Hmmm....
You make some good points. Alot of Apple users wish that Apple would licence it's OS. And I am sure there would be a pretty good market for them. In fact I wouldent be surprised if that very suggestion is in the works in some form or another.
I know of at least one grupe of UNIX hackers who are trying to tweek the x86 version of Darwin so that OSX can be installed on it. And in fact, I belive Apple was expecting such projects when they released Darwin free and Open sourced.
I think the above is the major point. Apple has made the core part of OS X available and free over the net to other platforms, most notably the PC. If such project's take off, no doubt some market share would be recaptured at no expense to Apple it'self. Sound's far fetched? Not really, Apple knows very well what Open Source means and the power that it has (M$ can't stand the idea).
Furthermore, Open Source means community. Windows has no true "community" as do Mac followers, or UNIX/Linux heads. If people actually participate in the development of the OS and contribute their efforts to it (as has been going on since the release of OS X! I myself am amazed at how many people are making cool FREE stuff for it) there is a bond that developes. Ask an Amiga person or a Mac person, they know this well
Windows people, just HAVE to use their OS.
Apple also works on the age old axiom of "The Costomer is Allways right" and what better way to express this than letting the costomer have full controll over what he buys? Bill Gates 's MO is more like "The Costomer comes in and never get's out of the store till his wallet is empty and we own the deed to his house".
But I digress...
My point is, that Darwin has been ported. There are comunities of programmers already working on making things cross platform and the like. And things can only get better from here on out
The Clones you spoke of, were not a good thing. Jobs axed them cuz they were leeching what was left of the economically batterd Apple. Like it or not, the reason Apple still survives is because the Clones are gone.
Most of Apple's money comes from it's hardware sales. Not it's software. One of the ways they keep people buying their hardware is by making their (EXCELENT!) OS available on it.
Hopefully the growing OS X comunity will expand cross platform boundrys and perhapse even up the playing field for the future of computer industry.
Alot of people wonder why Linux has not done this? Well, there is a pretty influential company behind a similar effort now. Apple may not be number one, but they are not to be underestimated.
In my opinion Apple actually WANTS to make things better. Not just suck up moeney and digital relestate.
OS X ROCKS!
P.s. Oh ya, one last thing. Carefull with talk like: "no decent programms for the mac". I know you probably are refering to the quantaty of programs as well as perhapse games. But it could be misconstrude (at least i hope you don't belive this) that you are saying there are no good programms for the Mac which is indeed absolute crap. I'm sure you can post something like that in the MAC OS forum and get liberaly flamed by everyone including me
[ February 17, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]