New G3-Based Platform Runs Mac OS X 315
Worried writes "Pegasos is a new platform based on G3/G4 CPUs and it runs MorphOS and various Linux distros so far. This very interesting review of the platform over at OSNews points out that Darwin can play a significant role attracting new buyers. Another --possibly significant-- point in the article is that Pegasos can run Mac OS X via the Mac-On-Linux runtime kit. This is the *first* non-Mac platform that can run OSX without even the need for an Apple BIOS!"
at some point... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:at some point... (Score:5, Interesting)
I ue briqs - www.totalimpact.com for a renderfarm ad they are G4 PPC CHRP boxes, running yellow dog linux and custom render management software that Total Ipmact have written. They're great little general purpose computers.
Breach of OS X EULA... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would think that the manufacturers will be in the clear as they don't supply or load OS X on the system, but the actual owner of the installed copy OS X is in breach of the EULA...
Can't see Apple identifying infringments, and tracking them all down though!
(At least I hope they don't... they should be busy building the 970 Powermacs...)
Re:Breach of OS X EULA... (Score:2, Informative)
So don't agree to the license agreement and figure out how to install OS X anyways. From first sale doctrine, you not only have a legal basis to resell a book, etc (of course destroying any archive copies you've made), but you also have an implicit right to use the copyrighted work (in this case, OS X). This could of course lead to requiring a contract be signed prior to leaving the store with a
Re:Breach of OS X EULA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but I bet for the cost of one of those legal nitwits they could employ half the population of whatever south asian country they are building those 970's in.
Re:at some point... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:at some point... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if someone tries to market these things as "Mac clones", they can expect a lawsuit pretty quickly. Apple's EULA restricts OS X to their own hardware, and vendors can not legally preinstall an OS without a written contract.
But, in all likelyhood, this is just Amiga Ressurection Vaporware Project #312, so who cares.
Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GPL (Score:2, Insightful)
Fairly pathetic troll, but it's Monday so: The GPL gives permission to do things that would otherwise be illegal. So what would be the point of invalidating the GPL? "Please! I'm begging you! I don't want to be able to copy this software. Take these onerous freedoms away!"
Re:at some point... (Score:2)
They did say that performance wasn't all that hot...on their 600-MHz G3, clicking a button in Mac OS X took a second or two just to begin to get a response from the computer. My 266-MHz beige G3 runs faster than that (it's not snappy, but it's not dog-slow either).
I somehow doubt that people will be buying these to run Mac OS X...at least not as the primary OS. Apple doesn't have much to worry about here. For a few hundred
No threat to apple (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way a mac on linux clone will ever match the quality, ease of maintence, the no-surprises of hardware comaptibility or missing drivers.
Its cute but its not a mac in the ways that attract people to mac.
I think its main utility is for people who run Linux that occasionally need to run mac software
Re:at some point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, so far it seems like I'd be far better off buying an iBook or eMac as far as form factor/price/speed/build quality goes and just loading linux on it.
MOL has NO GRAPHICS ACCELERATION! (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting together a system with this board will probably cost MORE than buying a mac, and running OSX under MOL reduces you to unaccelerated graphics anyway. I can understand firing up an OSX session on your pegasos machine to test if an app compiles/runs under OSX, but the usability of OSX under MOL is minimal.
I'd rather pay for Apple's workstation-class hardware than an obscure mobo running a VIA chipset, even if I have no intention of running an Apple OS.
Non-Apple BIOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the technote about it;
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn11
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:4, Interesting)
How's it run? (Score:2)
it runs GREAT (Score:3, Informative)
It could be that I run OS 9 in mol [maconlinux.oorg] and OS X doesn't like the slower graphics functions.
On a sidenote, Amigas can also do this, as can Briqs. The mentioned system is not the first.
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:2)
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:2)
Re:Non-Apple BIOS (Score:2)
With the Apple "new world" machines the OS isn't in the BIOS, but the BIOS is still needed to load the OS into RAM in the first place, and to do some inital set up of the hardware and a few other pre-OS jobs. Much like the BIOS in a PC, or even more like the Sun OpenFirmware (since it is in fact a FORTH boot enviroment maybe licenced from Sun or just extreamly closely modeled af
The problem with Pegasos (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:2)
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Informative)
a pegasus is simply a winged horse. a _unicorn_ has a horn.
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:5, Funny)
This is the problem I've always had with Apple. They're so shortsighted that they don't think about the needs of users - all they care about is artistic aesthetics of their computers. My PC will never fly away, because I can do anything I want to it. I don't have to install wings if I don't want to, and I can put the horn on the back and sides to avoid injury. Once again, Apple screws all of us by creating a pretty machine that doesn't work the way we want - e.g., it flies away without any control by the user.
Steve Jobs is really losing his mind. First the iMac, now this. Seriously, we need to boycott Apple. I think all of the Slashdot crowd should collectively work toward this goal, and make it a priority one item. This is where our focus should be - stop the flying macs. This is absolute absurdity. Once the Slashdot crowd puts their minds together and stops bickering - and we've demonstrated in the past a strong ability to stop the flamewars and put our differences aside to work toward a single goal - there's no telling what we can do! We could get Steve Jobs fired, and all macs returned to their non-flying status!
Let's get to it!
Windows XP lets you fly! (Score:3, Funny)
Actually I think flying might have been the only new feature they advertised.
If you just want to fly (Score:3, Funny)
If you already have an Internet terminal, and you just want to add magical human flight, get a Gillette Mach 3 Turbo(tm) razor. It's a lot cheaper than a new operating system license, even at volume prices.
Re:The problem with Pegasos (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but a Pegacorn is your top of the line, fully equipped mythical steed.
And then there's ofcourse Unisus, its bastard brother... it tried to sue Pegacorn but is now largely irrelevant and working as a services horse.
Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know about anyone else, but I use my Macs to get work done, not to be waiting 1-2 seconds for clicks to respond. Therefore, I think I will keep using boxes made by Apple.
Not the correct issue. (Score:2)
Do we not remember how slow OS X ran on the current Macs of the time when it was introduced?
not that slow (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not the correct issue. (Score:2)
Actually, I have a 600 Mhz G3 iMac running Webvision [utah.edu] on OS X and it is plenty fast. Go ahead click around, it can take it.
Re:Not the correct issue. (Score:3, Informative)
I've got a 333 Mhz Powerbook, and it runs OS X (10.1.5) at a sufficiently snappy speed to get plenty of stuff done. I *did* put a boa
Re:Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I don't understand why they leave it at DOS. DOS can run a C64 emulator which emulates the Vic20 which emulates CP/M (I've done it). Considering the speed of CP/M systems back in 1980, this setup should yield at least twice the performance of those old 1MHz clunkers.
That's nothing! (Score:4, Funny)
You keep going until you're running the fucking ENIAC. And don't forget the custom punched-tape reader either there, Nancy
Re:Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah you can run it but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
MorphOS is an old name from the latter dregs of the Amiga era, along with the infamous "A-Box". The A-Box was a promised Super-Amiga with all sorts of gee-whiz features for the time that sounded great. Trouble was it was nothing other than vaporware.
Note: No US resellers. (Score:4, Interesting)
The SSL certificate is not from one of the "trusted" providers, nor does the name on it match the site name, since they're using an IP.
I decided to go through the rigamarole of creating an account to find out the price when they DO get them in, only to find out that while they are sold out, you cannot even list a price.
In other words, this is a non-product. They made a small run of them apparently, but you might as well just call it a beta test, because that's what it seems to be. They have announced that they're bringing out a G4-based replacement, and a G4 upgrade for the current G3 board. All of this will be neatly swept under the rug by dramatically more powerful systems based on next-generation 64 bit PowerPC.
If you need a cheap system to run MacOSX, buy a used Mac or one of those ATX systems based on Mac motherboards. Both are available now and not very expensive, all things considered, plus faster than this unavailable hardware.
Yes you should. (Score:2)
Just what I need! (Score:5, Funny)
This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:5, Interesting)
fp!
Why would you want to run Mac OS X under MOL?
It completely defeats the purpose of MOL... and Mac OS X. MOL is designed to allow you to access your mac os x programs when running linux on a dual boot mac, but as far as I know you loose most of the flashy speed that you would get from a standard OS X install.
I say just run linux and be happy.
Re:This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:3)
I run OSX, OS9 and Debian PPC iMac 400. Under MOL, OS9 runs as quickly as it ever did on the iMac. (ignoring for the moment the fucked up networking which is flakey-as).
For running an OSX system on non apple hardware, it may be possible to get a Pegasos board, booting an absolutely minimal Linux install purely for the purposes of bypassing the Apple Hardware Tax.
Re:This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:4, Insightful)
MOL has to buffer the screen in order to make its graphics drivers glue the two operating systems together. MOL-in-a-window may buffer the screen twice or more. Iduno. OSX buffers each window, composites it, and buffers the resulting screen. Between the two of them, you've got so many layers of buffers that the MOL+OSX GUI is destined to be really tetchy.
If some OpenGL hackers were to spend a while writing a Mac OS X OpenGL driver for MOL, and then MOL were able to pass those OpenGL calls to the Linux OpenGL drivers, QuartzExtreme could give us bufferless graphics for MOL+OSX.
Does that sound like a lot of work? Yes, yes it does. I don't think it'll probably ever happen. That means I don't think the MOL folks will ever be able to get OSX running like they've got OS9 running right now. If some big company threw a couple (good) full time developers at it, then maybe.
ickest Hack ever! 1 use doesn't induce vomitting (Score:2)
Usefullness
Historical/Collectible value
Coolness factor (one of the coolest enclosures Apple has built
Hardware compliment
I have 5 36 gig 15K RPM SCSI HDs, 1 gig of interleaved RAM, the processor upgrade, a slot load DVD drive, and a CD Burner, + 4 multiport PCI ethernet cards and one I/O card on my ANS.
Linux PPC and Mac On Linux saved this beast from eBay.
*for wha
Re:This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:2)
Thus the system I run - RH 8.0 + KDE with the a theme thats a lot like some OS we know [kde-look.org]
Re:This is the sickest Hack ever! (Score:2)
Personally, I run Gentoo Linux PPC and have the best possible performace I can get on the hardware. But from time to time I have to run MOL (with Macos9) in order to run:
Also I have to reboot to Macos directly some times for other reasons: scanner, DVD playing.
Bu
Is it really the first? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it really the first? (Score:2)
RS/6000 Linux Support [ Karma Whoring ] (Score:2)
I found this through penguinppc.org/ [penguinppc.org].
I was looking for a cheap (hahahhha) PPC machine for PPC Linux and/or OS X a while back but it cost too much.
Bogus Post! Did you read the marketing blurb? (Score:2, Interesting)
This was a bogus post.
The first...? (Score:5, Informative)
From the Mac-on-Linux FAQ [maconlinux.org]:
oh but that price problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Loomis
Re:oh but that price problem (Score:3, Informative)
So make sure you update your Mac knowledge concerning OS X.
Re:oh but that price problem (Score:3, Informative)
Some small missing things, like say, networking
mac on linux (Score:2, Interesting)
The Mac-On-Linux [maconlinux.com] capabilities of this system with debian [debian.org] would make it a perfect solution for an avid linux user to access Mac new media software without having to purchase two systems. I bet if it was tested with the G4 dual processor systems they discussed, performace would be much enhanced in OS X, and even more enhanced in OS 9.
I would definitely love to be able to run adobe [adobe.com] products on my linux box.
not true, old news and more... (Score:2, Interesting)
secondly, theres to be a G4 module for this board later in the year
thirdly, these boards are currently not available to you
theres always the AmigaONE too. this board isnt as small as Pegasos, but its already got G4 and its avail
Apple Schmapple (Score:5, Informative)
One of the interesting points with the Pegasos is that it's a PPC based consumer-oriented (as in non-workstation/server á la IBM) system that's NOT from Apple, it comes on a nice micro-ATX mobo, and it comes with a rather new non-Apple OS! The POP concept has come to fruition, and hopefully the Teron PX (a.k.a. "AmigaOne XE" when marketed to AmigaOS users) will also do well.
That running Mac-On-Linux on Linux on a PPC system let's you run MacOS isn't all that sensational IMO...
People might be interested in hearing a new Pegasos system has been announced for this autumn(?), which won't be hampered by the currently buggy [flyingmice.com] Articia S northbridge. This will have a Marvell Discovery II northbridge (366(?) MHz DDR, gigabit ethernet...).
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:2)
RTFA:
Does it answer your question?
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:2)
[original superfluous apostrophe removed]
Running MacOS on MOL is not news, and even if it were news, IMO it would still not warrant placing this in the Apple section (thanks MyHair). The reviewed system runs several OSes natively, and the primary OS it's delivered with is one called MorphOS.
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:2)
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:2)
Well, to be annoyingly picky, it's in the Hardware Topic Category [slashdot.org]. It is in the apple Section, but there doesn't seem to be a PPC section or RS/6000 section or anything closer to appropriate than the Apple section.
Besides, a lot of geeks seem, like me, to be looking for a commodity PPC platform on which to play with LinuxPPC and OS X via MOL [maconlinux.org]. (Yeah, yeah, licensing...tell me you never have anything unlicensed on your systems even
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:2)
Re:Apple Schmapple (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the Pegasos would be closer to a Mac than the Teron, as the Pegasos uses Open Firmware (but it still doesn't present itself as a Macintosh to MacOS, should you try to install it natively). The Terons use U-Boot (ex PPCBoot) firmware these days.
Apart from the firmware differences, MacOS doesn't come with drivers for the onboard components of a Teron or Pegasos. You need MOL.
Wait A Minute... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wait A Minute... (Score:5, Interesting)
There actually was a Mac "emulator" for the Atari ST (which everyone called the "Jackintosh" when it came out) first. I didn't agree with the term "emulator" everyone used, since it really wasn't an emulator, but a port of MacOS to the Atari hardware, without Apple's permission. I dubbed this a "Hostile Port".
The early versions for the Amiga worked as well, but eventuall you got versions that ran as a more-or-less well behaved task under AmigaOS. That was pretty cool, if you needed Mac software... you could have Mac and Amiga at the same time. In those days, the Amiga had one of the fastest Mac hard drives, thanks to DMA, available -- dramatically faster than any "real" Mac.
I was a founder of Metabox, along with Andy Finkel (ex-Director of Software at Amiga) and two German businessmen, Stefan Domeyer and Geerd Ebeling. We were originally called PIOS Computer, back in the Mac Clone days. PIOS/Metabox had the first 300MHz Mac Clone shipping -- that should set the coordinated for your way-back machine. We bought the motherboards from UMAX, which also carried the license, and made our own CPU cards (actually designed by Thomas Rudloff).
I was working on a CHRP system, which wasn't terribly easy in the day. It had a separate CPU module, along the lines of what they had planned for the second generation BeBox (not precisely the same, but had they gone forward, it probably would have become so), and we had single and quad processor modules in development, G2 stuff in Apple terms. Future modules could have done G3, G4, or PPC970 for that matter. But Apple did pull the plug before this was finished, and Metabox [rightly] didn't see a viable market in a PPC machine that couldn't run MacOS. Of course, the Mac had over twice the market it has today.
The CPU modules kept selling, and Metabox acquired a US branch, based in Austin Texas, to bring some of this to the US market, but it wasn't expecially good timing, since Apple finally got aggressive with G3 machines.
We had three STBs -- the Metabox 500, based on the PC architecture and OS/2, the Metabox 100, which was an OEM from Teknema/Ravisent, and the never-completed Metabox 1000. That was my design, Thomas joined in later, and we had more people building add-ins for it, like a DVD/DVB decoder. This was roughly DVD-player-shaped. It ran a proprietary, AmigaOS-like OS developed under Andy and one of the Germans, Carsten Scholte(sp), called CaOS. The Amiga coonection was pretty key -- we tapped into numerous, well developed technologies like MUI (OO-graphics), Voyager (a browser), etc. This all ran on a ColdFire 5307/5407, not my top choice for a CPU, but a decent enough CPU if you had hardware for MPEG.
Metabox failed when the management got totally nuts, due to the stock prices rising (my shares, which I couldn't sell then, peaked at about US$5.8 million, but I got out of Metabox in terrible financial shape, with them owing me about $75,000 in salary alone). Basically, they spent money on nutty sponsorships: they tried to create a German basketball league, they sponored Forumla 1 racing, Soccer teams, etc. They bought a small film studio.
Meanwhile, the engineering team wasn't getting paid regularly, as the shares started falling in the fall of 2000. They pulled some maneuvers, probably illegal, that effectively stole all of my and Andy's shares in the company, replacing them with then-worthless, unregistered shares, all without our permission. A year of in-and-out of bankruptcy killed off the positive happenings at the US branch (I was CTO there in late 2000/early 2001, we were getting serious interest in the STB from Blockbuster, Enron, and others... ok, so maybe it was fated, anyway, to fail
They went into another bankruptcy late last year, more of the Chapter 7 than Chapter 11 sort from what I heard, but I don't know the German rules that well. Basically, the management proved, in less successful times, to be a bunch of criminals, stabbing their own partners in the back this way. I'd love to report they're all in jail now, but German law doesn't seem to have much to say unless you're German (they actually have excellent protections for employees - thankfully, most of our crew didn't get hosed).
Not good for MorphOS (Score:4, Funny)
you know your OS is bad when Linux is considered more usable than it is. :)
Illegal (Score:5, Informative)
"This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time."
It is illegal to run Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer. Even machines built from Apple parts are iffy.
Re:Illegal (Score:2)
Re:Illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Illegal (Score:2)
Re:Illegal (Score:2)
Good news, but not great news. (Score:2, Interesting)
However it is nice to see companies supply motherboards based on the PPC processor because of the lower powerconsumption. More Power less Heat.
why bother? (Score:2, Funny)
Has NetBSD been ported to this hardware yet? (Score:3, Interesting)
coolest screenshot (Score:4, Informative)
Why so many hacks? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example this board has what appears to be a non-standard north bridge and south bridge (non-standard as far as apples go)but they work under linux. Someone could port the modules over to darwin, I'm sure. From what I can tell, there is not very much of a "community" behind darwin. Most seem content to let the apple guys do the darwin work. If I had any level of programming skill beyond 1 semester of C programming I'd seriously look into this myself.
Where do the major differences exist between darwin and Freebsd? Certainly FreeBSD is written to be portable since it runs on i386, alpha, and 64bit Sparc platforms. I'd think that some of the code could be inserted into darwin to add kernel level support for unsupported hw.
what slashdotting? (Score:3, Informative)
By Eugenia Loli-Queru - Posted on 2003-05-19 08:09:54
Genesi was very kind to send us in a fully featured Pegasos-based computer with MorphOS and Debian pre-installed. Here is our review with a number of screenshots of the supported OSes.
The Hardware, MorphOS
The hardware
First of all, we all have to understand what we are dealing with here. Genesi's business is to create a brand new platform. Not just OS software. And not just hardware. But a brand new platf
Re:Perhaps I should RTFA... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Perhaps I should RTFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Perhaps I should RTFA... (Score:2)
Re:Whats the.... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Whats the.... (Score:2)
Keep in mind that I'm no Windows Fanboy. I've been a Mac user since I was in the first grade (which would have been 1985) but I have to be honest, using Windows XP Pro is as easy as using Mac OS X. Until someone makes advances in AI technology I don't think either OS will gain that much of a foothold over the other.
Re:Mac OS XP (Score:3, Informative)
After OS X came out I reasearched the slowest cheapest PPC it would run on--even considering MOL for non Apple platforms--and hunted for good deals on eBay. Old PPC equipment that can possibly run OS X or Linux ain't cheap!! I thought I found a decent deal on some RS/6000 PPC's, but the chip and architecture of that model (I forget which) made it unable to run Linux...only NetBSD and AIX would run on it. Plu
Re:Mac OS XP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac OS XP (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple will produce an x86 operating system and they won't die from it. It'll be for a very specific hardware configuration (on a licensed and/or Apple-branded machine). Your statement presumes that everyone will abandon PowerPC in droves.
There is an intrinsic value in buying PowerPC Macs: the tight integration of h
Re:Anyone else? (Score:3, Funny)
uh yeah... lets try looking at this in a way that may help you.
distro
distrobution
ANYTHING less typing, thats why, IMHO!
Re:This tweak makes OS X twice as fast. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Violation of User License (Score:4, Insightful)
#1> Buy MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple
Procedure B
#1> Buy PEGASOS motherboard
#2> Put Motherboard in old mac
#3> Call it an upgrade (The hardware {case} was approved by apple)
Procedure C
#1> Pirate MacOS
#2> Don't tell Apple
I'm not sure about the legal standpoints of running mac software on non-mac systems, but ya know, I don't give a shit. The SIAA isn't likely to go after *me* if I bought the software, no more then I've ever heard a case of mac emulation being pursued provided they bought the required ROMs. I should beable to put MacOS in my toster if I so choose to, dispite it being a violation of my license agreement. The worst thing I can see Apple doing is not support this alternative platform.
iToaster (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, Apple used to sell a toaster that runs MacOS [apple.com].
Re:AmigaOne? (Score:5, Informative)
No. Eyetech [eyetech.co.uk] is selling Mai Logic's Teron PX [mai.com] as the "AmigaOne". Amiga, Inc. [amiga.com] just sells trademark licenses and distributes PocketPC games, while AmigaOS 4.x is being made by Hyperion [hyperion-e...inment.com].
The Terons are ATX mobos, while the Pegasos 1 is a micro-ATX mobo, so no, they don't even look the same.
Re:Apple BIOS (Score:4, Insightful)
There is quite a cost issue associated with the method you mention - even if someone were able to successfully reverse-engineer the Boot ROM legally, and get a supply of compatible logic boards and processors, I highly doubt that Apple would license the OS to them. Because of the licensing terms of the OS, they couldn't package it with Mac OS X, so they'd have to leave it to the user to pay an additional $129 to buy Mac OS X.
Back in the mid-90s, Apple did license the OS to several clone manufacturers. It nearly drove Apple out of business, because market share wasn't increasing, therefore the clone manufacturers were taking sales away from Apple. Plus, it becomes an extra expense for Apple to have to support their OS on third-party hardware. Also, there really wasn't any compelling reason to buy a clone - they didn't look as good, the prices weren't much less, and they didn't really offer anything you couldn't get in a Mac. PowerComputing did demonstrate that you could use commodity parts and overseas manufacturing to be able to implement a faster bus and still charge slightly less. If I recall correctly, they had a 180 MHz 604 system with a 66 MHz bus, while the comparable Apple systems still only had a 50 MHz bus. Soon after that, Apple canned the licensing program, acquired PowerComputing and their engineers, and released the G3.
Been done... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OSX Inroads? (Score:2)
The only problem is the short lifespan of motherboards, real enthusiasts change their boards every 1-2 years.
[OT] MacOS X on x86 (again) (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, if they did this, binaries would be incompatible between the PPC and x86 versions, and fairly quickly most people would only develop for x86, making buying a Mac pointless.
Another thing: If they did this, they would be in direct competition with MS, which would be an insane thing to do.
Slightly more likely is OS X running on an Appl