The only 3 I've seen actually done is the i7 iBook G3 which is a real MacBook Air on the inside, the i7 iMac G4 that estherhernd (hope I spelled that correct) did and the G5 mod that every hipster online does
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Is PowerPC Obsolete in 2016?
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The only 3 I've seen actually done is the i7 iBook G3 which is a real MacBook Air on the inside, the i7 iMac G4 that estherhernd (hope I spelled that correct) did and the G5 mod that every hipster online does
The one I just referenced was never done, the person who originally talked about it was an idiot, look up his posts.
Apple are very happy making vast amounts of profit selling hardware and software as a package, be it personal computers or iOS thingies. One of Apples major advantages has always been the integration of the hardware and software.
OS X as is runs on a very limited range of hardware that they understand everything about. We still get the occasional OS X update that doesn't work as intended on specific machines in that very limited range. Open up the OS to anything x86 and the costs to Apple for support go through the roof. A Tenner wouldn't even get close to covering it.
Personally I think they'd make more money selling an expandable desktop system, which is what the enthusiasts want.
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Cost/benefit.
More money to develop/increased sales.
I don't have a crystal ball (more's the pity), so I can't tell you if the extra tenners would pay for the extra investment, but if you assume another 100,000 sales globally, that's $1,000,000.
Less taxes and all that, and you probably end up with ( I guess) some where in the region of about $500,000.
You're probably right, it's not that massive a heap of cash.
To an organization like Apple, that is, I mean I'd be quite happy to earn another $500,000 a year!
More money to develop/increased sales.
I don't have a crystal ball (more's the pity), so I can't tell you if the extra tenners would pay for the extra investment, but if you assume another 100,000 sales globally, that's $1,000,000.
Less taxes and all that, and you probably end up with ( I guess) some where in the region of about $500,000.
You're probably right, it's not that massive a heap of cash.
To an organization like Apple, that is, I mean I'd be quite happy to earn another $500,000 a year!
The profit margin on an iPhone is reputed to be in the region of 40%, Macs are a little lower. Apple are using the high margins on the hardware products to subsidise the software. $10 for OS X would get lost down the back of a sofa and is nowhere near covering the support costs of opening up the platform. A more representative cost for the OS would be in the region of that charged for Tiger and Leopard.
I agree with @MagicBoy on the principle of opening up Mac OS X.
One of the reasons why Macs have the reputation for stability that they do is because the hardware is carefully selected to work together and the OS is essentially tailor made for those specific hardware combinations. This also makes OS X installs "portable." The installer basically just dumps all the kexts(without regard to the computer on which you're installing) and you can move installs between supported computers without much trouble. Heck, I've booted a Macbook from a Titanium Powerbook via TDM and it worked perfectly despite the different architectures. Try that with Windows and it won't work unless the hardware is pretty darn close.
Trying to make OS X work on the wide installed base of Intel hardware would be a nightmare-look at how many issues folks who carefully select hardware for Hackintoshing have.
One of the reasons why Macs have the reputation for stability that they do is because the hardware is carefully selected to work together and the OS is essentially tailor made for those specific hardware combinations. This also makes OS X installs "portable." The installer basically just dumps all the kexts(without regard to the computer on which you're installing) and you can move installs between supported computers without much trouble. Heck, I've booted a Macbook from a Titanium Powerbook via TDM and it worked perfectly despite the different architectures. Try that with Windows and it won't work unless the hardware is pretty darn close.
Trying to make OS X work on the wide installed base of Intel hardware would be a nightmare-look at how many issues folks who carefully select hardware for Hackintoshing have.
One of the reasons why Macs have the reputation for stability that they do is because OSX is Linux based.
I remember how unstable systems 6 to 9 could be at times, 7.5.1 was particularly prone to crashing - in my experience.*
All the time running on Apple's carefully selected hardware.
*Open a file [save], copy and paste [save], 2 second edit [save], add a detail [save], change a color [save] - you get the idea - it really was like that back in the mid 90's. Adobe Type Manager didn't help any.
I remember how unstable systems 6 to 9 could be at times, 7.5.1 was particularly prone to crashing - in my experience.*
All the time running on Apple's carefully selected hardware.
*Open a file [save], copy and paste [save], 2 second edit [save], add a detail [save], change a color [save] - you get the idea - it really was like that back in the mid 90's. Adobe Type Manager didn't help any.
I'm thinking about doing one myself. Maybe with an iMac G5 or something.
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Well, you actually have two options; One go see my thread of skinning Linux to look like OS X. The second would be to download Gmac but I warn you its ran by a tool who steals others ideas.
So all I have to do is just put a new skin on Linux and I'll have OS X? That's great to know.
Yes, a million times yes, THIS. One of the reasons I still love the PPC Macs (going back to my first Mac, a 7200/90 bought in 1996) is because of this. They could be expanded and upgraded -- the memory, the PCI slots, the storage, the video, sometimes the CPU itself. You could squeeze 10, even 15, years of useful life out of a system with a few piecemeal upgrades at a time. Apple started going away from that when they went to Intel, and now unless you buy a Mac Pro (at US$3000+) you have a frozen system -- can't upgrade the memory, can't upgrade the disk, can't replace the batteries, can't upgrade the CPU, the video, and so on.
That to me is something that is souring me on Macs today and why I want to push my current Mac arsenal to its useful limits in capability and time. For 10+ years I and many others have wanted a midrange Mac desktop which could be expanded and upgraded -- roughly a headless iMac in power, with the ability to upgrade under the hood. Apple doesn't offer this, I want this, so I tend to stick to older hardware that provides it.
Some of you have seen the thread I've created about my work in upgrading a 7600 that is basically 20 years old. And it still does a surprising amount of useful things BECAUSE of how upgradeable it was. I just LOVE that.
The Classic Mac Pros remain quite expandable, and in some cases has the advantage of being able to use more generic PC parts.
I have a first generation where I've upgrade the CPUs, RAM, GPU, and installed an SSD. Unlike having to buy CPU upgrades from specialty companies(i.e. Sonnet, Newertech, Gigadesigns) I just went on Ebay and bought a matched pair of Intel X5355s for $40 or so and had an 8 core system. I did buy a pre-flashed GPU, but in many cases PC GPUs are plug and play with no flashing if you can forego a boot screen.
No but it's the closest you'll ever get without hackintoshing. I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic. I'm just saying. They share the same backend which is UNIX. In theory, if you had access to apples stuff, you could re write OS X and make it compatible with anything.
Agreed. But as I said, "unless you buy a Mac Pro..."
Sure, today you can buy an early Mac Pro pretty cheaply and run Snow Leopard on it (or maybe Lion, but IMO Lion sucks), upgrading the heck out of it. But even in 2006 as ten years later, if you want a truly upgradeable and customizable desktop, you have to spend several kilobucks on a Pro. There's been nothing out of Cupertino in a user-upgradeable desktop at a consumer price point since the Power Mac line.
In the later G5 days, the low end model was around $2K. I think the cheapest that PowerMacs ever got were the $1300 single 1.25 MDD2003s.
The MP 1,1 "base model" was $2500, but could be downgraded to 2ghz at about the same price as the earlier low-end G5. Even in 2012, the base MP was still $2500.
Considering inflation, prices have actually(relatively speaking) come down as they've stayed fairly constant or even dropped in some cases. When the PowerMac G3 was introduced in 1998, the desktop was $1800 and the minitower was(I think) $2500. For an even bigger shocker, the pieced-together Powerbook G3(Kanga) was $6K.
My MP is running Mavericks, but could run El Capitan-for the time being as long as you keep tossing new video cards in and Apple doesn't drastically change something, this will keep things going for a while.
The "newer" Classic MPs are coming down in price are even more current.
I wish Apple made a current Mac Pro that was actually expandable without spending a fortune on Thunderbolt peripherals. In fact, Steve Jobs use to make fun of all the cables and wires coming out of a PC, and that the first iMac would work with just a power cable and USB keyboard plugged in. A G4 tower with an ADC display could be quite "minimalist" also with only one cable between the tower and monitor, the keyboard plugged into the monitor, and the monitor into the mouse.
Yeah, it would be great to get OS X running on my Silicon Graphics Octane and on my Altix 3000 Minicluster. Apple allegedly kept their options open from the beginning, and reported that they had been running OS X on x86 from the early days of OS X(NextSTEP, AFAIK, was primarily run on x86 and I don't think ever ran on PPC). I think there's been some speculation about them keeping multiple architecture options open, and I would be shocked if full-fledged OS X isn't running on an ARM-based computer somewhere in Cupertino. I doubt they're still developing on the POWER architecture, but it would be great to see OS X running on a POWER 9.
Now the really great thing would be to get Irix 6.3 running on my Mac Pro so I can use Felix on it without having to go to the Octane. Granted other people in the building still use the Octane in my office, so I still need to keep it going.
I swear to God I just found this while downloading things for my next video. There is a version of OS 10.0. It's an alpha that will run on an Intel pentium 1. I'm tempted to see if I can't get an image and try to run it.
*Cough* rhapsody *cough* 
(its well known that apple continued NextSteps x86 port for a couple releases before axing it to the public)
(its well known that apple continued NextSteps x86 port for a couple releases before axing it to the public)
*Cough* rhapsody *cough*
View attachment 635350
I'm gonna test it out in a future video
So, off-topic, guys I just fixed my hackintosh PC, it is happily running Mavericks, will be upgraded to Yosemite(or El Capitan or Fuji) as soon as I get a new GPU, the Intel GMA 3100( NOT THE X3100) is not compatable with OS X, so Mavericks is the last OS X that will run at a reasonable speed on this machine. Actually, me trying to get the GPU to work well in Yosemite, was probably what made it stop booting, I tried using some kexts from a Dell Latitude(Which has a GMA950 type card, same core as GMA 3100).
Next my laptop(Dell Precision M4400, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB WD SATA HDD, Core 2 Duo P8700, mVidia Quadro FX 770M, Intel WifiLink 1000) needs to be hackintoshed, the Mountain Lion DVD keeps giving me an error(ElliotForceLegacyRTC is to blame, at least in-part)
Next my laptop(Dell Precision M4400, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB WD SATA HDD, Core 2 Duo P8700, mVidia Quadro FX 770M, Intel WifiLink 1000) needs to be hackintoshed, the Mountain Lion DVD keeps giving me an error(ElliotForceLegacyRTC is to blame, at least in-part)
My next Hackintosh is gonna be a weird one. I wanted to build an upgrade able laptop. Something I could drop a logic board in later. I found these kits called PiTop. They're meant for raspberry Pi. I'm thinking of combining that, and the Core M3 Intel compute stick (seeing as the Pi top connects through HDMI) I could have a $600 2016 MacBook. I mean literally the exact same everything.