timothyjoelwrig said:
The ugliness of the O/S market is you can't create a real alternative. At least not easily enough to be competitive. Especially for the home market, no one's done it since Microsoft took over.
This is definitely a negative thing. Yes, we'll live, but this decision is very disappointing, especially to those of us who value that kind of freedom. Surely what I value as a customer is important enough to permit me to at least complain?
If Apple has any sense, they know that no code is truly "closed source" to the determined cracker. Given that, I can't see a profitable reason to close the source except to hide new technologies -- but given that Mach is a microkernel, surely almost any such technology could be moved to a module?
Honestly, I think Apple (and rabid Mac bigots -- the ones that make the system look bad) need to accept that not only will Mac OS X run on non-Macs whether they like it or not, but they would probably make more money if they sold it separately. Would non-Apple PCs be as good? In most cases not, so Mac hardware would probably still sell, maybe even more so once people got hooked on the OS.
So, maybe they're not "big bad business," but this is bad news to me.
