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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."
Hell is freezing over for the fourth time!!
Chevy: "We'd love to sell Mercedes"
Apex: "We'd love to sell Marantz"
FP for that ass!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The question is who of the big PC manufactures would not offer OSX if givin the opportunity?
You are all a bunch of idots.
how many times have we heard about Dell and AMD?
Dell's just posturing to get better discounts from Microsoft.
"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.
Michael Dell is no longer CEO. He's chairman of the board. Kevin Rollins is CEO.
Dell and Apple make their money selling pricey hardware, not the OS. (The last time Apple tried fooling around with clones, Umax took it in the shorts. )
So, it's not surprising Dell would offer to sell hardware. It would be surprising to see Apple take the offer.
P.S. The "text in image" thing still sucks donkey balls. (Maybe that should be my sig...)
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.
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.
Back in the 1980s, there was a period of time where Macintoshs, Amigas, Ataris, and other computers all used the Motorola 68000 processor. Just because they had the same processor did not immediately mean that they could all run each others hardware. Sure, there were some emulators available, but they usually required that the user have, say, a copy of the Macintosh ROMs to put into a physical card, or something similar.
The BIOS needs to know how to address the disk. The bootstrap code can be the same from machine to machine, but without someone finding and feeding it to the CPU, you got nothing.
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.
You're wrong.
The whole advantage to the Mac is that it's of a better quality, more stable, and has an Apple logo.
Sending Mac OS X to every computer manufacturer in the world would inhibit those three attributes.
The Apple brand is beyond hot - it's becoming part of culture. Market share is growing by leaps and bounds, and it's arguably just the beginning.
If you could sell the software and the hardware, why wouldn't you?
It's not holier tha thou. It's their product. That's like saying, "God, McDonalds is so snobby because they won't let Burger King offer their McNuggets. Come on already!"
Yes, the formula works for Microsoft, but I don't think it would work for Apple. It makes Apple just another PC company. The fact that they are truly innovating is the reason for their success.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Well, they already have: iCal, Mail, Pages, and Keynote. What's missing? A spreadsheet and a GUI to tie them all together. Yeah, they could finish that by 2006, which is when their x86 hardware hits the market. Coincidence?
Anyone see HP+iPod?
Dell *might* still make the case. Apple would require them to use reference designs for the internals, and Apple would require them to sell at a certain price.
Dell *might* be permitted to bundle extras with the computer, similar to the way you can get a ram upgrade or free printer from Mac Mall.
At Apple's prices, there's still quite a bit of room for profit for a manufacturer. Basically, Dell would manufacture Apples, and be permitted to sell it through their existing channels.
For example, many businesses have Dell accounts. They may not have Apple accounts. Of course Dell would love to sell Apples. Even if they pay a large premium to Apple, there is still a lot greater margin than with Windows PC products.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Seriously, don't they realize that selling cheaper sometimes means bigger profits?
Maybe (gasp) they care about something more than just 'bigger profits'? Like, oh say long term survival of the company? As I said above, Apple has a fanatical following for a reason, and a large part of that reason is their underlying philosophy toward producing complete systems that 'just work'. It's worked for them so far (how many times have we heard that Apple is 'almost dead'?), so why change their strategy now?
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.
You are abosolutely correct, but most people just gloss over this point. To me, this is the key right here. This is why we can't have a generic OS X for intel. It would be installed on the most boring, busted beige PCs and two results would be seen:
1) OS X becomes unstable because of third-party drivers, etc, and Apple support becomes swamped, product image of 'stability' is tarnished.
2) The "mac experience" which includes both software and hardware is gone. To me, using my iMac and PowerBook are great experiences not just because of the OS, but because of the beautiful design, fit, and finish of the actual machines.
--- witty signature
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.
It would probably end up bearing both the Apple and Dell logos, and it would be very clear that you were getting a "Mac by Dell" rather than the real thing. Apple would also, of course, make them do all their own support. Granted, Apple would probably never even agree to anything like this, because of the risk of tarnishing their brand. There is a reason people buy PowerBooks instead of Inspirons or Latitudes, and it isn't just OSX. Everytime somebody has a problem with their "Mac by Dell," it would reflect just as badly on Mac as Dell, which would be unacceptable.
Unlike the switch to Intel, which is simply moving their brand in a different direction, letting Dell sell computers featuring OSX would actual water down their brand, which I don't think they are willing to do.
This could be really fascinating to see. Ultimately Dell and the like don't want to be selling commodity hardware. It takes a lot of resources for very little margin. They'd much rather focus on selling fashionable high end machines like their XPS systems.
So, OS X, could be sort of the bridge to getting the PC makers away from the commodity market. If you want a cheap bare bones PC, you get your wintel XP box. If you want something that's going to be high quality and last you a few years, you get yourself a macintel box.
The question that remains is whether Apple is willing to sacrifice some hardware sales to broaden the base of their OS support. I kinda doubt they will because their bread and butter really is making nice hardware. It's beneficial to them to have an exclusive lock on the apple faithful as far as that goes.
In the end, what I really hope for is being able to buy an Apple computer with OS X and be able to run my Windows games under that environment rather seamlessly. Then I can run OS X all the time, play my windows games when I want to, and then down the road hopefully mac games will come out and I can drop Windows all together.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You're missing something which is what I was originally alluding to.
If OS X becomes popular in the general PC marketplace, Microsoft stands to lose Windows sales from those who buy OS X instead.
If they kill Office for OS X, a lot of businesses would write off OS X as an option and stay with Windows.
They would lose money from killing it, but in the long run if OS X becomes popular enough they could make more from the people that would be forced to stay on Windows without Mac Office.
Sez you. I don't mind that everyone's been in there. Everyone's been to Disneyland and it's still fun. I'm sure there's still plenty of fun to be found in Paris.
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.
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