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Thanks for the ping. Here's a good read (excerpted):

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1826651,00.asp

Opinion: Steve Jobs knows that Apple will never wrest away a significant chunk of Microsoft's Windows market share as long as OS X remains tied exclusively to Apple hardware.

I predict that, shortly after the completion of Apple's big move, the company will deliver OS X Unbound—a version of its excellent and innovative operating system that'll join Windows, Linux, Solaris and OS X's own BSD cousins in offering users the option of running the OS they've acquired on the hardware they choose.

In fact, I believe (and maybe there'll be a magic Steve Jobs keynote moment in our future to confirm it) that this has been the Apple co-founder's aim ever since he returned to the company's helm. Jobs knows that Apple will never wrest away a significant chunk of Microsoft's Windows market share as long as OS X remains tied exclusively to Apple hardware.

Microsoft's OS monopoly, in addition to putting a "start" button on almost every desktop in sight, has ingrained a particular sort of business model in the computer market—consumers can choose from a variety of system OEMs and processor vendors on which to run their software.

Computer consumers, particularly companies, aren't going to surrender the flexibility of multiple vendors and abandon the still-valuable hardware they possess in exchange for a single, vertically integrated supplier that gets to call all of the shots.

For those of you who contend that Apple is primarily a computer hardware company, ask yourselves where the locus of innovation at Apple resides—it's OS X and the suite of slick software tools that are built atop it into which Apple has obviously poured the most attention.

When people talk about moving to Apple and talk about the problems that they expect the Mac to solve—the Mac is less virus-prone, it's easier to use, it provides a friendly portal to Unix and open source—they're talking not about Apple hardware, but about OS X.

While OS X will run most seamlessly on Apple-built machines, Apple can ensure good hardware compatibility in the same way that every other OS vendor does—through a hardware compatibility list.

The fact that companies and individuals will have the option of standardizing on the excellent OS X platform without having to buy 100 percent Apple-built machines will actually open the doors wider for Apple hardware, because a move to Mac will no longer require throwing away the hardware that companies and individuals already own, and the OEM relationships that buyers have already formed.

If I'm correct, why is Apple denying it?

After the keynote, Phil Schiller said that, although Apple will do nothing to prevent users from running Windows on Apple boxes, Apple would not allow OS X to be run on non-Apple machines.

Apple needs to deny its plans to unbundle in order to give itself the head start it needs to ramp up its Intel box production, and to prepare developers to enter the wider x86 world. Until Apple has readied its own x86 offerings, it needs the promise that only Apple hardware will run the flashy and cool OS X to keep people from buying boxes from Dell or other vendors that are already ramped up to produce rival systems.

Steve & Co. are too smart to allow protectionist attitudes toward one part of their product line to retard sales of another—that's the sort of "strategery" that prevented a Sony too focused on shielding its content properties from the digital age from delivering consumers a worthy, MP3-playing heir to the Walkman—thereby leaving open the door to the now-dominant iPod.

Perhaps second to the iPod, OS X is Apple's hottest commodity, and millions await the chance to pay Apple $130 every year and a half for it. Now that OS X is queued up to launch on x86, The Steve is way too smart to clip its wings — I guarantee.