So Apple has finally gotten around to suing Psystar, the company that sells PC hardware that runs Mac OSX. My understanding is that Psystar had legitimate licenses for OSX, so this isn't an issue of piracy. Apple's argument centers around the fact that the OSX EULA forbids the use of the software on non-apple hardware. Psystar's argument is that this section of the EULA is not legally enforceable. It's probably a long shot, but let's assume that Psystar does win and the section of the EULA in question is ruled to be unenforceable. Do you think Apple would start selling a version of OSX for PCs? I think the real question is why hasn't apple done this already now that Macs are now Intel based. I know right now that they make most of their money off the hardware, but if you open up your software to the other 80% of the market couldn't you make up the difference in increased software sales? More info at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9326
No. Apple will never sell OS X for PCs because that would require supporting ten billion pieces of stupid fucking hardware that manufacturers can't even bother to document correctly half the time. You know why drivers are such a collosal mess on Windows and, hahahah, Linux? It's because they have to support some shitty old ISA video cards from 1992 and bizarro ACPI implementations on laptops. Even pretty-good-but-still-kind-of-bad hardware support would decrease the brand value of OS X and, in turn, Apple in general. I mean, look at the Zune from Microsoft. It's actually a fine piece of hardware, with some pretty cool ideas behind it. But because Microsoft's name is on it, suddenly it's shit. Sure, there are some legitimate complaints about the software (which is why I went with Apple, ironically - at least their shit works on both Windows and Mac), but it is nothing that has stopped anyone before. The simple fact is that OS X's brilliance lies not in any particularly revolutionary way of thinking, but in its stability. Introducing more video cards, than, well, there have ever even been in Apple computers alone would destroy this. The OS is heavily optimized to the hardware, and once you start trying to expand that, you get into driver hell. The only reason PsyStar's systems even worked was because they shared components used in existing Macs. Once they start to stray beyond that, its game over. Oh, and PsyStar will lose. Imagine if a car manufacturer built a car that had a Ford engine, looked and drove like a Ford, and had the Ford logo on the front of it, along with the actual manufacturer's logo kind of tacked on there as well. No way that shit's gonna fly.
Apple is a hardware company, not a software company. This is why, quite understandably, Apple products are generally lock-ins. Even iTunes was originally designed to be a lock-in for iPods. It just happened to turn out to make a ton of money so they have shifted focus a bit with it. Personally I hate the concept, but I do understand that they are out to sell hardware, NOT copies of OS X.
