..........You missed my point..........
Apparently I did. *looks up* Look! There’s your point right next to that airplane!
...........The contention in the posts above is that Apple can’t produce a computing device with operating system etc to compete with the Wal-Mart Linux PCs..........
My contention is that they couldn’t do it profittably. I know they could do it. But they’d essentially have to linux-ize macos. That is, they’d have to make it free.
Apple has made one thing abundantly clear from beginning to end throughout it’s existance.(with the exception of a bungle from a previous CEO)
They do not want their OS commoditized. Even on the mini, I’m sure they are making a good sized profit. If they whorred everything out, there wouldn’t be any profit. And I honestly believe that apple believes that their stuff is a cut above the rest. And granted, in some ways it is. In other ways, the hype is greater. But I don’t want to go down that road at this time.
————The hardware and OS cost is the easy part.————
It is. Something larger has more ports, is upgradable, and that in/of itself incurrs(sp?) more tech support calls. That isn’t free. And there are other reasons too, I’m sure.