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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.
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
>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.