Got a tip for us? Share it...
• • RSS

Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Coming for the PC?

Thursday February 24, 2005 11:20 pm PST by Arnold Kim
In 2001, Transitive Technologies demonstrated a technology called "Dynamite" which allowed code written for one CPU to be run efficiently on another CPU. This "translator" was said to dynamically translate and accelerate binaries -- claiming to provide substantial performance over traditional "emulators". Recent numbers claim 80% performance matching.

Some more details came in 2003 at which time a "major" customer was reported. While speculation pointed towards Apple, no reliable reports emerged.

Transitive once again made headlines in September 2004 when they announced a derivative product called QuickTransit. They have since announced having a number of customers including Silicon Graphics Incorporated.

QuickTransit allows software compiled for one processor/operating system to be run on another processor/operating system.

According to an unconfirmed report, there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support this technology for the x86 platform. Beyond allowing Tiger to run on x86, perhaps more significantly is the potential to also allow existing Mac OS X applications to be run on the x86 (PC) platform without recompilation. Otherwise, requiring developers to recompile all current Mac OS X applications has been seen as a major hurdle in providing Mac OS X on the PC.

Other arguments against such a transition would, of course, still hold. Apple has traditionally been a hardware company, with the bulk of revenue coming from Mac hardware. The past few years, however, has seen software become a larger portion of their revenue.
[ 199 comments ]

Top Rated Comments

(View all)

Avatar
arn
91 months ago
Yes, I realize this is an overdone topic. Transitive is interesting however.

Take it for what it's worth, however... an unconfirmed rumor.

arn
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
geezusfreeek
91 months ago
I just don't see this ever happening.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
tomjleeds
91 months ago
This would, as always, be truly awesome.

But it won't happen.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
ryanw
91 months ago

This would, as always, be truly awesome.

But it won't happen.


I'm torn. The thing I like about apple is the complete & total package. OSX on x86 will not have that total package feeling and frankly will have nothing but problems. People will have driver issues left and right, it won't happen.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
the Rebel
91 months ago
Releasing OS X for Intel based computers is a good idea AS LONG AS APPLE DOES NOT OEM LICENSE IT TO ANYONE.

OS X for x86 should only be sold as a software product. It should only be available via Apple and Apple Authorized Resellers. The OS X for x86 retail box should have a clear disclaimer telling the end users that OS X runs best on Apple branded Mac PowerPC based hardware. There should be no doubt that the 4th generation OS X for PPC is superior to the 1st generation OS X for x86.

Under those circumstances, if an end user choses to spend $149 buying OS X for his/her x86 computer instead of spending $499 for a G4 based mini Mac preloaded with OS X and applications then it is a good sale for Apple. It is $149 more revenue than Apple would have been able to get from that user otherwise. After the user has had the opportunity to use x86 OS X for a while, there would be a very good chance that when it came time to buy new hardware that it would be a real Mac.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
Phillip
91 months ago

Releasing OS X for Intel based computers is a good idea AS LONG AS APPLE DOES NOT OEM LICENSE IT TO ANYONE.

OS X for x86 should only be sold as a software product. It should only be available via Apple and Apple Authorized Resellers. The OS X for x86 retail box should have a clear disclaimer telling the end users that OS X runs best on Apple branded Mac PowerPC based hardware. There should be no doubt that the 4th generation OS X for PPC is superior to the 1st generation OS X for x86.

Under those circumstances, if an end user choses to spend $149 buying OS X for his/her x86 computer instead of spending $499 for a G4 based mini Mac preloaded with OS X and applications then it is a good sale for Apple. It is $149 more revenue than Apple would have been able to get from that user otherwise. After the user has had the opportunity to use x86 OS X for a while, there would be a very good chance that when it came time to buy new hardware that it would be a real Mac.


Pc users won't go out and buy Mac OS X. Do you think that Microsoft makes much money relying on people to go out and purchase boxes of Windows XP? Microsoft makes money licensing the software - if Apple did a deal with HP or Sony or even Dell, Apple will be mighty rich. But that would be the end for the PowerMacs and iMacs. The Apple notebooks business will still survive however, IMO. This would be a big business move for Apple, and a move I personally won't be happy about cause I love the hardware and so does Steve. Can you even imagine him demoing an OS he made on a POS computer that someone else made?
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
russed
91 months ago
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! i just think it would be a bad move. apple wouldnt be apple then.

the software sounds interesting though!
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
nagromme
91 months ago

According to an unconfirmed report, there is evidence that Apple has had special internal seeds of Tiger which support this technology for the x86 platform.


I am sure Apple DOES have OS X for Intel "in the works." But only in a "just in case, someday" sense.

Porting it themselves (Rhapsody did run on Windows), and/or using Transitive, and/or some other method... I'm sure they are keeping the possibility somewhere on a back burner. And rumors of those internal projects are interesting.

At the same time, it makes no sense for Apple to SELL such a product. But if, one day, it DOES make sense, it wouldn't totally surprise me.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
Mac-Xpert
91 months ago
This technology sounds interesting. But I would rather see Apple use it the other way around than being suggested here. Apple could use this to build "Virtual PC" into the operating system, allowing x86 apps to be run on PPC hardware. It would allow users to run specific x86 apps that aren't available on PPC natively, or even x86 games. Maybe they could integrate some sort of classic-like mode into the system that runs windows within OS-X.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives
Avatar
eSnow
91 months ago
Move along, people, there is nothing to see here.

First, even if this company has some clever engineers, the speed of emulated applications is going to be noticeably slower. It might do for some light text processing, but not for heavy duty work like Photoshop, video editing and gaming. The Mac platform is not exactly known as a speed demon, so saddling it with even slower apps is not going to cut it.

Second, if Apple plays the x86-card, developers are going to follow suit and neglect PPC. For a lot of companies, stopping native Mac development might be worth considering, because on x86, they could use something like WINE to make their windows versions running on OS X. Does Apple want to go there? I doubt it.

Third, porting OS X to x86 is possible of course, but getting drivers of all or even most of the millions of PCI cards, modems, mice etc. if not. What good is an OS if there is no or only very limited hardware support?

Fourth, if Apple wants to get rid of native instruction sets, they should rather look at Java or C#/.NET, instead of patching in some emulation here and some blue box there.

Fiveth, if Transitive is so damn good, why haven't they released any consumer version of their emulation engine since 2001? Vapor ware, that's why.

This horse has been beaten to death many times over.
Rating: 0 Positives / 0 Negatives

[ Read All Comments ]