A lot of people who I normally think have pretty good judgment actually agree with this writer’s argument that Apple shouldn’t make its operating systems run on Intel/AMD hardware. As someone who has used Macintosh computers extensively in work environments, but never owned one personally this seems to me like the last gasp of the Mac evangelists.
In many ways the article could be boiled down to this — the Macintosh is dead in the long term as anything but a niche platform so why bother even trying to turn that around by offering the OS on anything but Apple hardware. Its interesting to see how thoroughly the Mac evangelists have become victimized by Apple’s corporate culture.
The author writes that it would be foolish for Apple to port the OS because it would never survive the onslaught in the world of PC hardware,
Apple makes most of its moolah from hardware sales. The average margin on the iMac alone is four times greater than the selling price of Mac OS X Beta. If Apple couldnÂ’t compete with the PowerPC Mac cloners going for its jugular, it will be minced to shreds in the hypercompetitive PeeCee market.
This, of course, has been Apple’s Achilles’ heel from even before it introduced the Macintosh — the lure of short term profits has always overshadowed any potential long-term thinking.
Apple is like a football team that sticks with a has-been quarterback because 6 seasons ago he got them to the Super Bowl. Sticking with the has-been is usually an easy choice — the fans will support it, the owner usually feels a debt of gratitude to the guy, and the players look up to him. But if excellence in the sport is what you want, occasionally you have to make important but unpopular decisions.
Apple has always stuck with the path of least resistance and it and its customers are paying the price as the platform increasingly becomes a niche market.