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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."
Offer OXS like how? On Dell x86 boxes, or Dell made apple branded hardware, or what?
The Digital Couture Collection
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apple contracts Dell to build the new x86 Macs, and licenses Dell as a Mac reseller. Everything still has the Apple logo, but Dell gets a cut.
-mkb
The question is who of the big PC manufactures would not offer OSX if givin the opportunity?
You are all a bunch of idots.
"We want Microsoft to provide us with cheaper copies of Windows XP, so we will threaten to switch to OS X but not actually do it."
They've done this before with switching to AMD--they've announced many time that they were "considering" it, but as soon as Intel lowered their prices, Dell backed off.
This is the one part of the story that makes no sense. If Apple outright made part of the contract, written, spoken, or implied, that Dell cannot sell a machine lower than a certain price, they would be jumped upon by the EU and US quicker than you can say "unfair competition".
And you can bet that Apple is aware of this, as they've been creatively circumventing these laws for years. Early ads for the Apple II had an asterisk by the price with a disclaimer "from our lawyers" saying that you might be able to buy it cheaper than that. Later techniques included barring sellers from advertising prices lower than those Apple set, a practice that continues to today. Retailers can sell Apple computers for lower than Apple's declared prices, but if they do, they can't advertise those prices (hence Amazon will regularly have a message in the price box saying "Price too low to display. Add to your shopping card to find out how much it costs."
Dell cannot legally be required by Apple to set its prices for a product containing an Apple component to whatever Apple wishes. Dell's retailers cannot legally be required by Apple or Dell to set its prices for a product containing an Apple component to whatever Apple and Dell wishes. The best they'll do is continue with the advertising of prices ban. This may mean Dell doesn't get to bite the Apple. Or it may mean Apple has to be more flexible.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
IF Dell started selling (or hinted at selling) the Mac OS that ran on x86, would MS just stand by? Even thought Dell offers Linux with some boxes IIRC, I suspect they [MS] would try to ink Dell to some exclusive deal and give them a major price break on Windows and related software. I suspect they must already have some deal...this may be Dell's way of getting MS to sweeten the deal even more.
I think it would be great if Dell provided MS, Apple, and Linux OSes as choises, but I just can't see MS allowing this to go on without some sort of "intervention". It wold be even better if they also sold AMD based systems.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
While Apple dosnt OpenOffice does. NeoOffice is an OS X version of OpenOffice. I have read countless reports that OpenOffice 2.0 is an office killer, I would not be surprised if Apple bundled this with OS X or made their own Office suite based on it.
Yeah, given Dell's past advice to Steve Jobs I somehow don't think he'd go for it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
No, but the licence for the BIOS code or whatever that locks OSX to compatible hardware could be pricy enough to make the machines more expensive ;)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Ok, now I'm just confused...
If your post is true, then please help me understand how Bose can price-fix their speakers. It is impossible to find Bose speakers for cheaper than their store prices. Why does the US allow this if Apple can't tell Dell, HP or whoever how much they can charge?
Maybe (gasp) they care about something more than just 'bigger profits'? Like, oh say long term survival of the company?
If they sold OSX separately, while still keeping their current business model of bundling HW+SW, they wouldn't survive? That doesn't say much for OSX.
Who gives a rats ass about MS Office anymore? I had a very smooth transition to the OpenOffice. I also transitioned to the Fedora Core3 and hardly use Windows anymore. Have to use both Windows and Linux at work, but Linux is my primary dev machine. Yes, I still use Word at work when I HAVE to write design docs, but just a matter of time before the switch comes.
I wrote about a week or so on the idea of HP selling Macs. I've pasted it below (with edits), much of it would apply to Dell as well.
Steve killed the clones, but why? Because they undercut Apple. But he is allowing iPod "clones." Why?
The difference is between "clone" and clone. The Mac clones were different hardware (asthetically, possibly physically) based on the platform. The HP iPod is nothing more than a Apple iPod with a different brand on it. Otherwise it is EXACTLY the same.
If Apple were to let Dell sell Macs (in the same way they let HP sell iPods) what would that do for them? It would give them another HUGE company saying "Macs are good!" (not to mention taking some of the tech support burden). Add onto this the economy of scale they could get on Intel processors if they put their weight in with Dell (Intel's #1 customer). They sell the same thing, maybe in a different color. But the guts, software, everything else is the same (except for the word "Dell" everywhere and maybe a bundled printer).
So Apple takes a small hit on revenue per box if Dell sells some. Big deal. In exchange they get all that marketing muscle, all that brand loyalty, and the economy of scale of making machines for Dell too (which would probably cover Dell's share of the machine's proffit). The Dell Macs could become their premium computers for power home users, and they could sell Windows machines for the low end. I think having Dell backing machines could really help Apple in the enterprise and server space.
I'm not saying it will happen, I doubt it. But the possibility is there. Benefits exist for both companies. As for the idea of just putting OS X on standard Dell boxes (true clones), I doubt it. Steve wouldn't let that happen.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Couldn't Apple do this building from the 2.0 code base? They've done it with a lot of other software (KHTML, Darwin, gcc, OS X Server etc) and it would suddenly be a huge pull for their platform. It would be a nice boost for OpenOffice as they're lacking the polish and attention to detail that Apple seems to bring to this kind of thing.
If they could say to large government customers -
"We support the OASIS standard and your legacy word documents out of the box, with no extra cost."
It would suddenly make their platform convincing for more than just home users.
I wonder if that project is in the building next to the Marklar one : ) That's probably wishful thinking however as Apple have already embarked on their own office replacement, which is half complete and really appears to have more of a SOHO user feel to it than Office. I think OpenOffice would be more convincing for a lot of big companies though as it's no longer tied to Apple, and they've learned (well, you'd hope they're learning) that tying their docs into one supplier leaves them open to being exploited for continual forced updates, and worrying about reading those binary formats in 20 years time.
However there are really several problems for Apple here
Presumably they won't want to try doing all of that at once.
You are talking about the HOME products.
These are crap.
Every year or so, my boss decides Dell Is Dell and orders from the home side of things, and these computers are pretty much falling apart while pulling them out of the box.
The business line IS expensive, but it is very worth it. At the same time, I spend just as much on this side of their product line as I would a Mac.
The business line is professionals that don't want to fuck around with garbage. Apple has had the same attitude with their products thoughout the entire line. If they didn't, they might have been as big as Dell selling garbage as a cheap price. Kinda glad they don't...even the Mac Mini is quality compared to the cheap shit on the PC side of things.
Did he say Macintoshes would now boot on ye olde' compaq in the basement? Nope.
That's basically what the development kits are. Generic intel motherboard and chipset in an almost-empty G5 case that looks like a bad joke casemod.
Did Jobs say the Mac was switching to intel Processors? Yes. Did he say Macintoshes would now boot on ye olde' compaq in the basement? Nope.
Is the article talking about ye old compaq in the basement? No. It is talkng about ye new Intel powered Mac.
Where is that "field of strawmen" mod tag when you need it?
A common thread I see running through all these conversations about the upcoming switch to Intel processors is an assumption that having an Intel automatically equates to PC Compatibility.
What's left, really? USB devices? Guess who has been doing USB longer, Intel or Mac? Hard drives? Well you don't go buy a "mac only" HD now do you? How about video cards? Maybe, but doubtful. Sound cards? Same. Parallel port, serial port? (who cares
The only major difference is motherboard and processor. That's one down.
BTW, the bios is only used for bootup. Once the OS is bootstrapped, it's pretty well ignored/bypassed.
There is no magic needed. Input devices, multimedia devices, storage devices, networking. It isn't that difficult. Could Dell realistically offer Mactel machines w/differing ram/hd/mediadrive/input device/accessories/cpu speed options if given the opportunity? Absolutely.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Reminds me of the news a few weeks ago that Nike is no longer selling shoes to Sears. Why not? Because Sears bought Kmart, and Nike doesn't want to be sold at Kmart.
In this day and age where brand is king and marketing is above all else - that Apple, the BMW of computers, would be sold at Dell? Sorry Dell dude, you're not getting a Mac.
CNET
Second paragraph from bottom.
I had mod points and was going to mod you up -- but I decided to post instead.
While Apple may make their money on hardware, one of the struggles that Mac has is a lack of a software base. The emulators have been nice and all, but they are slow. If Apple partners with a couple of vendars, like Dell and HP, then people may start to look at Mac OS X as a viable computing option and then more programs may start to be developed for the Macintel. What I can see happening is that the lower end Mac OS X systems would be sold by Dell, while the real neat toy computers would be sold by Apple. The other thing that would be rather wild would be for Dell to offer a dual boot system, or a bridge system that would use virtualization technology to run both OSX and WinXP at the same time.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
"Chrysler: "We'd love to sell Mercedes".
Mercedes: "We agree."
Mercedes, a division of Daimlier-Chrysler
Sales are up.
And quality is way, way down.
Mercedes used to mean "this car will still be running perfectly long after you're dead of old age."
Now you much are better off buying a Toyota or Nissan. The Japanese cars are nicer to drive, too.
If Dell selling Macs is at all analogous to Chrysler selling Mercedes, then I hope it never happens.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
While some people are thinking the change to Intel means that OS X will run on PCs, it actually means a totally different thing, too: It means that MS Windows will run on Macs.
So what are Apple's long-term plans? Licensing OS X to PC makers like Dell? No. While it might seem as if OS X is Apple, it's not. With the iPod Apple has learned what can be done by targeting the mainstream market instead of the Mac fanboys. And the mainstream does not want OS X. It wants Windows. If Apple is sane, they will offer machines with Intel CPU, MS Windows and ported iLife applications, targeted at the mainstream computer user, helped with a massive marketing campaign. It will not be called "Mac" (and it won't be a Mac in any technical way) but it will do to the PC market what the iPod did to the mp3 player market.
Apple would be silly to confront MS. Apple is after the mainstream and when the mainstream wants Windows, hey, they will get it. This is the main motivation of switching to Intel CPU's.
Apple is totally niche, and here's why:
If they switched to selling OSX, they may become competitive with M$. They may even keep getting relevant updates to M$ Office for Mac. But M$ and Apple would get into a price war that the hardware manufacturers would love, and M$ can simply wait Apple out, since M$ has a huge cash pile and ALSO makes money on every version of Mac Office.
If they ever wanted to compete on hardware alone (ha, ha), they'd run into a similar problem, in that Dell has made it a commodity business, and Dell, etc. have more money and current customers.
I think what will help is that Intel has access to mobile, integrated chipsets, and is motivated to push design forward. Also, I'm thinking they could return to a slate design, following M$ and copying them instead of vice versa. This is the sort of thing Apple should be good at, and Apple knows they can't coast on Ipods forever. And as we've seen with the Ipod, they can have success building accessories for PCs, which worked reasonably well for palmpilot, etc.
With a little algebra, Apple can decide at what price point selling OS X for Dell-boxen is a good idea.
Since Apple has switched to generic PC hardware like AGP graphics cards and ATA drives, the processor change will leave only two significant differences betweena PC and a Mac:
(A) Industrial hardware design
(B) OS X
So if (C) is Components like ATA hard drives and AGP graphics that go in every PC or Mac, as well as overhead for sales, support, etc, the total cost of the Apple box is:
Mac Cost = A + B + C
Now currently, an OS X upgrade is $129 for an existing Mac user, so we can assume that B is somewhere north of $130. But if Apple priced OS X on a Dell as a $130 option, then the price of the Dell would be C + B (Components + OS X) which means the Apple would be overpriced by $A for its Industrial Design.
So Apple needs to price OS X for Dell at $E = A + B
I figure if a high end Dell cna be configured for about $400 less than a similar Mac, then $399 is a great price for an OS X + iLife + Xcode option for the Dell.
At $400 a pop, Apple will make a tidy profit on the notoriously love overhead software and really won't be canibalizing the Mac sales because they have effectively balanced the price so you have:
Cost of Mac = A + B + C Cost of Dell OS X = C + E where E = A + B = $399
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
A very interesting observation. But I think it would be more expensive because of Apple's stringent hardware standards, not because of the OS component. Also, Apple is currently a "designer" product. While there is some overlap, it isn't targeting the exact same market as Windows.
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.
Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.
Quote: Couldn't Apple do this building from the 2.0 code base?
The short answer is no. It is a common misconception that the OOo 2.0 codebase eases any transition to a native interface. This is far from the truth. Take the GTK "look" in 2.0. The fact that it looks like GTK does not mean that the interface has been redone in GTK. Rather, the OpenOffice VCL widget set has been enhanced to work similar to the Java heavyweight peer implementation. OOo instructs the platform to draw a button according to its native platform appearance. All of the event handling still uses the abstract OOo toolkit.
Since everything still uses the native toolkit, you still need to port the underlying OOo widget set and toolkit to run on the platform. OOo 2.0 only provides this for X11 and for Win32. NeoOffice/J provides an implementation in a mixture of Java and Carbon (soon to be Java and Cocoa). Getting it right is a nightmare. It's taken three years and thousands of hours of developer time.
And we still don't have the native widget drawing stuff...but it's on the way.
There are other reasons why Apple wouldn't start from OOo 2.0. First off, Microsoft Office is one of the key selling points of the Mac platform that gets reiterated throughout the Mac sales materials and end user testimonials and, I daresay, things like Jobs' keynotes which always have Office demos. It's politics, of course, but Apple will most likely not start any "Office killer" application that may cause Microsoft to stop working on Office.
Secondly, Apple's already got their iWork suite. It's been designed as a consumer level and home office suite. Quite a bit of work has gone into rethinking the traditional office interfaces for Pages and Keynote. Most likely there's a spreadsheet application on the way as well. This engineering effort is not going to be simply discarded in favor of OpenOffice.org. iWork is also better suited towards their consumer-oriented strategy.
Additionally, KHTML is a great example of why Apple would not jump on the OpenOffice.org bandwagon. If you recall, the reason KHTML was chosen over Mozilla was because the engineers thought that the Mozilla codebase was unwieldly. I've programmed both Mozilla and OpenOffice.org for years and the Mozilla code looks easy when compared to OOo. And Mozilla is even commented in English, too. If they didn't want to work with the Mozilla code, you can bet they won't want to touch OOo with a 10 foot pole.
I've toiled on OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice/J on Mac OS X for nearly four years now. If Apple hasn't helped by now, I doubt they will so in the future.
ed
But here's the real reason I've never bought a Mac, and will continue to not by Macs: I like building computers.
The G4 motherboards worked great in PC cases, but it's amazing some of the mac casemods out there.
First, remember that Microsoft makes something like four times more from sales of Office than from Windows (it's true -- look it up).
Second, you need to know the value of the "a lot of" people that would switch if Office were not available in order to conclude one way or another.
Based on Office's higher profitability, if only 1/4 of the market decides to stay with the Mac even if MS stops selling Office for it, then MS would be losing money.
Um this is nothing. I mean a reporter asked the CEO if the opertunity arised to sell OS X he would probably say Yes.
Umm Duh. How is this news worthy? Apple is the 8th largest in harware sales. A lot of people like OS X but doesn't want to pay for Apple products, or feel suck on OS X. The next big answer is asking the CEO of AMD if he wants to make a profit this quarter.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Apple would still have control over the hardware. I'm sure Dell could produce MacTel boxes that would satisfy Cupertino's equipment requirements.
Expanding OS X's install base would be a GOOD thing for existing Mac users: more drivers, more software, more everything (including, perhaps, viruses).
Expanding OS X's install base would improve Apple's research and development ROI. Good for stockholders, and eventually for consumers.
Expanding OS X's install base would be a very good thing for Windows users, who would have more opportunities to purchase increasingly price-competitive MacTels.
Michael Dell's out-loud thinking is entirely consistent with his signal last week that Dell is ready to launch a premium line of computer hardware.
I think Apple ought to do it. They've traditionally been a computer hardware vendor, with software used to sell the pretty boxes. But these times, they are a-changin'.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
* sigh *
One would think that the facts are actually important sometimes... The HFS file format was documented in Inside Macintosh. That MS didn't put the effort into supporting it probably shows the disdain they held for Apple in those days. Oddly, Apple saw the reasons to implement the PC floppy format so the Mac could read and write PC floppies.
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
at least to the New York City department of Education. See the online catalog and notice the vendor.
When Dell said that, AAPL was trading near their cash value, and was steadily losing money, so he sorta had a point. Of course he was wrong, if only because Apple's enormous brand value was worth more than the stock indicated.
Also he and Jobs were trading digs on each other's companies. Of course, Jobs' Anti-Dell insults don't tend to stick in people's memory the same way as any diss against Apple.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.