Andy Ihnatko's rumor might be true after all.. - Page 6

Which Model?

As a licensor, Apple can decide which manufacturers and which products it will issue a license for. It would only pick licensees which generated cash.

Thought Exercise:
If all the world was Windows - which Mac computers would still sell and why?

Not everyone who buys an iMac would actually prefer a beige box. You might think that is the case, but it isn't true.

Not everyone who buys a Macbook Pro would be happy with a Vaio. Reason is they are crap.

Not everyone who buys a Mac Mini for under their TV would be happy with a beige box.

In other words, if Apple sees itself as primarily a hardware manufacturer.... (which is the argument being made) ....then they ought to be able to make hardware that was so good, it would *still sell* if the OS X "advantage" were not there.

C.

I don't think you quite understand. If Apple licensed its OS to manufacturers who would then make hardware that sold for less, apple would lose Hardware revenue, which would have to be less than the Software revenue generated.

That, according to Apple's high hardware margins (and high prices) would be incredibly difficult to do without grabbing substantially more marketshare.

Licensing out to a few manufacturers is not really going to help anything, it would generate less hardware sales and probably not gain enough market share on the Software End to make the money back.

Beyond that, it goes against their image, their economic business model, and the spirit of what owning a Mac is: a computer with few options (in terms of parts) and so it lacks the multitude of drivers etc. that are a big part of Windows boxes not being compatible with all software etc.

the tagline "It just works" would no longer be sufficient.

Say Apple makes $400 on each iMac sold. If Apple sold OS X to Dell for $400 dollars. Dell in turn would add that price to their box causing Dell branded OS X boxes to sell for nearly what Apple Mac OS X boxes sell for.

In the end, Apple receives $400 regardless. How is this bad?

In most cases, software companies do not spend millions of dollars in R&D and then give the software away free on new computers (or sell it for only 120). The operating system business is VERY VERY different than any other kind of software company.

wtf? If this were the case, what exactly would be the advantage to Apple or us consumers? We'd be buying macs for the same price, of a lower quality. How would that be better for Apple?

I stated the fact that they make money on their hardware, not that that's what differentiates them. Obviously, what differentiates them is software as well (actually mostly software), but by tying that to their hardware they are able to have the highest margins in the industry despite not worrying about piracy or having a large business install-base.

It's the same way and more so with the iPhone... Everybody and their mama is releasing touch screen hardware now, the differentiator is the software, including the App store and iTunes. And Apple is giving that stuff away. So obviously they're making their money on the hardware, but that doesn't mean that if we started selling the Apple hardware with Google's operating system it would stand on its own against the same hardware running OS X.

ignoring the obvious, Dell would not pay 400 dollars per box. In many cases that would be as much as the computer already costs.

I'm no economics major so i can't say definitively. I just have a sneaking suspicion that they can't play the OS X license game and expect to make more money than they are now.

The economics would more closely be tied to a large license, i.e. 100 million or some large number to offer it on all (specific?) models.

Doing that would completely kill their hardware, which they have obviously invested in bigtime (unibody).

At least that is one line of reasoning. Someone will more knowledge of economics/computer industry could probably be much better suited to this line of argument.

I think its fairly obvious Apple will NOT license out its OS any time soon, and to think otherwise is naivety.

Ok so loads of good reasons why Apple won't release a Universal OSX.

So what is the big thing?

I say it's new hardware. Something that ties into the digital hub. Could be released along side iLife 09.

well I want a tablet with a 6" screen with all the functionality of the iPod touch and a graphics good enough for gaming - and tv out.

but Ireland say's it's software and it's big - if so it's gotta be OS related I reckon.

And I stated there may be more pure profit in a single OEM pack of OSX / iLife and iWork than on a computer. If the deal is right.


This is an old argument. It goes like this...

This is the "Macs are crappy but OS X keeps them selling - argument" - I have never found it very convincing.

Despite the mark-up Apple computers are still good value.
In a post OEM world the sky would not have fallen. Mac computers would *continue* to sell well, especially those lines which are well-designed and which have unique selling points. Apple does not sell beige boxes.

Selected PC Vendors would offer OS X as an alternative upgrade to Vista. The upgrade would add $150 to the price. The iLife iWork bundle would be the big selling point.
Apple would realize as much profit from the sale of the OEM pack as the sale of a Mac.

Furthermore these customers are candidates for dot Mac subscriptions, and annual subscriptions for iLife and iWork.

Further furthermore. These customers are more likely to switch to Apple Hardware if they enjoy using OS X. The iPod halo effect is real.

C.

I think it'll happen within 3 years.

Computers in the traditional sense, laptops and desktops, are increasingly becoming a commodity. Its getting harder and harder for Apple to distinguish their hardware from others in order to command a premium price.

The iPhone is the future of Apple. Its much more resistant to commoditization. As it becomes a larger and larger piece of Apple sales and profits, it'll be easier for Apple to exit the 'computer' hardware biz and just license OSX to others to make the hardware.

It'll happen sooner than people think. Look at the netbooks. Cheap commodity hardware and it's selling like gangbusters. That's Apple's weakness. The have no answer for that and that's where things are headed.

You mean like the $400 that Apple makes on every iMac sold. And that was at release, over the life of the product component cost continue to decrease.

Sorry buddy, no dice.


Maybe the reason you don't find it convincing is because you don't understand it. Apple does not "invent" hardware. The parts inside of every computer/mp3 player/iPhone are 3rd party components available to everyone. Apple's innovation is in design "making things pretty." A large component of the population couldn't care less if there computer was pretty or not, they care about the function.

The argument is not that Macs are crappy- first of all, I think it's incorrect to refer to only the hardware as a Mac- I consider the hardware+OS a complete package as does Apple. Secondly, even if we consider just the hardware, it is *better* designed, etc. but not better-enough for people to select that hardware with the inherent increase in price just for itself. How people do you know (besides Linus Torvalds ) who buy Macs and only use them with another OS?? Even for the Laptops (which offer the most significant hardware advantages over other machines) that number is very, very low.


Again, this is wrong, wrong, wrong. (And that's even ignoring the cost to develop, maintain, and support an OS, which is MUCH higher than for just hardware)

People like you have been saying "that's where things are headed" for more than a decade now, and Apple has no problem bucking the trend.

And I'm not sure you know what the word "commodity" means.

Funny you should mention the iPhone: [shout] The iphone is sold on the same model as the Mac. Hardware plus Software FTW! There will be no separation anytime sooonnnnn![/shout]

Getting back to the important business of this thread:

It seems the people who want iMacs with quad core may be in luck giving the rumors going around.

And another Tuesday has come and gone without a mini refresh.

And on the "Big Thing" front, no news, no rumors. Is it really possible that Andy Ihnatko and Ireland have better sources than Kasper and Arn?

I'm still down with the Windows API's for OS X, sorta. I mean the only argument against it is that it would be very difficult/impossible to do, because it hasn't been done before. But we could easily be overlooking something that Apple legions of programmers have not.

For example, what about if you had to purchase a copy of Windows like you currently do with Parallels and Boot Camp, but then it was installed into a "compatibility layer" instead, which operated using a CrossOver type approach. Would that allow Apple to license the Windows API to make it easier to implement, instead of having to reverse engineer everything?

As much as I hate to feed the Windows-over-OS X idea, it's worth pointing out that Apple is already a licensee of the Windows API through the patent cross-licensing deal with Redmond done in the late 90's.

I've only been saying it for about a year.

Apple now have a platform to transition to with the iPhone. They've not ever had before.

I agree that there have have been some who have said this for some time, but now I think they're going to be right.

Time will tell.

Yeah, but I'm not sure what that license means.
Is doing something like CrossOver included, or only making other programs using that API.

If it were as simple as paying Windows some licensing fees, I would have thought CodeWeavers would have already done it. I kind of think that Microsoft's license probably doesn't let you use it in that way...

No, Apple and Microsoft resolved long-standing patent disputes in the late 90's by cross-licensing each other's technology.
Codeweavers and other outsiders do not have access to the APIs that Apple does.

The license Apple has (as far as I know, since I am not privy to the details) isn't a usual license as most people use the term - it's a cross-patent sharing. Anything MS had in its portfolio prior to date X, Apple can use free and clear, and vice versa. There are no fees, there are no stipulations like you're thinking, in the usual case of these things. It's a straight swap of IP usage licenses.

MS isn't about to license the API to anyone else, this was a "just make all the legal problems go away" move between them and Apple.

Edit: Argh! Beaten by Frank777

Well, that's pretty hopeful, then.

Except the "prior to date X" part. What does that mean for programs that only run in Vista or Windows 7?

So... since I mentioned adding Windows APIs to OSX a certain green leprechaun has been pretty quiet...

That means it must be true!

Or that he drunk so much Irish Whiskey that he passed out...

The iSupply $400 profit needs adjusting. You need to factor in some free aftersales care, inventory costs, shipping etc. Let's call it a more realistic $300 for an iMac. Probably $100 on a Mini and on the cheapest MacBook.

Now Imagine if the OEM pack was $250. (pure profit)

If you run the numbers.....

CurrentScenario: 10 iMacs = 3000 profit
TotalCannibal: 0 iMacs, 10 OSX Dells = 2500 profit (-500)
HybridCannibal 6 iMacs, 10 OSX Dells = 4300 profit. (+1300)

With these numbers - total cannibalization of all Mac hardware would produce lower profit as you suggest.
But.
Even with a bit of cannibalization, a greater volume of OS X units would create more profit. And I don't think cannibalization would be that severe. (With the exception of the Mac Pro which is due a refresh.)

Spreadsheets are fun.

C.

And you don't think your "pure profit" needs adjusting for aftersales care, inventory, and shipping?

To be more realistic, you would raise that profit per computer sold, since, as I said components costs drop over time, and Apple is a very high volume buyer with significant discounts.

And if Dell was paying Apple $250 for every computer they sold, where would that leave their price to the consumer? Again, if the Dell machine is costing just as much as Apple's cost right now, why would that drive the market growth you predict? Why would Dell even go in for that? Do you think OEM costs are higher than retail cost? Because they're not...

Yeah, spreadsheets are fun when you just make up stuff and type it in with no consideration for how the real world works.

No. We are talking about a disk - not a huge fragile box. Dell just switches the Vista OEM pack for the OSX OEM pack.


Tweak it $50 - See what difference it makes to the numbers. Apple is under intense pressure to cut margins. Not increase them.



The OS X upgrade option would add $150 to the consumer cost. Possibly less. Vista OEM may be $150.

Dell understands that consumers see OS X as more valuable that the virus-prone Vista option - and the "free" iLife and iWork inclusion would be seen as a major selling point. Much cheaper than Office.

C.

The only thing that would make my jaw drop is if Apple said our iPhones were all satellite capable and Apple (secretly) launced a wordwide network of satellites and that we'd no longer have to use a third-party network and our iPhones would work anywhere on Earth with unlimited use at no cost!

OK maybe I'm dreaming but that WOULD make my jaw drop! :P That's one way to ensure worldwide dominance!

Some of you guys are making a mountain out of a mole hill....

If Apple decides to license out the OS X, they will do it on their terms. They will not allow Dell and HP to have OS X boxes sitting next to a Mac OS X box for hundreds less. What you will see in BB is this:

Apple iMac - ~$1300
Dell iMac Clone + License for OS X from Apple - ~$1300
HP iMac Clone + License for OS X from Apple - ~$1300

If Dell and HP don't want to sell OS X clones, they don't have to. It's their choice. I would bet they would. But there is no way in hell Apple will allow them to undercut them so drastically. Apple will require Dell/HP/whoever to follow hardware standards that they write. That means everything from power supply, to motherboard, to NIC, to future expansion will be dictated by Apple (software too). Apple will end this sh*t of a thousand variations of the same thing...

What is the incentative for Dell/HP? Both Dell and HP can sell their iMac clones to businesses, by the ten of thousands... A market that Apple doesn't want to touch.

Both Dell/HP could further subsidize costs of their iMac clones through business service contracts, support agreements, number of units sold, etc.

And to top it all off, the geeks that want to build and tinker with their homebrewed OS X boxes they can knock their socks off.

Licensing of OS X is coming. This is why Apples hasn't killed Psystar yet. Mark my words.

Yes, because the development costs are $0...

Exactly. The software development costs *are* zero.

This software is written already. The only possible additional development cost is creation of new hardware drivers - which could be...

1) Avoided by adopting Apple reference hardware
2) Borne by the hardware manufacturers

C.

So OS updates get written themselves?

Errm. No.

Maintaining an OS is an expensive thing to do.

Which is why finding more customers to pay for it is clever.

C.

Soooooo... not pure profit then.


Unless the ensuing support costs (call centers, patches, other hardware support, etc) grow faster than your revenue.

Do you *really* think that Apple would relinquish control of the quality of such a necessary piece of the user experience such as hardware drivers to third parties? I can't see it. Which means they'd be responsible for writing it to make sure it was up to their standards. Which means that each new model would be a new cost to Apple, plus support costs for any new customers.

I just don't see it happening, based strictly on the financials.

Yes pure profit.
With no *additional* cost of development - even one additional sale is pure profit.


What cost? What patches?
OEM Licensees would use Apple reference hardware. OR pay to develop drivers which would have to be licensed by Apple at the licensees expense.

Aftersales calls might well have to go to the hardware vendor first. When Dell's break - don't you call Dell?


Relinquish means "letting go" of something.
Keeping something on a really really tight leash is not the same thing at all.
Apple can insist that licensees jump through hoops and pay for the privilege.

C.

Really, you have no idea what you're talking about, and it shows in this post.


Apple still has aftersales costs (support, updates, etc.) inventory and shipping, meaning that it is not "pure profit"


WTF? "intense pressure" from who? Apple has the best margins in the industry and they are doing well financially because of it. They certainly aren't responding to that "pressure" given the themes in this thread about how long they go before refreshing their hardware.

And now you're throwing in free iLife and iWork in with that $250 as well, it just doesn't add up.

Even the $150 increase in cost to the consumer, would bring Dell boxes in line with Apple's prices. Then what advantage would anyone have for buying the Dell? How would that drive the miraculous increases in market share?

The whole idea you're proposing is just preposterous.

Everything you've said up to this point is fine, except for one point: there is no incentive for Apple, Dell, or consumer to care one way or another in this situation. So then you addressed the incentive by saying:


Where do you get the idea Apple doesn't want to touch businesses? Business are not buying Macs because they're more expensive feature-for-feature at the lowest end. Believe me, if companies want to buy tens of thousands of Macs (and there are some that do), Apple would have no problem supplying them, sames as they do with schools and Universities.

In your fantasy scenario, businesses that are currently buying PC's would continue buying Win-Dells, and some companies currently buying Macs would buy Win-Macs instead resulting in lower profit to Apple.


This completely contradicts what you stated above about Apple licensing on their own terms with hardware standards and restrictions????

Oh, and by the way, Apple is currently *killing* Psystar. In case you hadn't heard.

BACK ON TOPIC (Ireland style)
The only other software/service related announcement I can think of that could be a pretty big deal.....

App Store/SDK for AppleTV!!!!

Would it be enough to breathe some life into the platform?
Maybe a link to the iPhone/iPod Touch to complete the package

First, to correct one misconception, businesses pirate like crazy. Any number of developers have found out that that one $40 license they sold to Company X has been running on 10,000 seats for the previous 5 years. No sector has a monopoly on saints.

For the first time in the roughly 150 million year history of the Clone Wars I can see a bit of a case for limited cloning, but not enough to justify it. Just for fun, I'll spell out what I see.

First, ignore the "OS X" trademark filing. The iPhone is not a Mac. Neither is the iPod touch. That's what that's about. Steve has been using OS X this way in presentations for about two years now.

Now, look at the conference call results: Desktop sales are in free fall, plunging 25%, but laptop sales more than made up for it, and Mac sales actually increased year over year. Laptops accounted for 71% of all Macs sold this past quarter. I assume that Apple is frantically evaluating its desktop strategy to see what can be done about this, but I think they realize that the desktop is becoming a niche product.

So: who cares if some company wants to make desktops running OS X? Why not let them? Apple is not in the same circumstances it was in the first time: Licensing wouldn't be a survival strategy, but a hit it's in a position to take in order to increase market share, right?

But this argument defeats itself: First, how do you increase market share by selling into a rapidly contracting market? Why take a hit when you don't have to? Second, what company in their right mind would buy in seriously? It's a low-profit market. Many companies start there, but always with the goal of clawing their way up to the more profitable premium markets. That's just good business sense. So Apple can either go to the trouble of enforcing a desktop-only license (how?) and getting an anemic response, or they can fight off an ambitious company that wants to sell OS X laptops in direct competition to the plum markets that Apple has cornered. That's what the Mac OS cloning companies did the first time, and that's what the real problem is.

A lot of Windows' reputation for unreliability comes from the fact that it must accommodate an uncontrollably large number of drivers for a sea of hardware that ranges from rock solid to junk. Microsoft has tried strenuously to tackle this problem, but since they don't control the hardware platform it's hard, expensive, time consuming and thankless. Apple is a much smaller company. They don't need a much larger problem space. (And yes, if a driver fails, the system vendor is involved and the system will get blamed by users. Microsoft has been there, done that, got the t-shirt).

Can't be done without hardware restrictions built into the vendor's machines. This means new lineups have to be made to accommodate Apple's OS. If they don't, people will simply get hold of the copy of OS X that loads without hardware checks and share it online with the world and people will just use it on all sorts of hardware.

This is what happened years ago. Apple licensed their product to 3rd party vendors and they just didn't pay up and it nearly took Apple 'down the shitter' to quote Jobs so they abandoned the program. Unless they have some smart way of protecting themselves, there's no way they are going there again.

On the subject of the Windows APIs again, this stuff has been going round for years:

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/200...ndows-license/
http://www.marco.org/269

Something in that last site caught my attention though:

"The PE loader in Leopard is a pretty clear sign that Apple has at least experimented with this idea in the labs."

The portable executable loader seems to be for loading Windows binaries:

http://www.cultdeadcow.com/tools/pewrap.html

I hadn't heard of there being evidence of such a thing in Leopard. Surely if this was the case then it's pretty firm evidence for this to be the case. Why would Apple even have this in their OS is it wasn't for a Windows compatibility layer?

http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine...er/060846.html

"Upon further research I found that the Mac loader seems to have its own undocumented PE loader built in. So this leads to the question. Whats going on? Is this a hold over from EFI which is PE by default? Why would the OS need to load the EFI files? Maybe just for easy of development and testing? Or is something else going on? Is Apple going to be adding a win32 compatibility layer to OS X? Is having a native PE loader of any use to us?"

"This is new to Leopard. On Tiger, dlopen rejects PE files as expected. PE Files were rejected on Tiger, which is interesting to me because I don't think that this is just a hold over from EFI support. I think it may be a sign of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X."

"More information

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darw.../src/strip.exp

which contains

# local symbols to suppress
*PE*
*Win*

The project file references ImageLoaderPE.cpp, but that isn't included
in the source...
all the other files are here, so yes it really looks like they are
trying to hide support for
PE. Why would they go to all this trouble to hide Windows Binary support?"

The security issues that could arise from such a compatibility layer could of course be gotten around by sand-boxing, which they introduced in Leopard too.

It's a much more likely scenario than OS X licensing because it means that people who buy or have bought Mac hardware benefit from it, not Apple's hardware rivals. It also scores some points against Microsoft as people don't have to pay licenses for Windows. It could of course mean that people will be less inclined to develop for the Mac in some cases but it could also be the ultimate tool in persuading developers over to the Mac platform as they can develop and test everything easily from one machine for both Mac and Windows users.

They might even jazz it up a bit so that Windows apps run inside semi-aqua (or whatever SL will have) instead of their usual uglified interface.

The big problem with this is there isn't a good UI for interaction with apps on the Apple TV. If Apple went with this, they would basically be getting into the PS3, XBox, arena. I'm not sure they'd go there only because Apple usually enters markets when they have something really amazing that will revolutionize the market. I'm not sure what there is in this arena to revolutionize.