On Jun 7, 2005, at 12:57 PM, Wiggins d'Anconia wrote:
Ian Ragsdale wrote:
On Jun 7, 2005, at 11:51 AM, Joseph Alotta wrote:
Did NeXT produce their own boxes, or did they allow installs on
any PC
with supported hardware. I believe that is a key difference. Apple
boxes will be exactly the same as they would have been, except they
will have a different CPU. You still won't be able to install OS
X on
a commodity PC without jumping through a lot of hoops.
Why wouldn't you? Memory, drives, video, etc. are all the same right
now. Motherboard has pretty standard features, other than it is setup
for a Power processor. Apple has been going cheap for a while, SCSI ->
IDE ring any bells? It would be a real shame if they didn't allow
you to
install OS X on any commodity PC, once again back to that whole volume
issue.
Some combination of BIOS, custom ASICs, EULAs, lack of support, and
installer trickery. There are lots of ways Apple can discourage
this. I don't think anybody expects these are 100% solutions, but
they are sufficient to ensure that consumers and corporations won't
consider it a solution. This leaves hobbyist/enthusiast types, and
I'm sure Apple can live with it. It's like iTunes' DRM - it's not a
100% solution, but just enough of a barrier that the general public
won't bother.
Without a different chip, Macs really are just a pretty looking
box with a nice software package preinstalled. Darwin runs on Intel
already (mostly) which is the real key, if Apple goes through with
this
and won't let you install on a commidity PC then they really missed
the
boat, in fact I would say they couldn't even find the dock.
The cost & speed issues are resolved by moving to x86 chips and
supporting chipsets. Keeping them off commodity PCs doesn't hurt
those things at all, but keeps them from dealing with support issues
and having to compete head to head with MS. Do you think MS would
have been nearly so quick to declare support for OS X/Intel if Apple
allowed installs on commodity PCs? If Apple can get to a 15-20%
market share, then maybe they could afford the loss of hardware
revenue, but they aren't there yet.
I think the only way that you look at it is that if IBM couldn't or
wouldn't deliver the processors Apple needed at a reasonable price,
what else could Apple do?
Will definitely agree with you there. Though you have to love the
media
spin making it seem like this is Apple's choice to drop IBM, uh huh.
I'm sure Apple could have stuck with IBM, but they would be paying
through the nose to be 4th in line behind Sony, MS, and Nintendo.
Ian
