Apple VP says Mac OS X won't run on other PCs - Page 3

If apple really wanted to license the operating system to PC manufacturers, they would have developed the universal binaries before and rosetta would have been in existence before. Remember, necessity is the mother of invention. Whatever tools were needed would have been available (be it rosetta, universal binaries, etc). Does it not fascinate anyone that apple suddenly have these tools?. I'm inclined (and i don't have any more info than anyone in this forum) to believe that apple had these tools a while back, just like MacOS X has always been compiled for intel chips. Kinda like a rainy day insurance policy.

Or it recently acquired them in order to make the switch. This is hardly surprising. Microsoft may have versions of its OS for other chips. Apple had a contingency plan. They had to get Roseta up and running before an announcement to developers to assure them. We don't know when Jobs made the decision.

Thanks for making my point. If apple wanted to license, it would have acquired the the tools before now or at that time. The capability to develop these tools were there for a while now. In fact, i would not be surprised if apple announced at a later date that ability to compile for either platform was there from the beginning but there was no need to release that capability. Again, i have no special knowledge but i wouldn't be surprised. I also wouldn't be surprised if apple said later they could have developed the tools but only chose to do so when they decided internally to move to intel. Apple is just like any company, they do have budgets and limited resources. Because they were not intending to license the os, they may not have bothered to develop the capability to compile for two chipsets until when needed.

That's exactly what's happening. Have you watched Job's Keynote speech at WWDC '05? He shows just how simple this is to do. Literally takes only one mouse click.

Have you watched Job's Keynote speech at WWDC '05? It literally takes only one mouse click [b]for the developers who have been compliant and using Xcode[b]. The funny thing is, some of the biggest apps are written without compliance or Xcode.

No your missing the point - developers would be required to do this to work on Intel PCs - not Macs. AND it's not as simple as clicking the box it still has to be tweaked (and that is if it's in Xcode already).

Won't be an emulator anymore. It'll have the native hardware right there. In fact this is the very thing Microsoft bought VPC for, running multiple instances of an OS. I expect VPC will be a big winner from this. No longer will is suffer slow speeds and lack of hardware support but instead will provide a way of running Windows programs at near native speed within OS X. Sure there will be alternatives but people like easy and VPC will give it.

About 80% of developers already use xcode or have been in the process of moving to it anyways.
You click a box to indicate if you want to compile for PPC, Intel or both.

If the app is already setup in xcode it is a matters of hours to a few days to get an intel port. No big deal.

If you aren't using xcode, well, then it's going to take alot longer.

This makes no sense, at all. Just because Apple didn't want to license MacOS X last month doesn't mean that it doesn't want to license MacOS X this month. There is something that people in the real world have to deal with called change. Change happens whether you want it or not. If you are smart, you manage change and make it work to your advantage. By all estimates, Steve Jobs is smart. IBM has not always been going down a different path than Apple. Intel has not always had the Pentium M. Apple has not always had Rosetta. Intel-based computer manufacturers have not always lobbied Jobs for MacOS X licenses. Intel processors have not always been fast enough to emulate the PPC at acceptable speeds. Technology breakthroughs don't happen on a set schedule. But when a significant breakthrough happens, smart people are ready to make the most of it. Dumb people should shut-up and follow. Just take a look at the cover story of the July 2005 issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine. Read and be wise.

80% of the "Top 100" developers. That's not the same.

Does no one remember the clone days and what licencing nearly did to Apple?
Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. If theres no money in hardware, why is Apple sitting on 6 billion dollars? Are you trying to tell me there's no money in iPod's, or are iPods suddenly not hardware any more?
Apple is one of the biggest sellers of computers in the world. Why would you give that up by licencing your OS to someone else?

Exactly - Apple are not going to abandon hardware. They make beautiful products which are also exceptional. My PowerBook is stunning.

So you can sell more software - and Apple makes some very nice software for the Mac, and products other than PCs. I don't believe they had much back in the old licensing days.

Here's a possible scenario: Apple uses a "standard" Intel chipset (CPU, BIOS, support chips, etc.) with some mechanism to keep OS X from running on anything but Apple boxes. Sales go great, so great Apple can't keep up with demand - Intel has lots of chips, but Apple's contractors can't produce enough boxes. Apple picks another major PC vendor (HP? Sony?) to make OS X boxes - maybe they even dictate the type of box the vendor can make (laptops, desktops). Supply picks up, Apple loses some hardware sales - but is then free to shift manufacturing around.

Meanwhile, Apple also has other products to produce - Airport line of products, iPod line, new lines. These products continue the halo effect and more OS X boxes get sold.

The trick in this scenario is negotiating a good deal with a PC manufacturer. That could prove extremely difficult. But I think the best approach is to license to a select few manufacturers rather than opening things up as much as they did the first time around.

It could work.

- Jasen.

It wouldn't be Apple though.

I wouldn't totally rule out Apple licensing OS X.

I think eventually they will.

They would do it in a much smaller more controlled strategic way. There are markets Apple can't penetrate as well as another OEM could.

I would love it if Apple openly supported standard PCs, I have several and would buy a licence for most of them. It is very tough to ascertain at what the minimum market penetration it would make sense to support everyone in that manner. I think that the sales Mac hardware would simply drop if just any computer could run OS X, because a lot of people don't care about even daily glitches, Windows 9x proved that with some hardware. To my knowledge, the only profitable major computer companies are Dell and Apple, if Apple had to directly compete on price, then it would just be Dell.

Another, they would have to worry about support for several brands of chipsets, being the good ones like AMD and nVidia and also the garbage from Via, Sis and others, and several subfamilies within those brands, wheras Apple now only needs to support one brand of chipsets: Intel. I would imagine that Apple is keeping a hedge though, secretly maintaining drivers for AMD brand chipsets (ones made by AMD, not simply any brand chipsets that support AMD CPUs) for a possible changeover should Intel products not prove competitive in the long run.

Even if all the respective vendors wrote their own drivers, validating those drivers would be a major undertaking. Part of what makes Windows problematic for some people is that other than the logo branding system, Microsoft simply has no control over what other companies do, and I think Apple is smart trying to avoid this.

Also, so far, every pay-for competitor to Windows on generic x86 has died or is living on market shares so slim that they make Apple look like a major OS company. BeOS, OS/2, DR-DOS and probably a few others have come and died. SCO is effectively gone, Solaris x86 works only on very limited sets of hardware. Even the free OSs have a difficult time, namely FreeDOS, Linux and BSD.

I agree. I don't know why so many people think that having one or two other OEM's would mean Apple would lose its own market. Yes, I remember the clones and it was an amazing and heady time to be a Mac person. There was innovation and energy...and Apple wasn't ready for it. I think it is now, or rather it could be soon.

I believe Schiller and Jobs would rather not license the OS and they will resist as long as possible and that is fine. That keeps the Mac the way we would all like it and who cares what cpu is inside, but if Apple eventually does allow clones, I bet Apple keeps being the #5 computer maker and keeps making huge money on 5% of the market while the Mac grows to 15% of the market.

Both could happen. It is just too bad it couldn't happen with IBM.

PS Cringeley's report is typical interesting, thought provoking Cringeley, but he is much better historian, than he is prognosticator.

Really guys, this is much ado about nothing.

Apple is changing the processor in Macs from a PPC to an x86, thats it. Why the fuck would they change their entire business model just because they changed something (on certain levels) as trivial as a processor? Two years from now Apple will still be selling Macs, just like they are today except that they will have Intel or AMD processors in them. The notion that somehow putting a different processor in a Mac suddenly means that Apple is going to license their OS and/or partner with HP/et. all, is total FUD.

Not to hate, because it is fun to speculatebut really, its not THAT big of a deal.

BUT these processors are the same as those used in PCs. Firstly a re-write of the OS and Apps is needed and secondly it would be possible to run OS X and Apps on x86 based computers with no work. I don't see Apple changing the business model but it's possible (I didn't see Apple switching to Intel either!)

It's actually 97% overall marketshare, NOT NEW SALES.

PC sales growth has gone from 18% down to 10% and Apple has gone from just under 10% to 45% hardware sales growth.

Apple has about 5% of the market but Mac people generally upgrade less often hence the misconception.

Indeed, but Sales Growth and Marketshare are two completely different beasts, which was the point I was trying to make.

Yes you're right - I was confused what you meant by new sales but I think I know you meant growth!

I think the fact that Sales Growth has increased about 3 times is a good sign, or though it could have just been that everyone was on their upgrade cycle. And now that'll probably be hampered a bit by the Switch.

I reckon that whoever let that developer preview into the wild will have a nice fat lawsuit on their desk soon enough.