Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
I still wonder why they haven't transitioned to a software company.
It used to be that their hardware was unique, now it isn't. Before their hardware carried a premium, now it's priced pretty close to what Dell or HP would charge for something similar (close in some cases anyway), so they don't have that huge margin that they used to.
And the fact that people are jumping through all these hoops to put OSX on their hardware shows the demand for it.
It's been said before, OS X seems like a perfect mass market alternative to Windows if Apple would just run with it, and there's less reason today than there's ever been for them not to.
The only thing I can think of is they don't want to get into the same driver support difficulty supporting other hardware would bring that other OSes have to deal with.
Illegal yes but there is the question of should an EULA restrict what do with something you buy after the purchase? Personally I hate the idea that more and more purchasing software is more like renting it.
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Exactly. That's the mess that Windows has been in from the start. Without any way to regulate hardware (other than standards), mass driver support is just a huge headache.
Interesting that you mention the "buying software is more like renting it" thing. I'm using Windows XP inside a VM and every single time I changed something on that VM, I have to re-activate the OS. I just change the RAM setting from 1024 to 2048, for example, and had to reactivate Windows when I loaded it up. Since I know I can only do that an unknown number of times, I'm not looking forward to the day I go to increase the HD size, only to be told that I can no longer use my copy of Windows XP because it can't be activated any more.
Overall, I'm still up in the air about whether I'd like to see Mac OS freed up or not. On one hand, it would be fun to see how much impact it would have on the overall landscape. On the other hand, I'm pretty terrified of the mess that would probably ensue from having to allow the same scale of hardware support that Windows has to.