OS X on an Intel platform

[Neb]

I'm new to Mac, so bear with me here. If the OS X system is Unix based, wouldn't it be possible to port this to run on an Intel platform?

Spare me the Mac hardware debate, but if Jobs really wants to compete with Windows....and believe me, Linux ain't gonna do it on the Desktop, then the only other OS capable of competing is OS X. So.....why not move in that direction?

[Pengu]

ok. yes it is technically possible, but Apple makes its money in hardware sales. and. they control the hardware, so they can support it in the OS very well. that's why "this device is not working properly" is no where near as much an issue with macs as wintel PCs.

[WinWord10]

Welcome to the forums. Your post should probably be in the Cafe. Apple News, Rumors, and Discussion is for discussion of the latest Macintosh developments only.

With that out of the way, it is not currently possible to run OS X's graphical interface on the intel architecture. However, you can run Darwin, the OS X core, on an intel-based system. Aqua and Quartz, which power the GUI in OS X, require a risc-based processor to function. Intel processors are cisc-based. Apple is not in any rush to port them because doing so would basically be committing suicide on their business. If people didn't have to buy Macs to run OS X, Apple would sell fewer computers and loose more money to piracy.

[Anim8r]

Is it that time of year again?

Sigh, every year it rolls around like Passover and Easter.

Where is the x86 version of OSX?

[Qion]

Originally Posted by Anim8r

Where is the x86 version of OSX?

Oooo hoo hoo..... My worst nightmare is living.....

[Mikuro]

If Apple ever really needed to, they could port OS X to Intel with relatively little trouble. The key word being relatively. It'd be easier that porting Windows to PowerPC, but it still wouldn't be easy.

It would be quite a challenge to rewrite all their frameworks to run well on Intel. It's taken years just to get things running really well on PPC, and this is what Apple knows. It would take more years to get it working well on x86.

Also, third-party applications would all need to be rewritten. For some of these, it would be easy, since Apple's Cocoa application framework, which is used for most modern programs, could be pretty easily ported to x86 (it was in the past, and I believe there are still incomplete implementations that do run on x86 hardware), but porting Carbon, which is still used by lots of applications, like Photoshop, MS Office, and iTunes, would be very, very difficult. And you can forget about Classic compatibility altogether.

And even if they translated their frameworks, all heavy-duty programs would need to be rewritten almost from scratch. Any application that is optimized for G4 or G5 would need to be rewritten for Intel hardware. This would mean that OS X apps would be utterly useless for professional work, because it would take a lot of time for developers to rewrite their apps to get competitive speed.

A big part of OS X's stability comes from the fact that Apple controls the hardware. They know exactly what it'll run on, with a relatively small number of variations. If OS X could run on Any Old Intel Box, it would send Apple's support and QA costs through the roof, and OS X's legendary stability through the floor.

Apple certainly couldn't abandon PPC altogether, as that would cut off their entire established user base. So they would need to maintain both x86 AND PPC versions of OS X. This in and of itself would be a huge task, but it would also lead to a nightmare for end users. Imagine downloading an OS X program and then realizing "oops, this is for OS X on x86, not PPC". And some apps might only work on one or the other, or at least be heavily optimized for one more than the other. Consistency would go right down the drain.

Those are just a few of the technical reasons why such a move would be impractical. I'm not even touching on the business reasons. As others have mentioned, it would be financial suicide. The only way they could really make it work is if they made OS X only run on Apple-brander x86 machines. But...that'd kinda defeat the whole purpose, now wouldn't it?

[RacerX]

Not that I disagree with the previous post, but I thought I would point out a few things...

Originally Posted by Mikuro

This in and of itself would be a huge task, but it would also lead to a nightmare for end users. Imagine downloading an OS X program and then realizing "oops, this is for OS X on x86, not PPC". And some apps might only work on one or the other, or at least be heavily optimized for one more than the other. Consistency would go right down the drain.

I can say from experience that this issue (having both PowerPC and x86 versions of applications) isn't that big a deal. I've been dealing with it in Rhapsody for years without it being a nightmare.

First, many of the apps were designed to run on both PowerPC and x86 without the end user doing anything at all. I have apps that run on my Rhapsody for PowerPC system perfectly and will run just as good on my Rhapsody for x86 (PixelNhance is one such app that comes to mind).

Further, developers took the time to label their apps with which platform it was design to run on ("p" for PowerPC systems, "i" for x86, and "pi" if it would run on both).

Nightmare seems like a strong word for this situation. And it was even worse with OPENSTEP/NEXTSTEP as there were four hardware platforms that they ran on. And even with four, it was relatively easy to figure out what apps ran on what hardware.


Now one thing that did come up (and lead to the demise of Rhapsody for x86) was developer's not making their applications run on both platforms.

When Rhapsody was first released to developers, OPENSTEP developers were the ones best suited for writing apps for the new operating system. Most people thought that they would put out more x86 apps than PowerPC as most had been running OPENSTEP on x86 hardware for quite a few years. As it turned out, that assumption was wrong.

By the time Apple was getting ready to release a version of Rhapsody to the public, the x86 version was facing a deficit in the amount of applications that would run on it. All of these developers had jumped to PowerPC hardware and stopped taking the time to make all their apps work on the x86 version of Rhapsody. Add to that the fact that Blue Box (sort of an early Classic) only worked on the PowerPC version of Rhapsody and the x86 version was facing a major shortage in applications (compared to the PowerPC version).

Well, with few apps Rhapsody had very little chance of success on x86 (this is a well known effect in the industry called the applications barrier which had doomed many great operating systems in the past). So Apple pulled the plug on Rhapsody for x86 (the last version released was 5.1, the last PowerPC version was 5.6).

As most big name Mac developers said that they had no intension of rewriting their apps in Yellow Box (which would become Cocoa), even the PowerPC version was facing an up hill battle. This was when Apple put forward the idea of Carbon.

If Apple ever really needed to, they could port OS X to Intel with relatively little trouble. The key word being relatively. It'd be easier that porting Windows to PowerPC, but it still wouldn't be easy.

There is a PowerPC version of Windows which runs on G5 hardware. This was done so developers could write games for Xbox 2. And it wasn't all that hard as there had been previous versions of Windows (NT 4.0 and 3.x) which ran on PowerPC systems.

What should be noted is that Windows on PowerPC ran into the same applications barrier that Rhapsody on x86 ran into (and that Mac OS X on x86 would also run into).

The most advanced operating system in the world is pointless without applications. With no applications, users will not use that operating system. With no users, developers will not write for that operating system.

With Carbon, Apple was able to give Mac OS X enough momentum to get passed that barrier. There would be no equivalent way to provide that type of momentum on x86... and Apple has plenty of incentive not to hurt it's hardware business (which is where about 90% of it's profits come from).

[Viro]

Thanks for the good overview, RacerX.