Mac Clones. Good or Bad?

[halfprep455]

What would you all think if Dell amde Mac Clones? Personally I would have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand it would make Macs much cheaper and provide more software options. However, it would take away a lot of the uniqueness that Mac has. If Mac became more widely used, it would undoubitly become more vunerable to viruses and spyware.

 

[EricNau]

BAD!

Apple makes the majority of their profits from hardware - if they licensed OS X they would be handing all of their profits to Dell.

Plus, virtually everything we all love about OS X would be ruined, and we'd be left with another Windows.

 

[Benjamin]

been there, done that, steve killed that. Bad.

 

[TheDance511]

I aggree with Eric Nau on this one folks.... i do believe that macs are their own...not some 3rd rate microsoft product. I think if you own a mac there is no reason you should need windows as it does all the same things.. and macs are tha shizit

 

[0007776]

I don't think that it would be any better to do it now than the last time that they tried it.

 

[halfprep455]

the more I think about it, making clones would just make Mac OS another Windows. Before you know it there would be viruses and spyware for mac. You would have to get Norton Internet Security. A new Mac would have a bunch of crappy software pre-loaded on it by the PC manufacture. It would completly destroy what makes Mac unique.

 

[johnmartin78]

OSX is great because it runs on the great hardware.PC manufacturers assemble a machine by getting one of the best processors,a great video card,a decent ammt or RAM,and a bunch of garbage components and throwing them together.Thats half the problem with windows,the components in the machines they run on have no synergy.

 

[flyfish29]

B A D!


for all the same reasons it didn't work last time they allowed it!!

Does anyone remember those kit cars in the 80's where you could buy the kit and a VW bug and make a porche out of it. The kit in this case would be the Mac OS and the VW bug would be the Dell and what would you have...something that looks great at first glance (start up) but runs like crap!

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Bad.

Apple has survived because it markets itself as something other than a run-of-the-mill OEM.

Apple will never outsell Dell, never out-muscle Microsoft. They will succeed because they offer a one-stop shop for PCs and digital lifestyle gadgets that compete in the mid-high end market, with unmatched integration and industrial design, plus a competitive OS.

Clones would be antithetical to this business model.

 

[bousozoku]

Bad.

I love my PowerComputing Mac clone from 1994 but they hurt Apple a lot. NASA and other groups bought clones and while Apple got minimal licensing fees, they lost big hardware sales.

However, Apple didn't move quickly enough to produce new and upgraded models, having something like 23 motherboards in production at the time Steve Jobs returned.

I bought my clone because Apple didn't have anything competitive at the time but to ask them to do that again, it would ruin them. They are producing competitive machines now.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I have to say though - one of the coolest Macs ever was a clone, the Daystar Genesis MP and MP+. A quad CPU Mac from 1997!

 

[halfprep455]

I dont honestly think Apple will licence Mac OS to other PC compines such as Dell or HP. I dont think a Dell or HP Mac would be very successfull either. However, HP is having some success selling machines pre-loaded with Linux insted of Windows.

 

[Zwhaler]

Ugh... that would be a nightmare. Please don't let it happen Steve!

 

[RacerX]

I think it would be great! A truly novel idea... why hasn't anyone thought of this before!

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[Sun Baked]

I think it would be great! A truly novel idea... why hasn't anyone thought of this before!

The novelty for these lazy newbies who cannot bother to search for a similar thread, is a normal big welcome to wasteland, or tossing the thread into the political section.

But they seemed to have missed the proper forum by a mile this time around.

Cannot wait for the free iPhone threads to start showing up.

Edit: Seem to have forgotten the big MacRumors welcome for the novel and repetitive topic picture...

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[Mammoth]

If anyone is making Mac Clones, it is not gonna be Dell. May sound crazy, but Sony would fit because they half care about their design. (VAIO TX.. yum)