I'd bet that apple's greatest net profit centers are it's software products, not it's hardware.
Any evidence for that? Even if you assume that software is 100% profit and the hardware margin 20% the numbers favor the hardware. It would be hard to separate out development and engineering resource for hardware from those for software. Apple is really selling an end to end experience, and without the synergy from both hardware and software they would loose that. Plus many companies, especially the larger ones, report on revenue (gross profit) rather than net profit because that figure is a so much more relevant and important gauge to their success. I am not saying Apple will never support OS X on generic Intel boxen, just that such a tactic doesn't make sense anytime soon. [Disclaimer: the day before the Intel announcement I was ranting about how such rumors were pure fantasy.]
Contrary to opinions stated on this list, it *is* possible
No one said it was technically impossible, just that it wasn't allowed per the license. As you articulate well, many people feel ownership over software. Others, with more moral flexibility, feel entitled to steal the software. They rationalize that it is not a shrink wrapped box, so it is okay. Or they are not getting support anyway, why should they pay full price? I think it is like buying a book and re-arranging the chapters and substituting the names of relatives and friends for the main characters. The original author might be horrified, and you have degraded the product, but it is okay for personal use. Just buy the book first. People use cost as a reason they want to do this. With the current hack available, this is a non sequitur since modern specific components are required. If you are curios about OS X, a supported G3 iMac can be found on eBay for less than $100.
