OS X running on an ordinary x86 PC
As they use to say, it was just bound to happen. Although many have said that it would not be possible, deep down in my heart I knew that one day some clever hack would make running OS X on a typical x86 machine possible. And so it has happened.
OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC
All in all, it does not appear to be a hoax as the installation instruction is very detailed.
The only downside is that it requires a pretty decent CPU to run (smoothly) and a helluva lot of disk space to install. That means no fun for me (yet!). But still, it’s a small step of one man and a big step for all humanity. Job well done!
UPDATE: Wired has more info about OSx86.
Thx Clint for the link!
August 18th, 2005 at 8:04 am
That sure does sound cool! I just managed to get some aqua look and feel on my xp machine… (see my site)
But there aren’t may programs yet supported on Intel? Only safari, iphoto, just like “default stuff”? Otherwise I should consider installing os x myself..
August 18th, 2005 at 10:18 am
Wish I knew the answer. But still I think that 99% of all the Mac stuff should be working. There are some things requiring SSE3 from Intel processors, but other than that everything (almost?) should be ok.
August 18th, 2005 at 10:27 am
That leaves me a bit confused… Steve talked about all the porting to the intel architecture and I thought that has to be done to every bit of code or at least the “programming language interpreter”?
Tell me if I’m completely wrong!
August 19th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
I believe it has little to do with what Steve was talking about. I still think that almost all software should be working without any porting whatsoever as OS X is supposedly running natively. It’s the hardware where the problems begin - not every piece of hardware is supported by the OS. It is BSD at the core of the OS X so that’s why it is able to work. OS X is just a graphical interface (that’s a simplification, because it’s much more).
Btw: check out this link.
September 10th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
I too played around with osx86 now - you were right, even ppc compiled Photoshop or Office 2004 works on Rosetta at a reasonable speed! I don’t know how much binaries are “fat” compiled - that’s for ppc and x86.
September 11th, 2005 at 10:40 am
Compared to the Windows XP running on the same hardware, how much slower, for example, Photoshop is?
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I really wander what is the speed of OSX running on ordinary PC?