[IncPen]

I think if everyone adopted the same model Apple has, new hardware development will suffer considerably. The only way a hardware manufacturer can survive will be through a partnership with an OS vendor, and the market will become incresingly balkanized. I’ve asked you directly and repeatedly if you think this would be a likely outcome. I think all the dancing around you’ve done to avoid any consideration of that possibility is rather suspicious.

It's kind of hard to tell on these Apple threads what it is that the MS crowd wants to hear.

I guess I don't know what it is you're asking.

If I understand what I think you're asking, then I disagree with your premise. Apple has dictated the terms of its platform with a vertical market. Risky, but I believe it will succeed where MS has so miserably (and, in some cases dangerously) failed. The consumers are voting with their dollars.

You appear to think they're stupid.

If MS had built- or enforced- a workable software platform for the hardware they purport to make software for, your world might be different.

So, do I think Balkanization a likely outcome?

No. MS killed the competition-- a wiser company would have encouraged it.

I rather think that the fix that MS finds itself in is because exactly because it tried to own a market-- not for the good of the customer-- but for its own good. The two are not mutually exclusive.

The difference between Apple and MS is that Apple understands this.

Until you convince me that Apple poses a threat to the average consumer (much less MS) I think you're crying into your towel.

[tacticalogic]

How many linux disto’s will survive under Apple’s model? How does an “open source” OS dictate the hardware it’s going to run on? Do you think destroying MS and that OS/hardware model in the marketplace is not going to have any unintended consequences, or that any collateral damage is not of any particular consequence because it doesn’t affect you?

[tacticalogic]

If that last reply isn't sinking in, consider this:

Right now there's a fairly wide variety of different flavors of OS out there to choose from. Lots of development work has gone into them, with some interesting results. I think Apple may even have benefitted from some of it. The vast majority of them are running on computers originally built for and shipped with Windows. They're cheap, reliable if the parts are of good quality, and readily available.

What would that landscape look like if Windows had adopted Apples model 15 years ago?

All of those Windows computers that came from Dell, HP, Compaq, or built from ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte or any number of other manufacturers motherboards instead were built by Microsoft. Instead of being generic, general purpose, OS agnostic computers they came off the assembly line designed and built by Microsoft, explicitly for whatever the current version of Windows was and with a security chip to prevent any other OS from ever running on that machine.

[antiRepublicrat]

I rather think that the fix that MS finds itself in is because exactly because it tried to own a market-- not for the good of the customer-- but for its own good. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Didn't Rockefeller do the Standard Oil monopoly so he could provide cheaper petroleum products to the people?