When will Apple sell OS X for PCs?
Any bets on when Apple will start shipping OS X for PCs to compete directly with Windows Vista for PCs? Microsoft sold 88 Million copies of Vista in three quarters this year. That is almost 30 Million per quarter. If Apple sold a third of that or 10 Million copies per quarter at $139 per copy, their potential market is an additional $4.1 Billion revenue per quarter. This doesn’t include the inevitable increase in demand for their other products. It also doesn’t include the potential negative of selling less hardware to people who just want OS X.
I bet they will do it.
Microsoft should be worried.
One thing people need to get into their head is that Apple is a hardware company, not a software one.
When hell freezes over. Apple has no intention of doing such a thing. They build computers.
They will sell it eventually. When Apple has like 40% market share, selling OSX for PCs will tip the balance once and for all and drive a wooden stake into Bill Gate’s black heart (or whoever his successor is). In the meantime, you can help things along by buying a Mac now and get that market share up.
The economics just don’t work for Apple, which relies on hardware sales for the bulk of their revenue. A Mac probably brings in an average of $1500 or something in revenue. So, for every potential Mac sale lost they’d need over 10 boxes of OS X sold. That seems highly unlikely. And that’s just from a revenue analysis, who knows how this translates to profit.
Also, fundamentally OS X benefits from supporting only a few sets of hardware – the ones Apple makes. Trying to support every computer from every manufacturer with a retail box would be a nightmare that Apple will never want to deal with.
First, Apple is a HARDWARE company. OS X is their secrete sauce to leverage the value of otherwise mostly of-the-shelf components.
Second, Apple is about PROFITABILITY. They make tons of money with every single product they sell. Their approach is to make products that people actually like and want to buy. This is not the monopolistic-world-domination approach that another well known company uses, and therefore Apple doesn’t have to dominate a market in order to suceed.
They are happy to skim the cream and leave the rest to MS & co
Marcos nailed it.. Microsoft writes third-rate software because they have to.. they are constrained by thousands of OEM models and decades of backward compatibility issues. They have huge enterprise customers and governments making demands on them. As an Apple fan, I absolutely LOVE Microsoft. If it weren’t for Microsoft catering to all those enterprise demands and OEMs, then the blissful Apple experience would surely suffer. Microsoft is the Jupiter to Apple’s Earth. Microsoft’s huge presence sucks up all the nasty asteroids and comets, and allows little old Earth to float in a peaceful blue bliss. Which planet would you rather live on? I know I’ve made my choice
This is why Apple doesn’t aggressively go after the enterprise, and this is why Apple will never release OS X for beige-box PCs.
Incidentally, the sweet spot for Apple’s market share, in my opinion, is between 15% and 20%. That’s big enough to be taken seriously by all developers, but not so big that they share in all of the problems that Microsoft has to deal with. I don’t ever want to see Apple exceed 20% market share in the US, maybe 10% worldwide.
Same here.
Apple is a hardware company; the software is only ‘value added’ to the hardware to help generate sales. And yes, people just don’t get that, and those that don’t will continue to think that all Apple has to do to dominate the world is sell their OS for other platforms. These people are either completely ignorant, or want Apple to fail.
Why do people seem intent on destroying Apple’s business plan? Especially now, when Apple is doing so well?
Apple’s sales are growing at 30% annually. It’s stock price has never been higher while Microsoft’s is flat. Apple has moved into the number three market share position the US. HP and Dell sell five times as a many computers, but Apple profits are about half of theirs combined.
Apple’s market capitalization is much higher than Dell’s. It won’t be much longer when Apple is bigger than Microsoft (2011?)
This makes no sense now. It made no sense ten years ago when Apple was beleaguered. Apple tried to compete in the same way that Microsoft does, and failed.
The problem is that Mac OSX requires higher quality components than Windows XP. Windows Vista requires even higher hardware components than Apple does. Expecting Mac OSX to work well on a four hundred dollar cheap computer is foolish. Vista with the full Areo glass features won’t work well on name brand computers costing less than $1000.
YOU guys always fail to realize that that money… as good as it is would be in leu also getting all the hardware revenue they currently do by keeping the two exclusive to one another.
Just buy an Apple Macintosh and be done with it.
Louis Wheeler said
“Apple tried to compete in the same way that Microsoft does, and failed.”
That’s simply not true. Microsoft achieved their current status through illegal and anticompetitive business practices. It was not by offering a superior business model. If that were the case then Apple would have done well when they adopted it.
For Apple to gain ground against Microsoft, not only would they have to adopt illegal business practices as Microsoft did/does, but they would have to do so at a greater degree to make up ground.
As you mention, Apple’s business model is the one thats more successful… so much so that they are gaining serious ground against a company that has an entrenched, government supported illegal monopoly.
That says a lot about Apple’s business model.
Dream on, friend. Dream on.
No, there’s NO money in it. MS makes anywhere from $10 to $30 from selling Vista (most go to OEM’s) – Apple is NOT going to undercut to compete that plus Apple would be then in the same boat as MS in tech support – “it’s not our fault, it’s the computer” or worse, people who then lug all sorts of shoddy Pc’s into Mac shops in order to get it repaired because it was poorly designed in the first place … the ONLY way would be to charge around $500 per license and then, that’s EXACTLY what the Mini is for – a PC with OSX pre-loaded and you add Vista & Linux if you want PLUS Apple will service it AND you get ILIFE – you have a monitor and keyboard, you are set. The best OS on the planet plus the two other popular OSes if you want to load it – all for around $600 – what more do you want?
As long as Steve Jobs is running the show, it will never happen. And it will probably never happen even after Steve Jobs, because Apple has already learned its lesson about doing that, and will never do it again, unless Apple wants to go out of business.
Steve Jobs shut down the clone market, immediately, when he came back to Apple. That’s one thing that contributed to the comeback for Apple. Why do you think Apple wants to “go down the tube” once again, by selling the system to clones? LOL!
Thank goodness it won’t happen as EVERYONE who responded made note of. Apple builds the whole widget for a reason. They want to offer the most stable, reliable and user friendly experience on the planet. You can only do this by making the entire product. Support OS X, buy a Mac. If you want to support Microsoft or Linux also, then buy their OS and install it on your Mac. Apple made sure that Windows would work well running on an Intel Mac, therefore once again giving us the best experience possible.
Thank you for all the interesting discussion. I think it is naive to say Apple won’t go after Windows because it is hard or not profitable. Microsoft is HUGELY profitable because of Windows. They are a big and powerful company now thanks to Windows. They have built many other profitable businesses because of the leverage they have with Windows. Microsoft made $3.37 Billion in profits on Windows in Q1 2007 according to this article. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/336881_msftearns26.html.
Supporting many different types of hardware is hard but definitely not out of reach. Device management is much easier now than a few years ago. Apple already does a good job of it; probably better than MS.
If I were Apple, I would not try to capture the Enterprise environment but would start by marketing to home users and licensing to Dell and HP. As I said before, it will cannibalize their hardware biz but it could be a much bigger market than they have now.
Home market – dumbest users who want the cheapest hardware and will complain vehamently when their $2 USB/FireWire card does not work. You don’t get it – Macs are about just works…. Going down the path of supporting that hardware is just suicide….
They are FINE with people buying the OS and hacking it to work on their PCs – they just have no desire to support it. They have no need to. THose who WANT to buy the Mac OS for their plain jane PC ARE DOING THAT!! But to officially support it would be suicide….
Well, what apple should do is license the OS to other OEMs. Or, perhaps create a shill corporation that sells low-end macs… Perhaps they could call them crapintoshes or something – so they can still support crapintosh-only hardware, yet make more $.
you are so clueless it’s laughable.
you should start a blog about shoes or driveway sealent, maybe you know more about that.
i feel less intellegent after having read your thoughts.
Alan Replied:
George, thanks for such an intelligent comment. See how I spell “intelligent”? You might learn to spell “sealant” as well but that may be a little advanced for you. But more important than spelling is to try your hardest to think of something useful to say.
I’m willing to bet my first-born child that they don’t do it…. the primary reason the Mac is more stable is the mere fact that Apple isn’t writing an OS to support a bazillion 3rd party motherboards, soundcards, video cards, networking cards, onboard video, etc. I guarantee you that they do not want to open that Pandora’s box. Vertical marketshare has made it the solid platform it is today.
Oh… I forgot to add the descriptive “shitty” to the front of the 3rd party hardware. So much of the crap that is made for the PC is just that… cheap, third party crap.
Can you imagine the size of support staff they would have to have for this?… imagine the support calls:
CALLER: “Hey Apple… umm… my brother just built me this PC and I’m having some serious issues with Leopard.”
SUPPORT: “What motherboard is in your PC?”
CALLER: “ummm… I dunno… let me call my brother real quick and ask ok…. he says it’s a Chinese knock-off of the Asus MB4451A-x1″
SUPPORT: “We don’t have that motherboard listed…. can you tell me who makes the BIOS and it’s version?”
CALLER: “uh… ok… let me ask my brother again he’s not 100% sure, but he’s pretty sure it’s some company named BIOS-Magic and it’s version 1.11″
SUPPORT: “hmmmm… we do not have that company listed… can you tell me what video card you are running?”
CALLER: “My brother says it’s a really great card… as good as an NVidia 8900XT.”
SUPPORT: “So you have the Nvidia GeForce 8900XT?”
CALLER: “No… he said it’s as good as the 8900XT… it’s called a Plexbox GL3120.”
SUPPORT: “hmmm…. we don’t have any information on that card…. you will need to contact the manufacturer for support for your particular machine.”
CALLER: “My brother is the builder… I’ve called him and he doesn’t know the answer.”
etc etc etc etc…..
Steve Jobs does NOT want this to be the user experience. Work with knowns not unknowns…. makes machines more stable.
Yeah, looks like everyone else gets it Alan – they are happy getting sales from hackers who want to buy the OS and install it on their machines, but as soon as it ends up on the shelf, everyone will want to run it. Once everyone has EFI. Oh wait – everyone uses BIOS. etc…
It is just a Pandoras box that should NOT be opened.
I am curios to hear your thoughts on the comments here (the pleasant ones) that all echo the device support issue, and the beauty of being able to sell it yet NOT support it (which is what they are doing now – I am waiting for the 1st time this is being tested in court, installing Leopard on non Macs, Leopard being the 1st Intel OS from Apple you CAN buy off the shelf…)
Thank you for your blog.
The thing that all PC users must understand is that Mac OS X on Apple hardware, is not the same as Mac OS X on generic PC hardware.
The fit and finish that the Mac offers is not down to the OS, or hardware, IT’S BOTH.
Stop being a cheapskate and buy Apple hardware for a change, the computer will last twice as long and re-sell for twice as much as your home-built or Dell PC, so overall the price is roughly the same.
Steve Jobs will never, in a million years, allow OS X to run on a beige box. Period.
You are all stupid, they just need to sell OS X Leopard on certain OEM bundles, they can even sell the Apple hardware (mouse, monitor, etc) but let Dell be the PC unit. This way Dell, HP, etc would have the ability to distribute OS X Leopard on PC’s while the hardware compatibility would still be there, Apple would know what their OS was installed on and could actually minimize it. What does it matter if a few OEM bundles from manufacterers are available with OS X, it can only help Apple not hurt it. So HP has like 2 bundles with monitors and such that include Leopard, same with Dell, but those are the seeds for their friends who buy it and realize how cool the OS is, then they can either buy a PC or Mac with it, but Apple would still control it.
You seen Hackintosh?
http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/222667852/install-os-x-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required
price Microsoft Windows Vista Business retail box
I am wodnering, why Apple does not sell their OS like Microsoft? Is it a smart or stupid decision in doing so? We just need your OSX not your Apple PC, Mr. Job.