Is it possible to run OSX on an intel chipset? How 'bout the other way; could a person run Windows on an Apple machine? And, since I think I know the answer, I’ll ask, why not?
I don’t think you know the answer Virtual PC is commonly used for Macs to run a full-blown installation of Windows XP and any other programs that a PC-compatible computer runs.
I believe that there have been older MacIntosh emulators for PC’s and some are probably still avialable but no one has written one for the newer Mac OS’s. My assumption is that it could and would be done if the market was big enough to justify the development expense.
Emulators for widely different systems are avaialble on lots of different platforms.
PearPC is an emulator that will let you run OSX on an Intel/AMD processor, under both WindowsXP & Linux, though the project is still in development. And others have mentioned you can run Windows on a Mac by using Virtual PC.
And if you want to be really silly, you can run WindowsXP on top of OSX using Virtual PC, and then run OSX inside of Windows using PearPC. 
Awesome! Thanks guys/girls/beings!
And color me stupid for forgetting that Virtual PC exists.
Anyone have any experience running OSX on an intel machine? How does performance suffer?
The instructions that each chip understands are completely different on a binary level. Therefore, you cannot “natively” run an operating system designed for one chip on the other. As others have stated, with good emulation, it can work well.
At one point in time, the precursor to OS X, called OpenStep, was available to run on Intel chips. I used to write software for OpenStep and we used off-the-shelf hardware. They also made it possible to compile OpenStep applications to run under Windows. I mention this mostly to point out that at one time, what is now OS X ran just fine on Intel chips, and I don’t see a technical reason why it could not happen again in the future. Politically, it won’t, because the operating system is really just an excuse to sell Apple hardware.
JOhn.
I’ve done the emulator-within-an-emulator thing, through several iterations in fact, but this is a combo that would bring most hardware to its knees, whimpering. Running MacOS X in PearPC within VirtualPC running XP, or for that matter running XP in VirtualPC within MacOS X running in PearPC, would really put your chips through their paces.
I have done ][ in a Mac (an Apple II emulator, running Apple ProDOS) within vMac (a Mac Plus emulator, running System 6) within Basilisk II (a Mac Quadra emulator, running System 7.5) within VirtualPC (running NT Server) on my PowerBook (running OS X), but you’ll note that each OS, and for the most part each virtual machine, as you tunnel down, is smaller and simpler than the environment emulating it.
Meanwhile —technically speaking, Microsoft could port XP to run on Apple’s Macintosh hardware (and once upon a time did have a PowerPC version of NT that wasn’t far from being able to run on a Mac, although there are other chips and ports and card slots that differ between the two platforms that have to be taken into account, not just the CPU). They haven’t, so you can’t buy it and run it, but theoretically they could, and then you could.
But you still couldn’t install your Windows software (AutoCAD, mIRC, PCAnywhere, the Windows verson of Microsoft Office, the Windows version of Adobe Photoshop, the Windows version of Mozilla Firefox, and your favorite Windows games). It would not run. All that software would have to be recompiled to run under the MACINTOSH version of Windows. It would be a simplier and easier port than recompiling it to run under OS X, to be sure, but you can see why this would still be a major bummer and it’s one of the big reasons why they don’t just go ahead and do it.
And, reciprocally, Apple could port MacOS X to run on Intel/industry-standard PC architecture (and once upon a time did have an Intel-native development version of Rhapsody that really would run on a PC, although it would not run Classic applications written for Macintosh). Apple didn’t continue to pursue that development path, so you can’t buy it and install it on your PC, but if they had, you could.
And yet, again, you would have been able to simply install your Mac software (iMovie, GarageBand, Safari, Final Cut Pro, the Macintish version of Photoshop, Mozilla Firefox, or your library of old MacOS 9/8/7 “Classic” software) because none of it would “just run” on OS X for PC. The “Cocoa” apps would be easy to port, the Carbon apps much messier to port, and the elderly Classic apps probably harder yet, but even at the easiest (the Cocoa apps) it would still be a disincentive if you couldn’t use the exact same software, and this again is a major reason that they don’t just do it.
The core of Mac OSX is available for Intel. It is called Darwin.
This only gets you the Unix guts and not the graphic or other goodies of Mac OS X.
Brian
Note that Virtual PC lets you run Intel-based operating systmes on a Mac; you can’t use it to run MacOS of any iteration on an Intel PC.
And it’s not-a-big-secret secret that Apple maintains a current version of MacOS X that runs on Intel. They use it strictly for testing, though; apparently anomalies that only appear on one platform is a warning sigh of a low-level bug. There are no plans to port MacOS X to the Intel architecture, and I’d be surprised if we see any in the forseeable future.