OQO Hacker Claims World's Smallest OS X Machine

TechRadar writes "A hacker has turned his OQO ultraportable into the world's smallest Mac running Leopard. 'I will warn you this project is not for the plug and play crowd but definitely do-able,' the hacker, 'TRF' says. Interesting, given the OQO was designed by ex-Apple employees." It might run Mac OS X, but one thing this OQO is not is a Mac.

Re:Time for Apple to cede some control?

[peragrin]

This isn't a clone, it's hack like installing netBSD on a toaster, with a remote bread loader.

Second neither this or Pystar systems can receive updates via Apple system updater.

Thirdly Pystar has pissed off the guy who makes the OS X boot on generic hardware software. I am waiting for him to sue Pystar, Apple won't even have to get their hands dirty.

Sony VAIO UX does it too.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is hardly anything new, Leopard has been running on the Sony VAIO UX for awhile now. The UX is about the same size, and double the performance of the OQO http://micropctalk.wetpaint.com/page/Installing+Macintosh+OSX+10.5+(Leopard)?t=anon [wetpaint.com]

Re:The new black?

[Ford Prefect]

Is cramming MacOS onto a wholly unsuitable machine the new version of doing the same thing with Linux?

I'm reminded of this [mactalk.com.au] - Mac OS X running on a Centris 650. 68MB RAM, 25MHz 68040.

No, not even a PowerPC processor. Fully software emulation.

Running? Well, booting. Sort of. Excruciatingly, glacially slowly!

Re:Time for Apple to cede some control?

[dogzilla]

What makes you say that "a lot of" people are "sick of it"? It seems pretty clear that a majority of people buy Macs because they don't want to deal with the hassle attached to using Windows and Linux computers. Hacking OSX to run on non-Apple hardware isn't easy, so the folks doing aren't really Apple's target market anyway. In any case, I find it hard to believe that the folks jumping through these hoops represent "a lot of people".

Let me repeat that because so few people seem to get it: hackers are not Apple's core market. Apple doesn't market to hackers, they don't have the infrastructure to support hackers, they don't design products for hackers. It's a different market, just like you won't find aftermarket performance minivan parts (requisite car allegory).

Also, why do you think this stems from frustration with Apple's hardware? Do you also think that people porting Linux to run on watches and PDAs are doing it because they're sick of commodity PC hardware? Seems more like they're doing it to see if they can.

Re:Superior Hardware?

[nano2nd]

I'm a long time Mac user who recently made the switch - to a Hackintosh. The OS really is central to the Apple proposition. But.. the hardware is also a big part of it - in terms of the reliability that only comes with total control of hardware and software.

Hardware is also important in terms of the user's perception of quality. I'm using the Apple Cinema Display I previously used on my Powermac and it is still far superior to the Samsung panel I bought recently for my kid.

But all that said, I like the fact that my Hackintosh cost me a lot less than the new top of the range iMac (granted, I already owned the Cinema Display), and it still outperforms the real deal.

However, 10.5.3 may be the end of the road for Hackintosh as I'm sure all the recent noise around this and Psystar will have Apple bringing down the hammer and breaking OS X for non-Apple hardware very soon.

Re:Time for Apple to cede some control?

[trolltalk.com]

Clones like this and the Psystar machine must have Jobs and the other control freaks at Apple screaming bloody murder right now.

I doubt it. The psystar is a *noisy* pc, the first thing most people notice about the iMac is it's QUIET!

People will pay a couple of hundred bucks for quiet, hardware and software support, updates, and the ability to just walk into a brick-and-mortar and pick one up off the shelf, etc.

Re:Time for Apple to cede some control? Nope.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

They won't do it because of two and a half fundamental reasons:

1. MSOffice
2. Profit Margins
3. History as Computer Maker

If Apple put MacOS onto other machines, MS would pull support for MSOffice on MacOS in a New York Nanosecond. That would seriously batter Apple computer sales, because many of us (myself included) are forced by our employers to use MSOffice. Yes, OpenOffice is a lovely thing, but our IT dept and management doesn't give a flying fuck about OpenOffice, and never will. It's an MS shop and that's that. They don't care what COMPUTER you use - so I have a MacBookPro - but the software for our daily interactions Must Be MS. (sigh - I know, I know)...

So, That's Reason #1 (with a gun to the head) why Apple won't open up.

2. Apple makes Serious Bank on their high end machines (desktop or laptop) and opening up would blow those margins to the wind because if you're so up on a high end machine, you could probably build something to rival today's fire breathing dragon [gizmodo.com] at a substantially lower cost than what HP and certainly Apple would charge you.

Also, Apple depends on that margin, as it allows them to use that money to seed other projects, some few of which might pan out (iPod, iTMS) and some more that won't do so well (AirTunes, AppleTV) some that seriously Tank (20th Anniversay Mac) and some that leave expensive craters in the ground (Pippin, Newton, The Cube). Without the margins Apple pulls from their high-end gear, none of those ventures would have happened, and while Pippin was a fucking disaster, the iPod is anything but.

So, they're not going to cannibalise their bovine cash dispenser.

3. History as a computer company. They are known first as a computer company, that happens to make totally hip consumer items. This will change over time, as computers slowly fade into the woodwork, but until then, their flagship product is MacOS - it's the one thing that ties all their products together, and it is intimately tied to their vision as a computer company.

So, for all those reason (and I am sure, many more) Apple will not open up their OS. It would be suicide.

RS