[mdawson]

I have seen some poor straw man arguments in my day, but this takes the cake. So let us look at the Macworld article that you improperly cited and intentionally quoted from out of context.

The article was posted on July 19? of 2007 in reference to the then new 8-core BTO option on Apple?s online store. The dual quad-core option was an addition to the BTO options for the first generation Mac Pros introduced in late 2006. At that time, it was one of the first, if not the only, 8-core desktop option on the market from any PC OEM. Also, at that time it was an option and not representative of the Mac Pro line. As the article clearly states in the first paragraph:

Quote

For software programmers eager to help their applications take advantage of multicore systems, or for Mac users who regularly spend hours compressing video or rendering 3-D scenes, purchasing the eight-core Mac Pro makes sense.

So yes, Macworld is recommending that Apple?s professional line of desktops are for professionals using professional processor-intensive applications. Imagine that. All your last post has proven is that you will go to any length to defend a position that has been beaten to death.

The $700 Psystar Open computer you are so belligerently propping up is not by any stretch of the imagination a professional system and even Psystar does not attempt to pass it off as one. That system is only truly comparable to a $799 Mac mini in terms of its performance and it was bested overall by the bottom tier iMac as indicated in another Macworld article as I already pointed out in the other thread. You have the audacity to compare your $700 POS to Apple?s pro systems when it is not even a match for Apple?s core consumer-grade systems.

As Grapho has already stated, by making bonehead statements such as,

Quote

Less than 1 percent of all computer users would do any 3D rendering. And since most people don't do this work, most people will be better off with a less expensive Quad Core or Core 2 Duo.

you are only making the case for a Mac mini to which Macworld has already demonstrated is the comparable Mac to your $700 Psystar. Surfing the net, writing papers, doing math?what are you in high school?, burning discs and using iTunes are not professional tasks and do not require a professional-level PC. So based on your needs, talking about the price point of the Mac Pro is non sequitur. You behave as if the Mac Pro is all that Apple sells because you cannot get it into your head that Apple figured out a long time ago that there is no need to manufacture tower systems in the consumer PC market. Every time you post you just make yourself look bad by comparing a bargain basement PC to a professional workstation.

You obviously do not understand the concept of a troll either as you erroneously referred to me as such. Nothing I have posted in any of the Psystar threads constitutes trolling, baiting or any other such negative forum activity. My record here on the Macworld forums speaks for itself, as does yours.

[jman3001]

Ok, let's answer the trollers.

Why are we talking about a $700 Psystar compared to a Mac Pro?

Answer: (and you should have gotten this without someone telling you) The cheapest desktop upgradable computer you can currently buy from Apple is a (base priced) $2300 Mac Pro Quad Core.

Next Answer: The Mac Mini is not upgradable with PCI Cards, Hard Drives, or Video Cards and fails to have even close to as many options as the $600 base priced Psystar machine, and therefore, is not comparable to the Psystar. It is not as good a machine on any level other than it comes in a cute little metallic box. The low-end $1200.00 iMac may have a better score using MacWorld's tests, but you can't upgrade an iMac unless you buy another overpriced iMac. There again, it has a very nice design, but won't let you do the modifications you can do with a low-end Psystar that is half the price.

Speed is not always the bottom line, so there's no reason to keep drudging it up. You also continue to talk about "just working". After a month, the Psystar $600 computer is "just working" better than my $3000 Mac Pro, because the Mac Pro has a few bugs!!

So, let's talk about time. I just wasted 3600 secs of my life calling Apple Customer Support for my Mac Pro. During my first call to Apple Support the automated system failed to understand the words "Mac Pro 8-Core" and ended up sending me to a dead line. Seems like Apple's geniuses should be able to set up a better automated system. But these are the same geniuses that sell overpriced machines that (in my case) worked well only 33.33% of the time.

A second call, where I bypassed the automated part of the phone message, delivered me, after several minutes of a ringing phone-line, to a man that appeared to be in India. (Way to Outsource Apple) Years ago to could talk to Americans in California, now we get Indians in India. Apple the all-American company that outsources their work. At least at Psystar you talk to Americans. Another reason to choose Psystar. And BTW, their response time to emails and phone calls is remarkable. They are a 5 Star support company. The call to Apple was to a NO STAR support company.

The Indian man had me do some very important things to my super computer Mac Pro. He had me Repair my hard drive from the bootable DVD disk, (the disk was OK to begin with, so the process was a waste of time) turn off the ability for disks to sleep, (which will shorten the life of the 4 hard drives installed and heat up the Mac Pro), and reset the SMU button, and he didn't know where it was located or how to access it. This walk through mediocrity wasted 3600 secs of my life and of course did not fix my super computer Mac Pro's 3 different problems. But I did get a nice Apple Case Number that I will use the next time I have another 3600 seconds to waste.

So, when we talk about speed, let's not forget about the wasted seconds used to talk to Tech Support in India.

Guess that's why MacWorld said you can skip the 8-Core and just use the Quad Core if you're not a 3D rendering guy, like the ones that troll this forum.

Yes, you can buy a $700 machine that will end up being better for you than an expensive PRO machine with bugs. Because the Psystar computers, "Just Work".

[sgupta75]

I'm sure the others have long since had their fuill of you, so as aPC user I will jump in one last time. Hang it up jman3001. You lost this argument a long time ago on the other thread before you evdn started posting on this one. Every time you post you only serve to make yourself look like more of a fool. You seem to be of the juvenile mindset that getting in the last post makes you the winner when all you are realy doing is demonstrating to anyone still reading this thread how truly pathetic you are.
Just like the otherhave stated if MACs are so overpriced and you are so displeased with MACs and your $700 Psystar is so great then stop buying equipment from Apple, switch to Windows and go away.

[jman3001]

{quote:title=sgupta75 wrote:}{quote]
>I'm sure the others have long since had their fuill of you, so as a PC user I will jump in one last time. Hang it up jman3001. You lost this argument a long time ago on the other thread before you evdn started posting on this one. Every time you post you only serve to make yourself look like more of a fool. You seem to be of the juvenile mindset that getting in the last post makes you the winner when all you are realy doing is demonstrating to anyone still reading this thread how truly pathetic you are.>

Well let's see what I've lost. I've lost a lot of money buying Macs for 20 years and then having them provide nothing more than designer packaging. But that's OK, because I just bought a computer from Psystar that has saved me half of the price of an iMac. So far, it's giving me a lot more than what I can get from an iMac.

BTW, if you're going to criticize people, make sure your spelling is correct. It really makes you look ignorant when you are trying to be pompous without the intelligence to know how to spell correctly.

>Just like the otherhave stated if MACs are so overpriced and you are so displeased with MACs and your $700 Psystar is so great then stop buying equipment from Apple, switch to Windows and go away.>

I already use PCs and I have for years, so you have nothing on me there. I've used macs for 20 years, so you don't have me there either. I know what I'm talking about and have given anyone that wants the truth the opportunity to here it. Apple has their hands full right now, because the curtain has been pulled on their long running game. Sooner or later changes will be made. For me, it makes no difference which way this lawsuit goes, I will no longer overpay for fancy boxes. My inexpensive Psystar is running OS X just fine.

[jman3001]

More reason for Mac zealots to be scared...........very scared!!!

The curtain has been pulled on the Apple monopoly........more later!!

http://efi-x.com/ind...anguage=english

[shawend]

I am not sure that I would have pursued the same legal strategy that Psystar is pursuing. However, one thing that I think everyone must understand about OS X is that the VAST majority of it is NOT Apple's code. Apples licenses the code for OS X. It would seem to me that anyone can use anything from the OS X software package that is licensed under any one of a number of open source licenses and Apple would have NOTHING to say about it. One thing that I think will happen with this case is that Apple will have to state precisely what in OS X they are accusing Psystar of infringing and it can't be the whole thing. Just my two cents but I would have to agree on the overpriced Apple hardware especially in the desktop space. After the premature death of my exorbitantly expensive G5 tower I will never go down that road again. My Apple notebook, that is a different story.
Shawen

[dbutenhof]

shawend said:

I am not sure that I would have pursued the same legal strategy that Psystar is pursuing. However, one thing that I think everyone must understand about OS X is that the VAST majority of it is NOT Apple's code. Apples licenses the code for OS X. It would seem to me that anyone can use anything from the OS X software package that is licensed under any one of a number of open source licenses and Apple would have NOTHING to say about it. One thing that I think will happen with this case is that Apple will have to state precisely what in OS X they are accusing Psystar of infringing and it can't be the whole thing.

Sorry, but that's naive and silly. Mac OS X runs on top of the Darwin Open Source kernel and runtime environment. Darwin, and FreeBSD on which it's based, are completely free. You can download the source from Apple and build your own fully functional UNIX operating environment based on Darwin, GNU, and X11, just as Apple has. Nobody disputes this. Knock yourself out. Frankly you'd be better off with Linux (at least unless you're a software developer) as you'll find many more pre-built binary packages already known to work on Linux, but that's entirely your decision.

Mac OS X is an enormous amount more than just another Open Source UNIX clone based on GNU; though it is indeed that as well. Mac OS X includes the applications and programming environment descended from Apple and from NeXT. None of this is free. It is invented, owned, and licensed under their terms to users by Apple. If you don't wish to use it, you don't have to; nobody is forcing you. Apple chooses to license that software only for use on its own hardware. Know why? Apple once tried licensing their software and found the result entirely unsatisfactory. That wouldn't have surprised Steve Jobs, because he'd already been through all that before with NeXT, which started by making and selling their own integrated system but eventually tried selling only the software for generic X86. They failed.

There are good reasons why they failed; why Microsoft would have failed as well had they not been able to run rings around the IBM giant's legs, taking advantage of its boneheaded arrogance. Bill Gates tricked them, bled their reputation for his own benefit, and dumped them on their backsides taking the "IBM PC compatible" market with him. It was great business (though not evidencing any personality traits any of you would likely appreciate in a friend), but it was a one time gold strike. David and Goliath. Nobody else has ever reproduced it, and probably never will. If Apple loses their software-hardware lock, Mac OS X will die. Even IBM in their heyday couldn't compete with Microsoft on its own territory. That's why Microsoft is a monopoly with power that needs to be reigned in under anti-trust regulations. (Though it turns out that even governments fear to slap Microsoft's wrist very hard, and then only when it's been unusually naughty.) Apple is not, never has been, and never will be. (And honestly I wouldn't want Apple, or Steve, in that position any more than Microsoft and Bill.)

Take Darwin. It's yours. It belongs to all of us. Have fun. The rest belongs to Apple. If they don't control it, it won't be long before nobody will even care who did. And then anyone who's not a die-hard Windows fanboy had better hope that someone can put the fire under Linux to pull together the splintered factions and develop a single workable desktop model that can replace it. (Which, incidentally, is highly unlikely because in the Open Source world, anyone can be a usability expert, and usually thinks they are.) It'll be our last hope before the world sinks into a steaming pile of Windows.

Quote

Just my two cents but I would have to agree on the overpriced Apple hardware especially in the desktop space. After the premature death of my exorbitantly expensive G5 tower I will never go down that road again. My Apple notebook, that is a different story.

Then buy something cheap and run Windows or Linux (or Darwin). And stop complaining that someone who worked hard to make something that isn't free should be forced to let you use it under your terms -- lest you find yourself in the same position.

Nobody ever said Apple, or Mac OS X, or Apple's hardware, is "mathematically perfect" -- except in comparison with Windows. (Which can make even the best hardware look bad.) But it doesn't matter; it's a package. If you choose to buy a Sony camera, that's cool. But if you'd rather have an SD card, sorry, that's just not a Sony. Deal with it. You don't get to say "I want a Sony and stick in an SD slot". Their product, their choice. YOUR choice is to buy or not buy. They make choices, so do I. Not only that, they have the same RIGHT to make those decisions as I do.

So stop being a spoiled whiner and get on with life. Download and build Darwin on your own, in fact. That will teach you some humility. ;-)

[jman3001]

Sorry, I will never believe for a millisecond that Apple would go out of business if they had to license their OS to people that wanted to install it on there own computer. Anymore than I will ever believe that Iraq was ready to attack America with WMDs. It's all politics and a desire to control.

Apple wants to keep their monopoly because it's a very comfortable game. We make the OS and to use it you have to buy our overpriced machines. Apple's OS and position was completely different in the 90s with OS 9 (not a great OS) and the clone makers. Apple had nothing else going for them back then. Today they have a much better OS, a bigger market share, iPods, iPhones, and iTunes. If they license their OS, they will make more money. There's no reason not to do it.

If Apple is worried about other computer makers stealing their business, then they should compete. That's what America is all about. If Apple makes the best computer for a reasonable price, why would anyone want to use another computer? They wouldn't. And I see no reason for Apple to have to support people that use their OS on another computer that's not made by Apple. That's not Apple's problem. But the fact that people buy Apple's OS, means they should be able to use it as they see fit.

It's all fairly simple, and I will never believe the Apple rhetoric that states otherwise.

[vulpine]

jman3001 said:

Sorry, I will never believe for a millisecond that Apple would go out of business if they had to license their OS to people that wanted to install it on there own computer. Anymore than I will ever believe that Iraq was ready to attack America with WMDs. It's all politics and a desire to control.

It is obvious to me that you choose to completely ignore history. Despite the fact that no WMDs were found in Iraq, at least one Kurdish village was completely destroyed by Iraqi-launched chemical weapons prior to 9-11. This means they clearly had the potential; it was up to our Intelligence people to determine the fact and up to our administrators to tell the truth. Somewhere, that is what failed. On the other hand, by doing what you so adamantly want them to do again, Apple almost disappeared in the mid 90's; they couldn't compete with their own authorized OEMs because, when given an option, the average person tends to buy the cheapest available, despite any flaws for the perceived up-front savings and ignoring the likely high maintenance cost.

Yes, I said High Maintenance Cost. Windows has caused the IT department cost of nearly every major corporation to go through the roof over the years, IT actually burning more money than nearly every other division combined! Why? Because corporations traditionally buy the cheapest available hardware for the job when talking about desktop computing. Only Windows and Linux runs on that cheap hardware; and because of the nearly-infinite number of configurations, usually using the cheapest possible components, Windows can't help but fail due to poorly-written code in the form of DLLs and drivers; totally discounting the very high likelihood of hardware failures.

History proved, in Apple's case, that permitting clones would do to Apple exactly what happened to IBM; and Apple doesn't, even now, have enough product variety to counterbalance the loss of PC sales as IBM did. Not, that is, without pumping the price of OS X to Microsoft's levels; thus voiding a significant part of the perceived savings you adamantly believe you will earn.

Quote

Apple wants to keep their monopoly because it's a very comfortable game. We make the OS and to use it you have to buy our overpriced machines. Apple's OS and position was completely different in the 90s with OS 9 (not a great OS) and the clone makers. Apple had nothing else going for them back then. Today they have a much better OS, a bigger market share, iPods, iPhones, and iTunes. If they license their OS, they will make more money. There's no reason not to do it.

You absolutely insist that Apple's machines are overpriced; and outside of certain "close-out specials" and specific one-off deals, Apple's machines are no higher priced than any other manufactured computer brought to the same specifications. Every attempt you and others have made to disprove this statement has ALWAYS left components out that cannot be removed from the Apple computer, instantly voiding your argument. Yes, I know you could BUILD one cheaper, so could I, but that's not the argument and you only attempt to distract your readers from the proven truth. Truth proven so many times that your arguments demonstrate just how much of an Non-Apple Zealot you are.

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If Apple is worried about other computer makers stealing their business, then they should compete. That's what America is all about. If Apple makes the best computer for a reasonable price, why would anyone want to use another computer? They wouldn't. And I see no reason for Apple to have to support people that use their OS on another computer that's not made by Apple. That's not Apple's problem. But the fact that people buy Apple's OS, means they should be able to use it as they see fit.

And of course, you clearly prove you are no better than the average consumer. You want your toys at the lowest possible price. You don't care that you might have to spend hours and even days of productive time and money repairing and maintaining that device so you can say "I bought it for $x.xx rather than $XXX.XX. In my own case, over the last year I have serviced my particular Apples twice; simply to add RAM. I have not had to take mine in for any kind of service since I first purchased it and simply don't need to waste time running malware checks or OS checks on the hard drive. I don't have to waste time loading and troubleshooting drivers for new USB peripherals I add to the machine; they're detected and ready to run as soon as they're plugged in. As of yet, no other OS or hardware manufacturer can make that claim. My savings is real and long-term. Yours is not.

Quote

It's all fairly simple, and I will never believe the Apple rhetoric that states otherwise.

And I will never believe yours.

[Grapho]

jman3001 said:

Sorry, I will never believe for a millisecond that Apple would go out of business if they had to license their OS to people that wanted to install it on there own computer. Anymore than I will ever believe that Iraq was ready to attack America with WMDs. It's all politics and a desire to control.

Please, don't bring the Iraq deal in to this conversation, because it is totally and absolutely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. If you are trying to make a point that some people lie so therefor, everybody is a lier, you are completely ignoring logical thought processes.

Quote

Apple wants to keep their monopoly because it's a very comfortable game. We make the OS and to use it you have to buy our overpriced machines. Apple's OS and position was completely different in the 90s with OS 9 (not a great OS) and the clone makers. Apple had nothing else going for them back then. Today they have a much better OS, a bigger market share, iPods, iPhones, and iTunes. If they license their OS, they will make more money. There's no reason not to do it.

So you know how to handle Apple's business better then Apple? Boy, you are not only delusional, but also quite pompous and completely off base. You presume to know better then the top executive team of one of the most successful computer companies in history?

Quote

If Apple is worried about other computer makers stealing their business, then they should compete. That's what America is all about. If Apple makes the best computer for a reasonable price, why would anyone want to use another computer? They wouldn't. And I see no reason for Apple to have to support people that use their OS on another computer that's not made by Apple. That's not Apple's problem. But the fact that people buy Apple's OS, means they should be able to use it as they see fit.

They do compete, actually competition is so fears, that they only command 3% of the world wide market. And for the last time, they MAKE OSX, it is their product, just like Windows is Microsoft's product. They would have NO choice in not supporting 3d party, if they licensed their OS. They would be LEGALY bound to support it, it would not be left up to them to support it or not.

Quote

It's all fairly simple, and I will never believe the Apple rhetoric that states otherwise.

I agree that is fairly simple, what I don't agree is your illogical irrational pompous erroneous stance.

[mdawson]

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jman3001 wrote:

>

Quote

Sorry, I will never believe for a millisecond that Apple would go out of business if they had to license their OS to people that wanted to install it on there own computer. Anymore than I will ever believe that Iraq was ready to attack America with WMDs. It's all politics and a desire to control.

As vulpine has already stated, just as you choose to ignore the numerous independent sources of fact that have been posted throughout this and the other Psystar thread from Labor Day weekend, you also choose to ignore history in your puerile rants. As I have stated previously, Apple was being run into the ground when they licensed the Mac OS back in the mid-1990s to a select few OEMs that were required to build Mac clones to very exacting standards. As such the Mac OS was guaranteed to work properly on those computers and dedicated Mac users starting buying the clones in droves despite the savings of at most $100+. Now you expect Apple to play into their own self-destruction by allowing any PC OEM to offer OS X with any POS system they opt to sell.

And your Iraq analogy is not only non sequitur but an affront to any intelligent following this thread. The Bush Administration?s misuse of intelligence to support an action that they fully intended to go ahead with anyway is in no way remotely equivalent to Apple protecting its brand by any stretch of the imagination. Apple is not posturing to sue to some underdog to protect some imaginary monopoly that people like you continue to erroneously believe to exist in your selfish, cheap fantasy world. Apple has as much right to protect their brand and intellectual property as any other company.

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jman3001 wrote:

>

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Apple wants to keep their monopoly because it's a very comfortable game. We make the OS and to use it you have to buy our overpriced machines.

Again with the BS premise of a monopoly where a monopoly cannot exist. Apple?s position is not different than that of any other company; you buy their product with the perks that come along with that brand or you forfeit those options by choosing to buy someone else?s product. If you go to Orlando, FL you do not get to sue Universal after to return home because they refused you access to Universal?s Islands of Adventure when you chose to spend your time at Disneyworld.

Quote

jman3001 wrote:

>
Apple's OS and position was completely different in the 90s with OS 9 (not a great OS) and the clone makers. Apple had nothing else going for them back then. Today they have a much better OS, a bigger market share, iPods, iPhones, and iTunes. If they license their OS, they will make more money.

Again, you are completely wrong and you keep making this argument after it has been torn apart ceaselessly throughout this discussion. You are like the drunk guy that just got his a? beaten and still refuses to shut up and stay down. But then as you have never been able to provide anything that substantiates your position anyone following this thread knows that this is really not about Apple, but about your ego. Every argument in defense of Apple offering its OS comes down to iWant? (1) therefore Apple had better provide; this is all about ego. Lexuses have features that set them apart as luxury cars, but you are not willing to pay $40K to $50K to buy a Lexus so Toyota damn well better offer up those features so you can add them to your ?93 Ford Escort and they better offer those options for less than $500. After all Ford?s economy car, or any Ford for that matter, is comparable to a Lexus.

jman3001 wrote:
>
If Apple is worried about other computer makers stealing their business, then they should compete.

If you actually knew what a market let alone market share is then you would know that Apple does compete. Apple has roughly a 5.9 percent market share. [color="#ff0000"]5.9%[/color]. Did you get that? [color="#ff0000"]5.9%[/color].
bq. Your market share cannot be anything less than 100 percent if you have no competition. Apple?s market share is 5.9%. In order to be a monopoly you must have control of most if not all of a market. Apple?s market share is 5.9%. In order to violate anti-trust laws a company must be in a position to abuse monopoly power. Ergo a company must be monopoly and Apple is not because Apple?s market share is 5.9%.

jman3001 wrote:
>
If Apple makes the best computer for a reasonable price, why would anyone want to use another computer? They wouldn't.

You must be either incredibly naive or ?. But in the end, we all know you are just incredibly selfish. People would buy something else because people are cheap. Otherwise the people selling cheap knockoffs on urban street corners would never make a sale.

jman3001 wrote:
>
And I see no reason for Apple to have to support people that use their OS on another computer that's not made by Apple. That's not Apple's problem.

No, you would not, because as every one of your posts clearly indicates, you know nothing about business, law or corporate responsibility.

jman3001 wrote:
>
But the fact that people buy Apple's OS, means they should be able to use it as they see fit.

People do not buy Apple?s OS any more than you buy a song. Short of paying Apple a few million dollars to get the code base and perhaps the development team behind OS X, the person walking into a store making a $130 purchase is not buying the operating system.
bq. Adobe acquired Macromedia and subsequently Dreamweaver and Flash for $3.4 billion; users purchase licenses for Dreamweaver and Flash for $400 and $700, respectively. Corel bought Painter and other graphics applications from MetaCreations; Painter users purchase a license to install and use Painter for $420. Apple bought NeXT and subsequently the NeXTSTEP OS for $400,000,000 and used it to develop OS X; you purchase a license to install and use OS X on a Mac for $130.

You cannot buy a product that a company has developed or purchased and continues to develop for millions, if not billions, of dollars for a few hundred bucks or less. As M. Kelly Tillery, a lawyer at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Philadelphia, told Macworld, ?If I license something to you, and say you can only use it in a certain manner and you breach that?it is in fact copyright infringement.? So just as the owner of a song has the right to prosecute you if your use of their song exceeds the fair use protected under copyright law, Apple has the right to dictate that their OS can only be used on their hardware.

jman3001 wrote:
>
It's all fairly simple, and I will never believe the Apple rhetoric that states otherwise.

Yes it is fairly simple, it has been explained several times over with citation and you still do not get it. The only rhetoric is coming from people like you, particularly as Apple has stated little of anything on the matter.

-----

1. iWant? is a trademark of leary hopefully used with his blessing. :)

[shawend]

That wouldn't have surprised Steve Jobs, because he'd already been through all that before with NeXT, which started by making and selling their own integrated system but eventually tried selling only the software for generic X86. They failed.


Wait, NeXT failed because they licensed their decent for the time OS on the x86? Not because their hardware software package at the time cost more than a BMW or Porsche? If Steve learned anything from NeXT it was that no matter how good your technology their is a price point that no one will buy at. Don't get me wrong, Steve Jobs is an excellent business man and Apple has done much better with him than without him. As such, I would attribute Apple's near death NOT to it's choice to license its OS but more correctly to colossal miss-management which Apple was famous for before Steve's return, anyone remember the 5 million Performaa MAC models.

Apple continues to struggle with a fundamental question. Are they a software company or a hardware company. As someone who has used EVERY version of every OS every released by Apple it has been and continues to be an interesting struggle to watch. Apple has been masterful at MARKETING the Apple hardware brand. My desire would be that someday they MARKETED their software to the same extent. But then they would have to decide to be a software company.

Shawen

[mdawson]

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shawend wrote:

>

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Apple has been masterful at MARKETING the Apple hardware brand. My desire would be that someday they MARKETED their software to the same extent. But then they would have to decide to be a software company.

And therein lies the underlying flaw in the argument to allow OS X to be run on non-Apple hardware. Apple is a hardware company.
bq. Does Garmin advertise the software that runs their GPS system? No. No advertises their GPS systems, because Garmin is in the business of selling their brand of GPS hardware. Does Nintendo advertise the software that runs the Wii? No. Ninetendo sells gaming systems not a gaming operating system to run on other OEM?s hardware.
Apple is no different in this respect, because the software exists solely for the purpose of enhancing the hardware and setting it apart from the competition.

As to your assertions that Apple?s hardware is overpriced, that is patently false and has been proven throughout this thread and others on this subject matter with linked citations from independent sources. Your analogy of the price of NeXT systems is also off base. NeXT workstations, like all UNIX workstations, were priced for the markets that used them: high-end professionals. NeXT workstations were no more expensive than the SPARCstations offered by Sun or, the IRIS, Indigo, O2 and Octane systems sold by Silicon Graphics, Inc. It was nothing for the companies that were buying high-end UNIX workstations throughout the 1990s to drop $10,000+ per box in order to work on projects with tight deadlines that generate millions in revenues. Those same companies would have spent much more on the mini computers and dedicated workstations available in the 1980s.

The introduction of OS X brought the UNIX workstation into the hands of the average computer user.As numerous tech correspondents noticed during the first few years of the 2000s at any number of conferences heavily patronized by uber-geeks, an increasingly significant number of Apple laptops were being seen in use by the very people that were the staunchest of the anti-Mac crowd in the previous decade. With OS X bringing UNIX to the Mac, *NIX users could suddenly buy a powerful UNIX workstation for home use without taking out a second mortgage and run real UNIX on laptops without having to resort to using Linus Torvalds? UNIX Lite (Linux).

For the average user, they get the benefit of having a system with UNIX at its core and hardware/software integration that no Wintel PC can match because Apple makes both. That places Apple in the unique position of being able to test each iteration of OS X on every single piece of hardware on which that version of OS X is to be compatible instead of a (hopefully) representative small sample group.

[jman3001]

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For the average user, they get the benefit of having a system with UNIX at its core and hardware/software integration that no Wintel PC can match because Apple makes both. That places Apple in the unique position of being able to test each iteration of OS X on every single piece of hardware on which that version of OS X is to be compatible instead of a (hopefully) representative small sample group.

>

Well, from my hands-on experience, OS X runs equally well on a Mac or a PC. UNIX doesn't seem to mind which computer it's on. The idea that Apple has to oversee the compatibility between the machine and the OS in order for OS X to perform properly is proving (on a daily basis) to be a bit of a sham.