haha... it is possible, and I have done it.
I flipped out a couple of my coworkers when I had it running on a Dell at work a few months ago. Mostly just to see if it would work. And it did--with a little massaging. But I'm not allowed to go into that.

Not if they want to remain profitable. The enterprise is low margin, high volume and that means that when a company falters (DEC, Compaq, IBM, etc.) there is very little chance of recovering. Apple appears to be better off doing what they're doing. With higher margins there's room for the inevitable error or two. I'd like to be able to buy cheaper hardware and still get a great performing Mac, but I don't think it's possible without harming the platform.

As for enterprises buying Macs, it isn't like they need to replace every PC simultaneously. They only need to incorporate Mac purchases into normal procurement schedules, so it isn't like they'd be spending millions on new hardware. They'd be spending what they normally spend.

It doesn't matter: they're not Mac customers and they're not going to be. The Mac is not now, and never has been about the hardware. The hardware is simply where Apple makes their money. Gamers are about the hardware. The Mac is like a sleek, sexy yacht that has great cruising speed, but gamers want a hydroplaning speed boat. Sure, the Mac can play games, and a gaming rig can run Photoshop or Office, but that doesn't mean they're in the same market.

Well of course it is possible but it requires effort and is not supported offically. Apples sucess and our pleasure from it comes from the close integration of Hardware and Software. Of course now that there is a lot of overlap in Mac and PC hardware it is more tempting.

As others have said Apple makes most of its Money on Hardware and somewhat higher margins. And Apple chooses not to offer as many models or configurations and never could then a dozen brands times dozens of models.

Apple took a pass at this and it worked, but not financially for Apple and it ended the experiment.

It is not like it is not possible for it to work as a business model. MS sells very little harware except the Xbox, Zune, and Mice and Keyboards. OK well they sell some:)

I Would say the most current elegant example would come from the Iphone. Is anyone even thinking about putting Iphone software on a G1, or Strom. It is almost unthinkable. With Laptops and Desktops it is not as radical a departure and Apple gets additional revenue mostly from AT&T and some from Itunes, and the App store, etc., but if you want to have Apple computer around it is probably not in their or our interest.

I guess the real question is that if Apple is willing to take the risk of jumping into that market? I mean I am polling other sites and almost all the PC users I have polled have said they would buy a copy just to dual boot and check it out before they would ever consider buying a Mac.

If marketed properly maybe it could be a gateway to buy a Mac, I dunno I am not marketing genius. Apple on the other hand....

If only we had of those crystal balls:) While what you say might be true I think the issue really is the golden goose. If Apple thought it would work as a business model they would do it. There is no inbetween though. They would loose the majority of their sales to all the other computer producers and left PCwise selling the OS $75 to $175 dollars.

Well, Apple is also, well Apple. SJ has been quoted saying that Apple is NOT an enterprise company, yet they make enterprise products and companies are looking to switch to them.

Then they pull out of Mac world.

I think the company will make some market changes in the next few years. They are already raking in the doe with the idevices.

Maybe once someone else holds the reigns we will see a change of what they want to do. I know how much yearly subscription licensing costs since I work in IT, and there is a lot of money in it.

If enterprise had the option to easily try out the product for a reasonable price while keeping their hardware why would they not try it? If they don't want Mac hardware they'll never switch.

Also, their servers, the Xserve is VERY competitively priced compared to other companies. It is also certified to run Unix, Linux, OS X Server of course, and Windows Server. You can feasibly run your AD/Exchange network off of Xserves running Windows Server!

If they aren't testing the waters then why the compatibility and why the competitive pricing? I mean I have spec'd out servers from many companies with Apple being the cheapest, including storage solutions. XSAN is getting a larger market shares. Companies are considering it, it will happen eventually. Consumer markets are unpredictable and not always the best way to make money.

The iDevices (iPod, iPhone, etc) craze won't last forever. Eventually everyone else will catch up and make better cheaper products, that is how the cell phone industry works. When that happens I will go back to Nokia when they make an awesome touch screen because even though my iPhone is awesome, all of my Nokia phones have out performed every other phone in one aspect. The ability to make clear calls over cellular networks, and to always have signal. The iPhone is great, but the phone part is not as good as my Nokia, which I still have as a back up plan.

This is getting slightly off the topic though.

I still think if the consumer had a choice to load OS X on say an HP they bought from HP they would probably start doing it. That was just an example.

But where is it written that catering to the enterprise is a good long term strategy? Most of the PC companies that have made that commitment are no longer around, or are in fairly deep trouble. Only a few are in good shape.

The enterprise wants a road map, low prices, lots of backward compatibility, and more hand holding than consumers. None of that is good for any company that wants to truly innovate, which is probably why companies that cater to the enterprise tend to get into trouble. They end up as commodity brokers who compete on price and price alone.

Symantec, IBM, HP, Dell, Microsoft, AutoDesk are all pretty much making most of their money off of enterprise. IBM stopped making consumer machines a while ago and now only makes business class and servers.

Who says Apple has to stop making consumer items?

Symantec may sell a lot of copies of NAV to consumers, but a site license to Ghost is a TON of money, and companies pay for it because Ghost is a great imaging solution.

We run the Casper Suite right now at work which is enterprise back end software for OS X and OD networks. We are paying per a client license at a discounted rate and they are making a good sum of money off of us each year.

The money is in the subscription licensing. Then you are in a contract and you pay x amount each year and you get all the software that comes in that subscription, so the company knows how much revenue they are going to make of off enterprise licensing that year pretty much already.

We purchased 6,000 Macbooks at my work, and we didn't get that huge of a discount on them. I think they were 900 a piece (w/ applecare parts and labor only), do the math. Enterprise sales do make lots of money. That doesn't count for our 30 servers either and our software license upgrade protection either.

What if Apple could land 10 of those sales each year? Even 5 of those types of sales would still be 30,000 units sold.

While the consumer market is easier to cater to, the enterprise market is always there buying in bulk.

"Tech journalists" have been saying this about the iPod for the last five years.

Symantec doesn't make computers, IBM is a shadow of its former self, Dell needs to sell something like 4 (or is it higher?) times as many computers as Apple just to make the same money, Microsoft doesn't make computers and is still resting on the monopoly Bill Gates won in 1981, and AutoDesk also doesn't make computers.
It isn't that they would have to stop making consumer items. The problem is that the intense hand holding that the enterprise requires would prevent them from producing quality, innovative products. It's probably what keeps companies like Microsoft from being able to truly innovate no matter how much money they spend on R&D.

Let's face it, innovation comes from small to medium sized businesses, and it dies in the enterprise, which is primarily about conforming. Apple's focus on consumers and small businesses is probably as important as Steve Jobs for making them innovative.

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Very interesting points, cwt.

No, I am saying those companies make most of their money off of enterprise revenue. Lets say you have a staff of 30 IT employees, they all need a copy of ARD Admin @ $500 per a license, they just made $15,000 in software sales.

Symantec and Autodesk don't make any money off their consumer products, they make all of their money off of their enterprise licensing. A yearly site license to ghost can cost up to $60k or more per a year for example.

I don't want even to go into how much Autodesk products cost, and Autodesk doesn't offer any support you have to buy it. I used to deploy the whole Autodesk educational suite, 500 install license for each high school, and we had 5 Highschools. Each license was $10k per a year. That is $50k per a year they are making (that is also edu discounted) off one school district. There are probably 15 to 20 school districts in the kansas city metro area and the out skirts.

Enterprise licensed software you can make a bunch. What happens when a business, college, or organization wants to buy a site license to final cut pro, shake, and logic audio? They are going to pay Apple a subscription fee each year for it.

We pay Adobe an ungodly amount for our subscription license, and CS4 has been on my desk for a few months now.

Mikey-

I thought the iRiver was a better product then the iPod (at the time of course) because it supported pure drag and drop of media and you could organize songs by folders in the music folder on the iRiver. No stupid software needed, it mounted as a USB drive and you just dragged and dropped supported media. Too bad the product could not innovate past that. I have an iPod touch that was given to me as SWAG and I like it, not sure if I'd pay for it, because I hate iTunes. There are third party items out there but the support sucks, Apple won't release any kind of SDK for it either. The iPod is still one of the better, if not the best you are right. However, that market is way different than cell phones. I mean as far as certain functionality my blackberry kicks the crap out of my iPhone. No exchange/groupwise support for my iPhone, no copy and paste, Apple are kind of nazi-ish with the apps on the iPhone. I jail broke mine so I could get all the cool apps for it and I love it, but it is lacking features to make it perfect. I think that some company will get it all with the cell phone and I think it is possible it won't be apple.

Another point I want to bring up, if Apple were so against the idea, wouldn't you think they would go after OS X x86 project? They haven't yet, and it is still widely available to download and people are developing for it. It is all open source community but it is still there alive and kicking and Apple is not trying to stop it.

I'm going to say "No". Once you take OS X and pull it away from the hardware it is meant for, then it becomes all diluted. The reason OS X is stable is because it's built for a specific set of hardware. Windows has to support every little device under the sun, and has to support a million different hardware configurations, hence a lot of it's instability.

Once you do that with OS X, I'd imagine it'd get all messy and such, like Windows.

Amen to that. Having TOILED with windows - no way would i want to go back there again. At least with Apple you can get on with what you WANT to be doing.

Apple are maybe always a bit behind with their configurations , but im sure in this day and age - for most users the present configurations are overkill anyway. All the people i know who have macs, seem to be very happy with their lot.

Because it just works.

Although I voted yes, I completely understand why Apple does not allow it and because of those reasons I do not mind either.

I agree that you could make a cheaper computer than Apple... no one would dispute that... but Apple operate the way they do for a variety of reasons.. the ones that spring to mind are:

Why go mass market? Apple operates very well in its own niche. (Heigher market share means more chance of Virus, Malware et al)
Why cheapen the brand by letting OSX be installed on any PC? Would you see Rolls Royce selling its badges to let you stick them on a Honda?.. I think not.
Not knowing what Hardware your OS goes on make it difficult to guarantee it quality... OSX is all about Use Experience... the problem with a 'build your own PC with OSX on it' scenario is that Apple are not able to control the quality of the end product..

to be fair... I cant even believe I am discussing this issue... its as daft as asking if McDonnalds will go into the fine dining market!

Linux can do it. I have installed Ubuntu and Debian on probably 100 to 150 different PC hardware configurations in my time, maybe more. Set up a DRBL server off on old desktop once.

It is very stable, and at boot up with everything running in the background, including all the fancy Compiz 3D stuff Linux has like a 400MB of memory in use. Vista will typically idle around 1Gig or at about 25% of your RAM because of ready boost, and OS X well I have seen it Idle at 20% of RAM usage and I have seen in spike.

I mean the stability thing is true on one side of the spectrum but its not like its end all be all argument either. I don't think it holds water. If Linux and Unix can be stable, offer robust 3D user desktop environments, work on a super broad range of hardware configurations, then why can't OS X?

Also for the record, once you tweak Vista you can get it running rather fast. I have it running on my PC at home so I can take advantage of DX 10, and overall I am not too impressed with Vista, but I must say it performs better than I originally imagined it would.

There are a few support issues with *Nix on a PC but for the most part it works as smooth as silk out of the box on almost all PCs.

You're IT background is getting in the way again. Almost all users are not in IT, and they're not going to tweak Vista or any other OS.

But the money they make doesn't get used for my (or any other consumer's) benefit. Their products are geared toward corporate wishes, many of which are not at all helpful to end users. What's more, none of them are true innovators and they represent a small percentage of the companies that have been and are involved in the enterprise. Most others have failed or aren't doing well.

That isn't to say that they haven't improved technology, but a faster processor, larger hard drive or more RAM on a chip isn't an innovation, and they aren't developing them to produce better products for end users.

You and many others in IT would naturally prefer drag and drop, but for the rest of the world, it becomes very limiting once they get beyond a few dozen songs. Most people just aren't that organized, especially when it comes to computers.

Not necessarily. By keeping the door open, they keep Microsoft a little off balance, and it's possible that Apple might some day come to a point where they make more off of software than hardware, in which case it might make sense to sell the OS separately.

I think you are wrong, you'd be surprised how many people are doing this. just check out any PC driven computer forum and you will find people, plus this next generation is already doing it. Video games are making billions per a year, and sure there are consoles lumped into there as well, but the growing number of power users is growing faster and faster. In the school system I work for you start using a computer in Kindergarden, and at 1st grade you start to learn how to type, and by the end of primary school you are using all kinds of applications. There is one student who showed me his flash animation the other day, and we haven't even started teaching flash just yet and he taught himself, and it was good, and this is a 16 year old kid. We have the full CS3 on some of the Macs and he just taught himself flash by just using it and watching demo videos. Times are changing.


Money is money, and funds get shifted and invested and diverted all over the place. I am sure the millions of dollars we spent got shoveled around to all departments of Apple.

Cell processors were innovated for enterprises as well as blade servers the PS3 uses a Cell processor. It innovates.

I don't see how any users wouldn't want simple drag and drop capabilities, in fact it failed mostly because there was no control or DRM on it. iPods have to be authorized to transfer data from machine to machine and it is a burden on me since I have 5 or 6 Macs I use on a regular basis. I can't fit all my music onto my 8Gig iPod so I want to distribute it amongst them. It isn't easy or innovative.


I think you are talking in circles. If they are keeping MS at bay by not touching OS X x86, why don't they just buy it up? I think them making their Xserves Windows Certified is more keeping them at bay than anything. Once enterprises start buying Apple servers they are more inclined to try OS X Server, and there are organizations out there buying Xserves to run Linux and Windows on them. Why aren't they suing psystar either? They are just doing mediations at the moment. If they were so worried and against their OS being used on non Apple hardware why didn't their lawyers throw the book at Psystar and make an example of them so no one else tried to do it?

I honestly just think Apple couldn't handle it personally at this point. It takes them longer to implement fixes and security patches than most other companies. If they had to broaden their support they would fall even worse perhaps who know? That will never be answered.

I do believe that Apple is definitely looking to venture that way. Their servers are very competitively priced and a better value in many cases, they can run any server OS. So the back end is looking a lot better, but still enterprises don't like buying iMacs and the Mac Pro is over kill.

If I have to tweak my OS to run fast, I am using the wrong OS. :)

And yeah, I can't stand organizing music into folders. Let the computer do this stuff, I have better things to do than Asperger out over how my record collection is placed into directory hierarchies.