Comments on: Clone Wars.

ZDNet's Jason Perlow responds.

[GaryPatterson]

The thing guys like this miss completely is that business decisions are not made on the back of punditry. Or at least good business decisions aren't!

It's great that Slashdot/ZDnet/ArsTechnica pundits and posters say they'd rush out and buy OS X for 'general' PCs if Apple would change their licensing terms. That's just peach keen.

It's got nothing whatsoever to do with a business case though, or real data. And that's what will be needed for Apple to literally bet their company on a change like this.

I've never seen one of these posts that ends with something along the lines of "... and here's my business case that proves this would maintain or improve profitability. [links to document]"

Until real numbers backed up by irrefutable data appear, Apple-supported OS X on any PC is just a nerd wet dream, and should stay as such.

Hell, let's play with some numbers now! These are just made-up numbers, but they illustrate the point.
Say Apple sells 2M Macs each quarter with an average profit of $500 each. That's $1B in profit.
Say the profit on each copy of OS X is $100.
The number of copies of OS X required to replace the hardware line comes to $1B / $100 = 10M.

So, can we find 10M new customers every single quarter? No? Then how about we stay with hardware sales until that time?

Once people crack open their calculator they can quickly see how this idea of switching to a software-only model makes no sense whatsoever. It might get them a copy of OS X for their Dell or whitebox PC, but that'll become a collector's item when Apple goes bust because their hare-brained idea was a crappy business model.

I just don't understand how people can miss the part about Apple being a business. I see those articles and immediately think of the quote from Zoolander - "Can't anyone see this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

[bkharmony]

Meh. Jason's out of his league, as far as high snark; and out of his mind as far as licensing OSX. I know he's trying to be funny, but...

[Macalope]

But he's *trying*. That's worth a lot.

[Phalougher]

?Whatever freaky hermaphroditic PC action people are into at home is their own business.?

This makes me wish I had posted my idea for a comment in the original article, so here it is now:

?The Macalope likes your American ingenuity, Jason, but he's not hearing the words that brings this sleazy scenario to its tacky nadir: steampunk casemod.?

Tacky nadir: Steampunk casemod -- or hentai steampunk casemod? ...?

[Macalope]

Hentai steampunk casemod bukkake party.

[inafishbowl]

I enjoy the sparring, although I agree that Jason is out of his league.
Two questions I would like to ask those who support Apple licensing OS X:

1. Would you be willing to pay more for an "open" OS X, say double the current retail price of Leopard? Apple would need to recover the additional support costs somehow.

2. Would you mind Apple implementing a more stringent licensing/copy protection mechanism into the OS? Can't really expect them to leave it like it is.

[ripragged]

Steve Jobs' funeral will be scheduled weeks ahead of Apple licensing its OS again. I'll bet if you had the time (or inclination) to research Jason's archives, you'd find him somewhere comparing Apple to Microsoft in pejorative terms. They all do. Then they issue the suppository that Apple should mimic Microsoft (in pejorative terms). Oh, the absurdity of it all.