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What would you PAY for a LEGIT copy of MacOSx86?


René Kåbis
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I've been waiting for it to happen since i started using OSx at work and then 6 months later got kicked back to a pc.

 

 

Would i pay for it? For sure.. If the support for graphics cards and what not i'd be alll over it!

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no more than $200, and it has to support ALL the hardware that PC can :D

 

U mean, it has to support all the hadrware that WINDOWS can, because an Apple Mac is a PC also ;)

 

Nevertheless, I'd be willing to pay 300€ (yep, euro-zone here) without event hinking twice about it.

I am so terriblky fed up with Windwos and Microsoft I already use linux for 2 years but Linux isn't exactly what I need. Though I'm terribly proud to have Ubuntu running here on all machine the real thing for me is OS X.

So yeah, if Apple gives it to the public I'd be the first to order it

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$150 if it can replace my XP and run all the programs I use daily. $50 if there are some interesting programs that I want to run on it and the program won't run on XP. $20 at current state (already have FreeBSD, not much need for just a pretty UI).

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But there are this stupid little problems with the driver!

(sigh)

Maybe the currently shipping, readily available copy of OS X would actually come with a plethora of drivers built-in, so maybe (just, maybe) it's safe to assume when a non-developer kit version of an os x86 version were to ship, it would have the same plethora of drivers.

 

OS X, on PPV, has some of the best driver support in the industry.

 

Obviously, the development kit has no need for extensive driver support - beyond the hardware of the kit it is distributed with. Why would they include more?

(sigh)

 

$129, the same price it costs currently.

 

$4-$500? You guys are totally lunatics.... because if it were to cost that much, you would never pay that amount, or you would go in on a team purchase with 10 buddies ($500 for OS X, $25 for a 50 pack of DVDs)

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I'd pay the same as I've just paid for Tiger. I love the OS and personally think its a good thing Apple moving to Intel. I would love to have a machiine that I could dual-boot Windows and Mac OS X. Currently I have a 12" PowerBook and a Sony Vaio for when I need a few windows-specific things. None of us know really what Apple is going to do, despite all the speculation but I hope that they do release a generic version - yes, they have always made money from hardware, but it would be so cool if they released it for everyone. A brave move I think, but from seeing the groundswell of interest that we have here, I think it would be a winner for them

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I would deffinately pay a fair price equal to or better than what MS is asking for their current setup. Being that a copy of XP Pro was around $300 when it was released, I think that I would be willing to pay that for a legit copy of OS X on x86. Hell the way things are right now, I want to go buy a mac now.

 

After doing some research and a ton on reading on the Apple architecture and Operating System, it is no wonder that this OS is stable. Just think, I have a copy of an OS designed for a specific Intel P4 running right now on a Atlhon64 and it still doesnt crash! Ask any other company if their prerelease, made for one machine only, software would do that?

 

After using OS X to this level and learning what I have learned. I, and I think many others, will consider buying a Mac now. Not to mention developing for the platform.

 

I for one think that these forums have started and continue to feed Mac with the boost they need to launch their new OS release. Lets just hope they realize that what we are trying to do is actually helping them, by showing them the shear volume of people that would ditch MS completely (or Dual Boot), and switch the OS X.

 

What are the chances they'll see it our way?

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I would easily pay $250 for it, providing most driver issues were resolved so that I'm not having to download ye old patch o' the day like we do from M$ at present. I have a Dell desktop and a 1.25ghz iBook, and there is no doubt that Apple has the superior OS.

 

Dvorak.org/blog is CNet writer (and former TechTV commentator) John C. Dvorak's blog. For those who are unfamiliar with him, he can come off as quite a blowhard, but there's no debating that he has a solid track record for predicting future technology trends. He has made the same conclusion as many of us - Apple knowingly released this into the wild, and we are basically doing much of the grunt work and beta testing for Apple in getting OSX for x86 fully functional. I also agree with Dvorak that somewhere down the line at one of the MacWorld or WWDC's, Jobs is going to make a surprise announcement that "we had never planned to release a version of Mac OsX for non-Apple hardware, but it's out there, people want it, and we're going to provide it so they don't have to get it illegally," as well as Dvorak's thought that Jobs will do so in order to not appear to be challenging Billy Gates head-on, but to have more of a "gosh, what else was Apple supposed to do?" type of appearance. Why else would they serve a cease-and-desist letter to an obscure French OSX x86 website and not to the U.S. sites that are much more active?

 

I mention this because I think that with the iPod's popularity, Apple once again has name recognition amongst the general public. I have two ideas on how Apple could release OSX and grab non-techie (i.e., most) of the computer-using public:

1) Provide an in-house produced emulator similar to Virtual PC, and advertise that "and you can still run Windows XP and all of your favorite Windows applications". With the emulation being on top of an x86 architecture, there would be only a minimal speed decrease, unlike what we who use VPC deal with today. OR

2) Provide some type of super-simple, idiot-proof partitioning software as part of the OSX install process that would make it easy for anyone to install OSX while keeping any Windows installs intact, and set up a super-simple dual-boot selection menu.

 

Sorry for rambling...these are just some of the ideas I've had while getting this to work - and it is working really great on my Dell 3000 - and I wanted to see what everyone else who has played with OSX on Intel thought as well. Thanks!!!

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Realistically, Apple would't charge any less than current retail + mac mini margin, plus say, 10-15% for the "grief factor"...

 

The Mac mini actually makes Apple money, so to account for the lost sales there, they'd likely tack it on to a "Retail Box" version of OS X "for Everyone".

 

As for the "and it has to work with every little thing I have in my current machine..."

 

Not likely. Even back in the NeXT days, the OS ran on a very specific set of hardware. Darwin/OSX currently runs on a *much* broader hardware range that it every did in the past, but its most likely that they'd pick an Intel Reference Logic Board and ATI GPU's as the supported, recommended system.

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After doing some research and a ton on reading on the Apple architecture and Operating System, it is no wonder that this OS is stable.  Just think, I have a copy of an OS designed for a specific Intel P4 running right now on a Atlhon64 and it still doesnt crash!  Ask any other company if their prerelease, made for one machine only, software would do that?

 

AMD chips were designed to be support x86 instruction sets. And your Athlon64 supports all the SSE instruction set required by OSX86. So, what is so special about OSX86 running on your machine? Look at all these people who can't get their OSX86 running on chips that don't support SSE2/SSE3. If you've studied OSX's history, you should've known it was spawn off BSD, which already supported many different chipsets. You should actually be amazed at how incompatible Apple made the devkit. Millions of Windows apps are written before XP came out, and they still works on XP. Heck, XP came out in 2001, and it works with thousands of different motherboards/chipsets/hardware that came out after XP was released. They are all compatible because applications/hardwares all developed against an aleady defined API/instruction-sets. In the x86 world, people are used to OS and apps running on almost any hardwares; it takes some effort to make things incompatible, that is why Apple went to the TPM route to stop people running OSx86 on non-Apple machines.

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if ive to pay.. i pay to have an apple's computer! not for the operating system.. if it will costs +/- 100 $ i buy it! but if it will cost more than 200 $ ... forget it! i chose the pirated version!... (copy of the original.. or something..)..

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I am fed up with Windows. XP is a decent OS, but it is riddled with security holes, attacked by viruses worms and other nasties from all sides

Unfortunately, what you forget is that once OSX goes mainstream, it will become the next target for crackers and virii and security holes as well. There just isn't enough market share for OSX now to make it worth while to infect.

 

Look at Firefox - it was touted as this really secure, better than IE browser, and it too has had its share of releasese to fix some security holes. And its still only has less than 15% share.

 

Hopefully development efforts and foresight for security will outpace the popularity.

 

Even so, it won't stop me from paying ~$100 for an official copy of OSx86.

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  • 4 months later...

I'd pay less than what Microsoft asks for Windows, considering fewer applications and hardware are compatible with Mac. Not to mention some idiosincrasies that are hard to get used to. I like Mac OS for it's good looks (Core Image and Quartz...which I presume will be equaled or improved on by Vista) and certain perks like Dashboard, AppleScript etc.

 

Unfortunately, what you forget is that once OSX goes mainstream, it will become the next target for crackers and virii and security holes as well. There just isn't enough market share for OSX now to make it worth while to infect.

 

Look at Firefox - it was touted as this really secure, better than IE browser, and it too has had its share of releasese to fix some security holes. And its still only has less than 15% share.

 

Hopefully development efforts and foresight for security will outpace the popularity.

 

Even so, it won't stop me from paying ~$100 for an official copy of OSx86.

 

I'll second the part about security and crackers. I read an article that Mac is actually less secure and Windows is more secure than you think. It's common sense.

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