Psystar Software Will Make Your PC Run OS X

[ossie]

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]I'll give you a hint. The hardware a MacIntoy runs on would run software for the original IBM PC. It would not run software for the Lisa, or original 68K, McIntoy. In other words, Apple makes PC-Compatibles that run a different software.[/citation]
Do you really thing that if the CPU can execute old 8088 code, the machine can run the app? There is much more than that: the architecture (which is similar enough), but you also need a compatible BIOS. Modern OSs bypass completely the BIOS routines, unlike DOS, using it only up to the bootloader.
Also Macs don't followed the strict "compatibility" in microsuxx' OS "evolution" - which results just in carrying all the garbage over and over again (the current windblow$ me$$ is the result) - and started clean whenever necessary, to create a lean and clean system.
[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]The original, diabolically priced ($666) Apple didn't work. You had to add things like video controller chip, etc... to it, so it wasn't really so innovative at all.[/citation]
It was a cheap, and an innovative enough SBC, for the home enthusiast, needing just a PSU, KB and TV set, compared to the rest of the offerings (Altair 8800 & co.) It included onboard text console circuitry (Signetics 2513 CG), just for graphics the additional GT6114 was necessary.
[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]On top of this, they used the horrible 6502 chip, whereas IBM used the much more powerful 8088, although being an early machine it's somewhat understandable.[/citation]
IBM's PC was released 6/5 years later than the Apple I/II, the latter one being one of the most successful series, and just a year earlier than Lisa (68k - 16/32bit) - compare it to that, from a technological POV, if you're just unbiased. Lisa would have shipped even earlier, if it wouldn't have been for 5 years in development (started way before IBM).
[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]The Lisa was plain overpriced, and as mentioned, stole from Xerox, although Apple had the gall to sue Microsoft as if they invented. We stole it first![/citation]
Xerox got 1M$ pre-IPO Apple shares, as tmike pointed out - unlike the 75k SCP scam by m$, for Tim Patersons work. That's the microsuxx modus operandi.
[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]... the AT-bus (often incorrectly referred to as the ISA bus).[/citation]
AT-bus is just the 16bit extension of the XT-bus (even mechanically), and both are part of the ISA spec. There also was EISA (32bit), which was even mechanically compatible to ISA... just it wasn't IBM's brainchild (MCA).
[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]blah blah... I'll reiterate it simply for you. Your MacIntoy is a PC. It runs software for the original IBM PC, not the original Mac (unless you use software emulation, but then you can run a Commodore 64 on a Nehalem based machine, so that's no way to measure it). [/citation]
All personal computers are PCs, including Apple earlier products not based on x86.

You're really deluded... too much windblow$ dumbs down.

 

[gimarbazat]

if I pay for Mac OS X I do whatever i want with it is mine right? just because I dont have a gray case for my computer it does not mean I cant use the software

 

[Regulas]

I have used OS X for years and think it rocks. I would spend the money and do this, $129 for Snow Leapard + $50 for Psystar = $179, if I knew for sure I could get updates for the OS and that down the road Apple would not throw a monkey wrench into it during a update and break my computer.

 

[ta152h]

Ossie,

I'll address your points one by one.

[citation][nom]ossie[/nom]Do you really thing that if the CPU can execute old 8088 code.[/citation]

You're really confused if you think Windows is hardware. I said PC, not Windows. Do you really not know the difference? You can run PC-DOS on modern computers, and it works. I know, I do it for old games. Understand now?

Whether the Apple was innovative or not is a matter of opinion. It didn't sell well, at all, so, I guess the market didn't find it so useful. The TRS-80 and Apple II line sold extremely well. So, I guess those are the products people really wanted.

[citation][nom]ossie[/nom]IBM's PC was released 6/5 years later than the Apple I/II, the latter one being one of the most successful series, and just a year earlier than Lisa (68k - 16/32bit) - compare it to that, from a technological POV, if you're just unbiased. Lisa would have shipped even earlier, if it wouldn't have been for 5 years in development (started way before IBM).[/citation]

I mentioned it was somewhat understandable because it was so much older. But, more to the point, why did they choose it over the Z80? The Apple I didn't matter, no one bought it and there was not compatibility between it and the Apple II anyway. So, why did they choose it?

The Lisa was not in development for five years. The 68K wasn't even around for five years before it was released. Stop making stuff up, please. Especially stupid things. I did give them some credit for using the 68K, which was a better chip than the 8088. But, look which sold better. The 8088 used an 8-bit bus, which allowed the computer to be sold a reasonable price. The Lisa was $10,000, and didn't sell well.

[citation][nom]ossie[/nom]AT-bus is just the 16 bit extension of the XT-bus (even mechanically), and both are part of the ISA spec. There also was EISA (32bit), which was even mechanically compatible to ISA... just it wasn't IBM's brainchild (MCA).All personal computers are PCs, including Apple earlier products not based on x86.You're really deluded... too much windblow$ dumbs down.[/citation]

OK, you're again, misinformed. The correct term is AT-Bus. It was created by IBM, and released on the IBM PC/AT. They choose the name, since they invented it, and got the royalties. It was not created by a industry, or owned by it. It was created by IBM. They call it the AT-Bus, it's the AT-Bus. Got it now?

Also, there was no PC/XT bus. It was the PC bus. The differences between the two were bigger power supplies, more slots, standard hard disk, but the expansion slots were identical. There were more changes than a move to 16-bit, by the way. The address bus was expanded to 24-bit (which is why 8086 processors always used PC slots, not AT), you had more interrupts, could have one bus master, etc...

You are a fool if you don't know what PC means!!!!!!! PC means Personal Computer, as in IBM Personal Computer. Small computers before then were called 'microcomputers'. The Apple II was not called a PC. If you called it a PC, people would think you're an idiot. People wouldn't even know what you are talking about, since the term came about in August 1981 when IBM released their Personal Computer.

 

[Guest]

I don't mind about Psystar or third parties home brew hackintosh software. If you look really at what is the architecture of a Intel Mac, you'll see that is many difference in the internal of the motherboard. It's not just an EFI pc, no. Intel Mac's contain many discret components which need to be worked around or disabled to boot another OS than OS X. It's the same thing when you want to run OS X on a PC, you need thrid party boot loader to emulate efi and some patch to work around or disable important security or hardware monitoring OS X boot kexts. A Mac is NOT a PC and a PC is NOT a MAC.

 

[winglerw28]

Seriously, Psytar is just STEALING the work of the OS X86 community and making them suffer the legal retribution of apple for a quick dollar.

As for the taking of ideas, this shouldn't be ridiculous or surprising, it has happened with every concept and every tactic from war to business for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

 

[Guest]

User beware...

Could only get this to start the OS X install and hang. To boot, no pun intended, it did nuke my Vista boot partition. Downloading RAID drivers now, hoping the Vista repair works so I don't have to install fresh.

 

[Guest]

the_krasno: "Who the hell Apple is to tell me what I can install or not in MY hardware!? If I paid for it, I can do as much as I want to with it."

Are you serious? You paid for your hardware, but that doesn't mean you can run any proprietary software you like on it, without paying for the software. Or do you think you ought to be able to run a cracked copies of Adobe Photoshop and Windows 7 and Excel, because it's your hardware? After all, "Who the hell" are Adobe and Microsoft to "tell you what you can install or not in YOUR hardware"? Good luck with that argument if you get to court.

anamaniac: "Isn't Macintosh the same [in ripping off open source projects]? If I remember correctly, it's just BSD linux…"

No. Mac OS X is *based* on the Mach microkernel *design*. Steve Jobs' company, NeXT, used Mach as the basis of NeXTSTEP - an full operating system (not just a kernel!) for NeXT computers, which had an objected-oriented API and a Display Postscript display. When Jobs returned to Apple, Apple bought NeXTSTEP and turned it into OS X.

(Incidentally "Linux" refers only to the kernel. The whole, open source operating system, that's based on the Linux kernel, is vastly bigger as it contains all the command line tools and windows servers: this OS is called "GNU/Linux" - again "Linux" is just the kernel.)

Finally, Apple have released the majority of OS X back into open source community as the Darwin operating system. You can legally download, compile, run and redistribute Darwin binaries for any machine you like - just like GNU/Linux. Darwin doesn't include things like the Quartz display manager, but it does ship with X-windows.

In short, Apple do take part in the give and take aspect of the open source movement for the Darwin OS, so they do not just "rip off open source projects"! However, Apple have also put a lot of time into developing proprietary parts of OS X, including Quartz, Quicktime and so forth. It is these extras that differentiate OS X from the open source, (largely NeXT and Apple developed) Darwin OS.

D_Kuhn: "Apple has been an innovative company, but they're as guilty as MS of borrowing tech they liked. The entire basis of the Mouse centric GUI was "borrowed" from Xerox."

It's true that Apple saw the Xerox Star - a $16k office system - but Jobs' genius was in seeing that this was the future of *home* computing and realising that a home computer with a similar-looking interface could be built for one fifth of the price. Jobs also added proper typography to the Mac.

Unlike the Xerox Star's resource-intensive SmallTalk code base, Apple collaborated with Nicklaus Wirth (inventor of Pascal and Modula 2) to create Object Pascal, the first object oriented language designed for use on home computers, This language was used to write the Mac OS and which paved the way for object graphics, which were at the heart of the Mac's GUI

This isn't accurate. From 1985-1995 Microsoft sneered at GUIs, publicly calling them WIMP interfaces (Windows Icons Menus & Pointers) while desperately working behind the scenes to copy the Mac's GUI. To do this, they needed an object-oriented implementation language and an API that was compatible with an O-O development language. I believe the first such language was Borland's OWL (1991), but Microsoft's C/C++ first O-O language/API combination was C/C++ 7.0 (MFC 1.0) in 1992. Of course, Microsoft didn't ship a true Mac competitor until 1995 (Windows 95).

So Apple's "copying" of the Xerox Star involved a raft of innovations by Apple. In contrast, Microsoft's copying of Mac OS a decade later involved little innovation: by the 1990s, hacking out Windows 95 was straightforward.

 

[standardperson]

the_krasno: "Who the hell Apple is to tell me what I can install or not in MY hardware!? If I paid for it, I can do as much as I want to with it."

Are you serious? You paid for your hardware, but that doesn't mean you can run any proprietary software you like on it, without paying for the software. Or do you think you ought to be able to run a cracked copies of Adobe Photoshop and Windows 7 and Excel, because it's your hardware? After all, "Who the hell" are Adobe and Microsoft to "tell you what you can install or not in YOUR hardware"? Good luck with that argument if you get to court.

anamaniac: "Isn't Macintosh the same [in ripping off open source projects]? If I remember correctly, it's just BSD linux…"

No. Mac OS X is based on the Mach microkernel design. Steve Jobs' company, NeXT, used Mach as the basis of NeXTSTEP - an full operating system (not just a kernel!) for NeXT computers, which had an object-oriented API and a Display Postscript display. When Jobs returned to Apple, Apple bought the NeXTSTEP operating system and turned it into OS X.

(Incidentally "Linux" refers only to the kernel. The whole, open source operating system, that's based on the Linux kernel, is vastly bigger, because it contains all the command line tools and a windows server: this OS is called "GNU/Linux" - again "Linux" is just the kernel.)

Finally, Apple have released the majority of OS X into open source community as the Darwin operating system. You can (legally) download, compile, run and redistribute Darwin binaries for any machine you like - just like GNU/Linux. Darwin doesn't include things like the Quartz display manager, but it does ship with X-windows.

Thus Apple does take part in the open source movement for the Darwin OS and they do not just "rip off open source projects"! However, Apple have also put a lot of time into developing proprietary parts of OS X, including Quartz, Quicktime and so forth. It is these extras that differentiate OS X from the open source, (largely NeXT and Apple developed) Darwin OS.

D_Kuhn: "Apple has been an innovative company, but they're as guilty as MS of borrowing tech they liked. The entire basis of the Mouse centric GUI was "borrowed" from Xerox."

It's true that Apple saw the Xerox Star - a $16k office system - but Jobs' genius was in seeing that this was the future of home computing and realising that a home computer with a similar-looking interface could be built for a quarter of the price. Jobs also added proper typography to the Mac. (Besides, mice had been around for years before the Xerox Star.)

Unlike the Xerox Star's resource-intensive SmallTalk code base, Apple collaborated with Nicklaus Wirth (inventor of Pascal and Modula 2) to create Object Pascal, the first object oriented language designed for use on home computers. This language was used to write the Mac OS and which paved the way for object graphics, which were at the heart of the Mac's GUI

From 1985-1995 Microsoft sneered at GUIs, publicly calling them WIMP interfaces (Windows Icons Menus & Pointers) while desperately working behind the scenes to copy the Mac's GUI. To do this, they needed an object-oriented implementation language and an API that was compatible with the O-O development language. MS finally achieved this in 1992 with C/C++ 7.0 (MFC 1.0). Of course, Microsoft didn't ship a true Mac competitor until 1995 (Windows 95).

Apple had to do a lot more work and innovation to get the look of the $16k Xerox Star, on a small form-factor home computer, back in 1984. In contrast, Microsoft had the IBM imprimatur that allowed them to coast and build capital for a decade, and wait for the compilers and hardware to become advanced enough to make Windows 95 an easy hack.

 

[standardperson]

ossie: Whether the Apple was innovative or not is a matter of opinion. It didn't sell well, at all, so, I guess the market didn't find it so useful.

There are at least two alternative explanations for why Apple failed to trounce the Windows/IBM PC between 1985 and 1995. First, the Windows/IBM PC had the IBM stamp on it, so the bewildered and largely ignorant consumers of the day might well have decided to take the "safe bet" on a clearly inferior product.

Secondly, the fact that Windows/IBM PCs and Macs were incompatible, and that it was hard to share data between them, made the personal computer marketplace a duopoly - much like the VHS/Betamax videotape wars.

The thing about incompatible duopolies is that their market share is subject to positive feedback- rather than the negative feedback that produces stability around market equilibrium points, that's assumed in most neo-classical economic models. The Nobel Prize-winner in Economics, Brian Arthur, showed that such positive feedback in market share can lead to absolutely any split of the market from almost any starting market share: for example, a 10%/90% market split at the start can result in 50%/50% split in the long run, but equally a 11%/89% market split can produce a long term split of 99%/1%.

In sum, Brian Arthur showed that in the case of incompatible duopolies, the final market winner may well be the inferior product. (Most people agreed that Betamax was better than VHS yet it only took a few years for Betamax to disappear completely.)

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]standardperson[/nom]ossie: Whether the Apple was innovative or not is a matter of opinion. It didn't sell well, at all, so, I guess the market didn't find it so useful.There are at least two alternative explanations for why Apple failed to trounce the Windows/IBM PC between 1985 and 1995. First, the Windows/IBM PC had the IBM stamp on it, so the bewildered and largely ignorant consumers of the day might well have decided to take the "safe bet" on a clearly inferior product.Secondly, the fact that Windows/IBM PCs and Macs were incompatible, and that it was hard to share data between them, made the personal computer marketplace a duopoly - much like the VHS/Betamax videotape wars.The thing about incompatible duopolies is that their market share is subject to positive feedback- rather than the negative feedback that produces stability around market equilibrium points, that's assumed in most neo-classical economic models. The Nobel Prize-winner in Economics, Brian Arthur, showed that such positive feedback in market share can lead to absolutely any split of the market from almost any starting market share: for example, a 10%/90% market split at the start can result in 50%/50% split in the long run, but equally a 11%/89% market split can produce a long term split of 99%/1%.In sum, Brian Arthur showed that in the case of incompatible duopolies, the final market winner may well be the inferior product. (Most people agreed that Betamax was better than VHS yet it only took a few years for Betamax to disappear completely.)[/citation]

Standard, you COMPLETELY missed the point. The original Apple computer was the one I was referring to. If you had read further, I mentioned the Apple II and TRS-80 sold quite well. Clearly, compared to the IBM PC and clones they did not, so that was not the measuring stick.

The Apple (meaning the first one) hardly sold at all, in fact, and they worth upward of $50,000 because of it. This is for a used, beat up one. I have a brand new TRS-80 (Model I, as it was later called) that's probably worth $1000. I have several unused ones that might get $100. That should give you an idea of how many were sold of each. I think the TRS-80 sold around 300,000 before it was all said and done. Of course, the later Model III and Model 4 sold many, many more, and were compatible.

One interesting side note is, most people don't know the z80 is still being made, and sold today. That's quite a bit of longevity - almost 35 years and still going strong.

 

[todicamer]

Hey people what about the drivers? are the macosx drivers are optimized for our motherboards chipsets? how about the integrated audio,wifi cards, etc?

 

[zak_mckraken]

[citation][nom]wildwell[/nom]Wow, $49 for the Psystar software and $29 for the OS. It's cheaper to try out Mac OSX than it is to try Windows 7.NOTE: I would also like to point out that Tom's is currently conducting a poll regarding a Mac OS section in the forums.http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/32340-12-forum[/citation]
Just to clarify, 29$ is the price of the upgrade from 10.5 to 10.6. If you upgrade from 10.4, you need to purchase the Mac Box Set for 169$. I guess it's possible to "fool" the OS during the install, but, then again, if you can do that, you can probably go without the Rebel EFI software!

 

[ominous prime]

Psystar seems to engage in some particular shady business practices, however, exclusivity of OSX on Mac's needs to come to an end. It's the same hardware at the end of the day, can Apple not get their OS to be compatible with all types of hardware? Apple can run all the Mac is better ads, but at the end of the day it can only run on their chosen system configurations without modding/hacking. Expand apple! expand! Until then, keep sticking it to them Psystar.

 

[dark_lord69]

HRMMM...
Well...
It's a lot cheaper than windows.
On the other hand if I wanted a cheap OS I could install Linux.

 

[insider3]

I own both OS's. Love em both. Trust me, you're not really missing out on anything with OSX.

 

[ichbinyogi]

Why anyone would want to run this on a PC is beyond me.

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]tmike[/nom]Hardly "borrowed": Xerox was compensated and assisted Apple with the implementation.[/citation]

No, Xerox was set to sue Apple when Apple was going to sue MS for Windows. The whole reason the Apple case got dropped was because Xerox tapped Apple's shoulder and said, "look buddy, you sue them, we sue you, and we'll bury you."

People really need to learn the history of computing from the late 70s onward (except ta152h, he knows what he's talking about).

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]ossie[/nom]Do you really thing that if the CPU can execute old 8088 code, the machine can run the app? There is much more than that: the architecture (which is similar enough), but you also need a compatible BIOS. Modern OSs bypass completely the BIOS routines, unlike DOS, using it only up to the bootloader.Also Macs don't followed the strict "compatibility" in microsuxx' OS "evolution" - which results just in carrying all the garbage over and over again (the current windblow$ me$$ is the result) - and started clean whenever necessary, to create a lean and clean system.
It was a cheap, and an innovative enough SBC, for the home enthusiast, needing just a PSU, KB and TV set, compared to the rest of the offerings (Altair 8800 & co.) It included onboard text console circuitry (Signetics 2513 CG), just for graphics the additional GT6114 was necessary.
IBM's PC was released 6/5 years later than the Apple I/II, the latter one being one of the most successful series, and just a year earlier than Lisa (68k - 16/32bit) - compare it to that, from a technological POV, if you're just unbiased. Lisa would have shipped even earlier, if it wouldn't have been for 5 years in development (started way before IBM).
Xerox got 1M$ pre-IPO Apple shares, as tmike pointed out - unlike the 75k SCP scam by m$, for Tim Patersons work. That's the microsuxx modus operandi.
AT-bus is just the 16bit extension of the XT-bus (even mechanically), and both are part of the ISA spec. There also was EISA (32bit), which was even mechanically compatible to ISA... just it wasn't IBM's brainchild (MCA).
All personal computers are PCs, including Apple earlier products not based on x86.You're really deluded... too much windblow$ dumbs down.[/citation]

Ossie, go learn your history before you post any further. All your comments are doing now is making you look stupid. You don't know anything about the history of computers since the late 70s. Please go learn that history before you come back here and spout your useless drivel.

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]ta152h[/nom]One interesting side note is, most people don't know the z80 is still being made, and sold today. That's quite a bit of longevity - almost 35 years and still going strong.[/citation]

There are a few CPU/Systems still in use because they're known to be reliable. For instance, the Navy Phalanx system is running Pentium 1/2 processors because they're well tested. The computers that run the control systems for various nuclear power plants in the US are still using systems from the 80s as well. When using chips in satellites, they tend to use old designed chips as well because they've been so thoroughly tested and have been shown to work.

 

[CChick]

[citation][nom]Yoder54[/nom]That is one of the stupidest statements that I have heard in quite sometime. Copying Windows machines? The Apple I was the first with a single circuit board used in a computer. The first home computer with a GUI or graphical user interface was the Apple Lisa. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made the first ready-made personal computer. The Apple II was one of the first computers with a color display. The Apple Newton MessagePad is one of the first-ever Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) - a term coined by Apple's then-CEO John Sculley. Then there is the iPod and all of the "firsts" that came with it.So what is it that Apple is copying from the "PC"?" Please don't say the OS.pple was the company that made personal computing affordable and they have always been knocked for being so proprietary. If you are referring to the OS, well you need to read about the OS wars and learn who stole what from whom.[/citation]

Hey, Mr. Dumbass.

Since when did Apple came up with the GUI idea? it was Xerox's idea. rofl

I dont even wanna comment your other garbage comments. cuz you're nothing but full of failed. get ur facts straight before you open your mouth again, jack a s s

 

[standardperson]

ta152h: Standard, you COMPLETELY missed the point.

I apologise for misattributing what you wrote to ossie and for missing your point.

I didn't know that the Z80 was still in production, but it doesn't entirely surprise me. If the CPU were bundled with some RAM and PROM onto a single chip then I could see it making a very handy micro-controller for dozens of devices.

In passing, I have to say that I personally preferred the Motorola 6800 and 6809 chips to the 6502s and Z80, but I was just barely in my teens when I was writing machine code for those chips. I recall writing a Forth-like language for the 6809 and the threading engine was something like 12 bytes in total, compared with Byte's engine for the Z80 which was four or five times that size.

In fact, I always preferred Motorola chips (including the CPU 680x0 and 88000 lines) to their Intel counterparts: their instruction set always struck me as cleaner and neater with fewer redundancies. These days I don't write machine code, so the instruction architecture is almost always the compiler's problem and I don't take such interest.

 

[tester24]

[citation][nom]bad_code[/nom]Read the EULA carefully. It really states you 'own' a license to run one instance of the app not the actual ownership of the app. Apple or who ever, actually owns it. Makes me wonder why they ever do collector's editions of software. They own it, you just hold on to it. Same with movies.[/citation]

This is going away, I think I remember seeing on TH that someone had a lawsuit about this and won. Judge pretty much saying the consumer can do whatever they want with their product as long as it doesn't violate the copywrite laws.

 

[eccentric909]

[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]HRMMM...Well...It's a lot cheaper than windows.On the other hand if I wanted a cheap OS I could install Linux.[/citation]

Really, cheaper than Windows? You can purchase an Windows 7 License (full version, not upgrade) + disc from Newegg for $109. The MacOSX 10.6 Box set is $169 (couldn't just find MacOSX by itself).

What still confuses me about MacOSX is that you have to buy a full OS upgrade to go from 10.x to 10.6. To me the .x stepping seems more like a service pack, instead of a full OS upgrade (like going from XP to Vista to 7). On my girlfriend's Mac we upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5 (which costed $129!), and now to 10.6 and I honestly don't see much difference at all, and it just seems more like going from Vista SP1 to Vista SP2 or XP SP1 to XP SP2. All I know is that she couldn't play Spore or the Sims 3 with 10.4, yet could with 10.5 on the same hardware. Again, it makes little sense to me why it works that way. Considering the same games would run on XP, Vista and 7, hell they'd run on 98 or (shudder) ME as well.

However, I don't use OSX enough to be fully informed over the OS upgrade system. Therefore all of the above is pure conjecture/opinion (except that we do own a Mac, which has had it's OS upgraded twice in the past 2 years). I just prefer my PC, and for the most part she does too, but since her Macbook Pro was free we don't complain. 😉

 

[standardperson]

Eccentric909: The MacOSX 10.6 Box set is $169 (couldn't just find MacOSX by itself).

The boxed set is an upgrade from Mac OS X v10.4, or earlier, to v10.6 and includes the latest iLife '09 package (including iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, iDVD and GarageBand ) and iWork '09 (including the Pages page layout/word processing package, the Numbers spreadsheet and Keynote presentation software). This has to be one of the greatest software bargains ever! (IMO, Pages and Numbers is the best word-processing and spreadsheet combination on the market, bar none.)

The upgrade from Mac OS X v10.5 to v10.6 is about US$ 30 and is available separately. I imagine this is because owners of Leopard (OS X v10.5) might well already have the latest (i.e., '09) versions of iLife and iWork, whereas people running v10.4 or earlier probably won't; IIRC iLife and iWork '09 won't run on OS X v10.4 or earlier.

What still confuses me about MacOSX is that you have to buy a full OS upgrade to go from 10.x to 10.6. To me the .x stepping seems more like a service pack, instead of a full OS upgrade (like going from XP to Vista to 7).

I would have said that upgrading from OS X 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5 was very much like the transition from XP to Vista to Windows 7 - except 10.4 wasn't a debacle like Vista ;-)

While the cosmetic changes to OS X v10.3,4 & 5 have been less obvious than those in XP, Vista and 7, there have been huge changes in terms of features; many of these features are obvious, but quite a few changes are fundamental improvements to the built-in tools (the stuff 'under the hood') which allowed developers to write increasingly powerful applications by leveraging the OS code.

For example, OS X v10.4 shipped with the Core Image libraries, which is a real-time image processing system for images rendered with the Mac's Quartz display system. In fact, v10.4 also included Quartz2D Extreme, which used the Graphics Chip (GPU) to display Quartz images at previously unheard-of speeds.

By putting Core Image and Quartz2D Extreme together, Apple were able to release Aperture 1 - a package that aimed to provide photographers with a tool to manipulate RAW format digital pictures in real time, without ever changing the original photograph. Alas, Aperture 1 was a disaster, but Aperture 2 is very nice and quite cheap compared with similarly capable products on MS platforms. Furthermore, the same technologies that underpin Aperture are seeping into other products (e.g. iPhoto) and Quartz2D Extreme has been extended in v10.6 to produce OpenCL, which is a computer language that makes it quite easy for programmers to use one or more GPUs as very fast number-crunching engines.

Of course, OS X v10.6 is not a typical Apple release. Although it does contain some new features, many of these are almost invisible to the user (e.g. v10.6 adds a system that makes it easier for programmers to write software that makes effective use of multicore processors, another system to use GPUs for number crunching (as mentioned before), and a third system that adds compatibility with Microsoft's Exchange Server) it was mainly meant to be a cleaner, faster rewrite of v10.5. This is why it's priced so cheaply. Still, Apple did add some more obvious features, and the "almost invisible" features give multicore Macs a (noticeable) 10-15% speed improvement; but perhaps most importantly, the new, 'hidden' features in v10.6 form a foundation that will it easier to write super-fast software for any Mac running v10.6 in the future. I just hope that third party programmers start making more use of the libraries that Apple have provided them with.