Dell says he'd sell Apple's Mac OS - Page 2

i agree...everytime i go to the mall i stop buy the apple store just to look at mac os x......it just looks so sweet......

If Apple opens up its operating system then its hardware becomes just another commodity. I assume that’s where it makes its money. I know very little about Apple other than Bill Gates wants it to stay in business so he doesn't have to fight anti-trust like IBM did and that it has a huge following in the graphic arts and printing world. But not as big as it used to be because I use several Adobe products and they've told me that they now sell more of their products for the PC platform than for Mac's.

IBM learned its lessons along these same lines.

First it outsourced parts for its original PC. It figured that the PC would just be a very small market with a slim profit margin and wasn’t worth the time to take it seriously. After all it was selling multimillion dollar mainframes. How much could be made from these little “toys”. Up until that time most people thought that IBM had a monopoly on the mysteries of computers. A giant magic wand that made them work and work very well. When it used parts from other vendors the mystic was lost.

As recently as the early 80’s, IBM’s annual INCREASE in profit was greater than the combined GROSS INCOME of the next 5 largest computer manufacturers. They were known as the BUNCH – Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC and Honeywell. Uh, how often do you hear those names today?

Second, IBM had to create software many years ago in order to sell its hardware because otherwise businesses had no reason to buy a computer. In the late 80's IBM became enlightened and recognized that it’s a hardware manufacturer. It sold off MAPICS - the most widely used manufacturing software in the world. It was used in IBM’s own plants. And as we all know it sold off the majority of its ThinkPad business.

So let's see, if Apple opens up its OS, it no longer has a monopoly on its hardware. Do that? I think not...

the development boxes for adc premier and select developers are basically a full-blown pc in a powermac g5 case. 3.6ghz pentium 4, uses bios, intel gma 900, etc. etc. etc.
a $2k apple desktop and a $300 dell are *not in the same league*
$2k gets you a dual proc powermac or a powerbook, which are not comparable to a $300 pc. if you want to compare a $300 dell to a mac compare it to the mac mini or the emac. i'll admit the pc would be cheaper, and definitely a better deal especially if they both run os x, but it's not fair to say a mac costs 5-6 times as much as an equivalent pc.

umm...about this, i think it's really bad. in the early-mid 90's apple licensed the mac os to a few companies to make mac "clones" but it really cut into apple's hardware marketshare and apple, being primarily a hardware company unlike microsoft, pulled their licenses when they were up for renewal. i doubt they'd make the same mistake again. although it would be nice to be able to run leopard on my new dell (i'm selling my current mac) and just buy a $69 copy instead of buying a mac mini or an ibook

I can't see Apple giving out OS X licencing to anyone for the many reason already pointed out in this thread.

And for those you've used apples and loved the look and feel of OS X you can go here and turn your XP looks-wise to OS X and its unbelievable.

I'm running RK Launcher (dock) 0.4 beta instead of 0.3 which came with the main app. It has many bugs fixed in 0.4.

People walk into my office and see a Dell and then they see OS X Tiger running on it and they flip out.

While Apple might not licence OS X to other companies, it's quite possible that they might sell Intel based Macs through them like they're doing with HP and the iPod. Imagine a Dell branded Mac...

Dell is a WINTEL company. They just use AMD and Apple to get a better deal with the hardware and software that matters most! You don't actually BUY a MAC...

For some odd reason, that statement made me want gatorade really badly. Maybe it's because I'm eating a cheeseburger and don't have a drink right now. . . .well, *dashes off to get a gatorade*

There is of coarse the liquid beauty of Linux which can combine or create brand new themes.

Eric

I'm just wanting to clarify that people replying to this thread realize that OSX running on off the shelf PC components means very little to the end user experience. Realistically the only benefit of that would be the abillity to dual boot. That is, IF (and a fairly large if) you had the need to run both windows and mac specific software. Since there isn't much you can't do on a pc that you can on a mac.

It would seem unrealistic for them to open up the Mac OS to other platforms aside from what Apple supplies. Where's the benefit to them? If you want a Mac, you'll buy a powerbook. If you want a pc you'll buy a "Dell". I concede that yes, there will be some people that want/need to run both OS's, but I can't see the demand being all that high.

Running the new Mac's on an Intel chip really makes little difference to the masses. It doesn't mean that the OS will run on any standard pc hardware. I've also gotten the feeling from reading forums that discuss the change, that people seem to assume that software will be interchangable. The idea of "oh, OSX is on my PC. now I can use all my software in a mac.".

I would have bought a nice 17inch powerbook in a heartbeat over my 9300. Except that some specific software I use is only available for Windows. Honestly, the powerbooks look much nicer, but I need Windows to work.

Anyway,, thats my $.02

I bet a Dell with a Mac OS wouldn't give anyone the same club rights as a complete Mac. It might even be worse because you'd wouldn't really fit in either club.

AMD vs Intel might be different then MS vs Apple since everyone knows that outside of the power savings a Pentium M offers, AMD has better stuff. AMD and Intel might actually get into price wars too. MS and Apple won't get into price wars because Apple is like a country club membership.

MS and Apple won't get into a price war because Bill Gates wants/needs Apple as a competitor. It's why he gave them $500,000,000! The last time I checked, Apple's market share was about 2%. It's really a bargain for MS compared to the costs of taking on the Justice Dept in more antitrust litigation.

Here is the latest status report to the court in USA v. Microsoft Corporation.

LOL, sounds like a truthful perspective.