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Can you buy a new Apple without OSX already installed? Can you buy any earlier Mac OS from Apple now? (I ask this question honestly, not sarcastically; I don't know the answer.)

When I said the hardware sales support the OS development effort, I meant financially. OS development is not cheap; serious cash flow is needed to furnish the ability to do the work. There are a *lot* of highly motivated people working in Linux now, but most of their companies seem to be rather sparsely financed.

Panther, the latest version of OS X does not include "Classic" on its install disk. However, you can load OS 9.2 and run in Classic mode concurrently.

The last Mac I bought was two years ago, OS X 1.1 and it came with OS 9 also.

I've since installed both 9.1 from an older system onto the newer Macs, and installed Panther on a much older iMac.

If you don't have install discs for older systems, I'm pretty sure you can download them free somewhere, perhaps from Mac, the upgrades are there from a long time back, so if you ever had a Mac or know someone who does...

However, OS X has been out long enough to finish the migration from v9 for most folks. I keep an OS 9 box to run those apps I haven't been able to justify upgrading to OS X. No, I don't believe you can buy a new Apple with OS 9 installed.

As for the price, you can get OS X on an iBook for about a grand, same price for eMacs and for a few hundred more you can get into a very good basic tower that is very price comparable to PCs, when you consider all you get with it - particularly if you consider all the security costs and hassles that Wintel adds to your life.

But, in the main, you're right, Apple is a hardware/software business model. There are efforts to port the OS to Intel, it's not that big a deal, but thus far Apple has been gunshy, likely for the reasons you indicate.