[X4U] Couple questions on Apples move to Intel

[Scott McCulloch]

On Jun 7, 2005, at 8:41 AM, Michael Gmail wrote:

> On Jun 7, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
>
>> 2. Will they continue to build hardware, or just sell the OS?  Or  
>> will the OS be available to purchase and run on non-Apple HW.  
>> (somehow I doubt any of these details have been revealed)
>>
>
> This one has been answered, by Phil Schiller: they "will not allow  
> running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac". <http:// 
> news.com.com/Apple+throws+the+switch,+aligns+with+Intel/ 
> 2100-7341_3-5733756.html>
>
> It's not clear just how much effort they intend to put into  
> preventing it. Personally, I hate seeing smart people put active  
> work into making their products less useful to the end-user (DRM,  
> anyone?).


Except that there is an argument that by controlling the whole thing,  
Apple is ensuring that their software is very much MORE useful,  
because of less likelihood of the nightmare of hardware/driver  
incompatibilities that I hear my Windows using friends complaining  
about. While it might seem less useful to those who are knowledgeable  
enough to make good choices, I'd really hate to see OS X running on  
an eMachine, followed closely by a myriad complaints of crashes,  
incompatibilities, etc. One of the reasons Macs "just work" is that  
Apple does have a much greater degree of control over the hardware it  
works on than Microsoft does (yes, there are many other reasons too,  
but let's not ignore this one because you either want a cheap  
knockoff, or to be able to "build your own" with more power or more  
whatever than what Apple will offer). Just because the processor is  
changing doesn't mean the whole game should change. OS X only on  
Apple hardware? It's nothing new. For the *average* user, this is  
probably a good thing - and there are usually a lot more average  
users than power users.

Scott