Originally posted by Winston
agreed...
ah well but i guess the OS itself was written in itself to suit the hardware they have
i think having just a set number of hardware types really eliminate alot of errors within the OS, as the OS doesn't have to be written to support 250000000000000 types of hdd, or RAM, or motherboards lol
Apple's use standard parts for RAM, HDDs, Video cards, Sound cards etc. The only part that is Apple specific is the processor.
Edit: Now that I think about it though, the way the RAM, AGP Slot and Processer interface on a PC (North Bridge) is probably different from that of the Mac. Still its obvious that if they did release MacOS for PC's it would be rewritten, and written well.
[Rant]
Macintosh OSX is arguably the best user operating system available at the moment, even I wont disagree with that. However Apple have dug themselves a hole in only supporting their own hardware. While from a "customer support" model this is an intelligent and worthy direction to move in, from a financial and share direction this is the one critical factor.
If Apple moved away from only supporting their own hardware and began support of at the very least, the ia64 standards for even the OSX Server (i386 would be nice for workstations however) then their OS market share, and thus the potential redirected to their "optimised hardware" would increase beyond imagination.
The single sole and only reason that Apple is losing market share, losing customers, and ultimately losing appeal is purely because their business model is fatally flawed. They are over specialising their market, and thus drowning themselves in their own idiocy.
Before the first Mac Zealot attempts to post sales figures and revenue, can we please first visualise the existing userbase purchasing trends over the past 10 years? With the advent of the PowerPC Mac's took off, and sales increased. At roughly OS8 sales reached a peak and died. The Mac userbase stopped spending money, and there wasnt any new blood (except education and govornment deals) feeding the pot.
Now, when iMac, the G range, and OSX were released, the existing Mac userbase went on a spending spree to "keep up to date" and this directly reflects on Apple's bottom line. So dont shove sales figures in my face - I am more than aware of the business trends of Apple and I am not blindly influenced by a single bottom line figure to ignore the actual REAL reasons behind its size.
MacOS had massive potential ... all Apple had to do is capitalise on this potential, which they didnt, and still wont, which is why Mac is a dead platform, not just dying, but dead. The developers are performing CPR by dumping new features and updates into the OS, but in reality Apple has flatlined and someone should sign the death certificate. The adrenaline charge that could recusitate Apple is supporting other architectures (ia64 and i386) ... but their hedonistic pride prevents this.
[/Rant]