The real coup would be to write an Apple OS that could run on any Wintel platform. Finally give Microsoft a reason to cut the bloat out of their bloatware.
At the moment the OS is very tied to specific hardware. This reduces the complexitity of development and keeps the design team lean mean and innovative. Once they see major marketshare gains however they'd have room to compete in this way.
Releasing it now would cost them valuable development hours and convince Microsoft to go into an all out drive against them (and MS is never afraid to LOSE money to kill off a competitor.
For now its probably best to let sleeping 'dog of an os's lie.
I agree.
If apple were to open it's os to the masses they'd gain alot of marketshare. Wasn't it Dell who hinted that they'd love to sell Apple's OS?
But Apple craves control. And as long as they desire as much control as they are trying to keep they'll find it very hard to gain alot of share.
Slowly, linux marketshare is creeping past apple's 2%. Just as Garner predicted.
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64504,00.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^After taking account for piracy, Gartner said 2004 worldwide market share for Mac OS is 2.5 percent, versus 1.3 percent for Linux. However, this will change next year. Gartner predicts in 2005, the Mac will slip to 2 percent market share, and Linux will grow to 2.1 percent. By 2008, Linux will have grown to 3.4 percent, while the Mac will remain at 2 percent.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As we are continuing to see, this prediction is very realistic. on both OS's.