the G4/5's. Can't even use classic in 10.5 so it's going to be stuck with 10.4 until it dies. They didn't say what kind of machine it would run on though. It might have limited (no support) coverage for pc's that have EFI motherboards but I don't see 10.6 playing nice with MBR or BIOS anytime soon.

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6 year cycle,...

took them 6 years, to finally move to intel cpu's

take them 6 years, to maybe realease the osx for intel pc's

it's only over 6 billion people and growing , ...

 

and hardware is not where they make their profit, not even the little finger

 

need to give them a buzz, a couple ideas,... couple billions here, couple hunderd there,....

who cares, apple don't, maybe start buying up all the shares,.... then as shareholders, we'd get invited to meetings,....

bring lots of carrots,....

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6 year cycle,...

took them 6 years, to finally move to intel cpu's

take them 6 years, to maybe realease the osx for intel pc's

it's only over 6 billion people and growing , ...

 

and hardware is not where they make their profit, not even the little finger

 

{censored} it ain't.

 

Apple is a hardware company, period. They make their money selling iPods and Mac computers.

 

Of course, with iTunes screaming along, this could start to change, but as of now Apple makes its money selling high-end consumer electronics and computers.

 

As for this rumor, I don't buy it. Apple will never, ever license OS X to run on non-Apple hardware. As an asute poster pointed out above, Apple has a hard enough time keeping OS X running stable on its own hardware, they're not about to just throw it out there in the open and deal with the tidal wave of support problems that would inevitably follow.

 

No, their strategy is to infiltrate the workplace with iPhone and the home with Mac, a strategy that has great potential and has doubled their market share in a few scant years. There is no need to deviate from it now.

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Arguably the most powerful company in the world made all their profit from software. They got Dell, HP, Gateway, Compaq, and etc...to sell their OS with the system. If Apple keeps on choosing to ignore that fact and not let at least OEM's to sell OSX on a PC, they will never get a huge market share because of it.

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Arguably the most powerful company in the world made all their profit from software. They got Dell, HP, Gateway, Compaq, and etc...to sell their OS with the system. If Apple keeps on choosing to ignore that fact and not let at least OEM's to sell OSX on a PC, they will never get a huge market share because of it.

Completely different. MS didn't achieved this when there was another entrenched OS and Office product with 90%+ of the market share.

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Keep dreaming. They make money off of OEM hardware and they're doing it good. You do understand what a headache supporting 90% of the basic computer population in stability and drivers can be? Apple's going to loose their pride of perfection and things done right if they do this odd move. Believe me, the financial supervisors there know what the hell they are doing with Apple or the next day they loose their jobs. Everything these days that's a minor change has [notice the sarcasm] to be some major change that will end humanity, blah blah blah. I just hope I won't be surprised...

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Keep dreaming. They make money off of OEM hardware and they're doing it good. You do understand what a headache supporting 90% of the basic computer population in stability and drivers can be? Apple's going to loose their pride of perfection and things done right if they do this odd move. Believe me, the financial supervisors there know what the hell they are doing with Apple or the next day they loose their jobs. Everything these days that's a minor change has [notice the sarcasm] to be some major change that will end humanity, blah blah blah. I just hope I won't be surprised...

What? 90% of the computers? Mac OS X would work correctly on less than 10% of computers out there. The minimum system requirements would solve almost any support problems:

 

Intel Core CPU

1GB DDR2 RAM

Intel 965G chipset

NVIDIA 7-series video

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I'm pretty sure that OSX will run on all PC's after Apple removed the EFI requirement.

 

After that, is up to manufacturers to create drivers for their devices.

 

Heck, look how stable most OSX86 installations are already, running all kind of hacked drivers. Imagine how it will run with official drivers.

 

Granted, Apple needs some kind of authorization to sell OSX, keys, activations, etc.

 

But to keep thinking that Apple will ever have a bigger market share with their current strategy, must be really dreaming.

 

No matter how bad Vista is, how geeky Linux is and how great snow Leopard might be, most companies and users will never lock themselves on one company. Well, at least, not on one that provides no more options than themselves.

 

Also, there are plenty of PC's out there that can run any version of OSX fine, is insane to suggest to just dump them and get a Mac.

 

Again and again, the software route works, Microsoft is proof of that.

 

Apple is in a great position to capitalize on Vista failure.

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I'm pretty sure that OSX will run on all PC's after Apple removed the EFI requirement.

 

I think that is pretty hard to happen. Apple usually go in only one direction and I don't think they would drop EFI just like that, specially now that a lot of PC manufactures are starting supporting EFI on their boards.

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I believe in Apple can thinkin' add "PC" support to OSX for tests. I install Snow in mine "LapCrap" and only add one kext to run OSX and different bootloader (sure, I need more 5 kext for my hardware), but, new things are nearer ...

 

:)

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I remember a few years ago, the many pundits that said that Apple would NEVER switch to Intel chips. Even the night before WWDC several well known bloggers were saying that the Intel rumors were around X-scale processors for the iPod. They were all wrong.

 

I believe, based on what I have read over the past month or so, there there is a good chance OSX will be opened up to Dell or a similar manufacturer. But the OS will still remain tied to this particular hardware. This might help the OSX86 project along too. As far as Apple releasing OSX into the wild for anyone to install on any machine, I doubt it.... but I would not discount it completely. Look for this latter scenerio if Alle sales (iPod and Mac) level out or drop over the next year or so).

 

In any event, my OSX86 machine runs great. And, the more installs there are out there, the better for the OSX86 project, and the more it is likely that I would buy official hardware.

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I think that is pretty hard to happen. Apple usually go in only one direction and I don't think they would drop EFI just like that, specially now that a lot of PC manufactures are starting supporting EFI on their boards.

 

Please, show me one motherboard, i can buy right now that is EFI?

 

and please, a reasonable one, not an exotic one.

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MSI says that they'll give a free EFI update to anyone who buys one of their P45-based motherboards.

 

I'm assuming it's something simple like a flash to the existing EEPROM? Sort of like a BIOS update, except EFI code instead of a BIOS? Wonder if it'll have the fancy GUI for setup instead of text-based like the current BIOS? I remember reading that's supposed to be one of the nice things about EFI.

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From what I understand it will be a flash of the EEPROM, and the interface is supposed to have a fancy GUI. I doubt it'll be as clean as Apple's, but it's still a nice start, hopefully other companies will follow suit and offer upgrades (assuming other boards have a large enough flash chip)

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