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Another reason why Apple won't release retail anytime soon.


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I was thinking about this last night while working on the EFI loaders and it dawned on me. EFI is another reason why we can't expect an OS X retail (vanilla) release anytime in the near future. Apple has tied their OS to EFI. The bootloader and the drivers. The current method by which we boot up OS X on vanilla PC's is using a completely different method then Apple currently employs on their Macs. Majority of PC's out there right now do not even have the ability to load EFI and the rest do not have it in such a way that it could load an EFI OSLoader.

 

So Apple would have to modify OS X to include a legacy OS Loader as well as invest in developing drivers to support legacy BIOS. Everything we've seen out of them seems to indicate they are moving further and further into EFI territory.

 

I can't see Apple taking on the extra cost of what basically would be developing and supporting a 3rd version (currently they support EFI/Intel and PPC) of OS X for a retail (vanilla) release.

 

I would not expect there to be any hope of a vanilla retail release until EFI is commonplace on all PC's and this will not happen until Microsoft supports EFI and we all know how that is going at the moment.

 

This is just thoughts on my part of course.

 

(just call me cringely. :guitar:)

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However, EFI certainly is not a barrier to Apple licensing OS X (and it's EFI firmware) to the likes of HP, Dell and Sony.

 

I am not sure if we will ever see "retail" OS X (for generic PC's) for sale, but I am convinced that sooner or later OS X will be licensed to select PC manufacturers.

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However, EFI certainly is not a barrier to Apple licensing OS X (and it's EFI firmware) to the likes of HP, Dell and Sony.

 

I am not sure if we will ever see "retail" OS X (for generic PC's) for sale, but I am convinced that sooner or later OS X will be licensed to select PC manufacturers.

well maybe not OS X :D

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