John C. Dvorak: Will Apple Adopt Windows?

[az]

Apple is selling a brand, or an experience as you may call it. They need control over the user experience. They just wouldn't have that with Windows. That's also one of the reasons to not allow OSX to run on PCs (besides all the development problems and costs this would cause, and the loss of revenue). Remember before Steve Jobs came back, and most "Apple" computers were clones? They had almost no brand recognition then, they weren't very interesting, an apple computer wasn't different enough from all the random beige PCs one could buy for less.

[Technoid]

They've only brought in and outsourced the mainboard design with and to, respectively, Intel. This hardly relegates Macs to being PC clones. The rest of the systems are being designed just as before save for any changes that were necessary for the introduction of the Intel parts.

An iMac or a Macbook Pro is hardly a PC clone.

Opening up a mac and looking at the innards has always looked like a pc clone

You got a mobo with a cpu, pci bus, ide controllers, usb and firewire (if old enough serial controllers and the mac mouse/keyb controller)

Ordinary ide hdd and cd-rom.

now that the cpu is intel, there just isnt much in it that are "exotic" anymore

[Jessterw]

But that's the whole point, to say that all of the sudden Macs are PC-clones ignores the fact that the internals have always been rather similar. PC's used to have "exotic" processors running in them as well, but a PC with a PPC chip wouldn't have been just a Mac-clone.

The design of the systems as a whole is what makes them different from a PC (ignoring the OS).

[Gurm]

JW has a valid point. Windows used to be compiled for several platforms. While you or I might think that Alpha/PPC/etc. are "exotic", MS kept those compiles going because some of their biggest customers used them exclusively.

So Macs are no less "exotic" because their chip is an Intel. Gone are the days when the entire hardware platform of the Macintosh was some amazing thing, different in every way from a PC, all loaded up with SCSI and ethertalk and all that happy slappy. For years now, Macs have just been PC's with a chip from IBM. *shrug*

[az]

...and it isn't important.

What chips is your iPod running? What's the name of the controller in your TFT? Who makes the motor controller for the Bugatti Veyron? It's just not important.

[Jessterw]

Now you've gone and done it az, the platform zealots are going to lench you

[az]

The question is: What brand and model will be the rope they hang me with?

[Jessterw]

Samson Rope Technologies, 2-In-1 Stable Braid (double braided polyester)

[lowlifecat]

They've only brought in and outsourced the mainboard design with and to, respectively, Intel. This hardly relegates Macs to being PC clones. The rest of the systems are being designed just as before save for any changes that were necessary for the introduction of the Intel parts.

An iMac or a Macbook Pro is hardly a PC clone.

not a clone, but the memory is practicly the same, the hard drives, sound cards, video cards everything except mobo and CPU where the same.

Some stuff you can even use on PC (example: at work i got a cinema HD 30" on a mtrox dl256 plugged into a HP xw4300, works grea!).

Apple is just another HP/Dell/Gateway with proprietary OS is all.

[az]

HP is much more than Dell or Gateway, and still more than Apple. Dell does almost no R&D themselves. Developing an OS, the iApps, and leading in userfriendlyness is no lean feat. If it were that easy, don't you think Windows would be better than it is and we'd have wPhoto, wDVD, etc., and WMP wouldn't be the POS it is now? (No dissing here: WinXP works well and is reasonably easy to use for me. Not for my parents, though.)

[Sasq]

See, being the guy, that has to go hope on a really fast train, go to the customers, fix their *nix servers when they break.

Apple are the only company that produces a laptop that is out of the box posix OS capable that I am interested in dealing with. If for no other reason then having a posix OS on my lappy, to fix a posix system, already puts it above the rest.

Even with wintel, not all PC's are created equal, to say mac is now just another pc clone, even when discussing hardware, is just foolish.

[Jessterw]

not a clone, but the memory is practicly the same, the hard drives, sound cards, video cards everything except mobo and CPU where the same.

Some stuff you can even use on PC (example: at work i got a cinema HD 30" on a mtrox dl256 plugged into a HP xw4300, works grea!).

Apple is just another HP/Dell/Gateway with proprietary OS is all.

Again, many of the components have always been the same. Nevermind that a lot of what is in a PC now has come from technologies developed by/for Apple as well as other that were not PC companies in the sense that HP/Dell/Gateway are.

Wait, isn't Windows a proprietary OS? I'll ignore that you've shown your ignorance in thinking Apple is anything like just another HP/Dell/Gateway. SGI would have been a better comparison when they were still around.

[Gurm]

Apple the company, the OS, and the experience are NOTHING like a PC clone.

Apple the HARDWARE... has been very PC-ish for some time now. Going Intel is just another nail in the coffin that once was a modeless machine.

I enjoyed having a SCSI printer, ethertalk networking, and digital audio in the 80's all courtesy of the fantastical hardware that was a Mac.

My Apple IIgs was an amazing piece of machinery.

But a G4/G5/etc. is just a PC running a remarkable operating system.