Brian's point is sorta the hardware angle of a larger question that has always troubled the Macintosh market. If Apple had released Mac OS System 7 on Intel hardware as it researched it in the very early '90s Apple, the hardware company, would have lost out in terms of their business model. The clone market brought this up again. When Mac OS X was first being developed as Rhapsody there was going to be an emulation layer for Windows software, prior to that Motorola had worked on a PowerPC chip that was going to be able to run x86 code as well as PowerPC code natively. The problem with each of these ideas is that if developers only have to write for x86/Windows then in order to cut costs that is all they will do. Currently the problem could surface again as MS bought Virtual PC and is bundling it with MS Office and Windows at almost no additional cost - why? Is it to up their marketshare? That will technically happen as more Mac users run Windows on their Macs in VPC. Is it a longer term strategy that MS will eventually justify cutting Macintosh versions of their software in order to produce only Windows versions that will run in emulation via Virtual PC?
We don't know, but due to the size of the Mac market the effects of a large number of us buying "PC" graphics cards or anything else and then using them in a Mac is very strong. Developers see those as "PC" sales and justify cutting Macintosh development and expanding PC development. Its a hard place to be as a consumer who should not have to pay out as high of premiums as we do for "Mac" versions of fairly cross-platform products.
David
On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 02:42 PM, James S Jones wrote:
How is this taking advantage of *them*? Clearly, the Mac part only differs in the ROM image, which probably costs ATI only a few thousand to develop. Moreover, most of the cost for coding of Mac drivers and ROM images is covered by OEM development for Apple. Oh, wait... there's package design. Those elaborately different Mac designs must cost a fortune--they probably do the work on Windows.
On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 12:21 PM, Brian Stewart wrote:
One interesting note about "hacking" pc parts to work on a MAC is;
If we take advantage of these companies they will discontinue manufacturing macintosh parts. I think it is BULL that they charge 2x or 3x as much for a Mac part over the identical PC part. They should charge a respectable amount for their R&D, but how much is a respectable amount?
comments?
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