Not to be rude, but you know, I really find it laughable that people here actually think supporting PC hardware is this nightmare scenario for Apple, or that it would be prohibitively expensive to do, thus giving some degree of business-case legitimacy to not selling Mac OS X to anyone.
First off, can you say "Linux"? Linux is a free OS, and yet there is an incredible verisimilitude of drivers in it supporting a fantastic range of hardware. And with a relative handful of exceptions, you don't see this wide-ranging driver support introducing significant stability issues into the platform. And typically those stability issues largely center around multimedia-specific components, particularly 3D mode graphics card support. And of particular irony is that the stability issues are introduced by closed-source drivers from the hardware manufacturers. However, there's already not much for us Mac OS X users to worry about since the hardware manufacturers have already written PPC and x86 drivers for Mac OS X, and they seem to be just fine.
Secondly, your better hardware makers generally write what are called "unified" drivers which support a range of hardware, and especially if Apple is paying them, naturally they'll give us drivers for Mac OS X.
Thirdly, and getting back to Linux for a moment, the overwhelming majority of drivers for Linux are written by the FSF/OSS communities anyhow, so inclusion of them into Mac OS X shouldn't really be much of an issue in a legal sense.
A lot of you either don't know or have forgotten that we largely got rid of Apple-centric, Apple-specific hardware when we switched over to the PREP (PowerPC Reference Platform) standard with the introduction of PowerPC-based Macs in 1994. Ever since, Apple's been streamlining the actual internals of the computers to greater and greater extents (such as with the CHRP -- Common Hardware Reference Platform), NewWorldROM Macs, and now with the switch to the x86 platform, a Mac seems to be little more than a custom-spec'd, firmware-flashed set of PC hardware in an Apple-engineered enclosure.
So, frankly, what's the big deal? The real question we should be asking is what is actually going on here? What's affecting the business case for keeping Mac OS X hardware-limited?
Apple initially introduced iPods with little more than cobbled-together software to make them work on a Mac. They then made a version of iTunes for Mac. And yet, even though Mac owners (clearly) were buying iPods, it wasn't until non-Mac-using computer owners started buying them that the iPod craze began. In fact (and this is a tribute to the tenacity of PC users to use an iPod "no matter what") that it was only through third-party hacks that you could even use an iPod on something other than a Mac.
And as much as it may well irk us Mac-dyed-in-the-wool, drank-the-kool-aid folks, we have Windows users to thank for the success of the iPod. Some might, at the thought of this, think they smell something fishy. Well, believe as you will about that, but clearly PC users are the ones who have driven sales of the iPod, not Mac users.
And then Apple starts to actively and publicly take advantage of the "halo effect". And then Steve Jobs comes out and calls Apple a software company. Yes, I know Apple's still making hardware (and for a number of reasons I hope they continue to do so) but are you not able to draw a line from A to B to C on this one, folks?
There are physically more non-Mac users out there, period. It's a fact of life. Therefore, even if Mac OS X only caught on with a relative minority of PC users, it would still generate far more revenue than if Apple only sold Mac OS X to Mac users.
An earlier poster said that Apple's (theoretical) sale of Mac OS X to anyone would not affect the average person buying a Mac, because the average computer user isn't an enthusiast. They buy a solution. Arguably, those with taste will buy an elegant Apple-engineered computer, as will those who want the status of owning a "Macintosh", but there's an absurd number of people out there who, for reasons practical, technical, or otherwise would never *think* of touching Apple hardware, even though they might drool over the proposition of running Mac OS X on their own hardware. Why in the world should Apple ignore those people?
It's time Apple admits the truth and changes their business case to fit the facts, instead of trying to do the reverse.
