Send in the Clones

[WrightBrain]

This is just an opinion piece, YMMV. But I was just thinking back in the 90's Apple licensed the OS to enable third parties to build PowerPC Macs in order to increase marketshare of Macintosh computers (Around 7%). And the program was successful. Too successful. They found that the clones were eating into their sales of the hardware that Apple themselves produced. Thus the clone program was Order 66'd by Jobs.

These days Apple seems to make most of it's money of it's iOS devices and accessories. The computer business is languishing at a 2.2% marketshare. So why not get back into the clone business? Obviously not everyone agrees, but it seems like the computer business is more of a albatross around Apple's neck these days so why not? They could license the OS and make hackintoshes official. This would keep the dream alive for the faithful, they'd still make money off the OS and the money they save on R&D can go back into their iOS and other services.

What do you all think?

 

[Fishrrman]

Ain't no percentage in that for Apple...
... so, it's not going to happen again.

 

[MacDawg]

Yes YMMV
I owned some of the PowerPC Macs from Power Computing and the hardware was inconsistent and uneven
There were issues which were hard to isolate as to whether it was hardware or software
1 unit was defective out of the box
And much of the clone hardware inferior and cheap
Which gave Apple a bad reputation and black eye

I realize that happens with Apple's own hardware, but I prefer dealing directly with Apple and not a 3rd party running Apple software

 

[WrightBrain]

Yes YMMV
I owned some of the PowerPC Macs from Power Computing and the hardware was inconsistent and uneven
There were issues which were hard to isolate as to whether it was hardware or software
1 unit was defective out of the box
And much of the clone hardware inferior and cheap
Which gave Apple a bad reputation and black eye

I realize that happens with Apple's own hardware, but I prefer dealing directly with Apple and not a 3rd party running Apple software

Yeah, my wife had one. But it was no more troublesome than a custom PC and it was a helluva lot cheaper than the Mac hardware. We didn't mind it because we were used to upgrading the mac towers and you always ran into kinks. No computer is trouble free - but most you can fix yourself.