[quote author=“brett_x”][quote author=“wheeles”]... One of the big things keeping Windows dominant in the workplace is Exchange server. Unseat that and the dominoes start to fall…

There should have been a wink or something at the end of that… unless you didn’t mean or know of the pun you wrote.

I’d completely forgotten about Domino. I’m certainly not advocating Exchange be replaced by Domino. I’m sure there are some pretty good open source email servers out there. Doesn’t OS X Server have one built-in?

No

The big question for me is what does Apple have to gain? The reason why people like the products is because they work reliably with the tight hardware software integration. Without that, Apple becomes just a regular pc.

Another problem with this is what do you charge someone to put the os on a clone? I think one of the reasons why Apple’s margins are so high is because they don’t fully include the full price of the OS in the machines they sell. Maybe I am mistaken with this but that has always been my impression. It is the reason why the clones were able to undersell Apple in times past in my opinion.

Neal

Re: No

[quote author=“nealg”]The big question for me is what does Apple have to gain?...

The question for me is “What would I gain?”.  I couldn’t care less what Apple would gain since as a user if I gain nothing then Apple also gain nothing.

“Open OS-X” would work only if Apple release some sort of hardware specification (e.g. this motherboard design with this video card design etc.).  The goal would be to limit the hardwarre to some “standard”.  Apple does this now with it’s hardware suppliers for it’s computers.  It would require them to let everyone in on the secret “sauce” that is a Mac.

Maybe…

I think if Apple did license the OS again, it would have to be a relationship between them and just 1 or 2 other companies, established vendors like Sony or Dell, and they would have to retain tight controls over which models with what features were offered. Basically, allow these “clone” makers to fill the market niches that Apple seems unwilling to, like ultra-light laptops, tablets, and a mid-range tower machine, and then sell them in channels that Apple is currently not competing in. One of the reasons that Clones hurt Apple the first time is that their main distro channels (mac retail outlets, catalogs, etc) were the same as Apple’s and people currently dealing with Apple could see directly the cost savings. If these new machines were sold at Wal-Mart, Newegg.com, etc, places where Apple’s current footprint is nil, it might help expand the market without killing their profits.

Still, I don’t see a rush at the moment, with sales the way they are.

Consumer hardware - no point. Big servers - maybe.

I don’t really see the point of licensing the OS, at this point. Would having more choices of hardware available sell more Macs? More likely, I see it leaching from Apple’s sales, just like before.

Since Apple is the only company paying the big R&D bucks to develop Mac OS X, which is the true heart and core of the innovation that makes Macs so great, having other companies potentially eat away part of Apple’s profit, the vast majority of which comes from high-margin hardware sales, just sounds like nonsense.

Yes, there may be a marginal increase in the overall market share of installed Macs, if Apple were to license out the OS, but I think that most companies who really want the quality of a Mac are looking to buy Apple hardware, anyway. What’s the alternative? Buying a lower-priced Mac? News-flash: A lot of people who bought low-priced alternative Macs, from companies like Motorola or Umax, during the original Mac OS licensing debacle, quickly found out that you get what you pay for. Whether it was fair or not, this just hurt the reputation of Macs, in general.

Before you even think of responding with ‘Power Computing’, I have to tell you that they were one of the biggest reasons that Apple pulled the plug on licensing. They were one of the best Mac cloners out there, but they got greedy and flouted, as loudly as they could manage, the fact that their hardware was ‘superior’ to Apple’s offerings, and cost less. Do you really think Apple would let anything even remotely like that happen again?

I think that there may possibly be room for Mac OS X server being licensed to a select number of manufacturers of server hardware, since servers only account for a small percentage of Apple’s hardware sales. Apple could benefit a lot, in the long-run, from having another established hardware vendor make inroads into the server market with Mac OS X.

If Apple cooperated with big-iron developers to put Mac OS X on existing server hardware that are already popular, it could go a long way towards unseating Windows as the de-facto server software in corporate America. Can anyone imagine the potential benefits of Mac OS X Server (especially with the new additions in Leopard Server), running on big IBM iron, like POWER 6 systems or their descendants?

Again, the big server market is a totally different dynamic than the consumer market. While licensing to Mac OS X for the latter would just be shooting themselves in the foot, Apple might reap big, long term rewards, by sacrificing a few server sales, and letting a company that is well entrenched do their server sales for them.

The moment Apple will even consider licencing Mac OS X to anyone, I will sell all my AAPL stocks and never buy AAPL again.

This idea is so inherently stupid that it always puzzles me that it is even considered to be an idea.

Why on earth go into the subcontractors shitty peanut business when you have a business model in which each and every single one-market-share-percentage gives you more than 10 times what you would get by fighting a survival combat in the shitty peanut-business. 

The Microsoft business model is a dead end route, and Microsoft headers do know that all too well themselves. They are sweating in their t-shirts in RotemÑŒnde HQ now. The future will require 1000 times more, tighter and seamless integration of hardware and software.

Please. Think again!

Apple could never ever win over Microsoft on Microsofts own battlefield. These ideas are last century thinking. The main idea is NOT to win.

Re: No

[quote author=“islandinthenet”][quote author=“nealg”]The big question for me is what does Apple have to gain?...

The question for me is “What would I gain?”.  I couldn’t care less what Apple would gain since as a user if I gain nothing then Apple also gain nothing.

As an Apple user, I understand your question. As an Apple shareholder, I feel that my question is valid.

Neal

How best to make money?

Sell hardware?  License OS/standards? Sell ads placements? Revenue sharing?  Sell applications?  Sell software services? Sell tools?

Apple’s strength is its ability to deliver cool user experience through integration of software and hardware engineering, and excellent consumer marketing.  Apple understands what the consumer wants.

IMHO:  iPhone/iPod touch business model is the future.

Apple can’t license the OS - it would damage almost every element of their business model. It’s possible that something like “made for iPod” can be extended. But the reality of the present market is that it’s hard to charge for general purpose software unless you have a monopoly.

OTOH, here’s an interesting idea that would declare war on MS: suppose Apple licensed some or all of quicktime/iTunes/iLife/iWork for Linux to OEMs . . . . .

(edit: the point being that there would be no hardware support issues, and no need to disclose Apple’s upcoming hardware innovations, but it would enable manufacturers to come up with a credible Windows alternative. But I don’t think it really works until Apple has 40% market share)

Licensing OS X is what’s sometimes called “pissing in the soup” (to make it go further).

Re: Maybe…

[quote author=“DaiMac”]

Still, I don’t see a rush at the moment, with sales the way they are.

1-Apple software sales… iLife, iWork, iPhoto etc.

2_ Asia. The biggest market in the world. Apple has virtually no presence
    there which is the fastest growth area for technology. Apple is woefully
    low on personnel world wide. The iPhone will be the first Apple user
    experience for many but Apple is not equipped to roll out Macs en    
    masse. Having an Acer or Levano adhering to strict hardware
    configurations would spread the Apple gospel to consumers who
    will not/cannot afford Apple laptops. MS won’t mind as no one pays
    for their software anyway

Re: Maybe…

[quote author=“SNIPUS”]2_ Asia. The biggest market in the world. Apple has virtually no presence
    there which is the fastest growth area for technology. Apple is woefully
    low on personnel world wide. The iPhone will be the first Apple user
    experience for many but Apple is not equipped to roll out Macs en    
    masse. Having an Acer or Levano adhering to strict hardware
    configurations would spread the Apple gospel to consumers who
    will not/cannot afford Apple laptops. MS won’t mind as no one pays
    for their software anyway

Heh, you don’t have to sell me, I was in Beijing a couple years ago (fall ‘05) and went to several large computer markets, so I’m well aware of Apple’s hurdles there. Its even more difficult to sell computers to people as cash-strapped as a typical chinese citizen when you can find functional laptops for well under half the price of Apple’s low end models. I remember seeing iBooks priced in the 8000-9000 RMB range (approximately $1000-1100 USD at the exchange rate then), and Lenovo machines that had them beat in every hardware category could be had for under 3000. The only people I saw with Apple Computers (Ping Guo Dian Nao, IIRC) were other Western students and Japanese/Korean exchange students. My roommate, the computer science major, thought my computer was very pretty (I got that alot), but basically said there was no way he could afford it. This was just before Apple started releasing Intel Machines, so the situation might have changed, but I doubt the pricing gap has shrunk that much.

I totally agree that a very selective trial run of OSX-on-Lenovo laptops could potentially crack open some of these markets, though popularizing an OS in China and actually profiting from that popularity are two different things of course.

[quote author=“xumbra”]The moment Apple will even consider licencing Mac OS X to anyone, I will sell all my AAPL stocks and never buy AAPL again.

Oh, Oh, this could be easily the sadest day in your life. No business model is made for eternity and the big guys know exactly, when it is time to get a new one.

If M$ doesn’t get its act together, some day in the future Apple will have to licence OS X. Otherwise you will hear the planet crying in fortissimo “closed platform” and so on ... . If it would be your personal decision wether to earn billions of money for nothing or been taken to the courts, how would you decide?

IMO the question is not “if” but “how”. The current Apple management has the patience to wait for the right moment and the creativity to develop OS (X, XI, XIII?) in a different way for licensees and Apples own customers. But at first: The knights in the IT-departments have to get down onto their knees!

In another post Tommo mentioned before that Leopard is a big leap ahead because of various improvements under the hood. I think it is all about multicore processing and 64 bit. M$ needs desperately to come up with something comparable in the next two years. But tell me: How to get rid of Steve Ballmer when the company earns billions of $?

My conclusion is: Stop the discussion now and come up again 2010.

[quote author=“buzzin55”] ... No business model is made for eternity and the big guys know exactly, when it is time to get a new one ... My conclusion is: Stop the discussion now and come up again 2010.

Agree with first statement but disagree with second statement.  Through discussion, we get an idea of what might happen in the future and help to focus our attention to current development relating to the issue.  So when some development occurs that illuminate one way or the other, we can make decision quicker and better .  By 2010, Mac OS may be open source completely.

Shure. It’s not my intention to stop the discussion.