Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick emailed Michael Dell, and asked him what he thought about OS-X, and the reply: “If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers.” What do you think? Steve should do it, because in the end it is going to increase the market for other non-PC Apple products.
The move to offer OS X (or XI or whatver it is) for non-Apple x86 hardware will be inevitable.
1) Hackers will have a field day trying to run the OS on their x86 boxes. Apple knows that they need nail down boxes (bring back the ROM chip!) or go the (failed) activation route of XP. Neither approach improves adoption.
2) By the time Apple is ready to release their x86 box they will have a good sense of whether they can survive as a software company (I am guessing PowerPC hw sales will be very low through 2006) Somewhere near Q2 2006 Apple will probably reposition their strategy as a software company, get advance licensing fees from HP, Dell and let ‘er rip.
No. What makes a Mac is the TIGHT integration of hardware and software. OS X on a pc will introduce all the driver and incompatability problems that drove me from the pc to the Mac 3 yrs ago.
Say it with me, Om. Never will happen.
Lets try that again Om. It will Never, ever happen. (As long as Steve Jobs is at the helm)
Just like you said, Ahem, “Apple will never ship on the Intel platform.”
Apple on Intel is like the original Porsche 924. Either it’s a very bad marketing decision or a precursor to a play for a much larger chunk of the mainstream market…