Thinksecret has a wet media dream involving Apple (of course) and the download of media. Whenever somebody starts raving about ‘intel technology’ and how enabling it is I have to roll my eyes: Intel makes great CPUs and other things that other people make as well. I might be uttterly ignorant but I never saw that any of those Intel plans where either new innovative or sucessful for that matter.
Reading Apple’s media delivery ambitions it should be pretty clear that OS X 10.5 aka Lepard will be available for non Apple hardware also commonly known as ‘PCs’. If Apple makes money with media distribution they might as well give the OS away. They might charge for support.
When the OS X on Intel was announced people usually said that Apple would want to protect it’s hardware business. I think that is /bs/. I think it is entirely strategic, that Apple pretends to let OS X only run on Apple hardware. First of all it is a bargaining chip. Apple, flush with cash from the ongoing iPod sucess, can sit at the sidelines of the PC-market of 2006. Apple will close see how Longhorn is doing. Technically and in the market place. If they feel that Microsoft’s position is vulnerable enough then they make a move. Or they get a deal from Bill for not moving. One thing they don’t want to do though is to openly declare that they are going into the PC operating system market. But technically they can. Not they that would or need to, but they would have OS X running on 70% of all machines that Dell sells within a week. I am sure that Dell would like this as well: Competition changes the price. Lepard might be in a good position to take a big chunk out of the Longhorn market: The latest Redmond OS has significant hardware requirements. If people perceive the upgrade from whatever Windows they run now as a ‘switch’, then they might as well switch to another brand.