Anyone thinking that just because they paid a "premium" for their Mac that they actually have any better hardware than an equivalent PC with the same specs is seriously drinking a little too much of the Apple koolaid.
Except for the DP Mac Pro buyers, of course.
In any event, a level-headed rational view is that
'Yes Virginia, There Is An Apple Tax' and its not for the hardware, but that jewel of OS X.
This is plainly why Apple is white knuckling the OS to the hardware. Without their crown jewel (OSX) inextricably embedded into their rapidly diminishing "premium" hardware - they would have to compete on the open market on the hardware alone - and except for their very low end (iPhone/iPod), Apple would lose a sizable percentage of their market share in a very short period of time. They just could not compete with much lower priced - but similarly outfitted PC that could run OSX just as well, or better than anything that Apple is currently selling - "Premium" design notwithstanding.
That's merely your guess at their business plan motives. Another one is that its technically fewer headaches to sell unlocked full OS installs on the honor system instead of pedantically packing it as the OS upgrade (that it is) and untrustingly locking it down with Serial#s and Dial-in registrations: not unlike the iTunes business model, they appear to recognize that there's an upper price point limit to how much they can get away with selling that box for before the price instead encourages piracy.
So it's easy to see why so many here on MR, and other MacFlack sites get nearly apoplectic when even the slightest suggestion of any kind of a decoupling of OSX from the Apple's hardware.
For someone who claims to have been around long enough to have witnessed the 'slow and steady demise' in hardware quality, you've somehow missed the lessons-learned of the 1990s. Instead of just complaining, how about trying to actually suggest a viable business case that doesn't consist of 95% empty air hand-waving.
They know that their position within Apple (many Cuperatino Apple Inc.'ers here), or their investments in AALP shares would end up take a major hit if OSX was ever "legally" liberated from Apple's "premium" hardware.
And many non-employees ... and non-stockholders either. Care to take a survey to see which group is larger? I strongly suggest that you promptly do so before making yet another unfounded derogatory insinuation.
The simple bottom line to this is that Apple could solve their OS X "linking" problem by changing their existing boxed product of OS X: just add a serial# and license registration system to the existing $129 box and re-categorize it as an "Upgrade". And for the folks who want to insist on allowing clones, have a second (similar) box that is nearly the same thing, but whose retail price is $1,001. However, the most important question is: would this be a viable business plan?
FYI, you'll note that I made the MSRP to be a dollar over rather than a dollar under, because this puts it into a higher legal category for 'theft' when the inevitable piracy starts to occur: this is not a superior business plan IMO.
If any of you have one tiny-tiny shred of someone else IP that you did not fully compensate them for.....well that just might seriously undermine your high and holy IP/copywrite dogma to it's core. If you live by IP purity, then you should die by it as well.
IMO, the first valid thing that you've said.
Of course, perhaps if you've done more reading at MR, you would have learned that the local culture is very strong on IP and Anti-Piracy.
Perhaps this has come about because the Mac has traditionally been a domain of 'Creatives' as their customers, so many readers here have significant IP investments, and their livelihood is thus highly dependent upon the continued legal protection of IP. This also would tend to explain why they don't steal IP from others too.
Unfortunately, this isn't everyone, which means that there's still a lot of misunderstanding as to how IP rights are sold.
Simply put, if a buyer of IP wants to have more unlimited use rights, he's expected to pay (significantly) more in the marketplace. If he wants all rights (buy the Copyright), its even more. Thus, the EULA is simply the converse: it is only providing a relatively narrow use set, which allows the IP product to consequently be sold at a significantly lower price.
The way that the system is expected to work is that if you don't like the restrictive provisions of the current EULA, then don't buy it. Instead, you contact the IP owner to negotiate the set of rights that you want ... and consequently, you're expected to pay a higher price in return.
There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
-hh
