New Type of Apple?
Posted April 14 2008 9:27PM by Michael
Apparently Psystar has decided to build & sell computers that are compatible with Apple's OS X operating system at an entry price of $399. Normally this would be nothing of note, however Apple strictly forbids installation of OS X on non-Apple hardware in their EULA. A short article about it from InformationWeek is here, and another article on MacRumors is here.
As a relatively avid Apple fan, I do find it curious that Apple has managed to keep their OS X operating system from being installed on non-supported hardware (at least by the general public). Although I doubt Psystar will progress far enough to be a legit threat before some sort of legal action forces them to stop, it would be interesting to see what would happen if they were allowed to sell these 'Mac Clones'. A commenter in the InformationWeek article made a valid point that there is no way any of the bigger companies like Dell/HP/IBM/etc. haven't already made an attempt to challenge Apple by pursuing anti-trust lawsuits, and since this hasn't publicly happened, it is pretty safe to say they didn't get anywhere.
However, if Apple were to be forced to allow OS X to be installed on non-Apple hardware, I wonder how much that would hurt Apple. In my opinion, Apple currently is the 'in' thing, as noted by Morgan Stanley a few weeks ago. This AppleInsider article states that 40% of incoming college freshmen are looking to purchase a Mac. Compare that to the current marketshare of Macs (15% courtesy of the AppleInsider article), and you can easily see that younger people think that owning Apple computers is currently the cool thing to do. Therefore, I don't necessarily see a sharp increase in market share, as most people who want a Mac have already found a way to purchase one. For instance, the Mac Mini can normally be found around $600, possibly cheaper, and that price point is comparable with Psystar's offering. And like I said before, I'm not sure it is the operating system that many of the college students who are converting to Apple computers are after: it is the fact that Apple computers are popular. Running OS X on an ugly PC is not the 'in' thing, having a MacBook is.
Apple currently gets a lot of praise for having just one version of OS X for all users, instead of trying to create 'tiers' of operating systems like Microsoft that can handicap cheaper versions, and I feel like Apple only can do that because they can make money on the hardware. If their hardware no longer is the main profit source of their computer division (I still don't think they will be hurt very much even if Psystar wins), they may be forced to raise the price of the operating system, and become priced in the same way Microsoft is. I'm also quite sure Apple can detour 'rogue' hardware from being used by constantly updating the operating system with deterrents. Again, I highly doubt it will come to this, but it is something that is interesting to think about.
And so concludes my first blog post that is a rambling of information that is not about me. And no, this is not one of the 5 queued blog posts. This was just a random thought provoked by an article.