Time to fork MacOS back to x86 with a partner like Sony driving?

[Imhotep397]

There's been some discussion about Apple partnering up with a major gaming company. It might be very interesting to see Apple partner up with Sony then fund Sony's acquisition of their old PC brand Vaio for the purpose of continuing MacOS development on x86 without disturbing Apple Silicon development or Apple's plans for video content development tools. Many people have wondered what MacOS would be like particularly price wise running on AMD CPUs/GPUs and obviously supporting Nvidia GPUs again as we've never seen that. Since this is unlikely to happen with Apple Silicon in the picture going back to x86 without Apple having to contend with Nvidia, but still getting the benefit makes sense. This is probably the best long term outcome VizDev/VFX/CGI/Data Scientists and gamers preferring MacOS could hope for.

Surely, Apple already has projects like these running in secrecy in Cupertino anyway given how long the "MacOS' Secret Life" story has been as it is. It makes sense to find a partner willing to shoulder part of the development cost/risk that can bring a significant amount of new sales growth products to MacOS even it's not MacOS running on Apple Silicon. Sony would be able to get back into the PC market with a unique platform that they would have more control over where they could potentially turn their Playstation Network/Playstation Now cloud game streaming into a new Steam of sorts they've been after for some time.

 

[diamond.g]

There's been some discussion about Apple partnering up with a major gaming company. It might be very interesting to see Apple partner up with Sony then fund Sony's acquisition of their old PC brand Vaio for the purpose of continuing MacOS development on x86 without disturbing Apple Silicon development or Apple's plans for video content development tools. Many people have wondered what MacOS would be like particularly price wise running on AMD CPUs/GPUs and obviously supporting Nvidia GPUs again as we've never seen that. Since this is unlikely to happen with Apple Silicon in the picture going back to x86 without Apple having to contend with Nvidia, but still getting the benefit makes sense. This is probably the best long term outcome VizDev/VFX/CGI/Data Scientists and gamers preferring MacOS could hope for.

Surely, Apple already has projects like these running in secrecy in Cupertino anyway given how long the "MacOS' Secret Life" story has been as it is. It makes sense to find a partner willing to shoulder part of the development cost/risk that can bring a significant amount of new sales growth products to MacOS even it's not MacOS running on Apple Silicon. Sony would be able to get back into the PC market with a unique platform that they would have more control over where they could potentially turn their Playstation Network/Playstation Now cloud game streaming into a new Steam of sorts they've been after for some time.

I am sure Sony has no interest in returning to making PC's.

SIE leadership had to have it's arms twisted to even port some first party games to the PC to begin with, not sure they would really be interested in doing that for macOS even if it was their own fork.

 

[Imhotep397]

...SIE leadership had to have it's arms twisted to even port some first party games to the PC to begin with...

That's not accurate, Sony is 100% on board with porting first party games to external platforms to expand the audiences for their content:

A vertically integrated PC like the Mac, even on x86 with limited user swappable GPUs, is more similar than dissimilar to a console than Windows, which could streamline the process of porting Playstation games if Sony could integrate their console OS APIs with MacOS.

With all it's various studios and more coming apparently Sony very likely employs more people than Apple and they all use a broad variety of PCs to complete all their various jobs that are mostly different than Apple work tasks. Just providing computers across that spectrum of creatives internally would save Sony money and get Sony and Apple the irrefutable research they would need to build products, extend sales into more creative enterprise spaces today without waiting for software to possibly catch up with Apple Silicon and without getting involved in the high cost/low profit business of building, deploying and supporting enterprise servers.

Historically, Apple and Sony, have been dependent on the same business to consumer sales segment of the pie almost exclusively with their PC businesses which is very volatile. Sony's high priced PCs running the same identical OS as cheaper similarly spec'd killed their sales of PCs and ultimately put their PC business out of business, not any lack of interest in building and selling PCs on the part of Sony. Had Apple not created the iPod and then the iPhone their fate might have been very similar.

A Sony fork of MacOS on x86 (probably AMD) with limited access to aftermarket AMD and Nvidia GPUs would improve sales and proliferation of MacOS on the desktop for freelancers in 3D as well as start the process of capturing those large elusive 3D creative enterprise customers. Other PC manufacturers like Dell, HP etc. have relied heavily on enterprise customers outside of creative initially, but more and more education customers than ever. During the desktop publishing revolution from the early 1990's to early 2000's, then desktop video editing, but Windows computer manufacturers even absorbed a lot of that since then.

Sony and Apple are very much aligned historically in a lot of different ways. It just makes too much sense for the companies involved and for the customers involved.

The interest is there but the required insane usually non-working work-arounds forced on various Mac user groups like these are just absurd:

(The iOS revenue topic is a dead horse. Apple is going to lose a lot of that revenue in the next few years because of litigation without some other form of legal intervention. PLEASE don't pollute this discussion with those topics.)

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I am sure Sony has no interest in returning to making PC's.

They won't.

SIE leadership had to have it's arms twisted to even port some first party games to the PC to begin with, not sure they would really be interested in doing that for macOS even if it was their own fork.

Money talks, they're trying to reach those not willing to buy a console for gaming. And that's the Windows market, not Linux, not macOS.

Another option is the cloud gaming market. All they need is a suitable hypervisor and they're good to go on standard hardware. Just like macOS in the core, Orbis OS (PS3, PS4 and PS5) is based on BSD (Free BSD actually), so there's absolutely no need for macOS, it would be counter productive.

Apple won't be returning to x86, it's dead, they've made that clear. There is no secret basement project returning, as people working with Apple with NDAs know. The transition from 68k to PPC, PPC to Intel and Intel to ARM was known many, many years before it happened, even for those not directly involved. Apple will be fine with their future plan to unite macOS/iPadOS/iOS and Sony will be fine running their console business and porting to Windows PC (>95% of the desktop gaming market) after a year of console exclusives.

 

[Imhotep397]

Apple collaborating with an industry player like Sony would also very likely pique the interest of one Jony Ive and potentially bring him back to Apple. Even the most jaded of us couldn’t argue that that would be a bad thing.

Also, consider the Billions Apple would likely save in litigation constantly fighting with every tech company. The competitors could no longer claim damages if they could continue developing for a MacOS fork running on x86 operating more closely with the rest of the industry.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple collaborating with an industry player like Sony would also very likely pique the interest of one Jony Ive and potentially bring him back to Apple. Even the most jaded of us couldn’t argue that that would be a bad thing.

Also, consider the Billions Apple would likely save in litigation constantly fighting with every tech company. The competitors could no longer claim damages if they could continue developing for a MacOS fork running on x86 operating more closely with the rest of the industry.

What does Sony get out of this deal?

 

[Imhotep397]

What does Sony get out of this deal?

Sony would get a stable modular/expandable PC platform they would primarily control that they could make available to their developers internally and externally that could be better optimized for console development (particularly PSVR2 development). Sony could also sell an upgradable "Pro" console to their users that want that specific feature to compete directly with Windows gaming.

To me the benefit for Apple is obviously more software, but even more for the long term benefit of having uninterrupted professional 3D software support/development on MacOS over an extended period of time in general without having to deal with Apple rejecting significant portions of APIs (like they did with OpenGL for YEARS), court warring with various Tech (like Nvidia, RED cinema, Black Magic etc) All the Apple grand standing leads to companies cutting development, having multi-abbreviated development periods, green-lighting partial functionality development on the Mac etc.

It's only after long, uninterrupted development cycles that a lot of companies will the make costly decision to port and support a major transition to something like Metal/ Apple Silicon because enough of their customers that they've procured long business relationships with already on Mac-x86 want it on Mac-AS. This didn't happen fully during the Mac Intel period because of Apple's ulterior motives/alternate agenda.

Obviously, Sony would benefit as well because of the immediate open door and opportunity to expand their products' reach but also eventually they would likely move to AS as well, but only after the majority software development for 3D/VFX and games shifted over.

This transition has been a hot mess for those 3D users that didn't completely drop the Mac back when Apple stopped supporting Nvidia GPUs. At least before if all else failed you could boot into Windows for native operation.

 

[diamond.g]

Sony would get a stable modular/expandable PC platform they would primarily control that they could make available to their developers internally and externally that could be better optimized for console development (particularly PSVR2 development). Sony could also sell an upgradable "Pro" console to their users that want that specific feature to compete directly with Windows gaming.

To me the benefit for Apple is obviously more software, but even more for the long term benefit of having uninterrupted professional 3D software support/development on MacOS over an extended period of time in general without having to deal with Apple rejecting significant portions of APIs (like they did with OpenGL for YEARS), court warring with various Tech (like Nvidia, RED cinema, Black Magic etc) All the Apple grand standing leads to companies cutting development, having multi-abbreviated development periods, green-lighting partial functionality development on the Mac etc.

It's only after long, uninterrupted development cycles that a lot of companies will the make costly decision to port and support a major transition to something like Metal/ Apple Silicon because enough of their customers that they've procured long business relationships with already on Mac-x86 want it on Mac-AS. This didn't happen fully during the Mac Intel period because of Apple's ulterior motives/alternate agenda.

Obviously, Sony would benefit as well because of the immediate open door and opportunity to expand their products' reach but also eventually they would likely move to AS as well, but only after the majority software development for 3D/VFX and games shifted over.

This transition has been a hot mess for those 3D users that didn't completely drop the Mac back when Apple stopped supporting Nvidia GPUs. At least before if all else failed you could boot into Windows for native operation.

Doesn't seem like Sony Electronics Corporation selling off the Vaio line in 2014 had any affect on Sony Interactive Entertainment. Not sure the folk behind PlayStation have been asking the other Sony branches for computing hardware.

It is an interesting wish, one that I don't really see Sony moving forward with as I still don't see how running macOS would improve anything on their console side, nor do I see other people wanting to get macOS but not macOS because it wouldn't be Apple maintaining it.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Doesn't seem like Sony Electronics Corporation selling off the Vaio line in 2014 had any affect on Sony Interactive Entertainment.

No, different things. Vaio line didn't sell to well, but they had great laptops. We used some running Linux back then.

Not sure the folk behind PlayStation have been asking the other Sony branches for computing hardware.

They have not, because it makes no sense. Anything they could do with a Vaio system can be done with Dell, Lenovo, HP or any other brand as well.

It is an interesting wish, one that I don't really see Sony moving forward with as I still don't see how running macOS would improve anything on their console side, nor do I see other people wanting to get macOS but not macOS because it wouldn't be Apple maintaining it.

Not only would it not improve anything, it would be counter productive and make things more difficult. Sony is not looking for an all purpose OS (which is Windows anyway), they're looking for a specific system for games/consoles. They already have that with Orbis, which is Free BSD + stuff added to it for gaming. Why would they now go to macOS, which is BSD + added NextStep stuff + added mac stuff - stripped stuff, only to strip away the clutter Apple added and then start adding Sony specific gaming features and features that FreeBSD already has? They already have that right now, totally free with the OS they're already using.

One could argue developing, but it doesn't make sense either. The software stack is optimized for Windows with all tools integrated into Visual Studio so it can be used in tandem with devkits. One could install all tools on Free BSD, but it couldn't be done in macOS, so that would add a massive amount of work only to get where they are already.

As you say, this is wishful thinking.

 

[Imhotep397]

Doesn't seem like Sony Electronics Corporation selling off the Vaio line in 2014 had any affect on Sony...

True, but there are some recent developments particularly with PSVR2 game development where devs haven't been able to find the sweet spot of saturating the PS5s i/O or get anywhere close while their PCs have been getting almost saturated to the point of diminishing returns. I suspect that it's the way that the PS5 is effectively moving data to and from the closely connected SSD/system memory, the discreet GPU operations in PCs are likely not getting the prioritization or don't have a fast enough bus lane to get the same performance.

Projects can get done regardless, so it's not critical, but I'm certain they are wanting to find solutions for in the future with more demanding projects.

I still don't see how running macOS would improve anything on their console side

Believe it or not there are actually are a few good things about MacOS that have nothing to do with Metal. The way the PS5 was designed to stream data from the SSD for execution almost like it's system memory sounds very similar to what Apple has been doing for years for several creative applications and is doing with their video processing now, which is probably getting done with Metal in MacOS, but it also can be done without Metal and Apple seemed to being doing similar things pre-Metal for video acceleration too.

Maybe Microsoft and AMD will get something out on ARM beyond just laptops that are rumored to be in the pipeline and that total rework away from Intel for the second time of having Windows on ARM with faster solid state everything this time as opposed to platter HDDs or slow SSDs will resolve some things for 3D related processing in general.

 

[diamond.g]

True, but there are some recent developments particularly with PSVR2 game development where devs haven't been able to find the sweet spot of saturating the PS5s i/O or get anywhere close while their PCs have been getting almost saturated to the point of diminishing returns. I suspect that it's the way that the PS5 is effectively moving data to and from the closely connected SSD/system memory, the discreet GPU operations in PCs are likely not getting the prioritization or don't have a fast enough bus lane to get the same performance.

Projects can get done regardless, so it's not critical, but I'm certain they are wanting to find solutions for in the future with more demanding projects.


Believe it or not there are actually are a few good things about MacOS that have nothing to do with Metal. The way the PS5 was designed to stream data from the SSD for execution almost like it's system memory sounds very similar to what Apple has been doing for years for several creative applications and is doing with their video processing now, which is probably getting done with Metal in MacOS, but it also can be done without Metal and Apple seemed to being doing similar things pre-Metal for video acceleration too.

Maybe Microsoft and AMD will get something out on ARM beyond just laptops that are rumored to be in the pipeline and that total rework away from Intel for the second time of having Windows on ARM with faster solid state everything this time as opposed to platter HDDs or slow SSDs will resolve some things for 3D related processing in general.

Hmm. Interesting thought. “PC” has an API that speeds up storage access (Direct Storage). I didn’t think Apple had an equivalent.

 

[jeanlain]

Apple's Unified Memory doesn't need Direct Storage.

 

[ian87w]

There's been some discussion about Apple partnering up with a major gaming company. It might be very interesting to see Apple partner up with Sony then fund Sony's acquisition of their old PC brand Vaio for the purpose of continuing MacOS development on x86 without disturbing Apple Silicon development or Apple's plans for video content development tools. Many people have wondered what MacOS would be like particularly price wise running on AMD CPUs/GPUs and obviously supporting Nvidia GPUs again as we've never seen that. Since this is unlikely to happen with Apple Silicon in the picture going back to x86 without Apple having to contend with Nvidia, but still getting the benefit makes sense. This is probably the best long term outcome VizDev/VFX/CGI/Data Scientists and gamers preferring MacOS could hope for.

Surely, Apple already has projects like these running in secrecy in Cupertino anyway given how long the "MacOS' Secret Life" story has been as it is. It makes sense to find a partner willing to shoulder part of the development cost/risk that can bring a significant amount of new sales growth products to MacOS even it's not MacOS running on Apple Silicon. Sony would be able to get back into the PC market with a unique platform that they would have more control over where they could potentially turn their Playstation Network/Playstation Now cloud game streaming into a new Steam of sorts they've been after for some time.

That means licensing macOS to a 3rd party, which Apple will never do. I'm sure that's probably one of the things Jobs put in stone that Apple must keep no matter what. Apple wants a vertically integrated ecosystem, where they are completely in control of everything.

Sony ditching Vaio was an unfortunate, but good move at that time. The PC business is very thin in margins. It's even worse now with the Chinese phonemakers joining the notebook market (Xiaomi, Realme, even Infinix are making laptops now). Add on the old volume players like Acer, Asus, and Lenovo, it's a really tough market. Sony is not in good health, and for them to go back into such red ocean is probably suicide.

As for x86 compatibility, well, considering Monterey still supports intel macs, I'm sure Apple will keep maintaining an intel version of macOS for time to come.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple's Unified Memory doesn't need Direct Storage.

Why not?

 

[Imhotep397]

That means licensing macOS to a 3rd party, which Apple will never do....

Never is a long time and it was Sony HQ that Steve Jobs flew to in Tokyo, unannounced with a hacked Vaio laptop running MacOS well after the Mac Clone debacle extending himself in a grand gesture to connect with Sony for a long term partnership knowing full well, even back then that their PC division was poorly positioned for success. Sony turned him around, which obviously pissed him off, but he went out of his way to make a MacOS licensing exception for Sony specifically in the first place. I always wonder if he forced the Digital Assistant/portable computer projects research path towards the iPod first just to stick it to Sony after that meeting that went south.

Sony would be more enticing today as a MacOS partner because of how much more of a customer base they have in an area where Apple isn't really at. (I'm not going back into the iOS game/app revenue dive that's coming)

I agree that the way Vaio was positioned before Sony wasn't really filling a need for many people, so the shut down was the right move. Running MacOS in the entertainment creative community primarily today would be substantially different for a new age Vaio.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Why not?

Because you don't need to go from SSD -> RAM -> decompressing with CPU -> move from RAM to VRAM -> GPU processing. You can go directly from SSD -> Unified Memory -> GPU processing including decompression as the GPU has direct access.

That being said, that's not the full magic behind the PS5 I/O speed. The PS5 has a custom 12 channel controller, which allows to read/write 12 NANDs simultaneously, which is a massive increase in speed. "Normal" controllers have less channels. Anyone can build such a controller, there's no Sony magic involved. It just comes at the cost of larger dies, more heat, more power consumption, less yield and is therefore much more expensive. For a gaming machine this probably makes sense, for an all purpose computer... probably not so much and if one really needs it... well, we've got PCIe cards (at least for the Mac Pro and PCs).

 

[diamond.g]

Because you don't need to go from SSD -> RAM -> decompressing with CPU -> move from RAM to VRAM -> GPU processing. You can go directly from SSD -> Unified Memory -> GPU processing including decompression as the GPU has direct access.

That being said, that's not the full magic behind the PS5 I/O speed. The PS5 has a custom 12 channel controller, which allows to read/write 12 NANDs simultaneously, which is a massive increase in speed. "Normal" controllers have less channels. Anyone can build such a controller, there's no Sony magic involved. It just comes at the cost of larger dies, more heat, more power consumption, less yield and is therefore much more expensive. For a gaming machine this probably makes sense, for an all purpose computer... probably not so much and if one really needs it... well, we've got PCIe cards (at least for the Mac Pro and PCs).

Can Apple Silicon decompress oodle kraken in hardware without using CPU cycles? That is cool. I thought only Sony had hardware blocks for that.

Edit: word swap

 

[ian87w]

Never is a long time and it was Sony HQ that Steve Jobs flew to in Tokyo, unannounced with a hacked Vaio laptop running MacOS well after the Mac Clone debacle extending himself in a grand gesture to connect with Sony for a long term partnership knowing full well, even back then that their PC division was poorly positioned for success. Sony turned him around, which obviously pissed him off, but he went out of his way to make a MacOS licensing exception for Sony specifically in the first place. I always wonder if he forced the Digital Assistant/portable computer projects research path towards the iPod first just to stick it to Sony after that meeting that went south.

Sony would be more enticing today as a MacOS partner because of how much more of a customer base they have in an area where Apple isn't really at. (I'm not going back into the iOS game/app revenue dive that's coming)

I agree that the way Vaio was positioned before Sony wasn't really filling a need for many people, so the shut down was the right move. Running MacOS in the entertainment creative community primarily today would be substantially different for a new age Vaio.

That was then. Back then. Apple was a tiny small company that almost went bankrupt. Remember how Apple made a deal with Microsoft to put IE on the mac? Jobs did what he needed to.

But the Apple today is different. Apple is a trillion dollar company now, way bigger than Sony. Apple doesn't need Sony at all. Going Apple Silicon further solidify Apple's desire to be fully vertically integrated.

 

[Imhotep397]

Going Apple Silicon further solidify Apple's desire to be fully vertically integrated.

I'm not disputing that and haven't disputed any of that which is why I stated x86/Nvidia IN ADDITION TO APPLE SILICON.

It is a significant value to Apple to eliminate a lot of the litigation costs they've accrued and will likely continue to accrue. A MacOS version that essentially stays in line with industry standards separate and apart from Apple Silicon Mac developments would make it difficult to impossible for companies to claim damages because of MacOS/Metal exclusivity as those other options could easily still be available or made available on MacOS x86/Nvidia.

Sony just would not buck every standard in video/3D like Apple is and in addition to pulling some more partners in that Apple has never been able to bring in they likely would have a better strategy for transitioning more of those partners to Metal/Apple Silicon than Apple's "Legal Sabers Up" all or nothing strategy.

Past that Sony would bring so many games to Mac OS that the Mac has never had or could dream to have without the jank.

 

[diamond.g]

I'm not disputing that and haven't disputed any of that which is why I stated x86/Nvidia IN ADDITION TO APPLE SILICON.

It is a significant value to Apple to eliminate a lot of the litigation costs they've accrued and will likely continue to accrue. A MacOS version that essentially stays in line with industry standards separate and apart from Apple Silicon Mac developments would make it difficult to impossible for companies to claim damages because of MacOS/Metal exclusivity as those other options could easily still be available or made available on MacOS x86/Nvidia.

Sony just would not buck every standard in video/3D like Apple is and in addition to pulling some more partners in that Apple has never been able to bring in they likely would have a better strategy for transitioning more of those partners to Metal/Apple Silicon than Apple's "Legal Sabers Up" all or nothing strategy.

Past that Sony would bring so many games to Mac OS that the Mac has never had or could dream to have without the jank.

Wouldn’t that mean Sony would have to write games using Metal instead of DX or Vulkan?

 

[TiggrToo]

for the purpose of continuing MacOS development on x86 without disturbing Apple Silicon development or Apple's plans for video content development tools.

I’ll take “things that’ll never happen for $1,000 please.”

x86 on Apple Mac hardware has come to an end. It’s not going back now, and will not go back ever.

The long term future is not x86, it’s RISC based - and even Intel knows that.

Apple doing anything with x86 would be a humongous time suck and cause a so much mixed messaging that it’s all but certain not to happen.

 

[Imhotep397]

Wouldn’t that mean Sony would have to write games using Metal instead of DX or Vulkan?

Initially, I would assume that Sony would port their graphics APIs to MacOS either as a separate object or integrated with Metal. Apple forces developers and customers to choose, but the way that I understand the operation of the OS, Metal, Playstation's APIs, and Vulkan could all easily and efficiently co-exist on MacOS with various applications executing through whichever APIs they were programmed to use.

Obviously DX ain't happening. (basic compatibility in as many areas as possible would be ideal)

Frankly, I don't know that they would even need Vulkan if the Playstation graphics APIs were incorporated and expanded under MacOS inside or outside of Metal. If that integration didn't happen it probably would be Vulkan.

 

[MysticCow]

Wouldn’t that mean Sony would have to write games using Metal instead of DX or Vulkan?

And that’s why it won’t happen. Metal isn’t “paint by numbers” and guess what developers want to see? HINT: it involves numbers and painting…

 

[GrumpyCoder]

Can Apple Silicon decompress oodle kraken in hardware without using CPU cycles? That is cool. I thought only Sony had hardware blocks for that.

Hm, not sure. It's been a while (over a year since I checked) and it was fast on M1. Specific hardware for it, no I don't think so. I can't remember to what degree it's utilizing the GPU. The question is, can it really do it without utilizing the CPU at all at least for the decompression process. All the rest still involves CPU. Microsoft is claiming 20-40% CPU load reduction (for everything) once they can do the decompression on the GPU.

x86 on Apple Mac hardware has come to an end. It’s not going back now, and will not go back ever.

Amen.

And that’s why it won’t happen. Metal isn’t “paint by numbers” and guess what developers want to see? HINT: it involves numbers and painting…

Not sure what you mean by "paint by numbers". If you're saying Metal is more low level than other APIs then no. I don't think there's much of a difference between APIs when it comes to difficulty other than some boilerplate code. They have different learning curves, but once you're in it, it won't matter.

But yes, it won't happen. Why would it? Sony have their own, proprietary graphics APIs with the low level GNM, high level GNMX and their own shader language with PSSL. There's absolutely no reason for Sony to bother with anything else than what they created unless it's a Windows port. They won't touch Metal with a ten-foot pole.

 

[MysticCow]

Not sure what you mean by "paint by numbers".

How on this blue marble we call earth have you never heard of "paint by numbers"???? Seriously?