“With the whole Pystar fiasco making headlines recently,” Gizmodo is running an interesting poll regarding Apple’s Mac OS X:
If OS X was available on non-proprietary hardware would you ditch Windows, Macs?
• Yes, I would switch to OS X – 37.5% (1780 votes)
• Yes, I would ditch my Mac for non-proprietary hardware – 10.2% (485 votes)
• No, I would not ditch Windows – 16.1% (765 votes)
• No, I would not ditch my Mac – 28.4% (1347 votes)
• Other – 7.7% (364 votes)
4741 total votes. Results as of 04/21/2008 10:26:25 pm EDT.
Cast your vote here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “RadDoc” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: This is a well-worn topic, but the one twist that we always found interesting is the idea of Apple releasing Mac OS X one version behind to selected OEMs. For example, these lucky OEMs would get the most up-to-date Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, certified by Apple to work on their specific hardware configurations, while Apple would retain the exclusive to the current Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
Oh hell no- I would not ditch my Mac!
It’s the whole widget, silly.
apple should sell tiger or panther only for non-apple hardware.
Keep leopard for apple hardware only but let the masses buy previous versions for $100.
wow only 16% say they stick with windows.?
Zune Tang is in a small group…
It’s never gonna happen, no point in even discussing.
Dump my 8 core MacPro? For what!
Yes, it is worth thinking about releasing a version of Panther/Tiger for white box makers. But how do you prevent someone from buying one of those boxes and upgrading to Leopard?
Are we going to go back to ROMs? DRM, dare I say?
bit of a meaningless question, that. Surely it would depend on quality, price, how well the system worked, stuff like that. Mind you, gizmodo does tend to be shallow. /Al in all a waste of time, like asking would you change your washing powder to brand x if the box was the right shape.
No I wouldn’t switch because I only use Windows for games (it’s the only thing it’s good for). I switched to Linux years ago.
I like MDNs idea though, let the Mac faithful be the beta testers, they’ll put up with anything.
“Dump my 8 core MacPro? For what!”
16 core UltraSPARC T2. Unfortunately I don’t believe they’ve ported iMovie to Solaris yet
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No way, never going to buy some beige box POS and install OS X on it. Thank god Apple will never do that either.
Making OS X available for every cheap ass out there with some shitbox PC would ruin the Mac culture.
It’s like saying lets make it legal for humans to mate with dogs…in other words just disgusting.
The best part of the poll is the hilarious comments posted in response.
Here’s an example that rivals anything seen on
Comedy Central ! :
by Sean Harrington
“Gotta go with a big “NO” on this one.
Why cut the amount of available software to 1/10th (20th?
100th?) of what I currently have access to?”
Hahahah! Oh! Stop it, Sean! You’re killin’ me!!
Why not? You could have floppies (what were they, 128MB?) and SCSI back again. From wikipedia:
It should be noted that Windows XP still requires the use of floppy drives to install third-party RAID, SATA and AHCI hard drives. This requirement was only dropped with the introduction of Windows Vista in 2007. To this day (April 2008), most PC motherboards will still attempt to boot from a floppy drive when the on-board ROM BIOS is corrupted.
Heck no. PC Hardware is crap. It might be cheaper, barely, but it is still crap. It would be like getting a Yugo for $400 when for $550 you can get a BMW.
I’d keep my Mac. But I would probably load OS X on my PC.
But how do you prevent someone from buying one of those boxes and upgrading to Leopard
You don’t. Which puts cash in Apple’s pocket twice, and in effect raises the price of that shiny clone box by the upgrade amount.
these lucky OEMs would get the most up-to-date Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, certified by Apple to work on their specific hardware configurations, while Apple would retain the exclusive to the current Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
What happens when Apple does an upgrade (say to Mac OS X 10.6) and the distribution channel is filled with 10.5 machines?
Does Apple wait for the channel to clear before providing cloners with 10.5? Do people who buy 10.5 Macs after a given date get free upgrades? What happens when a cloner tires of second-class treatment, and bundles illegal 10.6 installs?
Seems like a can of worms hardly worth opening, esp. when the best PC’s are Macs.
I’ve posted the idea of releasing Tiger to the PC masses in the past, on MDN. Of course I got it from Cringely who posted the idea along time ago.
What`s that old sayng… something about dead, prying ……..
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I would not ditch apple laptops but desktops I would consider ditching, just because I would be able to dual boot and play games when I wanted to for much much less.
Ditch my Mac? Are you crazy?!
@deepdish
That is one great idea!!
even though… how many people would buy an old operating system?
and then there’s piracy (even more than now) because of no activation (not that i would LIKE activation….)
Question:
If Porsche’s Boxer engine was not proprietary, would you ditch your C4 997?
(does anyone need to be reminded that Vista Runs better on a Mac? Does this mean anything to anyone? I mean really!)
I know some people consider these types of asinine non-realities, but for the rest of us sane enough to know . . . . . .
Sigh . . . . .
I’d give up using computers first…
As much as I like the PC hardware that I use at home, I think that Apple should keep OS X on Apple hardware. The current model is one of the reasons why Apple systems are stable and reliable. The general computer user simply wants a computer that works.
The professional system builder in me has a conflict however. I would love to build my data systems with Leopard, but I cannot do to the limited driver availability. I would have the same constraints, if not worse if I chose Linux or Unix. The simple truth is that more drivers are available for Windows.
But this is one of the things that adds to the instability of Windows. Getting all of the different hardware from different manufacturers to run reliably can be a challenge at times. It is a challenge that I enjoy, but it is not for the novice consumer. I say let Windows be difficult and a pain in the ass to use. Give the consumers something that they can enjoy and want to use every day.
This is a tough question.
The reason it is tough is that we don’t know what it would mean. If it meant that the computers used cheaper parts and there were lots of problems with compatibility, etc; then no. If however the third parties had decent products that worked well, I would certainly consider it. I would especially consider a cheapo $500 Dell or HP minitower that ran OSX as a replacement for my office machine (the one I use for word processing, e-mail, etc.) which is an aging G4 workstation.
However, for my main workstation, I would probably stick with a MacPro.