Roll your own Mac--an idea for the future
With the only effective difference between mac and PC being a couple of chips on the motheboard, wouldn't it be nice if Apple would simply license the ability to run mac OS X to motherboard vendors for a nominal fee?
Think of it, you buy an ASUS AMD-64 mobo, marked up $500 by their deal with Apple, and you get to run mac os x on it!
better still: what if they made a dual booting mobo?
next thing you know, you have a HUGE demand for products Apple's making tons of money off of.
Motherboard vendors presumably have less overhead than Apple. With Apple making cash on each (profit-wise, possibly MORE than what they make off their macs), they wouldn't have to worry about market fluctuations making factories into "dead weight"--let the vendors worry about it!
Also, think of the liability savings of not having to support the hardware!
They'd still be more expensive than the equivelent roll-your-own PC, but they'd probably be cheaper than package deals for the consumer.
FINALLY, THE BEST PART: imagine all the hardware vendors that would start writing drivers for OS X!! it'd be like opening the floodgates. Now all these mobos are on the market without video cards, sound cards, keyboards, and mice. All the hardware mfgers would have to do is write drivers and *BAM* 3 to 4% increase in accross the board sales.
I donno, maybe I'm just tired and daydreaming again... but what would be the downside? if Apple made the fee high enough, it wouldn't matter.
Think of it, you buy an ASUS AMD-64 mobo, marked up $500 by their deal with Apple, and you get to run mac os x on it!
better still: what if they made a dual booting mobo?
next thing you know, you have a HUGE demand for products Apple's making tons of money off of.
Motherboard vendors presumably have less overhead than Apple. With Apple making cash on each (profit-wise, possibly MORE than what they make off their macs), they wouldn't have to worry about market fluctuations making factories into "dead weight"--let the vendors worry about it!
Also, think of the liability savings of not having to support the hardware!
They'd still be more expensive than the equivelent roll-your-own PC, but they'd probably be cheaper than package deals for the consumer.
FINALLY, THE BEST PART: imagine all the hardware vendors that would start writing drivers for OS X!! it'd be like opening the floodgates. Now all these mobos are on the market without video cards, sound cards, keyboards, and mice. All the hardware mfgers would have to do is write drivers and *BAM* 3 to 4% increase in accross the board sales.
I donno, maybe I'm just tired and daydreaming again... but what would be the downside? if Apple made the fee high enough, it wouldn't matter.
Comments
I'll stick with the Apple designed hardware scheme where the drivers work very well with the OS, thank you.
First: an iPod company
Then: a hardware company
Finally: a software company
Note: they already tried the beige box vendor route in the late 90's and it almost killed them.
Originally posted by sandau
also you have forgotten that Apple is:
First: an iPod company
Then: a hardware company
Finally: a software company
Note: they already tried the beige box vendor route in the late 90's and it almost killed them.
Travesty! Apple is first a computer/hardware company, second a software company, and third an iPod company! Or you could argue that Apple is first a software company and then a hardware company, but in any case, the iPod is a consumer electronics product that is not quite into Apple's core business (yet).
Originally posted by sandau
mmm, your 'BEST PART' sounds just like the worst part of windows...badly designed non operable legacy drivers that need to be supported = crashing system.
I'll stick with the Apple designed hardware scheme where the drivers work very well with the OS, thank you.
agree~
that's why i plan to switch..
Also, the reason windows XP sucks is NOT that it has too many hardware drivers. In fact, all the noise about that nonsense pretty much evaporated after '98 (ME, etc).
My home-built XP box has NEVER crashed. My OS X box has crashed more than XP has... I never use it for e-mail or web browsing though
The question is not whether it would sell--the people who can read a list of available drivers before they buy would save a bundle, and the people who "don't have time" or the ones among us who are just plain afraid of "scary" hardware diversity could just buy Apple package deals.
A dual Proc x86-64 computer (or maybe a quad, as I'm sure they're out) would kick the crap out of a quad powermac any day, and even with the $500 fee, and $130 OS X, it'd still be cheaper than a powermac. It'd probably do it in 32 bit mode too, so when Apple pulls its head out of its ass and makes a 64 bit OS x86, you'll be set for that.
In the meantime, you could boot into windows for your proc-intensive tasks.
Oh plus I get to pick what stuff I use. I mean 2 hard drives max in a G5? $3000 "super professional" computer with 2 hard drive bays? Not to mention off-board sound cards, REAL video cards (and a wider variety at that), more optical drives, and more expansion cards in general.
Not to mention waiting for new hardware from just 1 vendor.
This way we'd have product "updates" all year long.
And how would it affect Apple? well if that $500 price is about the margin on the average mac (which, after all is said and done, I think it is), they'd be selling way more product.
In fact, if you include the amount of service given out on applecare plans, they might even make more money off this "licensing" than off Macs!
People would buy this. I'm not saying close down Apple hardware, I'm just saying YOU shouldn't underestimate demand because of bias of "average PC components".. Btw, as a person who builds his own PCs, I can tell you Apple doesn't always buy the best parts, I do, and they're 1/2 the price Apple sells their parts for (do the math and see!)
And finally, if Apple loses nothing over this, there will at least be increased demand for video drivers for other cards. This will allow Apple to choose from a wider variety of cards when assembling new machines. Even future x86 powermacs could run these cards.
Apple would make more money and I'd get more options and a cheaper machine *cough* with better parts *cough*.
An HP Quad Opteron systen at 2.6GHz per core is over $10,000.
A PMG5 Quad is $7549.00 and will outperform the Xeon workstation in most tests...G5 beats the NetBurst Xeon any day of the week, even if it would choke against the Opteron.
Originally posted by Mr. Dirk
Travesty! Apple is first a computer/hardware company, second a software company, and third an iPod company! Or you could argue that Apple is first a software company and then a hardware company, but in any case, the iPod is a consumer electronics product that is not quite into Apple's core business (yet).
Didn't 51% of Apple's revenue last year come from "music-related" sales? iPods + iTunes? That's to say: iMac + PowerMac + iBook + Powerbook + Mac Mini ≠ iPods and music. That pretty much makes it a consumer electronics company, first.
Originally posted by StealthRider
A dual-core, dual processor (Quad) Dell Xeon workstation at 2.8GHz, with a Quadro 4500, 8GB of ECC RAM, 500 GB RAID 0, no floppy drive, optical mouse, DVD+/-RW drive, and no monitor or separate soundcard, blah blah blah, is $7704.00.
An HP Quad Opteron systen at 2.6GHz per core is over $10,000.
A PMG5 Quad is $7549.00 and will outperform the Xeon workstation in most tests...G5 beats the NetBurst Xeon any day of the week, even if it would choke against the Opteron.
In other news, I was talking about homebuilt PCs.
Get your prices from newegg or pricewatch
Athlon 64 dual core 4800 + ASUS mobo (asus = good brand) = $723
250GB SATA HD = $80
Geforce 6800 PCIe = $134 (note, Faster than G5)
Gigabit Ethernet PCIe = ($53 * 2) = $106
1GB PC3200 Dual Channel = $68 (note, twice as much as G5)
Equivalent Optical drive < $60
Case + PSU < $150
TOTAL: $1,321
So let's see if adding $500 + OS X is still cheaper than the cheapest powermac:
$1,951
There's an INCREDIBLE tax to buy a pre-assembled PC, and no real advantage aside from a warantee. If you can go without it, why shouldn't you?
The problem with Apple's previous whitebox experience is that they didn't license the ability to run OS X for high enough.
Oh, plus nobody was buying macs because they SUCKED. Well, I bought one but that's beside the point. Even the whiteboxes were in limited production. The biggest whitebox maker (power something) was a mere $5billion company when Apple bought them. The rest of the companies gave up or died off.
But now, the disparity between Macs and homebuilt PCs is too high to be ignored. It's not that Apple's margins are too high, it's simply that it costs a hell of a lot to do what Apple's doing. When all is said and done, the markup on the new iMac is, IIRC, LESS than $500.
And btw, iPods do make more money for Apple than their computers. If we were guaging it on sales, Apple would be this type of company (give or take
1) iPod
2) iMac
3) Powerbook
4) Other macs
5) Software