Apple appears to be accelerating seeds of Mac OS X Leopard to developers. After only 5 days since the last seed (9A500n), Apple has issued a new version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to developers. The latest seed is listed at build 9A527 (client) and 9A528a (server), and reportedly list a number of less significant 'known issues' compared to prior seeds.
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Member since:2006-03-25
Member since:2006-01-03
Member since:2005-07-06
Selling OS and apps only would destroy Apple.
Well, if Apple had $50billion in cash floating around, thehy could easily do it - the problem is, is it really worth it. Give that Mac sales are growing double digets, it isn't as though its a need as to spur adoption.
Member since:2005-07-10
It would bring them more cash than selling it bundled with Macintosh hardware ever.
Actually Apple make the most money from the hardware. The profit margin for Macs, iPods and iPhone is roughly 50%, give or take a few percent. One source cites this:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB...
That's a huge margin, and that's how they can sell their software as cheaply as they do.
If they were to sell OSX alone for PCs, it would not cost 129$, but probably closer to 4-500$ and that would run Apple into the ground quicker than you can say "Commodore, April 1994". I won't mention all the technical driver issues this would bring along, because that is old news.
iTunes for Windows is there to sell iPods. Safari for Windows is there to make people buy iPhones and let people take a sniff at some more Apple software. If they didn't have any profit margin on iPods and iPhones they would definitely not have released iTunes and Safari for Windows.
Member since:2006-07-04
"It would bring them more cash than selling it bundled with Macintosh hardware ever."
Well, in the 90's there was a Mac clone market. Companies like Power Computing made their own hardware that ran Mac OS. When Jobs returned to Apple, one of the first things he did was to kill the program because the Mac clones were cannibalizing Apple's Mac sales (many were of the opinion that the clones were not only less expensive, but indeed better than Apple's own offerings). If Jobs were to now decide to sell OSX to PC makers, it would be complete reversal of his policy (not that it isn't possible).
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Computing
Edited 2007-08-26 19:36
Member since:2005-07-16
Member since:2005-11-21
Having worked during the NeXT/Apple transition and beyond it was clear that the sales Power Computing generated was cannibalized pre-existing Apple sales. Steve had more than one Town Hall Pow Wow about this reality and canned this program as it didn't "expand" the Mac platform.
Member since:
2005-07-20
It would bring them more cash than selling it bundled with Macintosh hardware ever.