OSx86 for actual work

[highpass]

Whether this has been asked before, i don't know, but i'm curious, and i know that this is obviously too early to forsee in some respects, but i still find myself asking the question; how long will it be until OSx86 (whether it be the 'hacked' - for want of a better term - version or the retail) can actually be put to good use?

 

I'm not talking itunes and web browsing, but proper work; Logic, Photoshop, etc etc. Word on the grapevine is that it will be an awful long time before Logic for OSx86 is at a suitable stage to deem switching.

 

slightly offtopic, but i'm in love with the possibility of being able to produce on both platforms, on the same box, taking advantage of AU only & Windows only plugins, switching between them as & when needed

[Hagar]

It seems that scanners, digital cameras & printers work well, photoshop runs in rosetta, so there's a performance hit, but apart from that, image editing is good to go..

 

Video falls down on firewire capture, I don't do much audio, so I can't comment on that.

[Eskurza]

It seems that scanners, digital cameras & printers work well, photoshop runs in rosetta, so there's a performance hit, but apart from that, image editing is good to go..

 

Video falls down on firewire capture, I don't do much audio, so I can't comment on that.

 

Interface is running pretty good.. What we need is more applications as universal binaries..

Forexample imagine new Final Cut or Ilife package being in intel/ppc binary..

That would really help.. and drivers finally..

Audio edit applications such as Logic and Garageband is working seamlessly with proper hardware..

However for SSE2 cpu people the emulation of the PPC appls in even slower.. sometime making it impossbile to work with..

[Acid_Burn]

It seems that scanners, digital cameras & printers work well, photoshop runs in rosetta, so there's a performance hit, but apart from that, image editing is good to go..

 

Video falls down on firewire capture, I don't do much audio, so I can't comment on that.

 

Scanner works??? How??

 

I have Viewscan and Canon N650U and my Scanner don´t work under OSX86!

[highpass]

ooh, it would seem i have been misinformed then! and with logic apparently working seamlessly, its become a hundred fold more interesting for me cheers!

[witzer]

i'm now doing photoshop work at osx86.

did some online stuff (browse n chat) as well.

[spacest]

i am working on my hackintosh now because my mac is broken. intel binaries are fast and stable. but don't be fooled by the "only 30%" slowdown in rosetta - practically you can't work continuously with ppc programs, it's just painful.

 

so basically things work, sometimes even great, but that special apple quality - it just works - is gone.

[ccihon]

I have an SSE3 cpu (P4 530) on a Dell 915 based system. I also work every day with a dual 1.8 G5 for dtp, web creation and Photoshop tasks. The x86 sytem is by no means as fast, but it is quite usable. i have complete QuarkXpress publications and done some Photoshop and Illustrator stuff...these are obviously Rosetta-enable PPC apps. It works...a little slow, but stable. The biggest stumbling block is the sketchy hardware support - scanner, tablet, printer. I can always boot over to XP to scan or print for now. Also wish VPN would work.

 

I am also booting to Ubuntu Linux to see what that is all about. It looks like a promising choice. So on a tri-boot system, I can see advantages to each OS. And although I sure many people won't agree with me, I can say my experience has been that they are all more the same than different...each a different way of accomplishing the same thing. Native Win apps are much faser than rosetta, but I like the Mac interface. Linux is great fun....you can do a lot with open software.

[dkelley]

...Also wish VPN would work....

 

It does work. I can remote control my hackintosh from any other windows pc on my home network, even over wifi from my laptop. All you have to do is follow the instructions for controlling osx from a windows machine as per apple's help file. Works exactly as intended by Apple.

 

I've had no success yet going the other way (controlling pc from osx) but haven't spent as much time learning how to do that.

 

Also, for the record (as a professional musician/audio engineer), the rosetta-running audio apps (garageband, logic, etc) can't handle any processor intensive audio plugins or effects. Midi stuff works perfectly, simple audio stuff works well, but for example adding 3 or 4 effects (such as reverb) to a garageband audio clip will end playback instantly. I still am trying to use it though, just have to keep my production very streamlined for now.

 

I use photoshop, illustrator and indesign (all cs2 versions) regularly under rosetta with no problems (except slow boot times and major filters taking a while).

 

Office 2004 is pretty quick.

 

Macromedia suite is working well too, dreamweaver is used regularly on my hackintosh under rosetta.

 

Printing is great on my lexmark c510 color laser, although I tried sharing it on my MS workgroup network and it shows up ok but printing is screwed (as is printing prefs pane) from windows pcs trying to use the mac-connected shared printer.

 

all in all much better than my experiences with REAL networked native ppc macs of 10 years ago!!

[ccihon]

It does work. I can remote control my hackintosh from any other windows pc on my home network, even over wifi from my laptop. All you have to do is follow the instructions for controlling osx from a windows machine as per apple's help file. Works exactly as intended by Apple.

 

I've had no success yet going the other way (controlling pc from osx) but haven't spent as much time learning how to do that.

 

Also, for the record (as a professional musician/audio engineer), the rosetta-running audio apps (garageband, logic, etc) can't handle any processor intensive audio plugins or effects. Midi stuff works perfectly, simple audio stuff works well, but for example adding 3 or 4 effects (such as reverb) to a garageband audio clip will end playback instantly. I still am trying to use it though, just have to keep my production very streamlined for now.

 

I use photoshop, illustrator and indesign (all cs2 versions) regularly under rosetta with no problems (except slow boot times and major filters taking a while).

 

Office 2004 is pretty quick.

 

Macromedia suite is working well too, dreamweaver is used regularly on my hackintosh under rosetta.

 

Printing is great on my lexmark c510 color laser, although I tried sharing it on my MS workgroup network and it shows up ok but printing is screwed (as is printing prefs pane) from windows pcs trying to use the mac-connected shared printer.

 

all in all much better than my experiences with REAL networked native ppc macs of 10 years ago!!

 

While I know you can remote control the desktops of mac and Win machines using VNC etc., I really needed a true vpn....access to all the shares on a remote lan via an internet connection. I was finally able to upgrade to 10.4.3, and the vpn feature via Internet Connect (PPTP to a WIN2K server RAS) finally works! This was broken for PPC macs running 10.4.1 also.

 

Edit: It now coonects but can't access anything via TCP/IP...still broken?

[wiebeest]

However for SSE2 cpu people the emulation of the PPC apps in even slower.. sometime making it impossbile to work with..

Agreed, my SSE2 only AMD64 Winchester running PPC Office 2004 through VMware RC2 is a complete torment to use, as could be expected from something like tripple emulation (Vmware + Rosetta + SSE3-->SSE2 patch).

 

Office 2004 is pretty quick.

Again, a drama in my case.

Takes about a minute to load M$ Word. Feels like running XP on a 386 with only 32 mb of system memory available (assuming that would be possible) or like running under PearPC.

 

I wonder...would an older version of PPC Office for Mac be faster in a scenario like mine?

Are there universal binary alternatives to PPC M$ Office available perhaps?

Because universal binary version vs PPC apps really make a difference.

 

For instance Opera browser 8.5 was dreadfull in my case, took ages to load and the whole damn thing felt totally unresponsive, which lead me to ignore Opera on the Mac and chosing Safari & Shiira instead, while constantly missing the mouse gestures I was used to from using Opera under Windows.

Then the universal binary version 9 beta of Opera came out...day & night difference and been using it eversince much to my delight...mouse gestures again!!!

I find myself preferring booting up my mac through vmware for surfing above natively under Windows.

 

But back to your main question, I think especially with the universal binary versions of Mac apps you can expect the x86 Tiger to be quite usable for actual work...provided you have supported hardware or someone writes a proper .kext.

I guess at this moment this what it comes down to. What are your system specs?

[miazmaticdotcom]

I've used it to develop a PHP/MySQL in Xcode. I've also used it for stuff that can run natively and take advantage of this box's relatively beefy CPU - converting from FLAC to MP3, extracting Xbox ISOs.

 

As long as you don't use anything under Rosetta, it is a pretty screaming OS. Anything you can get the source for, don't settle for emulation - recompile for i386.

 

Can't wait for that iTunes Unibin...