Yea it would be a large amount but Dell might find it a plus having a more stable OS.

Another thing to think about it is if microsoft allows it so there os can be installed on apple and apple cant block it. That kinda forces apples hand in a way because then they would lose the profit of people upgrading there os, if the person decides to use windows alone. This is very possible if windows is more stable than it has been in the past. I love my OS X cause I have never had one OS crash where I have had multiple crashes on every pc I owned. I do believe though Apple will do what they need to do to sell the most amount of product they can if be be hardware or software. If they feel this is a benfit to there profit they wont hesitate for one minute. It should be interesting to see how this all turns out.

This thread is interesting in some ways.

I was looking at the Intel iMacs earlier today at a dealership. They were opening telling me that they fully expect dual boot Mac / Windows machines AFTER the release of Windows Vista. Vista supports the EFI motherboards so that would be logical.

I can actually see pluses in this. One machine to run whatever of the shelf software you want. Windows users could buy Macs without the fear factor of how to work OSX, Mac users could run Windows App's at real speed not through the overhead of VPC, developers could offer one version of software that could be loaded on a machine and run under either OSX or Windows regardless of how the machine was booted. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might hold hands on the stage at MacWorld and announce Steve appointment to the board of Microsoft. Well I'm probably getting carried away with the last bit... :-)

As I said the concept is interesting and certainly the hardware platform is now at the point where it could become a reality.

P.S. To the person going on about PS2 support. Look at the majority of Windows based keyboards and mice these days - they are all USB!

i brought up the PS2 point. It started with me saying if Apple were to add support for PS2 in there next os release it would prove they were planning to allow the os to be installed on a pc platform seeing as there hardware doesnt use it.

All i can say is its an interesting time.

I think it's highly unlikely that Apple would licence their OS to anybody ever again particularly Dell. Look what happened last time, the third party players introduced better cheaper machines and took most of Apples hardware sales overnight. How long did that experiment last? About a year from memory.
I don't think Apple is likely to repeat the same mistake particularly with somebody like Dell who will slash and burn the hardware price and aim to sell to current Mac users rather than trying to grow the overall OSX market.

It might help to consider what various players have to gain and lose from this.

All Apple would have to gain from licensing their OS to other hardware manufacturers is, really, expanded manufacturing capacity. We can be pretty certain that their contract-required specs will be so stringent that, aside from volume, nobody'll be able to make a non-Apple Mac significantly cheaper than Apple, and that Apple would charge enough in licensing fees to make up for their lost hardware profits. Apple would also suffer significant dilution of their brand name; ``Apple'' is a high-quality brand, while ``Dell'' is cheap. And Apple would also suffer a support nightmare, as people who bought Dells would call Apple for help after Dell fu...er, failed to provide adequate service. The PR result would be a fiasco.

Dell, on the other hand, would have a lot to gain. They'd no longer be dependent entirely on Microsoft, and it'd give their image a big boost. They'd also steal the bottom half of Apple's market away, as lots of people decided to go for price over value. Indeed, you can see that, in this scenario, Dell would quickly do to Apple what Wal*Mart does to its suppliers. Good for Dell...and the death knell to Apple.

If you ever hear anything substantial to these rumors, you can be pretty sure that it's nothing more than Dell yanking Microsoft's chain when contract renegotiations come 'round.

I'm sorry, I just don't see it ever happening. Not sure I want to, either.

Cheers,

b&