Is it possible to install MAC OS on a PC??
Printable View
Is it possible to install MAC OS on a PC??
No. The closest you could get is to install Darwin on a PC, which you can download from links on linuxiso.org. (Darwin is the Unix-based core of Mac OS X, and it's been ported to x86.)
Currently, there is no commercial/free version of MAC OS for x86. However, there have been rumors for a while of an x86 compatible version of MAC OS in alpha form floating around under NDA. The code-name of the MAC OS x86 project is Marklar, so do a search on that for more info.
Here's an article a little over a month old:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,6071,798200,00.asp
I've heard rumours that Marklar keeps up with the PowerPC version of Mac OS. This isn't necessarily indicative of an imminent OS X shift to x86 as it's also a good debugging method.
If you don't mind running an older Mac OS on an emulated 68K processor, try Basillisk II. It's free, emulates a 68040, can access networks (including other Macs over Appletalk) using the host's card and is quite fast. The most recent version of Mac OS it can run is 8.1.
You'll need ROMs from a 68K Mac to use Basillisk II. I don't know if it would be illegal to give you them or what the acceptable use policy would say ;).
You can download Mac OS 7.5.5 legally from ftp://ftp.apple.com but you'll have to hunt elsewhere for Mac OS 8 disk images. Basillisk II can boot from Mac OS floppies and CDs.
Emulators Inc. claimed to have a PowerPC emulator in the works but it looks like vapourware.
Aplogies for the thread resurrection, but you may be interested in http://pearpc.sourceforge.net. Emulates a PowerPC Mac capable of running Mac OS 10.3, but you'll want a fairly fast PC for reasonable performance.
Yeah well he emulation is supposed to make it really slow, osx is not something I want in that sort of setting if you know what I mean. If you want to run osx, just go buy a mac. They are probably the best systems I have ever used.Quote:
Originally posted by stoo
Aplogies for the thread resurrection, but you may be interested in http://pearpc.sourceforge.net. Emulates a PowerPC Mac capable of running Mac OS 10.3, but you'll want a fairly fast PC for reasonable performance.
Then you haven't truly lived, my friend. ;)Quote:
Originally posted by pudad
They are probably the best systems I have ever used.
Heh, I have used my share of oses and architectures. For a desktop/workstation osx is probably above anything I have used.Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
Then you haven't truly lived, my friend. ;)
I thought that OSX was based off of BSD...:confused:Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
No. The closest you could get is to install Darwin on a PC, which you can download from links on linuxiso.org. (Darwin is the Unix-based core of Mac OS X, and it's been ported to x86.)
Yeah, Darwin has stuff from BSD, see http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/
( For less gloss and more insight, read Ars Technica's review at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/003/p...sx-10.3-1.html , which touches on the Unix side of things a bit, too )
Great PC/Mac hardware comments have come from Anand (http://www.anandtech.com) who went Mac for his primary machine a while ago. His blog has Macdates every now and then, although I couldn't find the old ones after the site redesign :(
And the stock answer to Mac OS on PC would be: if it's an Apple box. They like to make money out of selling hardware. This might of course change, but as they've so far been a 'platform' company, they'd lose their advantage. Great products, great profitability - better not screw it up.
J
I take it you've only ever used Windows 9x and Max OS 9.x.Quote:
Originally posted by pudad
Heh, I have used my share of oses and architectures. For a desktop/workstation osx is probably above anything I have used.
-MrD
I think you are a fool for thinking that, but here are a list of oses I have used for many purposes, server oriented and for programming:Quote:
Originally posted by MrDigital
I take it you've only ever used Windows 9x and Max OS 9.x.
-MrD
FreeBSD (workstation and server related tasks)
OpenBSD (server, packet filtering firewall router nat)
OSX
Gentoo Linux (SUCKS!)
Slackware Linux (More acceptable than Gentoo)
Red Hat Linux
Solaris (mainly just for dbx and the sun compiler, nothing more)
Windows 9.x-server 2003 (all the server series and nt from 4 and up)
Right now I prefer the first mentioned 3 over all else. For that lame comment about what experience I have my answer is: shove it!
OSX has the the bsd base I am accustom too, the stability I have been used to from using the bsds (yeah like any os it will hang if the drivers or hardware is bad, but that goes for everything in that list), great apps out of the box, great opengl and pdf rendered ui, and a great ide form me to write programs for a Unix environment. Nothing else gives me all of that all in one package. So screw you buddy!
darwin consists of the freebsd stuff with the Mach kernel stuff from carnegie melon's project running underneath. The actual kernel is called xnu, it mainly just takes the mach microkernel and runs the freebsd (fbsd 5) components on top. It is not exactly a microkernel but it is pretty close, nt is also sorta like a microkernel but of course the gui is rendered in the kernel and the kernel doesn't lie in the hardware abstraction layer like a standard microkernel should. ms did a few things to get things running a bit faster in the gui which is fine, considering it is primarily used on workstationsQuote:
Originally posted by AstroCreep
I thought that OSX was based off of BSD...:confused:
Anyways they are very nice systems, I want to get my hands on a powermac g4 cheap so I can put my scsi drives in a system I actually use.
Whatever works for you chief, but OSX is still not as good as Windows 2000/XP for desktop/workstation use. In a couple of years, perhaps. After they work out compatibility issues and better program implementation, as well as continue adding features that should've been there already (such as the new finder in 10.3).Quote:
Originally posted by pudad
Right now I prefer the first mentioned 3 over all else. For that lame comment about what experience I have my answer is: shove it!
If you need a UNIX environment to make UNIX apps, good for you. That's a specialized need which limits your choices of OSes anyhow.
And looking at your list, it's not very hard to see why you think OSX is the best. You've been too busy running Linux and BSD with probably Gnome or KDE, both of which pale in comparison to 2000/XP and OSX, so I'm sure from your viewpoint OSX is a step up.
-MrD
I agree, but I didnt know OSX was a KDE/Gnome GUI. I thought it was still the custom apple gui.Quote:
Originally posted by MrDigital
Whatever works for you chief, but OSX is still not as good as Windows 2000/XP for desktop/workstation use. In a couple of years, perhaps. After they work out compatibility issues and better program implementation, as well as continue adding features that should've been there already (such as the new finder in 10.3).
If you need a UNIX environment to make UNIX apps, good for you. That's a specialized need which limits your choices of OSes anyhow.
And looking at your list, it's not very hard to see why you think OSX is the best. You've been too busy running Linux and BSD with probably Gnome or KDE, both of which pale in comparison to 2000/XP and OSX, so I'm sure from your viewpoint OSX is a step up.
-MrD
Sorry for the noob, but havent worked on OSX, and I dont really care to get back into Apple OS.
But yes KDE/GNOME/etc falls quite short to 2000/XP.
I still prefer to run Linux from a command line. But I dont really use Linux as a desktop, more as a server role.
I think maybe I miscommunicated. I meant that OSX as a desktop is a lot nicer on the BSD base than KDE & Gnome are. And since he is used to using Linux/BSD (which don't have the custom apple gui) I was inferring that OSX is a step up from the window managers currently available in the open source arena (KDE/Gnome/others), but still a step down from 2000/XP.Quote:
Originally posted by Colossus
I agree, but I didnt know OSX was a KDE/Gnome GUI. I thought it was still the custom apple gui.
-MrD
I think it's more a matter of taste. Win2k/XP is nice, lots of options but I wouldn't hesitate to switch to OSX if I could load my windows programs with it and use my x86 hardware.Quote:
Originally posted by MrDigital
I think maybe I miscommunicated. I meant that OSX as a desktop is a lot nicer on the BSD base than KDE & Gnome are. And since he is used to using Linux/BSD (which don't have the custom apple gui) I was inferring that OSX is a step up from the window managers currently available in the open source arena (KDE/Gnome/others), but still a step down from 2000/XP.
-MrD
EDIT: this post written using OSX ;)
Under the hood, I really like OS X. But even with its nice eye candy, I'm not a fan of the Apple GUI. The way it looks is fine, but its logical layout just seems like it could be so much more efficient. I suppose a lot of that is due to making its GUI seem familiar to longtime Mac users.
Aside from the OS, I'm not using Apple because their price/performace ratio still seems higher than their competition's. Even with the huge speed advantage the G5's have over past Macs, you can still put together faster x86 boxes for less money. Not that the G5's are dogs by any means, but they're not "the fastest personal computer ever" as Apple's marketing folks might want people to believe.
I think XP went a long way into making things easier for people to find stuff. Win2k still has lots of things in different locations that aren't very intuitive unless you know Windows OS from past experience. Just as I think is the deal with OSX, the more you use it the more you get a feel for where things are and how things work.Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
Under the hood, I really like OS X. But even with its nice eye candy, I'm not a fan of the Apple GUI. The way it looks is fine, but its logical layout just seems like it could be so much more efficient. I suppose a lot of that is due to making its GUI seem familiar to longtime Mac users.
But isn't the point of this thread to see if you could put OSX on PC hardware? If you could do that, would you switch?Quote:
Aside from the OS, I'm not using Apple because their price/performace ratio still seems higher than their competition's. Even with the huge speed advantage the G5's have over past Macs, you can still put together faster x86 boxes for less money. Not that the G5's are dogs by any means, but they're not "the fastest personal computer ever" as Apple's marketing folks might want people to believe.
I just like the dev tools I get while still staying in Unix. It is a pain to not have man pages and unix libraries when all your classes have you program in unix. xcode is one of those really great tools, also I get all the great command line utilities as well. I guess I am just not your average mac user, but I can see why most people would be annoyed by some of the crazies that use one thing or another for no reason.
No, I wouldn't. I'd be more inclined to use *nix than OS X.Quote:
Originally posted by Mr Cherry
But isn't the point of this thread to see if you could put OSX on PC hardware? If you could do that, would you switch?
Like I said above, I like the underpinnings and eye candy of OS X, but I find navigating it to be a bit clunky. For example, why should I have to browse the contents of the hard drive to find an executable to launch? If Microsoft made people use Windows Explorer instead of the Start Menu to launch programs, they wouldn't accept it. Yet Mac users happily use the Finder to do the exact same thing.
Sometimes, we also use the Dock for common programs. Which is easier than the start menu. I also use desktop icons like any computer user. When it's two clicks to get to your applications I don't think it's much of a problem (one click HDD icon, one click Applications icons). Or if you prefer you can use the Apple button and go to Recent Items, just as easy to get to the last 10 apps you used.Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
No, I wouldn't. I'd be more inclined to use *nix than OS X.
Like I said above, I like the underpinnings and eye candy of OS X, but I find navigating it to be a bit clunky. For example, why should I have to browse the contents of the hard drive to find an executable to launch? If Microsoft made people use Windows Explorer instead of the Start Menu to launch programs, they wouldn't accept it. Yet Mac users happily use the Finder to do the exact same thing.
Haha, that is where the doc bar comes in ;). Plus, the programs in osx in the applications directory are much more cleanly layed out than in windows. All the executables contain all the programs files etc. I mean it is one .app file *** opposed to all these directories in C:/Program\ Files. It is just much easier to do that stuff when it is setup so much easier, and for things you access more frequently there is the doc. I have no problem with it though, I am a Unix user and a Computer Science major so osx gives me more than enough as far as usability goes, and it gives me a better ui than windows. Windows never tear or go blank on load etc (of course on load there is the beach ball, but I mean that is much more graceful than the window going blank because some stupid process is taking too much cpu time, etc). On top of that I love the integration of the ipod + itunes + other apps that come with osx. My chat, mail, contacts, and calendar all came with the system and work very nicely together too which is a very nice object oriented approach to setting up a group of apps imo. By no means am I preaching osx, the gui is a bit more heavy than say windows xp, but at the same time being rendered as pdfs in opengl makes for some nice functional effects like expose´. I needed a laptop, so I went with the smallest lightest model they had (which is what I want, I don't see the point of having these crazy huge laptops with insane specs, that only makes for less portability and less battery life), which was the 12" powerbook G4, and it is nice, but having that kind of tool is great when you have a tiny little screen. I mean I don't disagree with you, I wouldn't mind a little menu like in windows, but there is really less of a need for one at the same time.Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
No, I wouldn't. I'd be more inclined to use *nix than OS X.
Like I said above, I like the underpinnings and eye candy of OS X, but I find navigating it to be a bit clunky. For example, why should I have to browse the contents of the hard drive to find an executable to launch? If Microsoft made people use Windows Explorer instead of the Start Menu to launch programs, they wouldn't accept it. Yet Mac users happily use the Finder to do the exact same thing.
The dock's great for a couple of applications, much like the Quick Launch Bar in Windows. But there are probably over twenty programs that I use on a regular basis and I really don't want a huuuuge dock or a whole boatload of aliases on my desktop.
Like you've pointed out, OS X does have its strengths. But I'm sure we can all agree it has some weaknesses, too. And for my particular uses, I feel the weaknesses still outweigh the strengths.
I'm all for someone using what suits their particular needs or tastes. I'm the last person you'll see zealously advocating one platform or bashing another for no good reason. If OS X meets your needs better than Windows or *nix, use it by all means!
Yup! I am also all about using the right tool for the job. Half of why I like osx so much is due to what I'm used to in freebsd though, the other is the apps and the eye candy :). I really like itunes and itunes sharing, really makes music sharing over a lan very transparent and organised. Best part is that rendezvous is an open standard so you can run these servers on anything (had one on my bsd box over the summer, it worked great). A lot easier than having itunes sort everything over nfs.Quote:
Originally posted by SkyDog
The dock's great for a couple of applications, much like the Quick Launch Bar in Windows. But there are probably over twenty programs that I use on a regular basis and I really don't want a huuuuge dock or a whole boatload of aliases on my desktop.
Like you've pointed out, OS X does have its strengths. But I'm sure we can all agree it has some weaknesses, too. And for my particular uses, I feel the weaknesses still outweigh the strengths.
I'm all for someone using what suits their particular needs or tastes. I'm the last person you'll see zealously advocating one platform or bashing another for no good reason. If OS X meets your needs better than Windows or *nix, use it by all means!