OS X Tiger x86 leaked

[Jammrock]

Several reports on the net say that the developer edition of OS X x86 has been leaked on the net. Not onlyhas it been leaked, but it runs on pretty much any x86 system that has compatible software.

http://www.shapeofdays.com/2005/06/mac_os_x_on_int.html

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/6012/

Conspiracy theorists are already saying that it's an Apple ploy to get hacker and hardc0re Windowers to give OS X a shot and get hooked on it. Then come 2006 when the developer copy shuts down and the dev kit computers are due back at APple, the OS shuts down and all the pie-rats go running to the nearest Apple store for an Intel-Apple system.

I have yet to find a pirate site that has the x86 build of OS X on it, but I'm sure it'll be widely available soon.

Jammrock

[Nowhere]

Does it require 64-bitness?

[Gurm]

Define "compatible software".

Personally, my days of running an operating system that won't run ANY apps written for ANY platform are over.

This thing won't run Windows apps, and from what I'm hearing it won't run most MAC apps, either. So unless there's a native version of WinMac (or whatever the Windows emulator is called nowadays) on the install CD, I don't see many people installing this as more than an idle curiosity.

[GT98]

Conspiracy theorists are already saying that it's an Apple ploy to get hacker and hardc0re Windowers to give OS X a shot and get hooked on it. Then come 2006 when the developer copy shuts down and the dev kit computers are due back at APple, the OS shuts down and all the pie-rats go running to the nearest Apple store for an Intel-Apple system.

So whats stoping me from just putting windows back on if I want?

[Jammrock]

Supposedly it will run Mac apps, but just slowly through the Rosetta translation service. Though they say that iLife (APple's equivelant to Office) is on the image, fully ported to x86, and working at full speed, as well as Safari and all the basic tools.

No x86-64 needed, afaik. The demo at the Mac Dev Conference was running on 32-bit P4's according to reports.

The idea is "hooked". You should be able to run OS X, Windows, and Linux on the same PC (assuming OS X works on your computer) with a good boot manager. Get people hooked on OS X and boost sales when it hits, evenif just a littel bit.

[KeiFront]

Until now this story is a HOAX, there are still no dev-kits released. But i'm sure that when they get released we can expect a leak.

[xortam]

... Personally, my days of running an operating system that won't run ANY apps written for ANY platform are over. ...

So what are you running that will run my OS/2 Warp and NetWare 4.x apps?

[az]

He didn't say "...that doesn't run ALL apps written for ALL platforms..", but rather the opposite

AZ

[Jessterw]

Don't, won't... the point is that most operating systems don't run software compiled for another. Most software can't even be recompiled for another OS, for that matter.

Sure, you can use a virtual machine or some sort of emulation or translation service, but then, I don't know of any (currently-available) OS that includes one of those out-of-the-box (some Linux distros being the exception).

Ignoring that this is a hoax, the Intel version of OS X will run the majority of existing Mac applications just fine through the Rosetta translation service; speed being a variable issue that depends on what the app is doing. Last I checked, apps written for previous versions of Windows (or *nix) don't always run on the new versions either. Nothing new there.

[schmosef]

Java was supposed to solve all this!

[Jessterw]

It does, to a degree; however, Java has a lot going against it in terms of popular support by developers and users.

[schmosef]

Not to mention JVM consistency.

[Nowhere]

Java was supposed to solve all this!

Python did?

[Wombat]

JVM consistency, IF you get a JVM at all. You have to have the right architecture & OS combination, or Java won't run at all. At work I have projects on NetBSD, and on the 440 PowerPC architecture. No Java support on either, let alone their combination.

Also, I have some JNI code, and debugging it is a royal bitch. Multithreaded Java, works in Windows, works in Linux until I get into multithreaded code. I found a way to get gdb to attach to the native library, but Java gets a segmentation fault when the second thread tries to open a file handle passed from the parent thread. There's no good way to debug this.

[Gurm]

Grr...

As a longtime Java proponent (I was in favor of Java way back in 1992 when it was still on paper) I can honestly say that there is NO excuse for sub-par virtual machines, and yet here we are. Sun's Windows VM is JUST NOW getting caught up to where MS's VM was 4 or 5 years ago, and as Wombat pointed out there are major OS's that just DON'T have a working VM. It's really quite sad.