[OT] really?

[Geert Janssens]

On Saturday 11 June 2005 07:37, Rick Thomas wrote:
> On Jun 7, 2005, at 3:20 PM, Eric Dunbar wrote:
> > Plus, what this means is that Apple's future doesn't have to be
> > exclusively tied to its hardware. With Apple running on X86 Dell now
> > has a much stronger stick with which to beat Microsoft into
> > submission, and, if necessary, Apple can become the OS supplier of
> > choice for one of the big manufacturers.
>
> Don't get your hopes up.  Remember what happened to the PowerPC Mac
> clone makers.  Apple believes -- rightly or wrongly -- that selling the
> hardware their OS runs on is vital to their bottom line.
>
> Also, consider this:  If Apple allows MacOS-X to run on commodity
> hardware, lots of people will decide to try it out on their own
> (commodity) PCs  - just "borrow" an install DVD from a friend and give
> it a go.  Some part of those people will be convinced that OS-X is
> better than Windows for their needs.  Microsoft will see this as
> competition.  Their monopolist reflexes will take take over.  They will
> immediately proceed to squash the competition (Apple) like an annoying
> bug.  All MS has to do is withdraw support for MS-Office for Mac, and
> Apple disappears in a cloud of slightly bad-smelling smoke.
>
Actually, I think Apple WILL definitely consider having their OS run on 
commodity PC's. Wether they will eventually make it happen, is another 
question.

I imagine a scenario as follows:
- Officially, Mac OS X will not run on anything but Apple Hardware.
- Mac OS X will almost certainly be hacked (or better, Darwin) by someone to 
make it run on non Apple hardware. Apple will likely make this a hard one.
- Since the hack is not too easy, it will never get to average PC users, but a 
certain number of enthousiasts will definitely try this.
- By evaluating this behaviour, Apple can make an estimate of the popularity 
of Mac OS X on PC. Important parameter 1.
- Next, in their own labs, they can now do real performance comparisons with 
windows, since the hardware differences now are minor, certainly those that 
influence performance. If Mac OS X performs favourably on commodity hardware, 
they would have a selling point there also. Parameter 2.

Again I don't know if Apple would eventually feel strong enough to go into 
competition with the Windows department of Microsoft. But I'm still curious 
to see this evolve.

Geert Jan