“There’s been an awful lot of column inches devoted to Steve Jobs’ announcement that he is going to port the Apple MacOS to Intel. Here are some more,” Jason Stamper writes for Computer Business Review.
“The big debate is around whether Jobs will license MacOS to other manufacturers, so they can build Intel machines around MacOS. Some pundits have been saying that if he did, Apple could quickly grow to rival Microsoft’s Windows dominance. A little hasty, perhaps,” Stamper writes.
“Jobs has so far said that he will not allow others to license MacOS on Intel, or any other hardware for that matter. That’s because Apple’s current business model is reliant on its hardware sales more that its software sales. It could of course change its business model, and if sales of MacOS on other people’s hardware became great enough it could more than make up for the loss of Apple hardware sales. But so far that looks like a bridge too far for Jobs, who is no doubt mindful of what a change like that might do to the company’s share price in the short and medium term,” Stamper writes. “Culturally, too, the company sees itself very much as a solutions company. It likes the idea of someone buying its hardware and software together, wrapped up in a fantastically slinky, well-engineered skin. That philosophy is in its blood now more than ever. In which case, what difference does MacOS on Intel really mean?”
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Fortune columnist doubts Apple CEO Jobs will let Michael Dell sell OS X anytime soon – June 23, 2005
Mac OS X Leopard to contain ‘Red Box’ for natively running Windows applications? – June 23, 2005
Is Apple morphing Mac into the ultimate PC capable of running Mac OS X, Windows, Linux? – June 20, 2005
The Washington Post: ‘In a year or two, the best Windows PC may come from Apple’ – June 19, 2005
Intel’s built-in virtualization tech could be one way to run Windows on Intel-based Apple Macs – June 16, 2005
If Intel-based Macs can run Mac OS X and Windows, buying a Mac will be a no-brainer – June 15, 2005
Apple could use Trusted Platform Module chip to keep Mac OS X off non-Macs – June 14, 2005
Intel-based Macs running both Mac OS X and Windows will be good for Apple – June 10, 2005
Why buy a Dell when Apple ‘Macintel’ computers will run both Mac OS X and Windows? – June 08, 2005
Microsoft and Dell must have a lot of bricks lying around today – June 07, 2005
Apple to use Intel microprocessors beginning in 2006, all Macs to be Intel-based by end of 2007 – June 06, 2005
yaaaaawwwn…
this has been going on for 10 years. Not a new idea just because of OSX popularity. I’m not saying it will NEVER happen…just unlikely. Hell, there’s going to be an intel inside sticker (hopefully not literally…please leave the stickers off the box apple!) on my mac soon…ANYTHING can happen.
g
“Will Apple CEO Steve Jobs license Mac OS X?”
In the short term – No.
In the long term? – Well, I’ll let Steve answer that one.
I still think that if Apple were to liscene the OS, they should exclude Dell. Let them wither the cow they’ve tied themselves to. Then, they casn close up shop and give the money back to shareholders.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!
gforce:
Don’t worry about the Intel stickers. That’s part of a promotional incentive Intel uses. ‘Show the logo, get cash’. I doubt Steve or Jon Ive are going to let any sticker screw up the beauty that is the Mac.
Besides…you don’t see ATi or nVidia stickers on current Macs, do you?
You will see a SONY computer running MacOS X and maybe even an HP, but that one is a stretch.
Right macnut222,
but the point is, Apple never had Motorola, IBM, or Freescale stickers on their machines and they’re certainly not going to start with a sticker that’s been used ad nauseum and has come to be associated with Windows.
Absolutely no way!
I really don’t see Apple ever licensing OS X under Steve’s reign. Steve Jobs has always loved hardware design. He’s not gong to give that up.
Everyone automatically thinks that Apple’s endgame is to have the 90% marketshare. Why? I don’t want that. It would bring a lot of headaches and quite possibly stifle innovation. Let Microsoft deal with that. Most journalists seem to have the notion that if Apple can’t take 90% of the market then they’ve lost to Microsoft. That’s ridiculous. They are very profitable and they make the best products in their industry. How is that a failure?
macnut-
good point man. …but those stickers aren’t on PCs either … from what i know, Dells ship with Windows and Intel stickers. You have to think that Apple design will shy away from the stickers though.
Didn’t know it was a pay-per-view though…Apple may be a lot of things but they aint no whore.
Next was working on an OS that would run on Mac, Intel, and Sun systems at the time they were bought by Apple. When Bill Gates invested in Apple one of the deals was that OS X would be Mac only. Interestinly enough, there has has been code for converting CISC to RISC in OS X since the beginning and it was always believed that that made it run about 10% slower. Now we’re told they’ve been running it on intel boxes for 5 years. No matter what the Mac faithful want, Steve has had his own agenda, OS X looked an awful lot like Next in the beginning, the cube looked like his Next computer, the OS runs on intel. Oh, and have you noticed, the Mac OS is dead, Steve held a funeral for it. Of course he’s gonna liscense the OS, just not in the way you think he should.
NeXTSTEP ran on PowerPC originally, then Intel and Sun’s SPARC after NeXT killed their hardware division.
As for the deal with Bill Gates that OS X would only run on Apple computers, I’ve never heard that before, but regardless, the terms for that agreement (which included MS continuing to develop Office for Mac, and Apple setting IE as the default browser) were only for five years, and that has passed.
No! There is no way this is going to happen. SJ wouldn’t risk killing his hardware business by licensing the OS, and if he did they would never make the amount of money they do today. Its covered in the latest article on this blog: http://timcoughlin.typepad.com/
Bill
“In which case, what difference does MacOS on Intel really mean?”
1. faster notebooks with lower power consumption.
2. Ability to (somehow) run windows apps at or close to full speed.
3. No more supply problems (at least with regards to chips).
4. Increased ease of porting apps to and developing for the OS X platform in addition to windoze.
Isn’t that enough?
There will not be a general license for Mac OS X available to all comers. However, I would not at all be surprised to see a specific PC manufacturer enter into a specific licensing deal with Apple to produce a low-cost business-oriented Mac. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple begin to sell a “do-it-yourself Mac kit” for the PC builder hobbyist market.
ndelc,
Actually, most journalists think that Apple cannot possibly survive on a 2% market share. That’s the real misconception.
I seem to remember a quote from a while ago where Steve Jobs said most of their professional users preferred laptops to desktops. I’m sure that made the problems with the G5 chip that much more disappointing to Steve. I could see Apple slowly phasing out PowerMacs and only offering Powerbooks, iBooks, iMacs, and MacMinis. I think Apple is pretty proud of those designs, and I don’t see them feeling a need to offer their customers an alternative.
Will Intel make a custom chip for Apple?
What’s with I.B.M. having a THREE CORE 3.2 GHZ chip for the xbox 2? So… they can make a 3 core 3.2 chip for the xbox 2, but they can’t make a SINGE CORE 3 ghz chip for Apple? Apple could have a custom chip that would really kick ass running OS X on the mac, but wouldn’t work on a wintel computer.
Btw I’m happy to see that developers can come out with versions of software, that will work with both PPC and Intel–on the same disk. COOL!!
LordRobin,
I think you are right – a low cost business computer running OS X would be a good idea – and businesses wouldn’t want to pay more for a well designed “true” Apple machine. I think you are onto something! Businesses could still get a cheap PC – but a more secure operating system. That would make people everywhere more comfortable with OS X and lead to more Mac purchases for home use – where people would want the great Apple designed hardware.
um, no…he won’t
I can’t imagine Apple phasing out desktop units and going completely to PowerBooks. How many hard drives and video cards can you cram into a PowerBook? I can’t imagine serious video editors working soley on PowerBooks.
“I can’t imagine Apple phasing out desktop units and going completely to PowerBooks. How many hard drives and video cards can you cram into a PowerBook? I can’t imagine serious video editors working soley on PowerBooks.”
I agree. Apple, like every other manufacturer of computer hardware and/or software, wants to get in on the big money, and the money isn’t any bigger than the corporate and government markets. Having only portables in the lineup would be suicide, and they would have to eat the money they invested in OS X Server, Xgrid, Xsan, Xraid etc.
Apple is only just beginning to attract attention with their enterprise offerings, and it would be foolhardy to deliberately remove themselves from competition in that space, especially with the recent attention OS X has been getting. Much of the interest in OS X Server has to do with the ridiculously low price for an unlimited license, the ease of set up and administration, its imperviousness to malware, and its rock-solid stability. It doesn’t yet have the track record to make it a no-brainer for big business, but it will get there, and simply throwing away such a promising product would be exceedingly short-sighted.
Apple will never again allow others to sell clones like they did before, but I very much expect Apple to allow others to sell MacTels in a different way to how it was done before.
I think that the terms of the license would be such that the product couldn’t be sold cheaply as the product would have to be approved or certified by Apple. Don’t forget they’ve recently done that with iPod accessories, so there is already a concept in place which admittedly is very different, but has enough similarities to make it worth bearing in mind.
Apple has said it won’t be supporting Windows on MacTels. Perhaps that’s because others will. If somebody like Sony or HP were selling MacTels, then they would surely be looking to offer dual-boot machines. They could also be hugely popular in schools, where there is currently a very acrimonious platform war going on in some areas.
My feeling is that MacTels will be launched by Apple alone and that selected others might be allowed to join the party after a short interval.
The major difference with Apple’s previous cloning attempt was that at that time, Apple was beleaguered ( when did you last see those words in the same sentence ? ).
These days, Apple will be granting licenses from a position of strength and with the knowledge of what went wrong before. The whole deal will be entirely different and very much to Apple’s advantage.
While you may be right that Apple would never discontinue Power Macs, I have seen many musicians and video professionals who prefer a laptop they can take on tour or location. And external drives can be always be hooked up to a laptop. And Power Macs are way too much computer for most businesses and goverment agencies. A mac mini or cheap Dell would do just fine.
Jobs and Apple dictate the hardware specs before licensing Mac OS. Hmmmm.
Why not? I’d enjoy hearing Mike Dell saying, “Yes, sir, Mr, Jobs. Anything you say, Mr. Jobs. Whatever you want, Mr. Jobs. Thank you, Mr. Jobs.”
Whoever cannot see this coming is ignorant to change. It is happening before your eyes and you can’t see the forest from the trees. Yes, Steve Jobs said that he will not license OS X, but he says that he won’t do things until he does it. I bet everyone here who thinks this will never happen also believed that Mac going on Intel was a rumor up until it was officially announced by Steve Jobs even when reliable sources said that it was true the weekend before.
This is not the clone days. OS X is superior. Apple is not as heavily reliant to computer hardware because of the iPod success. And apple stands to make much more opening OS X to everyone.
If you think that if Apple kept OS X only for Apple machines that they would dominate the market, you are dreaming.
The only way to dominate a market is to aggressively saturate it with superior product which they will when they license it to everyone.
Hardware sales will take a beating, but software sales will more than make up for it. Apple is a hardware company, but that doesn’t mean they will never become a software company. They can even be both for crying out loud. The clone days did not provide the distribution channels that Apple will have by using Dell, HP, Sony etc… Hell they could even do what they are doing with the iPod and HP with their computers. They could make Mac Mini’s for HP, Dell etc… My guess is if they want to remain a hardware company, this is what they will do.
It is the software, stupid!
One last thing…
I don’t believe Apple will become a software only company, but I do believe that most of their revenue will be because of it’s software influence.
They will remain strong in the hardware department because they offer the superior experience, mac hardware and mac software together, and they will license hardware like they are doing with the iPod.
Ask yourself the following question if you doubt me, but pretend that you are forced to make a computer purchase.
What computer would I buy if my only choices were a Mac that could only run Windows or a Dell that could only run OS X?
I would choose the Dell unless I was dependent on Windows. Which would you choose?
It is the software, stupid!