Mac OS X - sold as software? And dual booting?

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sparky2002b

Registered
Hey,
based on some decisions Apple's made so far, it's looking like apple may sell Mac OS X as standalone software for PC owners, to try to attract buisness. And also, with this intel-based version coming, would it be possible to dual-boot Mac OS and WinXP? Or in my case, WinXP, Redhat, and OS X? :rolleyes:
 
Most of Apple's revenues still come from hardware. They'll not turn into a softtware company in a hurry. Selling the Mac OS for installation on generic computers is not in Apple's best interest, so it is very improbable that that will happen in the foreseeable future.

I don't think we'll see it happen in the next five years, if ever.
 
Apple has made it clear that OS X will NOT run on non-Apple hardware. They have also said that while they will not officially support installing Windows on their hardware, they "will do nothing to preclude it", so for now the logical assumption is that you will be able to dual-boot with Macs.
 
sparky2002b said:
Hey,
based on some decisions Apple's made so far, it's looking like apple may sell Mac OS X as standalone software for PC owners, to try to attract buisness. And also, with this intel-based version coming, would it be possible to dual-boot Mac OS and WinXP? Or in my case, WinXP, Redhat, and OS X? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Apple will not release OS X as a standalone operating system for PC owners. The only systems that Mac OS X will run on is Apple's own hardware, and that goes for the new Intel version of Mac OS X also. Apple will use either a hardware or software verification process to ensure that Mac OS X is being installed on "authorized" hardware that will make it very, very difficult (if not impossible) to install it on anything but Apple-branded hardware.

With that being said, yes, the new Intel-based Macintosh computers should be able to run Mac OS X and Windows as a dual-boot system. Apple will not prevent you from loading Windows on their Apple-branded hardware, but they also will not support it -- so you're on your own for tech support and drivers and so forth.

Anything that runs Windows should be able to run Linux, with some exceptions. I don't think Apple's new Intel-based hardware will be an exception.
 
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