Now here’s my problem with these statements.
1. If the only thing making OS X safer is it’s small numbers then it’s not very safe to being with. Add in the sales of Ipod’s and Iphones with OS X and you have a lot of new hacking abilities coming out in the future. Also this kind of makes me appreciate Linux even more.
2. Microsoft has it’s fingers in many pies but very few of them are profitable, they make the lions share of their money on software. With Apple making great consumer products and achieving such high market penetration into the PC crowd it’s not difficult to see people adding OS X to their PC’s especially if they could get all the apple connectivity with their household electronics without having to make the huge leap to a Mac. I myself almost went with a Mac this winter but held back because I wanted a quad core computer with at least 4 gb of ram and a terabyte hard drive for my work. Now for a Mac that would have cost me $2700+, I spent $1400 including a new LCD screen. Hardly a comparison for the cost, and quite a difference from the notion of “Apple Macs, with superior hardware, for prices that are, 100% of the time, cheaper than any name brand comparably equipped PC (many hundreds cheaper, when you get to the higher configurations).” As stated in the above post. Would I like a Mac yes, but not at those prices. Now I know they would sell a lot more software than described before simply because your looking at new hardware sales vrs. existing units that might have it installed. If Apple were to make it easy to install onto existing PC’s you’d see a large portion of sales move in this direction, then in a few years many of those people would move over to MAC’s since they are already familiar with the system. Now let’s look at the math a bit again. If Apple could make 1/4 the profit it makes in hardware from software why not? You have to factor in the amount of money tied up in computers until it sell’s where as software is less expensive to produce. With software you can ship 50x more copies than you can 1 computer. So while a store may carry 100 computers in stock they could carry several hundred OS’s in only a few boxes and therefore sell more. Even if the computer doesn’t have OS X on it I as a consumer may opt to buy it and install it right from the start knowing that as my needs change I could add a smaller MAC to my network and have no problems down the road further increasing Apples bottom line.

The complexity of the interaction of zillions of different hardware combinations, poor quality drivers, or the access to poorly written 4th party drivers to 3rd party hardware, and the radically increased complexity driven by this extreme diversity, would make the Mac as problematic as a Windows box.

Me, I will continue to buy Apple Macs, with superior hardware, for prices that are, 100% of the time, cheaper than any name brand comparably equipped PC (many hundreds cheaper, when you get to the higher configurations).

Allowing poor quality hardware and drivers to exist in the OS X world, would degrade the experience to that of a PC.

BTW: in managing IT environments with as many as 262,000 desktop computers, I can empirically state that Macs cost a fraction (10-25%) of a PC over the typical 3 year life of a corporate machine. Acquisition cost is such a minor factor in the life cycle price of the machine, that, even IF a Mac cost more, it would be a sound financial decision.

Opening up the hardware platform would remove that tremendous advantage that a Mac currently has.

Now, I do believe the software has value, and that’s the reason of this post. Given that the OS has value, and the user space applications have value, why not capitalize by releasing OS X for non-apple branded hardware?

Right now if I understand correctly the measures Apple has taken to avoid that you install your Leopard DVD’s directly to a Dell, are the bios, and a few kernel extensions that Apple has in place. Of course it’s not news that all this have been defeated, and there are people running off the shelf Leopard on their Dell’s machines without issues.

So the difference in this case, you are putting value on the case and not what’s inside? Because of which you don’t realize that oops your partner is a cheap, promiscuous, with a taste for the minimalist bling.

You made some good points, but why would the Hardware sale decrease? I know there are plausible scenarios where the sales might be affected, but let’s face facts, their OS will always run better on Apple hardware, and if they can make money from the OS and keep increasing their hardware sales, well then by your logic, they’ll be making a nice profit, not necessarily huge, but as Steve Jobs said once “it’s not just about the money”.

I’m not in any advocating Apple should become just a Software Company, as I said in the post, they have the opportunity of learning from the mistakes of Microsoft, and they have done this, they have diversified in a way that adds a lot to their sales and revenues. The iPod, iPhone, etc.. are some the results of this diversification, but I ask is releasing OS X for pc-clones really hurtful to their business? Also another point that interest me what would the impact be for the other OS’s?

As I see it, Apple has committed major blunders in the past, some even made company tremble, but it survived. Would this have the same effect? Don’t think so.

Apple’s last fiscal quarter (1FQ2008), Apple sold 2,319,000 computers–Mac minis, MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros, and Xserves. They made $3,552,000. Apple’s Gross Margin was 34.7%.

So the “average” Mac sold for about $1532. We’ll apply the gross margin–this is not fair since it includes all products Apple sold, but it’s the best we’ve got–and say Apple makes $531 of profit from each Mac.

There. Now we have some numbers to play with.

The most obvious thing we see is that Apple makes more money selling a Mac than they do selling Leopard. Software typically has very high margins (All you’re selling is a box, a DVD, and some paper) so we’ll ignore it and pretend that Apple makes the whole $129 off of a sale of Leopard. In that case, Apple makes a tad over 4x the money selling a Mac than they make selling a retail box of Leopard.

Or, to put it another way, for Apple to make the same money it made selling a Mac, they have to sell four copies of Leopard at MSRP. So, for Apple to make the same money they made in 1FQ2008, they’d've had to sell 9,276,000 copies of Leopard.

Now let’s say Apple partnered with HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Acer–the top selling computer makers worldwide. In 4Q2007 (Which is Apple’s 1FQ2008), these companies sold 39,229,000 computers. So Mac OS X would have to have been 23% of all computers sold for Apple to make the same money. Remember–that’s the same money. Not more.

Would it work? Do you think Apple would be able to get to 23% World-Wide market share from their current 2% or so? Personally, I don’t think so.

To the point of availability it’s true you can buy OS X anywhere, but it only runs on a Mac (unless you want to modify, violate the EULA,etc..) so OS X is not option for non-mac users.

As to whether Apple should open source OS X, I wouldn’t mind if they do, in fact I would be very happy. But that’s a stretch.

I will amend the title, because I mean no harm at all to Apple, and let’s be honest, there are some people that wouldn’t mind hemming at Steve Jobs’s feet as you put it, and I think you know this.