Like Florian indicated, you need to hack Mac OS to run on PC hardware. It is something that Apple REALLY frowns upon (i.e. can take legal action) but people have done it - just underground right now. There are websites which explain what needs to be done and from what I have gleaned is not too difficult if you have a good grasp of unix & command type interfaces.

I am thinking that it may not be too far in the future, we may see a some kind of official porting over of the Mac OS's since there is no processor differences between platforms now. I would bet Apple is thinking every day how to move i n that direction without causing too much disruption. They are making money right now so it is not in their best interest to make major changes in their business plan this instant. Apple is not hampered by backwards compatibility of PC legacy code in any porting their OS which makes it all technically possible. In fact Apple has several applications which run on Windows: the Safari browser, QuickTime, FileMaker, etc.. I have heard Safari has an 8% market share. So it is just a matter of time in my opinion

If you search the web, I think you might find an OS hack published. Don't be surprised if not EVERYTHING works perfectly though. Alternately, you might be able to pick up an older Apple Mac mini for say $200 or iMac for $300-$400 and try that out. The former option would be cost effective if you already had a monitor and usb peripherals. Just make sure you have a dvi to vga adaptor if your monitor doesn't take a dvi input. And you may find even cheaper prices on ebay than I've indicated.

I am biased having used Macs since they came out, but I know several people who have switched and after about a month of griping about how things are done differently, they get to like the Mac and recommend them to others. One thing I don't particularly like about Apple is their interface with developers which is a bit haughty and controlling at times. Not blaming the technical people but rather the corporate policies and mandates which seem to come from the legal department. Apple provides a nice way to program iPhones but due to legal stuff, it is not quite legally possible to entirely port FPC to it although technically it seems very doable.

The only official development path is through Apple, namely Objective C, Cocoa and their Xcode platform. Carbon (the procedural C framework) is on a bit wobbly ground now. The nice thing is that FPC and GPC, Lazarus, and the Lightweight IDE are available for OS X. That's the only reason I started writing programs again after many years. Ironically, Pascal was THE first class citizen for quite a long time at Apple until NeXT was introduced. But that gets into another discussion on ancient history of golden ages past and barbarian takeovers. heh :)

- Richard Ward