Perhaps Apple should allow clones (again)

blangblang
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
If Apple were to licence OS X there would be cheaper Mac clones which would increase OS X usage, give Microsoft more competition and produce more software for the Mac platform due to the increased usage.



Perhaps it would even speed up development of faster processors.



Of course the clones would not have the asthetics of Apples own products.



Anyone agree?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    no don't agree at all. why would it increase OS X usage? why would people switch to a mac clone? it would just eat Apple sales like it did 6 years ago
  • Reply 2 of 6
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    The problem with this is that the total Mac marketshare doesn't increase (much), but Apple's sales decrease and thus they make less money, leading to lesser profits or losses.



    The only way I can forsee this working is if Apple had about 15% marketshare.



    And only then really if the hardware was decent.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,438member
    No



    clones= leaches



    They wouldn't be cheaper because Apple wouldn't be foolish and "give" away the OS like they did with the first round of clones(I hear they only charged like $50 for the OS..yet they had to do ALL the R&D).



    Cloning only helps if your market is already large. And the clones were less reliable. Cloning is a lose/lose proposition.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    airslufairsluf Posts: 1,861member
  • Reply 5 of 6
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    TigerWoods99 said no more than two weeks ago, "<a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=002372"; target="_blank">Screw Apple for killing the clones</a>". It was quickly shot down with the reasons why Apple ended the clones.



    This thread belongs where the other is: in General Discussion, not Mac OS X. I'm tempted to just close it, but I'll get the Gen D. mods decide on that.
  • Reply 6 of 6
    snoopysnoopy Posts: 1,901member
    Clones are a loser for Apple. But, there may be a way to get the advantages of a clone, without the drawbacks. I been thinking of business models. In the Windows world, Microsoft really controls the system. The hardware vendors have a bloody war to out sell each other, and very few make much profit. The only sure winner is Microsoft. So what kind of model can compete with Windows? What would give consumers real choice too? To win, the model must give business incentive to move away from Windows, and it must attract software developers. So try this on for size.



    Rather that a rally around a second OS to compete with Windows, as clones do in theory anyway, lets rally around a way to provide software that works on more than one platform. Well, Java comes to mind, but it does not encourage developers to write more Mac specific applications, and doesn't attract hardware developers to a new platform. However, what about a portable API that works on the PPC? This is a blue sky idea, and I don't know whether it's workable. Let's just talk about Cocoa, but it could be yet another PPC API that OS X could support like Cocoa. Apple sells a license for Cocoa, to be used on the PPC only. The new company gets the license and develops their own OS and hardware. The idea is that when this new company finishes the OS and hardware, any OS X software written in Cocoa will run on it. The user interface will look and act differently, but there will be software to run on it. That is likely the greatest impediment to a totally new system -- no software and few, if any, interested in developing it. With the Cocoa PPC license, business has an alternative to the Windows-hardware-vendor rat race. They can control the hardware and OS both. If this catches on, the market share for the PPC Cocoa camp will increase, and encourage more software development, which works on OS X of course.



    It seems like this model could be pretty effective in competing with the Windows camp. As the Cocoa PPC camp grows in market share, it attracts more software developers. It does not under cut Apple hardware sales, since no other computer will run OS X, just the Mac. If you want the cheaper box, you get the OS that goes with it, not OS X. Apple will still have competitors, but some of them will be able to run the same software. And this is good. Let's consider the extreme, but unlikely, case. If the Cocoa PPC camp kills off Windows, then the world would have universal software. There might be ten different operating systems, but they all run the same software.



    Comments?
Sign In or Register to comment.