Sorry, but your assumptions are incorrect, you can indeed install Linux, or any other OS for that matter if you would like on a Mac.. .its a piece of hardware, there is nothing that prevents you from changing out the OS if you choose to... So, that argument is incorrect.
I think a PC being sold with the MS OS on it is indeed being built to run that OS, otherwise the PC manufacturer has no reason to pay MS royalties to ship the machine with the MS OS... Last I checked no business is willing to spend money for something they don’t want or need if they have a choice.
I think this PC in particular is being built to be a Windows machine, because well, first and foremost its Microsoft... and they aren’t building machines to show off Linux, anymore than Apple would be. But you certainly could install it if you wanted.
However, and again, the market share for folks who are going to buy this to install Linux on it, is the same market share that are going to buy a macbook pro to install linux on it... insanely nominally small.
I love Unix, but the percentage of laptop owners running it, if you don’t count OSX as a Unix derivative, which it is, is a percentage of the marketplace that doesn’t measure a 100th of a percentage point.
That’s not short sighted, that’s the truth.
As I have said to others, lets wait a year and check the sales figures, and if we can filter out the give away numbers MS will certainly have to prop it up, lets see where things stand then.
*scratches head*
Hardware is hardware. If there’s nothing locking down the hardware to a specific OS, then you can install whatever you want on the hardware. There’s nothing unique about the hardware MS chose for their new platform. It’s all industry-standard hardware. Microsoft isn’t in the hardware manufacturing business.