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Apple CFO Gives Info on Company Direction
osViews.com writes "Mac World is reporting a recent talk given by Apple's Chief Financial Officer (Peter Oppenheimer) at the Goldman Sachs Technology Investment Symposium. The article illustrates several things about about Apple's business plan, much of which is totally new information about the company's current and future direction. Here's the nutshell summary: iPod "Halo" effect is causing some Windows switchers, little demand for satellite radio/iPod integration, iPod shuffle margins below HD ipods, happy with rate of growth - no plans to license OS X, margins on Mac mini equal to eMac (both below corporate average), retail store to expand to 125, no plans for media center PC - prefers to stream multimedia to TV from primary computer over wireless network, no video for iPod, portable media centers a failure."
Kudos to the submitter and the editor for posting a useful and interesting story with a useful and concise summary. I wish we had more stories done exactly like this one.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
Hook up near a TV, plug in your S-Video+Optical out, and you have your 'media center pc-less', or something.
So for $189 you have a base station, streaming music, streaming video, a print server, and no need for another computer.
Any bets on whether we'll see something like this soon?
GPL Deconstructed
...what we've already known either because the products are out or because there have been pre-release photos of real equipment.
As much as I'd like Apple to diversify and build more products suitable to my needs, a 17" wide "pizza box" of an entertainment center computer isn't very likely and probably wouldn't sell well enough to pay off development costs. I'd buy one if it were less than $800, but the odds of that are small.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Why do you think that, of all things, is going to sink Apple?
If anything I would have thought their intensely secretive nature would kill them.
Their iPod and iTunes products are exactly how they are expanding to the PC world.
Their mini is exactly how the PC world will get OS X.
If OS X is the only real desktop alternative, nothing is stopping people from buying Macs you know.
GPL Deconstructed
Halo wasn't even that good, but it's being given now not only credit for the success of the XBox but the success of the iPod??
Something is seriously wrong with us as consumers if we are so reordering our world for such a mediocre FPS.
Looks like it's once again time to dust off my "why OS X on x86 won't ever happen" post:
/., or you'd pirate it-- either way, Apple would lose money on it.
----------
Look, you guys just can't get it through your heads that the reason why OS X works so well is because it runs on such a limited pool of hardware-- this allows the engineers coding OS X to make assumptions THAT CANNOT BE MADE in the x86 world, where a machine could be using one of thousands of motherboards, network cards, graphics cards, sound cards, etc. Windows developers have to code for the lowest common denominator. OS X developers code for specific hardware. Even the version of NeXTStep that ran on Intel hardware ran on a tiny subset of the then-available PC hardware. If your CD-ROM drive and motherboard weren't on the "supported hardware" list that came with NeXTStep, you were SOL.
That little fantasy you all have of buying "Mac OS X for x86", running it on some homebuilt shitbox you cobbled together from spare parts, and having it work as well as a G5 runs Panther today will NEVER come to pass. Microsoft has spent twenty years and untold millions trying to achieve that goal, and they still have quite a way to go.
Do you think Jobs could just snap his fingers one day and a few months later have a product on the shelves that would run perfectly on every PC capable of running XP today? It's impossible. And even if it were possible, you wouldn't buy it. Why? Because Apple uses their software to sell their hardware, so a copy of OS X for x86 would have to be priced to ease the pain of a lost hardware sale-- you'd either do without it and bitterly bitch about the price here on
~Philly
Adding video to the iPod costs Apple practically nothing. It doesn't matter if other portable media players were a failure, adding that feature to the iPod would lead to incremental additional sales at virtually no extra cost. I don't believe Apple when it says it isn't thinking about video for the iPod.
The thing that is holding back portable media, in my opinion, is the lack of easy, legal, content. Providing people with easy access to digital content is something Apple knows a little about. Why wouldn't CBS license Apple to distribute survivor on iPods for $1 an episode? You think they are going to get money from syndication? I don't think so. $30 DVD sets? Maybe from some people. Don't get distracted by the specific example, the point is valid.
running OS X on a piece of shit Fry's discount x86 box doth not a Mac make.
This is somewhat believable. I'd wager that average college students would be a prime target for the Mac Mini, as well - unlike Apple's laptops, it doesn't cost a mint, and its size would be a great advantage for students living in space-challenged dorm rooms. Most of the software they'd need would be on it, too. Your usual non-computer-geeky college kid would play games on their console, not their computer, and the Mac has Microsoft Office and fine Internet capabilities. Colleges use plenty of specialized software (e.g. statistics packages) but most kids go to the labs to use that stuff rather than bothering to acquire their own copies. If the Mini can make a successful tie-in with the iPod in the minds of this particular target audience, then Apple stands a fighting chance of boosting its market share at least with that segment.
Apple is very good at marketing perceived value (iMac, iPod, etc.) as opposed to embedded value (the way Microsoft pushes most of their products). I'd say that perceived value is what matters a lot in the impressionable minds of young students.
The coolest voice ever.
I don't buy that Apple will buy Tivo, but I can see them creating a Tivo-like device with these abilities:
DVR with free remote control service (why free? wait a second)
Ties right into the iTunes Movie store.
Right, Movie store. Imagine Jobs going to the MPAA and saying "Hey, remember all the problems the RIAA had with downloading? Lawsuits didn't help enough - but now we have legal music, and people are buying music online, and look how many songs I've sold.
"Join with me, and we can end this pointless conflict, and bring order to - *cough*, I mean, we can sell movies."
The PC/Mac will still be the hub - use iTunes to buy music, or buy a movie. You can put either on a new iPod, but for the movies, the iView (just a name I threw in) will be the best way.
Want to watch a movie? Forget Netflix - just use the iTunes store. How about a documentary (independent movie makers who have limited releases would love this - what if you could pick up a documentary for $10, and around 50,000 people all wanted to - now that little indie project just broke even).
Miss a TV show? Why DVR it (though you have that power) when you can go to your computer, type "Battlestar" or "Babylon" to get the entire current archives (including commercial), and for $3 (or $20 for the entire season), you can watch your movies *now* (or, with broadband and figuring about 300 MB per 30 minutes, about 30 minutes or so).
The biggest thing of this is what it turns Apple into. With the iPod and the iTunes Music store, apple is moving away from hardware systems, and going towards hardware accessories and services. Eventually, I can see a Linux client - but in the end, Apple won't care what you run as long as you buy an iPod and use their iTunes store for movies and music - they still make money (though they'll still tell you a Mac will work better, and as the services do well they'll sell more Macs along the way).
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
OSX is in fact irrelevant to Apple's future, as are most other major operating systems to their creators. What is the future, and the iPod and Nokia's 200million per year mobile phone sales prove, is that various interconnected devices that confirm to industry standard protocols are the way forward. The electronic musical instrument industry has proven this thanks to the amazing success of MIDI which binds most instruments, yet each instrument is based on it's own unique software/hardware. OSX will become a server OS and Apple will eventually tailor software to suite the client device - as per the iPod which communicates with it's host using standard protocols (USB, MP3, Firewire etc). And if Apple don't (continue) to do this, an as yet unheard of (unformed?) company will, and they will sell products in the sort of quantities Nokia do, which dwarf even sales of the iPod and Mac. Ironically, Nokia could become the all powerful mega entity that networks our world. After all, the future is all based on communication and sharing.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
True. Not to mention the binaries for OS X software is built for PowerPC, not x86. Let's take Photoshop for example...
Say, for argument's sake, that Mac OS X 10.5 came out for Pentium/Athlon PC. You buy it, install it, presto. Now, you want to run Photoshop. OOH, which do you install? Photoshop for Mac OS X? No, it's compiled for PowerPC. Photoshop for Windows? No, it's compiled for Windows. You would need to buy a special Photoshop for OSX/x86, a third option.
Basically, when you put aside the software pirates (99% of Slashdot users who use Photoshop) and the rich artist/musician types (who would buy the Mac hardware anyway), OS X for x86 would be a software nightmare. For corporations, it would be a software investment crash. You can't use your legally owned Windows software on it. You also can't use your legally owned OSX PowerPC software. It just would be a failure.
The only reason Linux works on multiple platforms is because 99% of its software is open-source and can therefor be compiled for the installed architecture when needed. When you get to the prorpietary stuff, like Photoshop, it becomes a nightmare.
If you need a Linux example, look at Macromedia Flash (player) and VMware Workstatioin. Heck, even look at official NVidia drivers. Try and get those for SPARC or PowerPC Linux (or any non-x86 Linux). You can't. Now, imagine all the software for your operating system in the Flash/VMware situation. You go to buy Photoshop for OSX only to realize it's coimpiled only for PowerPC.
The only way it could work is if Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, even Microsoft (Office 2004 for Mac) needs to compile an x86 version of all its Mac OS X software and then recall all discs that only contain the PowerPC software. It would be a financial nightmare, for the consumer and the manufacturer. If you want a living example of the whole situation, look at the "64-bit" Windows XP for Itanium, or hell even Solaris.
Of course, 99% of Slashdotters who use Windows XP run a pirated copy, with a pirated version of Photoshop or whatever, so I'm sure this has all gone through one ear and out the other...
Used to like Apple, moved to PC for customizability/etc (in mid 90s). Never considered moving back because the more I learned, the more obviously out of date the Mac OS was. Then I learned Linux and fell in love with Unix. Add to that the hate and distrust I've gained in MS and I was ready to jump ship (and I knew it wouldn't be too hard for me, unlike some people). Linux didn't seem "there", I wanted something more mainstream. When OS X came around (and I got to try it on my brother's PB) I really liked it, and started following it. I got an iPod, which did serve to remind me of Apple's quality. Then when my current computer (a Dell laptop that served me well for 4+ years) became too slow for my needs I waited until new PowerBooks were announced and I bought one. The whole (longer) story is in the site linked to in my sig.
So as for "the halo effect", I'm not so sure. It might happen for some people. I used to love Apple so I was really just finding them again. And even without the iPod I would have switched because of OS X. I have three observations on all of this. First is that iTunes really showed me how nice Apple software was these days (iTunes on Windows was the first Apple program I'd used since leaving my old LC II in about 95). Second was if OS X was available on a PC (as some want it, and as some other companies have been asking Apple) I doubt I would have switched (why switch processor architectures when you don't have to?). And third, I had been wanting a Mac to try OS X on for the last few years, but even used Macs were expensive (for what you got). Had the Mini been available 2 years go (the equivelent kind of computer, at that price point, not neccessisarily that size) I would have bought one as fast as I could and I may have switched earlier.
I'm not the "typical" switcher (someone relativly new to computers and raised on Wintel that went to Apple) since I'm a power user (used the OS 7 back in the day, Linux, most flavors of Windows, etc); but I switched and I am VERY happy with my new little Mac. Next step: evangilizing when people ask me about what to buy for their first computer!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Miss a TV show? Why DVR it when you can go to your computer, type "Battlestar" or "Babylon" to get the entire current archives, and for $3 (or $20 for the entire season), you can watch your movies *now*.
A column not too long ago (don't ask me to recall who or when or where) discussed this sort of thing in light of sites like "Homestar Runner". The case was that this is the future of video entertainment -- visit the show's web site and download and watch any episode you like, in any order, at any time, rather than wait for your favorite episode to reach syndication or buy the whole season on DVD.
The bandwidth, I think, is still the biggest problem, but that's just a matter of time and R&D. And the difference in quality from downloadable video vs. HDTV will, like the difference between MP3 and CD quality audio, keep the downloadable format from completely replacing TV broadcasts or DVD sales.
All we (and Apple) need is the device to do it, at a price point people can afford. That too is a matter of time -- iPods arrived costing, what, $400? $500? Now you can get a Mini for $200 and a Shuffle for even less.
I think Apple would like to sell just what it described in the article: a program that lets you download and view video on your computer, but supplemented by a small remote-controlled set-top device that streams it wirelessly to your television set, a la Airport Express. Video on an iPod-sized device is impractical by any measure, but video on your television set is a given -- but it has to be as easy to use as a DVD player. Fortunately, that sort of ease of use is Apple's specialty.
I perceive this as a certainty, not a possibility -- it's just a matter of when.
I can confirm that anecdotally. Last night I got a call from my uncle and my cousin the college student. She has yet another broken Windows laptop (it'll cost several hundred bucks to fix it), and they wanted the family geek's advice on what kind of computer to get to replace it. Without me even having to suggest it, she (an iPod owner) had already been looking at Apples. So I just steered them toward the 12" iBook with AppleCare. Talking to her, I added that it'd match her iPod; to him, I explained that it was the best bang for the buck of the Apple line, and AppleCare would be cheaper than any repairs that might be needed.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I mean front page? Come on. Anyone who trades tech stocks knows that companies are constantly participating in various financial conferences where these sorts of presentations are given.
True. Frontpage sucks so bad the Microsoft even dropped it from the standard Office suite. I think they replaced it with Publisher.
You know a product sucks really bad when it loses market share to Notepad.exe
There's a large chunk of the vocal PC userbase who use the thing as glorified nintendo- it's really (imo) the ONLY area where the PC has any kind of advantage over the Mac.
The Mac mini is just the right size to fit a GameCube on top of it. The only thing keeping Macs from having a lot of games running "on" it :) is that very few consumer 17" monitors can display both Mac mini's 768p DVI/VGA output and the GameCube's 480i S-video output (the component cable is nearly unavailable, and newer Cubes don't even have the jack for it).
Forget it. The only way you are going to get OSX is to buy a Mac. Wishful thinking won't get you there. Apple don't need the PC market, they are growing market share regardless.
Thought there were going to be some big plans for a digital hub. Seems that a unit capable of displaying digital pictures (iPhoto), digital tunes (Tunes), digital movies (DVD player, Quicktime), and digital TV shows (through their own means or if they acquired TiVo) would be at the top of the digital hubs. I thought the Mac Mini would've been a great digital hub item, but it's missing a digital audio out.
There's never enough when you have too little
I've got not only a one hour train commute, but also an Archos AV400.
I'm an American finance geek living in London, so every morning my handheld PVR records the overnite BBC Business News at 3:45AM. I watch the 45 news broadcast while I'm headed to work at 5:51AM damn early in the morning!
I get a lot of utility out of time shifting the BBC, and would dump my iPod(s) (3G 20GB, 1GB Shuffle) in a heartbeat if my Archos (it also plays MP3's with cover art) matched half my iPods battery life. At present I get three hours tops.
I own ten Mac's (two G3 iMacs, a ClamShell iBook, two SEs, a MacTV, a PowerMac 5500/275, a G4 TiBook, a 15" G4 PowerBook, a G4 Cube) and still use the OS X capable machines daily. Even though I grok Apple deeply, they'd better put together a PVR solution ASAP.
It's their market to lose. I only own two iPaqs because my Newtons were getting long in the tooth.
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Mac OS 10.3 has a mini Finder which is built for computer users such as your friends mom. It strips everything down to basic functionality.
Not to mention the binaries for OS X software is built for PowerPC, not x86.
NeXT solved the multi-architecture binary problem many years ago. If Apple ever offered the OS on x86 again, you can bet that every software vendor would recompile their apps and have them available within a month. Most of them could do it in a week.
The only way it could work is if Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, even Microsoft (Office 2004 for Mac) needs to compile an x86 version of all its Mac OS X software and then recall all discs that only contain the PowerPC software.
No, you don't need to recall anything. Just make the x86-specific parts of the app (about 1/3 of the package) available to download.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I meant the brand new "Sid Meier's Pirates!" that just came out on the PC. But any of my older PC games that if I wanted to play (doubtful) would run fine in an emulator (like VirtualPC or SCUMMvm or somesuch).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
so does that mean that anyone can have a tv station -- all you need is an ip address and the new Airport will stream to the little box that's hooked up to the TV - video content from the web? everyone will be v. happy to watch their "tv" on their tv like they all seem so die hard about.
with enough viewers (advertisers will love the registered hits stats) we might see advertising dollars going to some nice startups of whatever kind -- a nice departure from what the networks and cable companies have set up now. iptv would be nice.
too bad the portable video device is a no go impossibility (is it?). iptv would work great on an ipod with a wireless card - you could watch CNN at Starbucks on your ipod! weee, that would be fun.
The mini is the repository of everything and it gets beamed to the Airport Express. It already works nicely with music. Apple is going to skip the whole DVR in the living room which will always be a commodity and keep it all coming off the PC wherever and however you want. Brilliantly efficient, simple, and they control the front end of the media delivery. No one is ever going to make money with something like TIVO.
Putting video on an iPod would require much bigger iPods than we have now. And Apple thinks there isn't a market for it. And lack of interest in PMCs means they are probably right.
Apple could integrate WINE into Mac OS X, to let it run like the bluebox (Mac OS Classic) does on Mac OS X/ppc. That way, you could use all of your Windows apps right there in Mac OS X!
Go to System Preferences, Accounts, add a new account, click on the limitations panel, choose simple finder, and check the smallest subset of applications you need to get by. (Say Safari, iTunes, maybe that's it.)
Log into the account. You'll notice there is just the dock at the bottom with an applications folder, and a documents folder. Single clicking opens apps or documents. Now, for maximum simplicity, open up each app, choose Open, and drag over the middle bar in the open dialog so the disks and default folders are covered up. That leaves no distraction from the documents folder.
That's what I do to create an account for someone who doesn't "get" all that techie computer stuff. (And fair play to them.)
Now, your point might be that there should be an option to set the machine up like this the first time you boot it up, and I'd totally agree.
A.
Except for the OS X application code that makes assumptions that it is running on 32bit big endian processors (PowerPC) and fails when ported to 32bit little endian x86. And we all know the kwality of closed source vendor code, don't we? </ob/.troll> :)
Remember all the UNIX code written over a decade ago for SunOS 4 [on] SPARC that didn't work on x86 boxen, due to lack of correct use of htons(3) (et al)? Nowadays the opposite problem exists; so much [open source] code does #include <linux.h> and assumes it is running on 32bit x86 CPUs.
At least the trickiest endian-bugs won't occur when porting OS X apps to 64bit PowerPC. The tricky bugs are in 32bit little endian (x86) code ported to 64bit big endian (Sparc64, PPC64); they're harder to track down than 32LE->64LE (alpha) because the latter often didn't barf when accessing 32bit entities with a 64bit fetch due to the word layout in memory.
Back to the topic; I'm fairly certain OS X still supports "fat" binaries which can ship with both PowerPC and x86 code in the same binary (package).
A while back I got irritated by some troll on slashdot trotting out the standard 'apple computers are slower and more expensive' line -- mainly because they were low-id rather than an AC, but I digress.
Anyway, I compared two machines, a 20" iMac and a dual 2.5GHz G5. The iMac was there because they wanted to see a budget range computer, and the dual G5 because they claimed AMD was faster.
The rules were pretty simple, configure a roughly similar machine at newegg and compare the price to apple's. Components had to be of acceptable quality (it isn't like apple uses $50 cases), and the same spec (speed, size, whatever) but within that I chose the cheapest I could at newegg and took advantage of any on-the-day deals.
The end result was apple came out cheaper for both machines (though it would've been slightly more if I'd done a 17" imac). The dual G5 was a lot cheaper since dual proc PCs are considered workstation-class and therefore have a huge markup, especially when you want a processor the same speed as the 2.5GHz G5 (I used an athlon FX-55 IIRC).
There are still price points where apple gets beaten by newegg -- e.g. without comparing properly, the powerbooks look lousy value to me -- but you can be sure that anybody claiming Apple is more expensive has had their head buried in the sand for years now.
Absolutely. The first 20 years of their existence, the only thing that kept them afloat was licensing their OS to other manufacturers. This new no-licensing policy is really a death knell, there's no way they can stay in business like that.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
"97% of the market is not, and will continue to advise people to get what THEY know."
A lady at work wanted to buy a graduation gift for her daughter, I suggested she get a Mac if she did not want to do tech support or hear her daughter could not get her paper done because a virus at school. At that time I was a 90% Windows user and 10% Linux user, what did she buy? 12" iBook for her daughter.
A few weeks later the Mac Mini was introduced. What did I buy the same day it was announced? A Mac Mini!
I know a few other employees at work that are fed up with Windows and have already purchased Mac computers in the last 30 days...
Mac OS X, the ONLY version of UNIX your garandma can use!
Your Average Joe
I think it was a wise decision for the regularly tight lipped CFO to give some insight from the company. Here's why:
(1) Usually it is Jobs that announces any sort of strategy or "feelings" Apple may have on a technology. This helps investors feel like someoen other than the CEO is running the ship.
(2) With iPod obviously so huge, it is important to know if Apple is seeing itself as a music playrer company or what. Also, with TIVO rumors abounding, it is important for Apple to stake out their position on the DVR battle field.
(3) Stating the intent of the Mac mini. Obviously people are seeing cool applications for the Mac mini and as the CFO said, some people will try to use it as a home media PC, but he clearly states that it isn't that which helps to determine what the thing IS - a Windows Switcher PC.
(4) A glimp into Apple's crystal ball. It is interesting how he proclaimed the death of the personal video players. Jobs has said this before but with people trying to make the iPod Photo into a video player, it is interesting to hear another cheif reiterate the position.
(5) Points 3 (Mac mini not a PVR) and 4 (iPod Video not in the future) help us to see Apple's implementation of the Digital Hub more clearly. At home, the Mac becomes a dual purposed iLife Workstation as well as a media server. Using products like AirTunes to stream audio around the house and one day perhaps AirFlicks (FireFlicks?) to deliver a 21st century family slideshow, streaming video from DVD, or even PVR style recordings.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
The PC is NOT sitting by the TV.
The PC is in the PC room. The Airport Express 2 is sitting by the TV. (And Airport Express is about as big as any standard Apple power plugin.)
That's the whole beauty of it -- the PC is wirelessly streaming audio and video to the TV through the proposed Airport Express 2.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Apple isn't stupid. They know they have a hot one in the iPod right now. Why would Apple dilute the value of the iPod and this whole new market segment at a time when the music industry and consumers are still being converted to the Apple way of doing business? Why would Apple introduce a radio-enabled iPod that would distract consumers from buying product at the iTMS (iTunes Music Store)? I don't believe Apple has a clear idea right now of how to distinguish itself (ie, compete and dominate) in the portable media player market, because the content isn't available. When you see a broad selection of video content available to consumers as readily as music content has been, then there will be an opening for iTMS-like video services. Why should Apple fragment its expertise now, though, and jeopardize the success of the one and only market it currently dominates?
Actually, the trend I've observed via news articles on Mac-centric web sites and so forth is, the schools are currently most interested in using iBook laptops - rather than buying up more eMacs.
Apple even offers a whole package with a rolling cart full of iBooks and power strips to recharge their batteries as they sit in the cart, etc. It's sort of a "mobile computer lab".
The iBooks are fairly inexpensive, and can be doled out as-needed to students to use right at their desks - instead of requiring an actual dedicated computer lab.
I also question the accuracy of Apple's marketing research if they really believe fewer than 1% of non-business Mac owners own more than 1 Macintosh! I've been to the local Mac users' groups and practically everyone who shows up there owns several Macs. When I go to the local Mac stores and talk with people, I get the same feedback from their sales staff. "Yep - I think just about everybody that comes in here has a spare, older Mac around the house someplace!"
In fact, until the fairly recent "switcher" phenomenon, most individual Mac users were pretty fanatical about the machines, and kept buying new models every so often, while hanging onto their previous models. That's one big reason you see better resale value on older Macs than older PCs. The older Macs tend to still see regular use up until the time they're finally resold, so their owners believe they should fetch a higher price. (If your old Windows PC just sat in the closet collecting dust for 2 years and you finally went to sell it, you're probably just letting it go for peanuts because you want the space back and just want to see it go "to a good home".)
Lastly - asking customers if "they're interested in purchasing additional computers" is pointless, no matter which company you are. If Dell or HP or anyone asked this in a survey, they'd get a resounding "No!" from the public. Typically, they ask this in some type of survey taken right after you make a purchase, so it's the time you're LEAST likely to be in the market for another computer. But also, you typically don't think you have any use for ANOTHER computer at home until you discover a need/use for it all of a sudden. Then and only then would you answer "Yes" to this type of question. (EG. Kid suddenly starts becoming a heavy computer user due to school assignments, so you decide it's time to buy a new one and just turn the old one over to him/her completely.)
I suspect that a lot of the problem with corporate acceptance of OS X is that there is no second source. The MS monopoly has conditioned buyers to ignore the fact that there is no second source for their OS, but PC users are used to being able to second source their hardware if their primary source puts prices up. Licensing the OS to someone like IBM would eliminate this, particularly since Apple have repeatedly stated that most of their market is home users. Let IBM bring to the market cheap, no frills, OS X boxes aimed at corporate users (similar price / spec to the Mini, but a more boring box), and pay Apple for every copy of OS X they ship, and they could make a significant impact on the corporate sector.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The main reason that this will never happen is that Apple actually enjoys selling their hardware. While they're competing with the PC market, why would they give the PC market their biggest advantage? (a far better OS) Ask any Mac user, if OS X was available on a P4 for 1/2 the price of your standard Power Mac config, which would you buy?