Should OS X run on generic PCs?

June 12, 2005 at 2:40 pm Mike 3 comments

The current developer’s build of OS X 10.4 for Intel will run on standard PCs. Most likely that will change for the release version. Should Apple allow OS X to run on non-Apple hardware? Discuss the pros & cons here.

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Written by Emmanuel about 2010 years ago.

Drivers for OSX aren’t straight out of FreeBSD. They’re written
to use the IOKit and other Darwin-specific things. However,
Darwin does run on quite a few generic PCs and OSX would be
able to use that.

I however don’t think it’s a good idea. OSX is about a consistent
user experience, where everything just works – and that means
using well-defined hardware that has been tested for proper
interoperability with all Mac software. I’m a switcher myself
and even though I’m a programmer, I have better to do than
fiddle with drivers when I want to get work done – that’s what
attracted me to the Mac in the first place.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

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Written by Anonymous about 2010 years ago.

From what I understand, it’s based on FreeBSD and that runs on generic PCs…

There must be a bunch of hardware driver already available in FreeBSD that could be re-packaged with future OSX releases.

I think everything is possible from the technical side because of that.

I believe this is more a marketing challenge than a technical challenge for Apple. Who knows if they will decide to support non-apple hardware.

Now what about Microsoft? Will they market XP on intel-apple computers? If is intel based, they could manage to do that as well!
Written by Anonymous about 2010 years ago.

I agree w/Apples philosophy. Putting osx onto all intel plaforms would be a really bad move. Support costs a lot of money, and the costs of supporting every platform could hurt apple badly.

However, I do think they should partner with a mainstream company who produces stylish looking machines. The only one I can think of now is Sony. Their FX series 15″ laptops are really nice, spoiled only by the need to load them up with a boatload of anti virus, spyware and other pest control programs.

My mac mini at 1.42ghz/1mb actually feels faster than my 1.73ghz/1mb sony laptop, and I am sure that if I could run os/x on the laptop, it would run a lot faster. Ofcourse..my choice of sony is completely selfserving since I own one

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