Time for Apple to License OSX?

A

AndyG

Registered
OS X is great, the best OS there is in my opinion. But although some PC users are moving over, the market is still PC dominated, and shows little sign of changing significantly, despite Apple's nice hardware.

I see a parallel to the mid 80s - Apple had by far the best OS, but chose not to license it. This hardware "closed shop" didn't go down well with customers, especially large companies, who tend not to want to be locked into one supplier. Thus the PC and Microsoft won the day, despite much inferior technology.

I think perhaps the variety and competition aspect of OS X running on hardware from a variety of manufacturers may be the answer - imagine Sony and Dell for example making "Macintosh" computers running OS X; surely Joe Public is more likely to "buy Mac" if that was the case?

Cheers,
Andy
 
I don't think Apple will.. because Apple makes money from not only software but also hardware.

Hardware is where Apple makes most of their revenue. I don't think Apple let other company releases OS X with $800 box..

I like concept that Apple makes software and hardware becuase I know software on Mac will work as Apple says.

On the other hand, it is very hard to predict if software would work on PC or not. Even M$ own software has so many bugs...

Sure, Apple is expensive than some of PC manufacture, but don't forget you can't trade quality over quantity.

Of course, some of PC manufature make PC with quality. Such as Sony makes a good product. Guess what, some of Sony PC is more expensive than Apple. What does it tell you?

Only reason I won't buy Sony is that it comes with Window.

Just my 2 cents.. :D
 
imagine Sony and Dell for example making "Macintosh" ...that would be Apple licencing the Mac ..not OS X......
 
by AndyG
imagine Sony and Dell for example making "Macintosh" computers running OS X; surely Joe Public is more likely to "buy Mac" if that was the case?
Click to expand...

Lets look at this (yet again). First, Mac OS X would not have as many apps on a non-PPC platform and users won't buy computers that they think do not have that many apps (and we should not forget all the great operating systems that were ported to the PC platform only to die or leave... BeOS, NEXTSTEP, Solaris). But this has been beaten to death in this forum.

What about just licensing Mac OS X as-is? Funny thing is, one of the first things Jobs did when he returned to Apple was kill the licensing of the Mac OS because it was hurting Apple. Why, if it didn't work before, do you think it would work now?

People buy PCs because they run Windows and Windows apps. Having alternatives on the PC platform has never made a difference, and adding a Mac OS to the list of alternatives is not going to change that. And the only thing that might happen with licensing is that someone thinking of buying a Mac from Apple would buy it from someone else, meaning Apple loses the hardware sale.

Honestly, the best systems are by companies who make both the hardware and operating system (Apple, Sun, SGI and IBM). The ones with the most problems are the ones that are made by tons of different companies (PCs) because the chances of things not working correctly increases by an order of magnitude, and that is not taking into account that you would have a hard time figuring out which company's product is causing the problems (though 9 times out of 10 it's a Microsoft product that is causing them :D ).
 
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Having alternatives on the PC platform has never made a difference, and adding a Mac OS to the list of alternatives is not going to change that.
Click to expand...
I agree that the Mac on x86 is not a good idea at all. What I would love to see, however, is more large companies like Sony and Dell having a flavor of Unix pre-installed on their computers. I know you can specifically order one built that way, but have them on the show room floor. I think people have a fear of how complicated Unix is, but once things are set up, most of that complication goes away. Granted, changing the setup is not for the faint of heart, but...

Oh, AndyG, you mean having other manufacturers make Apple-compatible computers? It's been done, it didn't work.
 
When it was done - it was done too late: at that point MacOS was, at best, as good as the equivalent M$ OS, and arguably inferior. In the mid 80s when MacOS was far superior to MSDOS, the opportunity was missed. My point really is that now we have OS X, the Mac again has a (far) superior OS to anything Redmond can produce, so perhaps now is the time to cash in...

Andy
 
Before posting, I searched for "license" and found little of relevance - please post a link if I missed something.

I'm NOT talking about OS X on Intel here, I've seen loads of threads about that. It's frustrating that people have jumped in here without properly reading my post, but such is life I suppose.

Andy
 
nkuvu
....it did work ...actuall way to good for the other companies....so that Apple had to stop licvenciung....the other...as NewTeck..were actually faster as reliable as the Mac...and way cheeper....too good to be true.......so Apple bought the licence back :)

AndyG
Please...before saying other don't read....reaad yourself :) what i was pointing pout..is that.. the theme of the thread Time for Apple to License OSX seems like YOU want to say Apple has to licence the OS ...while you want to say Apple should licence the HARDWARE... so i pointed out that the theme...is not what is discussed here...>PLEASE READ
 
Andy, I think part of the confusion might be that the point you appear to be making , ie

I think perhaps the variety and competition aspect of OS X running on hardware from a variety of manufacturers may be the answer - imagine Sony and Dell for example making "Macintosh" computers running OS X;
Click to expand...

isn't really what the title of the thread suggests. You appear to be advocating something similar to the Mac clones that were briefly available. This isn't licencing OSX, it's licencing the chip architecture/machine configurations etc which make it possible to RUN OSX.
 
Andy, If you want to have people understand what you are suggesting please make it clear, because frankly, I have no idea what your suggesting :)
 
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