3 ms·
It always baffled me that Apple refuses to sell MacOS, they could capture a significant part of the OS market.
by Aaronstotle 7y ago
It always baffled me that Apple refuses to sell MacOS, they could capture a significant part of the OS market.
- richardwhiuk 7y agoThey probably wouldn't. Apple have very limited driver support, and they get away with that because of their tight hardware configurations. The slickness of Mac OS X is partially because it's only deployed on high-end, well known hardware.
- holy_city 7y agoI don't fault them for it, they're a hardware company. Releasing the OS as a consumer product would probably destroy their hardware sales, since users (like me) wouldn't buy Apple hardware anymore. But like I said, I would pay an outrageous fee to use MacOS on a non-Apple machine without violating the EULA. And I only want it for professional use, where I can justify certain expenses (like a $500 software license + yearly renewal for updates), but can't justify spending $2-5k on an Apple machine that won't give me the performance, maintenance, or upgrade path available from off the shelf components. It's such a weird business calculus to develop for MacOS. I genuinely love their products and software, but it constantly feels like developers get screwed every generation (especially smaller shops that do heavy lifting on MacOS).
- jki275 7y agoIt would be a maintenance nightmare for Apple. MS puts a lot of resources towards making Windows run on everything. Apple controls the hardware with an iron fist so they don't have to do that.