I understand the mechanics of why you currently can’t run the MacOS on a PC, but why hasn’t Apple made a version that will run on Intel-based computers? If Steve Jobs would burn it to CD, put it in a box and sell it, hell, I’d buy it for $100.
I was going to answer “you’ll understand these things when you grow up” but I see in your profile you are a network administrator? I am dumbfounded…
From what I understand, MacOS X, currently in beta testing, will run on any platform. The word is that it’s UNIX-based, and can even reliably emulate Windows to run MS-compiled software. If it lives up to all of the hype, I’d seriously consider it, myself.
sailor, I couldn’t have said it better and won’t even try.
Well, OK, I’m a network administrator and I’d kind of like to know why Apple hasn’t done this yet. I keep hearing the Apple guys talk about how that OS is more stable, more flexible, virus-resistant, etc.
Has Apple not previously released an Intel-compatible OS simply because they were trying to protect their hardware biz? Or are there techical/licensing/other reasons that prevented them from releasing a product?
one reason that it’s more virus-resistant is that fewer people use it, so there’s less incentive to make a Mac virus. I don’t even have a virus-protection program on my iMac
If OS X does get released to those vulgar pentel-using computers, I guess I’ll have to get a virus program to protect myself from the common herd.
Off Subject: A Network Administrator does not make you a genius. But don’t worry I’m not passing judgement on you. I know a few Network Admins that don’t know how to set up printers across LANS, montior large and important backups and what not.
I just don’t like that “I’m such and such, and I know…” attitude, I’m just sayin’.
I just don’t think there’s a reason to make the Mac OS Intel-compatable. As has been said before, practically nobody uses it. Viruses aren’t a problem but that also means not a lot of programs are written for it. I happen to use a Mac OS at work and the amount of work you do on it is limited by that very factor. It also has a propensity to crash or freeze up at odd times, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with its underwhelming marketshare. 
Much of the Mac’s really important OS stuff, like routines for drawing the cursor, windows, menu bars, memory handling, and so forth is contained in highly-specialized ROMs. In the past, that made things run a whole lot faster, but now that computers have cycles to burn, it’s kinda a dated concept.
Anyway, the MacOS has always been very dependent upon the codes in these ROMs. Intel and compatible PCs don’t have the ROMs, so the CPU would have to take care of everything, which would make things…difficult.
There are still advantages to having some stuff hard-coded on the ROMs. Just look at the difference in mouse movement between the Mac and PCs; on the Mac, the mouse glides along smoothly and precisely, while the PC’s pointer shudders across the screen like a spastic flea.
Well, as far as Mac OS X (pronounced “TEN”) goes, it is possible to run it on an Intel, but it will not be happening soon. OS X is based on Free BSD, and Free BSD runs on Intel and Alpha processors. So it would take quite a bit to get OS X to run on an Intel, new device drivers need to be written, along with signal code, etc… Many people have realized the possiblity for Mac OS X to go Intel, but when asked, Steve says that it is not in development right now, nor does he think it will be for some time.
Now as to why it has not happened in the past, who knows? There is probably a technical barrier since Motorola chips are RISC based and Intel ones are not. That would be one of the major reasons, I believe. Also I do not think that Apple is out for world domination like a lot of PC makers are.
And Derleth:
Macs over all do not do that. Only poorly maintained Macs crash or freeze at odd times. You probably need to weed out your system folder, esp. your Extentions. Since you use it at work, I imagine you have an IT dept. that could do that for you. And also, there are thousands of programs written for the Mac. Any program, not game, out there has it equivilent on the Mac. The only difference is that a PC you have 200 choices for drawing programs, on a Mac you have 10 or 15.
-N
I’d imagine that one major reason that it hasn’t been done is that they’d then have to support it.
Apple keeps very tight control over their hardware platform (the main reason I won’t buy one), but if they sold an x86 compatible version of the OS, they’d suddenly have to deal with literally thousands of bits of hardware from vendors who don’t give a damn about Apple. And there is very little incentive to these hardware vendors to cooperate with Apple, at least until the MacOS-on-pc is proven to have some profit potential.
This article in Wired is an excerpt from a book about Apple’s business practices (and mistakes), and details exactly why there was never a port of the Mac OS to other hardware. Prior to launching Windows 3.0, Bill Gates actually sent a secret memo to Steve Jobs, proposing that Apple licence the OS to several large hardware vendors for porting, and he would help them market it; at the time, Gates knew that the real money isn’t in the OS, it’s in the applications, and he believed that Mac could have been the standard desktop OS.
However, Mac is a hardware company, as much a software company, and the feeling at Apple among the all-powerful engineers was that porting it was just releasing a cheaper, poorer, competing version of what they were rightly proud of. They continually nixed the idea. Later, Jean-Louis Gassee, head engineer who left to found BeOS, said that it was a mistake.
Will OS X run on Intel hardware? I know that Free BSD is the foundation for it, and Free BSD runs on x86, but I thought I heard that the higher layers of the OS were extremely difficult to port. This article was written by one of the lead developers for OS X, and discusses some of the deep difficulties they had building OS X on top of Free BSD. Another good read.
You can run Mac programs on a PC. As a matter of fact, that’s been possible for many years with the right program, a program that lets you use Mac software on a PC.
Yes, handy, you can. But that wasn’t the question.
That program that you refer to is essentially a mac emulator. It runs mac programs on top of a virtual machine running on the pc. Thus you get a terrible performance hit since everything must go through an entire extra OS worth of redirection.
According to leaks and other various rumors and legends, there was once a test version of MacOS tested and operational running on Intel. It was known by the codeword “Star Trek” and nobody is really saying how well it worked. But Apple buried it for unknown reasons. Personally, I think its a good thing that they buried it. Apple’s main advantage is the “monolithic platform” where they design all the hardware and software. Even installing Linux on a Mac is easier than on Intel, it is unnecessary to deal with hundreds of different video cards and drive controllers. If Apple had supported MacOS on intel hardware, they’d have been drained by the effort of making their software compatible to every oddly configured x86 cpu.
Some people have commented about MacOS X running on Intel. There’s a lot of misinformation, MacOS X will not run on Intel. The lowest layer of MacOS X is BSD Unix, and Apple-developed versions of BSD known as “Darwin” are running on Intel. But this isn’t MacOS X for Intel. The user interface, and all the stuff that makes a computer a Mac, that’s all in the layer above BSD. That stuff isn’t part of the open-source Darwin project, its proprietary and not being ported to Intel.
Small question: If PCs use Intel chips, what does the MacOS run on? What brand name or number?
they used to run on Motorola chips - don’t know if they still do.
Yes, the older macs used motorola chips of the 68000 series (incidentally, the palm pilot dragonball processor is compatible with these).
I’m not sure who makes the newer G3 and G4 chips, but I think IBM is part of it. I could look it up I suppose, but I don’t really care all that much. 
quote:
I was going to answer “you’ll understand these things when you grow up” but I see in your profile you are a network administrator? I am dumbfounded…
What are you talking about? Your desktop OS can be anything as long as it is networkable and there are useful programs for it, and the Mac OS is both. Lotta people use Linux as a desktop OS in network environments. What I’m saying is, if Steve would make his OS more widely available, the MacIntosh platform would become more widespread. Instead, he is locked into the idea that it has to only work on those RISC based machines he makes.
Why are you worried about computers Maxwell Edison, shouldn’t you be studying medicine?