[brbethke]

Apple has a closed market. If you want to buy a new Apple computer, you *must* use OSX. The hardware sales support the OS development effort.

The Intel hardware platform is an open market, where each Linux vendor has to compete with other operating systems including other Linux distributions, and very few of them have some other source of cash flow to support a full-blown OS development effort.

Just a guess.

[Richard Kimball]

Agree with your points. Additionally, MS can run at a loss for however long it takes an upstart company to go out of business, or, they can purchase the company. Microsoft's weaknesses are also it's strengths. Pretty hard to find computer equipment (printers, peripheals, etc) that won't run on a Windows PC. OTOH, Windows PCs lock up a lot more trying to accomodate so many devices.

Unfortunately for MS, if Longhorn is going to be anything other than Windows 95 with a fresh coat of lipstick, it's going to have to do what Apple did with OSX, and that's dump some legacy support. When they do this, market share is up for grabs, and Apple & Linux and something we don't even think about now may grab some of it.

[1L]

Apple has a closed market. If you want to buy a new Apple computer, you *must* use OSX.

Actually, you can use virtually any version of the Mac OS, as well as various other flavors of Unix written for the Motorola or PowerPC chip, as the case may be. I confess I'm not sure what, other than the Mac OS, is available for the G3/4/5.

The hardware sales support the OS development effort.

Fine, but I'm not speaking about motivation; I'm speaking about the ability to do it. If it is a motivation thing, what's holding the companies back, since such a system would have the ability to immediately compete with Windows?

[tortoise]

If you want to buy a new Apple computer, you *must* use OSX.

On the other hand, OSX is just about the finest desktop OS currently being produced (or ever, though OS v9 and prior were giant turds), so that isn't particularly tragic. At least for desktop usage, I can't think of a better OS. And you can always put LinuxPPC on it if you want; some Apple resellers sell machines with LinuxPPC pre-installed. In fact, the US Navy uses Apple computers running LinuxPPC for some of their combat sensor systems.