Vendor touts PC's Mac OS X compatibility Apple Legal, we laugh in your face! Brassy computer company Open Tech is cocking just such snook Jobs-wards, though we note it's not brave enough to publish an address on its website... Undeterred by Mac clone maker Psystar's recent run-in with Apple's lawyers, Open Tech has announced Open Tech Computer 1.0, a $620 bog …
Steve Jobs is going to know how IBM felt in the early 80s when PC Clones began emulating the BIOS and started running DOS etc. I am sure plenty of people remember PCs being marketed as 'IBM PC Compatible' compatibility is now just accepted. Wonder when we'll see 'Apple Compatibile'?
I am sure Jobs and Co will question the logic of moving to x86...
then they will make a statement something like this.
1. Use of OS X without a license is piracy.
2. Use of a legitimate copy of OS X on non apple hardware is a breech of license and will therefore Apple would not be responsible for any support issues or problems.
3. Sale of non Apple hardware pre-installed with OS X will attract the attention of their legal department. (In countries where this would be illegal)
P oint 2 would allow people to buy machines to make into hackintoshes, themselves, which is not likely to cost real mac sales, and the extra leopard sales would surely be welcomed.
Point 3 would stop cheap clones directly competing.
I do not know why but I suspect this was Jobs plan all along, I mean that Jobs knew this would happen, and that he plans to take advantage of it somehow.
I think Jobs is evil enough to be plotting something.
In my case I won't ever buy a MAC as in Apple hardware (I think it is overly expensive) but I would buy a license for OS X
I'm sure Steve, deep down, is happy. This is what exposed the general public to DOS back in the day. Ultimately Apple can own more market share by a move like this.
There is a downside though. OS x is relatively cheap as it stands right now. A full OS for 150 compared to a windows flavor of equal features for 300 or more. If Apple starts to lose money because they are not selling hardware marked up by 200% then I'm sure we'll see OS x be closer in price to Windows.
Because if you have to build an OS that runs on hardware other than the 10 pieces you've hand picked and tested into oblivion, your OS might have issues. MS build their OS to run on just about everything. OSX has conniptions if you change video cards to a non-apple supported flavor. I doubt you'll see Apple adopt this model anytime soon.
"I am sure Jobs and Co will question the logic of moving to x86..."
Perhaps that's one reason why they bought P.A. Semi -
"designs PWRficient family of 64-bit multicore processors based on POWER design" (from their website), apart from using this company's relatively power efficient technology in their future iPods and iPhones.
Apple are a hardware and software vendor - for them to control most or all of that can make good business sense. Perhaps the x86 line of Apple desktops and notebooks has a limited lifespan, longer term they may switch to P.A. Semi designs. They've successfully switched CPU architectures before - 68000 to PowerPC to Intel x86. So they have that experience to help them should they switch to PA Semi.
Plus they still support PowerPC based MacOX - perhaps they will continue this given that PA Semi designs are POWER based, so that they will be well prepared to switch back.
The legal route of stopping clones may not hold - given that, for example, the EULA license Of MacOS X cannot dictate how an end user uses it. Sure the user can't make illegal copies, but the user cannot be told by Apple what hardware they should run it on - according to this comment:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/14/openmac_advertised_for_39999.html#comment-1048710
Except so far every PC outfit that's followed this route, and even the Hackintosh DIY guides themselves all use/promote using the same components that Apple uses. So long as the cloners keep doing that, and you have to imagine they will seeing as Apple doesn't seem interested in adding support for stuff it doesn't use, these clones should work just fine.
I don't think officially sanctioned clones are forever off the Apple radar though, Apple has seriously diversified since the early 90's into music, films, applications, consumer hardware and now mobiles. I wouldn't be surprised to see iPhone + App Store profits alone overtake Macintosh Hardware profits this time next year. Assuming there was enough pent up demand to warrant a major OEM risking* upsetting Microsoft I believe they could run with it. Snow Leopard would be a good step if that was your intention.
*heh
The only reason OSX doesn't run on any old hardware is that it checks for a specific chip that basically says, yes you are allowed to install and run on this hardware.
If microsoft can get knobbled by the competition guys for bundling media player and IE, how do apple get a way with this? At least when they were power pc based there was a physical reason why the OS wouldn't run on x86/x64 processors.
As for drivers all they have to do is say we will only provide drivers & support for Apple hardware and let the community sort themselves out.
interestingly, i'm surprised that no-one has released a cracked version of the os that can be installed on any pc.
To make is clear
1. Because Apple main marked is mindless drone who like to fellow job's orders, clone will not work
2. Apple is a hardware "assembler", as all it does it assembling generic x86 hardware in a shiny cheap flastic case and sell 3 times it's price
3. Mac OS is heavily sunsidize by hardware sale. SO MacOS is NOT CHEAPER THEN WINDOWS.
4. Apple cannot compete as is whole business modele is based on captive market of mindless drone who only buy Mac because they have have brainwashed into thinking they will be smarter with one(but in fact prove how stupid they are).
5. Mac cannot allow clone because they open source OS (with a candy in terface on top) is not ready to run on real computer.
into other world why bother with Mac
I thought the intel macs had ati cards? I mean I hacked around and got tiger working on my AMD/nvidia machine a while back and it worked (mostly) but the video drivers where basic to say the least. They were a homebrew 2D affair from some folks calling themselves "The macvidia project" or some such.
Have things changed lately? Does Leopard natively support nvidia cards now?
On the legality of Open Tech's actions
As long as OpenTech have some sort of disclaimer on the information they distribute which warns customers that Apple's EULA explicitly rules out the use of OSX on any non-Apple hardware and that consequently OSX is not supported on their gear, then they might legally be in the clear and Apple is unlikely to care. After all, the inconvenience of having to go through some hoops to install the operating system, the uncertainty whether and how well it will work in the end, that all makes the offer rather uninteresting for most people.
On Apple's purported reconsidering their move to Intel
It is unlikely Apple are questioning their move to Intel (as has been suggested by one of our adolescent friends who posted here) because Apple's market share, revenue, profits and share price all have gone up spectacularly as a result. Apple is a for-profit-business, as long as their business is good and their future prospects also look good, neither the company nor the shareholders will have any regrets.
On the significance of people who use hackintoshes
People who are using hacked install DVDs to install OSX on non-Apple hardware are a negligible minority. Adolescent posters on this board give them far too much weight. Most people who are seriously interested in a Mac will just go and buy a Mac. If they are on a tight budget, they might buy a second hand Mac or a Mac Mini, but they won't use a hackintosh. In this respect it is important to remember that most people don't build their own PCs from components either, most people buy DELL, HP, Acer, Lenovo etc etc. The price differences between those vendors' PCs and comparable hardware from Apple are mostly negligible. Most people don't even install their operating system. They use their computers the way they were delivered, with the OS preinstalled. Consequently, most people cannot be bothered to hack a non-Apple machine to run MacOSX, if they want to have a Mac because of MacOSX, they buy a Mac. Of course, there is also a group of people who try out those hacked OSX DVDs simply for curiousity. Either way, those hackintosh installations done by individuals are not anywhere near as significant as all the geeks who get excited about this stuff would like us to believe.
On profit margins of companies and Apple in particular
BTW, Apple's margins are known, even if only roughly, but unlike some adolescent poster claimed here, their markup is not 200%. On lower end products such as the Mac Mini, their margins are somewhere below or near 20% and for high end product such as the MacBook Pro, their margins are just below or equal about 30%. That's a good margin in this industry, yes. But outrageous it is not. It has made Apple the only vendor which has been consistently profitable during the last five years. During that time, while Apple was profitable, other vendors lost money, for example HP lost money on their PC business with a margin of 1% per unit just as often as they just about broke even. Such cut throat margins are not good for HP nor for HP customers because it puts the business at risk and customers may eventually end up without a supplier. Recently, HP have improved their margins and thereby improved the chances for their PC business to survive. Unlike most of the adolescent posters here who are still cared for by their parents paying for food and shelter, companies have to make profits in order to survive. Companies which make profits survive, companies which don't will die, no exceptions.
On the possibility Apple will ever license their OS
As for licensing MacOSX, it is quite likely that Jobs does have a plan somewhere in a drawer that he can pull out in case market conditions become right for Apple to offer OSX to other PC vendors as an OEM operating system. However, if this happens, it will happen on Apple's terms and they will be very careful not to repeat the disaster they experienced with licensing their OS in the mid 1990s. Whatever they do, they would want to preserve some kind of differentiation between their own computers and those of potential OEM partners. Most likely they would want that differentiation to continue to be both on the hardware and the software side, like it or not.
Note that it was made known that Apple had offered to license MacOSX for 1 USD per unit to the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. OLPC declined Apple's offer but this shows that Apple are open to consider the possibility of OEM licensing if they think that the circumstances are favourable to them.
For example, Apple could build a separate OEM operating system based like OSX on the XNU Kernel, the Darwin base and the Cocoa API. In other words they could make a derivative that is OSX API compatible but that wouldn't have the exact same look and feel. The OEM operating system might even be customised in look and feel specifically for the OEM partner. Apple might only sign up the big fish, for example HP and/or DELL, and leave all other vendors to Microsoft. Apple might restrict support to a limited number of system boards and components or charge the OEM partners for developing and maintaining any drivers that might be required to support their hardware and components they would like to use. The resulting OS might not even be called MacOSX then, it might be called HP-DesktopOS and DELL-DesktopOS or whatever the OEM partners choose to call it. Like Intel's sticker "Intel Inside", Apple might then grant those OEM partners the use of a logo "MacOSX API compatible" or something like that.
Of course this is mere speculation, but if the opportunity arises for Apple to take advantage in some way, and if they feel they can manage this in a way that will not kill their hardware business, then it cannot be ruled out that they would do some form of tightly controlled OEM licensing. In no event do I foresee any situation where they would just sell their OS to everybody for every piece of hardware, in other words for them to adopt Microsoft's business model, that is simply not going to happen.
On the possibility that another company clones MacOSX
There is also another scenario that cannot be ruled out, that some other company will put some effort into assembling a MacOSX clone OS. This is not as difficult as it might sound. Apple's kernel, many of the drivers and the base OS (Darwin) is already open sourced. That leaves the Core Foundation and Cocoa APIs for which the specification is open and independent open source implementations exist. Some company which wanted to sell their own MacOSX clone OS could fund those projects and integrate all the parts into their own version, add some nice logos and graphics of their own and sell it. The logos and graphical elements would probably remain proprietary in order to make it a little more difficult for any competitors to fork without any further effort. They would also need to license some fonts. Yet, overall, the effort and cost to create a legal clone of MacOSX is not that immense.
Consider how much money a vendor like HP or DELL might be able to save in royalty payments to Microsoft if they could simply sell their own OS. The fact that MacOSX is becoming ever more popular is continuously reducing the risk for those vendors to create their own legal clone OS, because if they can market it as API compatible with MacOSX, and if they hire some decent graphic designers who make it look nice enough, they will likely find many interested customers.
On the possibility that open source projects such as GNUstep will deliver a decent looking Aqua substitute
It is also possible that the projects which work on the open source implementations of Apple's APIs (ie GNUstep) will eventually gain enough support that an entirely open source based MacOSX clone OS will emerge. They'd need some decent graphic designers though to make it look more appealing than what they have now. Yes, strictly rationally speaking, looks should not be considered as important as reliability and functionality, but in the real world, looks do matter a lot, even if only on a subconscious level. Any project that neglects look and feel is not going to be a winner in the realm of GUI systems.
look at the thing! it's an ugly, plain black box. ooooh, it's got silver trim! it's pug ugly and looks just like any other windoze pc.
i wouldn't put something like that in my loft! let alone somewhere that people can see it.
but you lot are missing the point - there's nothing more special about this than another pc out there - you still have to hack it to get OS X to work on it - the only difference is that in this case, the vendors are providing the hacking tools
and you'll still get a not quite perfect OS X experience - whenever anything goes wrong, you won't know if it's your sub-standard pc hardware that's at fault, the glue-and-string used to make OS X work on the non-apple hardware, or a genuine problem with the system
"Ultimately Apple can own more market share by a move like this."
Apple are a hardware manufacturer and one of the main features is OSX, if you could buy any ond PC and slap OSX on it Apple would stand to loose alot of money. Well i'm sure hairdresers will still buy the pretty boxes but that one area limits the oppurtunity for market growth :-)
@Iain Paterson
That argument about the hardware QA is nonsense all Apple would have to do is just publish a list of the supported hardware, or add a clause in the eula stating that they do not provide support for non-apple official hardware.
Then create some kind of Apple-certified ccna/mcp-like cert and you and I will have more fun with computers at work.
Most HW vendors will do the QA for Apple and test the hardware themselves.
I really hope Apple wakes up to customer demand on this one.
Would you rather make $1 each on 30 million PCs selling for $499 or would you prefer to sell only 1 million PCs selling at $799 but make $160 each?
The former is what HP have been doing until recently, the latter is what Apple have been doing. As a result HP has a lot more market share but their PC business continuously struggles to turn a profit, while Apple has a lot less market share, yet they've consistently been profitable.
So what if it was your business? Would you still want to be market share champion? Or would you want to be profitability champion?
"If microsoft can get knobbled by the competition guys for bundling media player and IE, how do apple get a way ..."
The difference should be blatantly obvious:
A court of law has found Microsoft to be operating an illegal monopoly in violation of antitrust laws.
By contrast, as many people have pointed out, Apple has only a small share of the market, they have not been found by any court of law to operate an illegal monopoly in violation of antitrust laws.
In other words, Microsoft is a "convicted felon", while Apple have "no criminal record".
"The only reason OSX doesn't run on any old hardware is that it checks for a specific chip"
OSX doesn't run on any old PC hardware because the graphics engine requires SSE3. It also requires some other technologies which are not found on older system boards.
"i'm surprised that no-one has released a cracked version of the os that can be installed on any pc."
DVD images which contain hacked version of OSX to install on non-Apple hardware do exist but if you wanted to make them run on "any PC" you would be looking at a serious amount of work writing code for the tons of hardware components that Apple's code doesn't support. The folks who are involved in the hackintosh DVD images therefore concentrate mostly on hardware with components which Apple code does support. They did add an EFI simulator though, because Apple doesn't use BIOS and consequently OSX doesn't work with BIOS firmware, it requires EFI.
There is always more than meets the eye. You are entitled to your opinion of course, but there is a big difference between an opinion based on hearsay and wishful thinking and an informed opinion based on having researched the subject matter and knowing some background information.
"look at the thing! it's an ugly, plain black box. ooooh, it's got silver trim! it's pug ugly and looks just like any other windoze pc.
i wouldn't put something like that in my loft! let alone somewhere that people can see it."
I don't see any problem with the case. An acrylic window and a few blue blinky lights don't make a computer go any faster. Just like a NoS sticker and undercarriage lights don't make your car go faster.
Just my $0.02
@Anonymous Coward
How many times can you say 'adolescent poster' in one big old boring kludge of 'stuff we already know / I'm so clever'?
Anyhoo, boobies...
A hackintosh works great, but your in the hands of amateur hackers when you download dodgy DVD install ISO's.
Think about it, if these guys are clever enough to hack various iterations of the MacOsX install DVD to run on SE2/SE3 compatible chips, they sure as shit are clever enough to chuck in a whole bunch of back doors to the install.
You are then effectively in the hands of those who provide these dodgy DVD's.
There is really only one solution, buy a Mac.
Damn adolescent posters, boobies.
Yes, there are ATI and NVidia cards for Macs, but it is not uncommon that graphics cards have different firmware for Windows and Macs. Some models may not have Mac specific firmware and those might then pose a challenge to use under OSX without adding host based software to substitute the missing API calls.
Note that the OSX graphics engine delegates various functions needed for the GUI to run on the graphics card instead of the host CPU. Initially OSX had equivalent host based code in case the graphics card didn't support the functions required, but with every new version of OSX, Apple have raised the bar on what the graphics cards must be able to do for the GUI. The more processing the graphics card is expected to do, the more severely would the user experience suffer if the card didn't support it and that processing took place on the host CPU. Apple doesn't like their image to be tarnished by old hardware struggling to cope and when they feel that certain hardware is simply no longer up to the task, they simply withdraw support for it.
Microsoft Vista is an example of how an overzealous desire for backwards compatibility can go wrong. Vista has also moved towards graphics card based GUI processing but unlike Apple, Microsoft don't like to tell users that some hardware is no longer supported because the user experience may suffer. Consequently, many Vista users with hardware that is only barely up to the task have been complaining about sluggish performance and Vista's reputation has taken a hit because of this. Microsoft may have been better off if they had followed Apple's example and simply withdraw support for hardware that is only barely sufficient.
So if you find some graphics card that isn't supported by OSX, even though it is supported by Windows, it could be either the lack of specific firmware which OSX requires for its GUI processing, or it could simply be that the card was deemed by Apple not to be sufficient to provide a positive user experience.
Whether you find a PC (or any other appliance for that matter) to be ugly, that is entirely subjective, a matter of taste. One man's cool looking gadget is another man's ugly box.
I personally like appliances as small and slim as possible so that they don't take up space on my desk nor under it. I like Apple's iMac design where the PC is built-in to the monitor, even though it has some drawbacks. I also liked HP's idea mounting a small PC case behind the monitor to achieve a similar footprint as the iMac but still have a separation between monitor and main unit although its less clean in terms of the cabling. Basically I like my stuff to be as invisible as possible.
Yet, there are those who like boxes as huge as possible, with as many buttons as possible, as many flashing lights as possible and as many connectors as possible. To them this is beauty, to me that is an ugly mess. There is really no point in judging other people's visual preferences. Different people have different tastes, and that is probably a good thing.
"How many times can you say 'adolescent poster' in one big old boring kludge of 'stuff we already know / I'm so clever'?"
I didn't think this post was boring and considering to whom it was addressed ("... to the adolescents ...") it probably wasn't even meant for you. You will probably admit that some of the posts have been rather silly, not everybody will want to bother replying to uninformed drivel posts, but the content was warranted nevertheless.
You're wrong, OSX is based on Mach and a FreeBSD userland.
"Most part manufacturers (video cards etc) cope with Linux."
The programming paradigms for drivers under Windows and Linux are very similar, all procedural C code, monolithic kernel. It's not too difficult to rip a Windows driver's guts apart and write a Linux wrapper around it and vice versa.
The OSX kernel is a totally different animal. It's got an object oriented API, all coded in embedded C++ and the kernel is a hybrid between a microkernel (Mach) and a monolithic kernel (XNU minus Mach). If you have sample source code for a driver for Windows or Linux, you will be struggling to write a wrapper around it to derive an OSX driver from it. Usually you have to write an OSX driver from scratch, simply because the programming paradigm is totally different.
The OSX kernel API (IOKit) has its advantages but for people who have only written drivers for conventional kernels and kernel APIs before it is a pain in the butt to adjust to the way drivers are written for OSX. This is one reason why some manufacturers don't want to bother with OSX drivers, their existing driver developers can't do it on the side and they don't feel like hiring an extra body just for OSX. Besides, experienced driver developers for OSX are difficult to find.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Oh, I forgot. Mac users are just users not techies."
Been building and fixing PCs for 15 years, so I qualify as a "techie". I just BUILT a spare Mac, "from parts" that is file serving, torrenting, burning DVDs for my tape archive project, AND is the heart of my entertainment system for about $75 total cost. Dual 550 G4.
Could I do that with a 2000 era Windows box? With a supported OS? With decent performance?
Most of the tech people I know are going to, or have gone to Mac. I don't care what's trendy, what's popular, or what's "pretty". I just like an OS thats usable, stable, secure, and requires no maintenance.
Yes, its a pain to pay a little more, but my $2.500 macbook Pro is twice the computer My $2000 Dell Inspiron was "though now the Dell is a great Linux box" the fact that the Mac is sleek and eye pleasing is nice, but I didn't buy it for how it LOOKS, I bought it for how it works, and it works great! Its a joy to own and a pleasure to use and thats reason enough.
Who needs Windows? I already HAVE a gaming system!
@Richard Cartledge
I think you are being unduly pedantic. Apple are a hardware company who outsource the actual manufacturing to factories in the far east, just like every Dell, HP, Acer etc.
They are very definitely _not_ are a software company. They use the perceived "qualities" of their software offerings as a carrot to induce people to buy their hardware. That is why apple don't licence software in _any_ of the markets they participate in, even to the point of keeping their fairplay DRM to themselves. If they were like MS (a software company) then they would have fallen over themselves to licence fairplay to all and sundry and take a cut from every MP3 player sold on the planet.
It is clear that this is not their business model. They want people to buy ipods so they use their exclusive access to itunes+fairplay as a means to "encourage" people to buy ipods.
Angel Jobs, because even though he may be an arsehole, he's a genius at business.
Hell a lot of modern pc hardware is osx compatable if you know how to get it installed and can find the correct kexts. I have osx 10.5.4 running on my HP laptop niceley (I damned well wasnt going to keep the preinstalled vista that it came with), everything working as it should and didnt take that much effort (partly because hardware wise its almost identical to a macbook anyway).
For those that go on saying OSX is just linux with a candy GUI, go play with a vista laptop then an osx laptop of the same size, the GUI is so much nice and inteligently designed. Just the use of screen space for example (vista you have half your screen taken up with stuff you dont care about). Plus OSX is build on a BSD core anyway so its not actually linux no unless you want to say linux is really unix/minux etc.
I work with a lot of techies and they all have mac's because of the "it just works factor". The spend all day fixing broken computers they dont want to have to fix or have hastle or worry about compatability with their own.
Personally though I dont run OSX on main pc because im a gamer, I spend silly money on that box (more than a good mac pro would cost), and while osx does run great on it doesn't play the games I want to play so sadly is XP x64 for me on that box.
At the end of the day joe public (and most of the retail market) dont care about the technical side/brand loyalty side etc, they just want something that does the job they want from it without any headache.
Apple is becoming more popular, they sell more macs, they make more money and that also means they attract more copycats, nothing unusual.
As for lack of drivers and lack of applications, more popularity and more sales of macs will also attract more companies to develop apps and drivers for macs, just a matter of time.
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