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Dell We'd Sell Mac OS X
euphonaesthesia writes "In this article from Fortune, Dell CEO Michael Dell mentions that he would offer OS X to customers if Apple were so willing. The author speculates also that Apple would probably demand certain specifications. Having OS X would probably require a higher price point--this both Apple and Dell would probably like."
Michael Dell is no longer CEO. He's chairman of the board. Kevin Rollins is CEO.
Not what you're missing, but rather what the poster/editor missed.
I imagine it was to read:
Dell: We'd Sell Mac OS X
(and that's in would, as in will if Apple allows)
was that SO hard to figure out?
damn..i think i just bit a troll...strangely bitter it is...
This Michael Dell? ("...the best thing that could be done with Apple would be to shut it down, liquidate its assets, and return the money to its shareholders")
It should be observed that Michael Dell has taken pot-shots at, belittle, and marginalize Apple at every turn, in every market, using every bit of FUD he and the top brass at Dell could muster. The rivalry is legendary. At first I thought he was just trying (bitterly) to tout his machines at the expense of another company.
Then Apple makes a significant hit with OS X, talks about running on Intel hardware, and now he's more than willing to swallow a little of his pride and share in Apple's good fortune. This reversal of his stance has opened my eyes. He's not actually bitterly opposed to Apple, he's just bitterly opposed to poverty and obscurity. He's a techno-whore.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
And this is exactly the reason I stopped buying Apple and migrated the entire company where I worked to Windows NT.
Actually, Umax, Power Computing and Motorola all took it in the shorts. I bought a pile of shiny new Power Computing McMacs when OS 8 came out, only to find that Apple declined to license future releases to the clone makers. I guess Power Computing folded, Umax went back to making pretty good scanners and I guess Motorola just walked away disgusted.
Me? I started putting dual processor Pentium boxes in place of the Mac graphics workstations and got higher productivity lower TCO.
It is funny that nobody ever thinks of Apple when they mention questionable business practices - the McMac thing was just one way they stifled the competition.
Know why Macs could read PC disks but not vice versa? Easy. Apple's HFS filesystem was copyrighted ;-)
I'd probably buy another Mac if I could build it myself. Wonder if that'll ever happen?
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
That's right for floppies. There actually were some floppies for PCs that would read Mac disks. After they went to the same basic floppy then there were utilities on the PC for reading Mac disks. And, right now, there are several utilities for mounting HFS+ formatted hard drives. (Including the iPod) So the original poster is just misinformed.
I should add that the reason neither Linux nor OSX can write to NTFS disks is due to Microsoft doing what the poster claimed Apple was doing.
(I should add the caveat that I have no idea how legally all these HFS readers work. Possibly the patent just ran out. Possibly Apple doesn't care. Possibly Apple just didn't patent anything at all.)
*sigh*
One would think with all the discussions on this site that people would know the difference between the four types of "intellectual property" protected by the legal system: Copyright, Patent, Trademark, Secret. Know why Macs could read PC disks but not vice versa? Easy. Apple's HFS filesystem was patented or a trade secret.
If Microsoft wrote their own HFS driver, copyright wouldn't be an issue. If Microsoft couldn't figure out the HFS without illegal corporate espionage, then it's a trade secret. If Microsoft could figure out how it worked, and could write their own, then the only legal protection remaining is a viable patent in force.
Of course, that still leaves the possibility that maybe Microsoft was just apathetic on the issue, or consciously decided to snub the Apple crowd by not bothering with the HFS at all.
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>I guess Power Computing folded
Power Computing is still around, though they sell x86 boxes now.
Af far as the cloes go, Apple was going to go out of business if they didn't stop licensing the OS under the terms that they used. They were bleeding cash like there was no tomorrow, the clones were killing their hardware sales, while the licensing wasn't bringing in any real revenue. It wasn't a predatory business practice - it was done to save their skin.
>It is funny that nobody ever thinks of Apple when they mention questionable business practices
Apple does get mentioned a lot - their treatemt of VARs, their cannibalizing tools that 3rd parties create (Konfabulator, etc), iTunes license changes, et al. Your example of the clones is ancient history, and not an example of a questionable business practice.
>Apple's HFS filesystem was copyrighted
There are a number of 3rd party utilities that can be installed on Windows to read HFS. A quick Google of Windows HFS will return a number of tools. Apple has not gone after any of the makers of these tools.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
I could be wrong, but I don't think this is correct. I'd imagine the difference has a lot more to do with NTFS security attributes and journaling than trade secrets, but I'll freely admit that Microsoft isn't sharing anything about how NTFS works with anybody outside the company ;-)
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin