Psystar Open Computer notes, benchmarks and video
By Nilay Patel 
posted April 30th 2008 4:57PM
posted April 30th 2008 4:57PM
- It's running 10.5.2, build 9C31, which is behind the latest Apple build of 9C7010.
- The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-G31M-S2L with an Intel G31 Express chipset. We're not sure which model of Core 2 Duo is in there as of yet.
- The graphics card appears to be an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, but it doesn't show up in ASP, so we have to confirm. Psystar's store says it's supposed to be a 256MB card, but we have 512MB -- strange.
- It's LOUD. Crazy loud. OS X doesn't seem to interface with the fan controller, so it runs at full tilt all the time. It doesn't really come across on the video, but it's loud enough so that it's hard to talk on the phone when the machine is running. There's no way we could deal with this thing on a daily basis.
- The DHCP lease drops every fifteen minutes or so and you have to manually renew it in prefs.
- Apple System Profiler doesn't know how to read the configurations of several systems, notably memory and audio. The Audio screen just says there's no built-in audio, while the Memory page returns an error.
- That said, audio works just fine, showing up in prefs as HD Audio Output, and obviously the memory works fine.
- We plugged in a couple cameras, an iPod, and an iPhone, everything worked as expected.
- There's no iMovie or iPhoto out of the box, since iLife doesn't come with Leopard -- you'll have to buy it separately.
- Time Machine seemed to recognize an external HD, but we didn't have time to fully test it out.
- The included copy of Leopard was out of the shrinkwrap, but there's no way to install it -- it shows up in Startup Disk but it won't restart, and it's not recognized at boot.
- Front Row works fine.
- You can grab the entire System Profiler file here, if you're so inclined -- just make sure and share with the group if you notice anything crazy, okay?
As far as benchmarks, it doesn't exactly blow Apple's gear away, but it definitely holds its own -- and the GeForce card just destroys the integrated graphics in the MacBook / Mac mini. Check it out:
- All machines tested with Xbench 1.3.
- All machines tested were using Leopard.
- You can check the bold Xbench scores to compare the cumulative results for each test.
| MBP (2.5GHz Penryn) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, previous gen.) | iMac (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) | Psystar Open Computer (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 169.23 | 126.66 | 138.58 | 188.54 | 138.89 |
| GCD Loop | 15.33 Mops/s | 13.43 Mops/s | 14.91 Mops/s | 18.90 Mops/s | 13.70 Mops/sec |
| Floating Point Basic | 3.37 Gflop/s | 2.95 Gflop/s | 3.23 Gflop/s | 4.12 Gflop/s | 2.98 Gflop/s |
| vecLib FFT | 3.93 Gflop/s | 3.36 Gflop/s | 3.66 Gflop/s | 4.65 Gflop/s | 3.39 Gflop/s |
| Floating Point Library | 36.64 Mops/s | 17.80 Mops/s | 19.43 Mops/s | 44.76 Mops/s | 24.08 Mops/s |
| Thread Test | 275.13 | 186.4 | 208.77 | 314.45 | 195.42 |
| Computation | 6.93 Mops/s | 3.58 Mops/s | 3.56 Mops/s | 8.50 Mops/s | 3.73 Mops/s |
| Lock Contention | 9.90 Mlocks/s | 8.48 Mlocks/s | 11.06 Mlocks/s | 10.81 Mlocks/s | 8.97 Mlocks/s |
| MBP (2.5GHz Penryn) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | iMac (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) | Psystar Open Computer (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) |
|
| Memory Test | 168.11 | 150.23 | 150.82 | 211.78 | 146.46 |
| System | 183.01 | 158.95 | 151.56 | 247.04 | 142.68 |
| Allocate | 922.99 Kalloc/s | 856.78 Kalloc/s | 657.80 Kalloc/s | 374.06 Malloc/s | 559.35 Kalloc/s |
| Fill | 7424.09 MB/se | 6480.99 MB/s | 6606.88 MB/s | 9667.21 MB/s | 6585.52 MB/s |
| Copy | 3522.10 MB/s | 2914.92 MB/s | 3014.12 MB/s | 4651.03 MB/s | 2918.53 MB/s |
| Stream | 155.45 | 142.41 | 150.08 | 185.33 | 150.44 |
| Copy | 3059.86 MB/s | 2799.64 MB/s | 2926.68 MB/s | 3653.38 MB/s | 2853.57 MB/s |
| Scale | 3008.89 MB/s | 2797.66 MB/s | 3022.24 MB/s | 3652.08 MB/s | 2888.89 MB/s |
| Add | 3525.00 MB/s | 3196.17 MB/s | 3364.41 MB/s | 4165.23 MB/s | 3484.55 MB/s |
| Triad | 3523.21 MB/s | 3211.97 MB/s | 3328.48 MB/s | 4147.22 MB/s | 3514.66 MB/s |
| MBP (2.5GHz Penryn) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | iMac (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) | Psystar Open Computer (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) |
|
| Quartz Graphics Test | 198.29 | 154.32 | 193.4 | 228.36 | 213.88 |
| Line | 12.43 Klines/s | 9.69 Klines/s | 11.64 Klines/s | 15.27 Klines/s | 11.00 Klines/s |
| Rectangle | 70.01 Krects/s | 51.66 Krects/s | 70.02 Krects/s | 252.7 Krects/s | 67.11 Krects/s |
| Circle | 15.29 Kcircles/s | 11.54 Kcircles/s | 15.29 Kcircles/s | 16.46 Kcircles/s | 14.73 Kcircles/s |
| Bezier | 4.92 Kbeziers/s | 3.79 Kbeziers/s | 4.51 Kbeziers/s | 5.64 Kbeziers/s | 4.32 Kbeziers/s |
| Text | 12.17 Kchars/s | 10.39 Kchars/s | 12.66 Kchars/s | 15.06 Kchars/s | 41.75 Kchars/s |
| OpenGL Graphics Test | 165.99 | 23.36 | 152.66 | 201.68 | 143.78 |
| Spinning Squares | 210.57 frames/s | 29.64 frames/s | 193.65 frames/s | 255.84 frames/s | 182.39 frames/s |
| User Interface Test | 326.63 | 244.28 | 335.18 | 443.26 | 324.71 |
| Elements | 1.50 Krefresh/s | 1.12 Krefresh/s | 1.54 Krefresh/s | 2.03 Krefresh/s | 1.49 Krefresh/s |
| MBP (2.5GHz Penryn) | MacBook (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) | iMac (2.4GHz) | iMac (3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) | Psystar Open Computer (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo) |
|
| Disk Test | 33.08 | 39.64 | 80.72 | 78.47 | 70.94 |
| Sequential | 60.60 | 66.07 | 115.15 | 106.39 | 137.51 |
| Uncached Write | 52.17 MB/s [4K blocks] | 53.34 MB/s [4K blocks] | 72.17 MB/s [4K blocks] | 84.32 MB/sec [4K blocks] | 92.61 MB/sec [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Write | 47.88 MB/s [256K blocks] | 47.63 MB/s [256K blocks] | 66.51 MB/s [256K blocks] | 77.36 MB/sec [256K blocks] | 82.91 MB/sec [256K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 9.89 MB/s [4K blocks] | 10.83 MB/s [4K blocks] | 27.81 MB/s [4K blocks] | 17.43 MB/sec [4K blocks] | 29.79 MB/sec [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 39.17 MB/s [256K blocks] | 49.62 MB/s [256K blocks] | 69.83 MB/s [256K blocks] | 80.85 MB/sec [256K blocks] | 86.51 MB/sec [256K blocks] |
| Random | 22.75 | 28.31 | 62.13 | 62.16 | 47.80 |
| Uncached Write | 0.81 MB/s [4K blocks] | 1.03 MB/s [4K blocks] | 2.67 MB/s [4K blocks] | 2.51 MB/sec [4K blocks] | 1.87 MB/sec [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Write | 18.56 MB/s [256K blocks] | 22.73 MB/s [256K blocks] | 48.45 MB/s [256K blocks] | 62.96 MB/sec [256K blocks] | 34.00 MB/sec [256K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 0.41 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.48 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.63 MB/s [4K blocks] | 0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks] | 0.64 MB/sec [4K blocks] |
| Uncached Read | 18.44 MB/s [256K blocks] | 19.31 MB/s [256K blocks] | 27.08 MB/s [256K blocks] | 28.77 MB/sec [256K blocks] | 28.12 MB/sec [256K blocks] |
@Matt:
That was the point i was trying to get across. People often feel that because the MB in their particular PC is not of the "ATX, BTX, etc." form factor, that the company which designed the case/PC must also be the designer of that particular piece of hardware. That couldnt be farther from the truth a majority of the time.
That majority involves apple as well. Im just tired of the feeling that Apple somehow infused something into the hardware. Besides how the board is layed out, they are not involved with any of the actual chips that make their way to their "logic boards." They are selectors, just like all other PC manufacturers.
@ Ruben, you should take apart a few macs and take a look at their logic boards. You would be astonished to see how custom they are compared to their PC counterparts. Yes, their chips are made by the standard companies, like broadcom, TI, motorola, whatever, but they do a ton of hardware design work on their own (and contracted) in developing their products. They custom design brackets and spacers, and utilize dozens of custom finish fasteners because they agonize over details like weight distribution, aesthetics, down to every single screw. Even though they're using the same CPUs and obviously same SATA devices, same intel controller chips, lots of the subsystems, and particularly the hardware design are ridiculously custom, and it would be IMPOSSIBLE to make Apple products any other way.
Take a computer like an iMac: in certain ways, they operate very differently from a standard PC. They have custom heat pipes and spreaders, and carefully selected components to meet strict thermal requirements and space considerations.
Did your compaq's motherboard look like this:
http://210.157.201.118/~kodawarisan/imac_2007_mid/DSC_3859L.JPG
(yes, that's the logic board),
but just as important, here's the other side:
http://210.157.201.118/~kodawarisan/imac_2007_mid/DSC_3841L.JPG
or was it a square PCB with basically the same layout as an off-the-shelf mobo? Yeah. I thought so.
soo.. when are they getting sued?
It seems like Apple just loves breaking people's stuff if they don't follow
the rules. I know this is an extreme example but you all remember the
whole iphone thing..........
Is the fan noise from the NVIDIA card. I have encountered the fans issue when loading XP at work. It stops when you load the correct NVIDIA driver.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2BNq1pdmp0
That would be mine.
build it yourself people
Kind of like watching TV with commercials. Cheap and a pain in the ass....
Problem with Ubuntu on any hardware: file a bug, gets fixed
Problem with OSX on any non-apple hardware: Screw you, consumer!
Problem with Windows on any x86 hardware: ......WHATS NEW PUSSY CAT? WHOOAAAOOWHOAWHOAAAAOOOOWHATSNEW *I'm done*
So you think that by specifically violating Apple's terms of usage for OS X, you deserve their support? Are you high, or just stupid?
That doesn't sound anything like my HackMac based in the Bad Axe motherboard. I can't even hear the fans.
Plus, a third grader could install Kalyway on most systems. Just do this yourself guys. It takes like 20 minutes.
Get a tripod.
As far as Apple bricking these pc's, the only thing that they could do is attempt to disable os features, and this would be a very bad idea. It would be impossible to test the bugs that could be spawned from this, and I'm sure that they'd much rather bite the pillow than seem like M$. I'm not certain, but I'm thinking it's illegal to do such a thing. FTA Hardware allegedly cannot be damaged by satellite providers through ecm's or other attacks due to the same principles. The truth is, Psystar will not be allowed to make profits from this forever. This is a startup company, and if you didn't notice, Apple has bulked up financially in the recent past. I wonder how many lawyers they own. The OSX86 community can easily circumvent any attempt that apple makes to patch things. Patches would be manual, and any bad patch can be modified or removed completely. They do it in the PSP and WII communities, as well as any other hack communities.
It continually boggles my mind that "tech" sites such as this one couldn't take a clear picture or a steady video to save their life.
Seriously guys, stop being amateurs.
For all the specs goto: http://www.insanelymac.com/
Really good link, thanks! This guy said he used the Open Computer all day with no problems. No mention of any internet trouble.
Loud fan, is LOUD.
I don't see the advantage in this. If you're digging around into the world of Hackintosh...the mere fact that you're aware of the Hackintosh means you're more likely to be more tech savvy. Tech savvy enough to make your own Hackintosh with hardware you already own or build a new one from scratch.
Chelsea who won what?
Are all the drivers on this computer working? audio, video drivers, LAN drivers, etc
thanx
What about those "approved" mac clones called GBS(?) that Daft Punk claimed they used in their latest tour, Alive 2007? They said they have 3 pieces in the pyramid, running a customized Ableton Live version. Any additional info (Website, price, etc..)?
r0main
MacBook - OpenGL Graphics Test 23.36 ??? Has someone omitted a one from the start of that?
Is that correct? I know that its running the Intel Intel GMA X3100 Chipset, but can this be true?
The X3100 supports OpenGL 1.5 so a little suprised this figure is SO low.
Well I guess we are all slightly disappointed with the Open Computer; some of us are maybe even a little bit angry that we fooled ourselves into thinking it might be better. Many of us hoped that this was going to be a way of getting a half decent and upgradeable Mac without spending a fortune. Cleary at present as many have observed this is just a Hackintosh with some of the install cut out. In reality what else could it be?
Nonetheless it does clearly demonstrate two things. Firstly that there is a huge pent up demand for an affordable and upgradeable Mac Mini Tower and secondly that current Mac hardware is over priced. For years when it was PPC V Intel it was really hard to make a strict price comparison. Many of us using Macs knew that they were slower and more expensive and so welcomed the move to Intel so that at last we could get up to speed and that hopefully there would be some transparency in like for like computers. But by not releasing a standard desktop computer for under £1,000 Apple are still making us pay a lot more for a nice box and the OS. Nice boxes and a good OS are not to be sniffed at of course but the margin you pay is not really sustainable nor is the limited choice on offer.
The new iMacs for example have a pretty decent spec but if you don’t want a glossy screen then what? It’s either a Mac Mini or go pro. The Open Mac could be great if Apple were willing to help and release OSX for PCs but of course they won’t for as soon as the comparison between PCs and Macs become transparent then the margin become unsustainable.
See, this is why Macs are so great. You ain't underneath the hood like a pc
geek. Now, you pc geeks have found a way of putting the best OS on a pc just to end up under the hood fixing problems. What's the point?
Do you folks get any work done?!!!! Damn!
PC sensibilities mix with mac ain't right.
It's all nice but look like a PITA to me.
I recently became curious about Macs in general. I purchased a MBP, couldn't stand the noise and heat so I returned. Next, I got onto eBAy and snagged a used G4 tower for $47 bucks, an 800 MHz processor for $22 and installed an XFX 6200 card and used a 120 GB Hard Drive and PC133 RAM I had kicking around. I also purchased a mini PCI to PCI adapter so I could add a Broadcom wireless card (Airport) and to my surprise my generic Ali based USB 2 card also worked.
Granted I had most of these parts already but for less than $200 I have a fully working, usable legit Mac! I can do updates, my DHCP lease never goes away wired or wireless.
So there you go - you can discover the Mac for very little money and playing with legacy hardware can be fun.
It's even cheaper to watch paint drying, you should do that next.
Ok, I like Macs and being on a tight budget this doesn't seam like that bad of a computer. I went to Psystar's website and customized one of these yesterday, I got a final price to be $524.30 which isn't a bad price. Sure it may not work in complete, but for less then the Mac Mini with iMac specs I'll take it. I am also really low on money but would like to get a new mac. Being low on money, when I get a little more I might just buy this machine. The only question is, is it illegal?
You would do much better to build your own. There are lots of parts that work flawlessly in a OSx36 system. Do some research and you'll see that you can build exactly what you want for less than half the price of an iMac. I'm building one that completes directly with the base MacPro with some extras for under $1k. If you're really serious about doing this, you'll be much better of building your own.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_2_microprocessors it would seem that the Core 2 model should be an Allendale (E4500) or a mobile Merom (T7500), since these are the only models clocking at 2.2 GHz.
Get a tripod man!
On what basis would Apple sue Psystar? They are doing nothing wrong. They're just buiding computers of regular parts found in every single computer store. If they are legally buying and reselling Leopard, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. EULA is bullshit and doesn't mean anything. Even if Apple argue you accepted, it's not notarized it's not legally binding.
Psystar is safe on that. It's a crappy computer tho.
I believe that is the reason why Psystar is selling this computer in the first place, to challenge Apple's EULA.
I believe it was on news.com where there was an interview with Psystar and they basically wanted to challenge the EULA.
So I dont think Psystar is out their to offer Apple alternatives. Just trying to get more of the non tech crowd aware of what could be possible if Apple changed their ways.
Sorta like unlock/locked cellphones. This has been going on for a long long time and only till the iPhone did the general public become aware of this whole thing and now even people in Washington are taking notice.
It takes a catalyst to get things going and Psystar maybe the one to start that movement.
Who knows.....
I love Macs and I love PC's.
I think the problems with OSX stems in that you can buy it separately from the hardware... By doing this you are automatically entitled to Software updates regardless of hardware you put it on. Did anyone kick up a storm about running Windows on a Mac?
There are some severe anti privacy problems with Apple's EULA too. Once you start selling software seperately you can't really insist what it gets installed on. It's called 'monopolisation' - remember Microsoft and Media player? They were ordered to give users the choice and had to open up the software to allow other media players in on the action. Apple have had the monopoly for a lot of years and finally there's a chink in their armour.
You don't actually know what the word "monopoly" means, do you? What exactly do you think Apple has a monopoly on? Their own products? Buying online music? MP3 players?
Anybody who thinks Apple has a monopoly on anything is an idiot. Go look up the word monopoly in a dictionary, and then try to apply that to Apple and see what happens.
"The graphics card appears to be an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, but it doesn't show up in ASP, so we have to confirm. Psystar's store says it's supposed to be a 256MB card, but we have 512MB -- strange."
Perhaps somewhat related, if you run bootcamp on a MBP 2.2 with the 256 MB video card, windows will see the card as erroneously having 512 MB of vram.
Here's my experience of building a Hackintosh. I did it just a few weeks ago because my desktop G5 was starting to feel slow. Also, I wanted a quieter machine, and one with more internal bays. The fact that I could also customize it with options that Apple doesn't offer - such as front-mounted flash card readers - was also very appealing. However, another benefit of the Hackintosh experience is that, though it can be frustrating to get it working, it's also very fun and interesting. My machine's very stable, and very quick, and almost silent. I can't do OS updates via software update, but I never really trust Apple's updates anyway, (especially under Leopard) so I don't mind running a few months behind, just for the sake of stability. If Psystar's real, it seems they haven't done their Hackintosh building homework.
Here's my machine: http://www.completedigitalphotography.com/?p=525
"I can't do OS updates via software update, but I never really trust Apple's updates anyway"
I'm sorry, are you actually using that as an excuse to justify the fact that you can't use Software Update? That's pathetic. Don't make excuses, just say you can't use software update and that can be a real problem.
Seems like a lot of hackintosh supporters like to gloss over the dozens and dozens of problems with them to try to convince people that hackintoshes are just like using a real Mac.
New flash: They're not just like using a real Mac. The software update thing is only one of many examples. If you could try a little harder to not downplay the issues with hackintoshes, that'd be just fantastic.
It's funny that people complain about Apple's pricing on the Macs, but they have around $1,000 dollars to throw out on junk, just to run MacOSX. This company is smart enough to market their crap around this group of people. lol
You're an idiot. The reason people Hackintosh is not because they're "cheap," it's because Apple refuses to release a machine that meets their needs.
It seems a pity it's so bad. If it had been a decent machine, maybe Apple would have had not only to mobilise lawyers but also do something about their recent woeful production engineering. (Every Mac I buy lasts half as long as the one before it...)
Of course, what I REALLY want is a Cell-based machine (PS3, perhaps) which can run PowerPC versions of Mac OS X, but with virtualisation still lets me build and run executables that use the Broadband Engines. How hard can it be? :-)
Just like to point out a few things from someone who has run both the Intel 10.5.2 Hackintosh install and an AMD Athlon64 10.5.2 Hackintosh install:
The fan issue is partly BIOS/OSX in that OSX doesn't look at the bios and say "Woot! Intel/AMD QF/Cooln'Quiet Settings! Yay", so on *some* boards, it will indead run at stock less the BIOS is setup to regulate this. In short: Psystar got lazy and didn't allow for Q-Fan support to be enabled. I have only had this issue on my Intel install. The AMD install had an external hardware fan controller.
DHCP: This is EXTREMELY limited to the board chipset. My Intel with a BroadCom 440 had absolutely NO Issues. The AMD machine, an older nForce 4 setup, only had this problem reportedly on its Marvell Yukon gigabit, however, I use the nForce gigabit and it has never lost IP connected to a plain Linksys via DHCP on copper. Haven't tried wireless on the AMD, the intel w/ a "Dell Wireless" worked without issue, even Bluetooth.
Updates: The issue with updates is infact hardware, more specifically, kernel. Many updates like iTunes, for some odd reason, affect the kernel or SMBIOS kexts. This causes, like any other kernel upgradable OS (Linux/Unix) to freak out and crash when the wrong kernel flags/settings are detected for the current configuration. I have had no issues updating my system, carefully, following the advice of insanelymac.org.
The 512 is most likely from a hacked geforce kext to accept the 8600/8800 series of cards. This is to enable CE/QE (the cool transparency and effects).
Secondly, this is a homebrew/hack. Don't expect it to run as efficient or easily as a generic box Apple machine.
Ruben said: You would end up with a much better system for the same amount of money if you build it yourself, and possibly get it quieter than an iMac.
Well, unless they've changed something since the white-plastic models, that would be very difficult indeed, since at least those iMacs are absolutely silent (except when using the optical disc) - I can't even hear the HD in mine, though that might be because of other noise in my computer room.
At any rate they definitely have no fans; I could see a top-notch box PC being about as quiet as that, with the right hardware, but it's hard to be quieter than convection.
why the hell didn't you compare it to a Mac Mini???
You're comparing a $399 machine to machines costing OVER ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!
I'm sure any computer would lose benchmarks tests when compared to computers costing 3 to 6 times more.
What an idiot.
What a pathetic joke for people trying to save $100, man up, pay the Apple tax and get over it.
Psystar was just in this for the money.
They grabbed everyone's attention by naming it "Open Mac" then intentionally renamed it to "Open Computer" to avoid a lawsuit.
OSx86 fans are angry, so they aren't gonna buy it. Average computer users aren't gonna buying it, as they don't even know about it. Mac users already own a Mac, so they aren't gonna buy it.
I think Apple is trying to avoid drawing more attention to the situation and might actually just leave Psystar alone. I'm betting that Psystar is just going to die out silently and nobody will notice.
So many people seem to hate Apple and their users when a story relating to the company gets mentioned, Yet they all seem to want OS X to run on their own hardware. That's very strange indeed.
Some people get furious when other people start using hacintoshes. Damned if I know why, you'd think Apple folk would be saying 'hey, welcome to OSX'.
Just curious since I'm not a Mac type and never have been...
What exactly is it from Apple that people want to run so badly on another platform? If it's the programs, I could understand this. That would be similar to Gnu/Linux and the Wine project to get native Windows programs to run, since there is plenty of software that just isn't available for Linux (games come most frequently to mind) that are desirable to have. If this is the case, I'd think a project to run Mac apps in Linux would be far easier than Wine is since Leopard is closer to Linux/BSD in the first place.
If it's just the "look and feel" of Leopard I don't understand it however. Linux is very capable of producing a desktop clone of any other OS (Windows, Leopard, or even the PS3's) complete with whatever widgets or any other toys you wish that would provide the same functions as you'd get on an Apple machine but would be fully supported unlike a hacked Mac is.
For myself if I had the cash to burn I'd be happy to buy a high end Mac to be able to run any OS I choose, but since I don't, l'll keep building my own and settle for the Windows/Linux alternative. I don't envision this changing unless a "must have" app becomes available only on the Mac OS.
For me, it's a bit of both. The applications in my area of interest are much better on the Mac than on either Windows or Linux. In some areas, the Mac application is really the only practical or well-executed solution (although this is less common these days - in the 80s/90s there were many killer applications only available on Mac).
It's also the consistent and polished user interface. You are mistaken that Linux can "clone" the MacOS experience. Sure, you could put a MacOS "skin" on it to make it look similar, but it would not work similarly at all. Again, it's the consistency. There are also some very different UI paradigms - for example the "single menubar" approach that applies across the OS and applications, rather than the "menu in windows" approach employed in Linux and Windows.
This level of consistency is really where Windows and Linux fail. The applications and OS form a seamless whole. Generally, applications written for the Mac adhere much more closely to design and interface principles. While on the other platforms, interface conventions differ wildly between different applications, and between the applications and the OS.
Sure, there are "non-standard" and "renegade" Mac applications - but they tend to be much rarer and less egregious than on the other platforms. And they usually don't get popular among the community of users, who expects applications to work in consistently "mac-like" manner.
it's strange hearing non-Mac users talk about "look and feel" because you tend to talk about things like "eye candy" or "toys" when you speak of interface design. For me (and most experienced Mac users, our enjoyment of the system has almost nothing to do with these things. "Design" and "user interface" are all about usability and functionality - not superficial appearance. This is a mistake made by many companies, who think that competing with Apple is just about changing "style" or being fashionable, or slapping on some pretty widgets. They totally miss the point.
Check out the original "Apple Human Interface Guidelines" sometime. They are a seminal work of computer interface engineering and design. They really put a lot of thought into how the user interacts - which is an afterthought for most people and companies.
uhhh... What the hells the point? The "geniuses" at Apple hold Hitler like reign over their precious products, so you might as well conform now and get it over with... If you want OSX then just buy a mac, or at least follow the geek code and hackit yourself... I mean, what is the point of paying ANYTHING for a machine that is halfassed out of the box.... Might as well buy a Vista based system.
Jobs and Gates are two pees in a pod (capitalists), mark my words that good ol beatnik boy is gonna pull a fast one on the market. He goes Intel based, ignores the hackers, and stupid companies (Psystar) who hand out their software illegally, and once a large enough number of hacked macs are in consumer hands, then they are going to "officially" release OEM / retail versions of OS X that can go on virtually any system, then pull the classic WinXPish license requirement maneuver... Enough consumers will be in love with the OS X and will pay through the nose to get it working again...
Next time when you make a video, make sure you don't insert the microphone in your gullet and next time, Normalize your audio. Jeez.
Also, when you first booted up the system, and the BIOS screen showed up, although we know you are a Mac freak, don't be a mactard and go "OH THERE WE GO". PC's are better anyways..
For one, OSX is based on BSD which is mainly a PC OS, so you're welcome for giving your blessed overpriced paperweight some merit. Without FreeBSD, your precious little Mac would be worthless