Thinking outside the Cube: Mac OS X for X86

Jason Brooks AnchorDesk

Published: 05 Oct 2000 11:04 BST

Recently I wrote a column about how nice it would be if Apple were to free us all to think differently by releasing OS X for X86 hardware.

Much to my surprise, the wide majority of responses I received were positive. Almost all of the readers who contacted me expressed their desire to fire up OS X on their Intel- or AMD-powered hardware.

I had expected a flood of angry messages, full of anti-Intel trash talk and boasts of floating-point Photoshop feats. Indeed, the word "supercomputer" did not appear in my inbox, even once.

Perhaps the most negative response I received didn't address the perceived technological superiority of PowerPC gear but instead defended Apple's high prices: "Compare the G3 Powerbook to IBM's 600 and newest A and T series, not to no-name brands, or the G4 desktop to HP Vectras."

The problem here is that the last time I checked, high-end ThinkPads and Vectras fell just short of 100 percent market share in their respective product classes. The world of X86 hardware leaves options for the rest of us, with a veritable Star Wars cantina full of chip, component and peripheral players from which to choose.

Learning from BeOS
This brings up an important question raised by another reader: How would Apple handle all the crazy and varied driver requirements that surface for X86 hardware?