Originally posted by pjkelnhofer
Maybe I should re-phrase my question. I realize that many parts are stand parts (after all why design a DVD-ROM drive from the ground up), I am looking for other people's opinions on why the like to use non-standard parts for a lot of things.
For the most part, I really don't think it goes past what carbonmotion said. They use what they think is best.
I look at it like this: Dell makes the most generic PCs it can. That's they selling point, why they're cheap, and why they're so popular for faceless corporate purchases.
The more stuff on their computers that is the same as everybody else, the better, regardless of whether it's the most elegant solution or not, because they're selling volume, not elegance, and since they move the most volume they'll always win on price. Using anything custom raises their price (they're mostly a hardware assembler and brander, not a designing company), which is bad, too.
Apple, on the other hand, asks "What's the best way to do this?" The answer frequenly involves standard parts--5.25" optical drives, SATA HDs, or FW 800, for example--but sometimes it does not. When there is no "industry standard" (not really a standard, more just what everybody else is doing), they don't take no for an answer and do something custom.
Hence the funky power supplies that feed the ADC connector (which, yes, all G4s since way back had), the ADC connector itself, the strage shape of some components (such as the G5 power supply along the bottom of the case), and their variety of motherboards. The disadvantage is, sometimes it's hard to find cheap replacement parts for Apple computers, and when they change something to make it more elegant it can leave users of older technology out in the cold (part of the reason companies like Dell can't afford to EVER do anything revolutionary, but Apple can). The advantage is it's the coolest solution for the given time--you've gotta admit ADC is amazingly cleaner than your average DVI connection--no screws, no seperate cords, no seperate power bricks for the monitor, etc.
It's a tradeoff, but one Apple is willing to make. Heck, if they weren't, the whole PC industry might never have made some of these advances, because nobody the size of Apple would've been willing to go out on a limb with them.
(By the way, it's worth nothing that Apple motherboards actually are roughly a "standard" architecture among Apple computers; they standardized most of the design back in the early iMac era, making it a lot easier to keep the software in tune with new computers.)
