NoFastMem wrote:
As long as they keep supplying PPC buids of OS and suppoorting software updates, I'm cool enough with it.
It would seem odd to me however to "go x86" and yet still lock out that desktop market. OSX has something Linux doesn't, and that's a consistent, usable front end.
So has Windows, and Apple don't have the corporate market Microsoft have to make their money from. It's no good trying to compete againt Linux, because Linux is free and has been making inroads even in the PPC Mac user base. How much harder will it be to try and compete against it in its homeland?
There are lots of other drawbacks to going "generic":
- Apple would lose the hardware revenue they currently earn.
- The R&D costs would increase because lots of different motherboard types would have to be supported.
- Apple would lose the "cool & trendy" image that does so much for their sales to their primary market: the consumers.
- Piracy would increase (not that it isn't rife already, but at least now the potential users of pirated MacOS are still limited to Mac users).
There is simply no profit in competing against Windows on Microsoft's terms. Apple's offering needs to be more than just another OS, however nice.
Geeks like me would buy OS X if it was available for our hardware, but sales to geeks wouldn't begin to cover the losses.
