If you haven't done so yet, have a look at http://www.osx86project.org/

Loads of information there. I tried, but it didn't work at all well. You have to download hacked installers from torrents, so you can't be certain what you'll end up with.

If it works for you, good, but even if you have hardware identical to someone for whom it is working, it may not work for you.

"you cannot buy a licence for OSX like you can for Windoz."

It's available at their store for purchase $130 bux, out of curiosity, what's the dif. between buying that and buying windoz?

Dave

I believe their license states you can only install it on an apple machine, because they know it's a garbage OS that couldn't handle having to deal with all possible hardware configurations on the PC side.

"what's the dif. between buying that and buying windoz"

I am no apple fan, but the Mac OS isn't bogged down with legacy code and drivers. Whereas M$ tries hard to ensure a high degree of backwards compatibility with older hardware and software, Apple doesn't bother. You buy a new Mac OS, you buy a new Mac system & hardware, too.

So that $130 OS suddenly becomes $1300.

So the difference between Windows ($100) and Mac OSX is about $1200.

I'm no M$ fan either.

The $129 buys you an upgrade.
When you buy a Mac it comes with an OS licenced to that box, you later can buy an upgrade to that licence.
You can buy a clear licenced version of Windoz, it's not an upgrade and you can run it on anything you can get it to run on, including a Mac. So think of OSX as only being available like a OEM Windoz licence.

Over the years a number of businesses have tried selling Mac clones, either it wasn't economically viable or Apple shut them down because of copyright issues.

The thing I find odd is that OSX is built on an open source kernel and yet the licencing is anything but open.

Bob.

Even though there are other suites, one is constrained more or less to only working with Apple's Apps - sure you can TRY to run XP via Bootcamp or what have you - and then run any Windows based app, but why would you in the first place? Buying a MAC is about using MAC native apps - that's what the Fan Boyz want you to believe to be so called better.

I would much rather work with a "Properly" configured Windows box of my choosing (I spec my own builds), spec'ing the hardware I know to be both reliable and cost effective. I get to choose what processor (Intel OR AMD) I want to run. I can then run the apps of my choosing - that gives me freedom of choice, not what Mr. Jobs says I have to run. I've read that even though Adobe's CS3 suite has been ported to the MAC, it doesn't run nearly as well as FCS2.

Personally, I have found the more I use XP Pro x64 with SONY's apps, the more I realize which platform makes me money without having to kludge my way around - and it's more stable than what I have experienced with the MAC platform.

My $0.02 worth on a cold, dreary Friday in the PacNW.

Cliff Etzel - Immersive Video Journalist
bluprojekt

The latest OS X Leopard has been a dangerously buggy disaster. And why in the world would I want to find a "cheaper way of getting Final Cut"? I already have Vegas.

"the Mac OS isn't bogged down with legacy code and drivers."

True, but it is bogged down with ... the Mac OS. That's definitely a bog i never want to deal with. Why on earth do people like it so much? I just can't understand that.

The latest OS X Leopard has been a dangerously buggy disaster.

A lot of sour grapes in the OS comparison in this thread.

Apple made a good decision when they stopped the clone business. Why? They were simply too small a company to be able to support a large variety of hardware, with a fraction of the number of engineers and project managers etc. that Microsoft has.

Vegas is the #1 NLE for working fast in many circumstances.

But it can't do everything, and there are many cases when FCP will do what Vegas cannot, and there are even many cases when FCS (FCP+Motion, etc.) can do the same thing much faster than Vegas.

So just use Vegas when you can, and if that means always, focus your use on it so you become maximally proficient.

Back to Leopard, last month's new version of Mac OS. "dangerously buggy disaster"? Certainly not. Just like with the Sony EX, there were some loudmouthed people shouting "it doesn't work!!!!" before they had thought to check if their 3rd party OS hack could really truly expect to be patching exactly the same part of the OS when they upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. Of course not...

And the Move bug that was a problem when moving from certain file systems mounted a certain way? Fixed a long time ago. The rest is noise, and the inevitable discussion about whether features should be this way or that way, just like we are doing for Vegas here in this forum.

I like that Windows XP is finally stable after six years of continuous bug fixes. Just in time for it to be thrown on the scrap heap, if Microsoft gets its way.

I don't like the daily security scans, virus updates, and continuous flow of security holes having to get patched. These annoyances are greatly diminished on the OS X platform. I think 99% of Mac users don't have any kind of virus checker at all, and doing just fine with that. Saves the money for annual subscriptions, the disk space, and the frequent work interruptions that we have to live with in XP and Vista.

It also comes with an amazing amount of high quality software development tools, for those who are so inclined.

Other than that, overall the functionality is similar to XP. Time Machine is brilliant and has no equivalent for Windows that I know about, and there are a number of other things that are quite nice also.

And the hardware is flat out beautiful inside and out.

Still, I love my Vegas, so I work with a PC and a Mac side by side. Allows me to handle just about anything, and I feel no need to get involved in adolescent OS wars.

[/i]Apple made a good decision when they stopped the clone business. Why? They were simply too small a company to be able to support a large variety of hardware, with a fraction of the number of engineers and project managers etc. that Microsoft has.]/i]

Not so. Every Mac clone had to be approved by Apple. It had to use hardware approved by Apple. If it didn't, no licence for that machine would be issued.

I had a Motorola StarMax 3000 clone. Internally, identical to the PowerMac 4400.

The reason the licencing stopped was because Apple didn't like cheaper machines with better warranties (5 years vs 1 year) undercutting their poor value hardware.

>>>I like that Windows XP is finally stable after six years of continuous bug fixes.<<<

That's still better than selling another version of a buggy OSX, after six years of those lazy bastards at apple, not really even trying to fix anything.

I haven't had any issues whatsoever with stability of Windows ( any version )
, starting with Windows 2000 back in 1999.

The apple OSX bugs and new hardware issues are too numerous to even post here. Try plugging in RME firewire interface into a new mac, see what happens. Does anything that's not made by apple work on a mac these days?

The new slogan should be: "It just doesn't work"

I was right in the thick of 68000 development at the time, man were Apple one devious bunch, they were so abusing Motorola's product it wouldn't have surpised us if they refused to supply Apple with the chips.

Apple had exploited a back door / bug in the 68000 to ensure you couldn't swap out the chip for the faster 68010. As luck would have it we had a Motorola 68000 hardware emulator and trapped the exception and managed to find how they'd done it. We patched the EPROMs and upgraded our Macs to 68010s. About a year later they were all landfill anyway, best move the company ever made.

Bob.

"Motorola 68000 hardware emulator " that was a lot of fun ;-) but a long and slow death probably was more enjoyable. Emulators are great for debugging hardware designs with software, but a hard road when reverse-engineering a completed OS unless one used specific instruction traps.