The big Mac

Although I am not a techie by profession (not even close), I do like to keep myself abreast with the techno advances. My fav gadget as of now is my iPhone. It seems just perfect. It just draws me to buy an iMac. 

An iMac seems perfect too: a robust computer with just a monitor, keyboard and a mouse, with the CPU built into the monitor. But more than the external looks, the internal OS is what attracts me the most. It looks good, works good, feels good. It must really be good! I do want the upcoming Leopard OS for my desktop, which is currently a HP with AMD 2GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, 160GB HDD and a flat screen LCD monitor. The price tag on this after rebates was a mere 750$. The same configuration on a Mac would be more than 1300$. And the accessories are so damn expensive, even their wired keyboard (redesigned) costs 50$!!!! Most consumers would definitely NOT go for a Mac just because of the price tag. And same here.

So why doesn't Apple release the wonderful OS for the rest of the world just like Microsoft, on license basis? I would buy it even for 200$ and install it on my PC and work on it using some kind of dual boot. Wouldn't that fulfill Job's dream on OSX everywhere? How much could Apple loose in $ just because of following this strategy? Wouldn't they sell ginormous amounts of Mac OS CDs and thereby make profits anyways?

Apart from the apparent financial and licensure analysis that has to be done to carry out Mac OSX CD's out to the market, I don't really know the intent of Apple anymore. Their hardware market would keep increasing, purely pertaining to the fact that in general computer sales increase through years. But will Apple to able to gain a greater marketshare, more than say 10%? I seriously doubt this if they continue to sell just the iMacs without the standalone option for a PC guy to buy the OSX CDs.

And what do business' think about adapting a Mac? Just like Apple is a business, trying to make as much profit as possible, other companies that might potentially adopt Mac are also business' trying to make a profit. Apple isn't willing to sacrifice their capital by selling cheaper Macs or selling standalone OSX software, neither are the companies willing to spend their capital to buy the expensive lineup of Macs for their daily use. I can consider the point that companies would buy Macs (to improve productivity in certain departments like graphics), but they would never EVER replace PCs in this case. I bet that every Mac owner in a company has a PC beside it too!

Apple will have to sellout the OSX software to work on PCs in the near future to take some real marketshare from Windows. Otherwise, Apple will just keep doing what it's doing right now: create newer Macs, that will just be the sidekicks of iPods (because many people today are choosing a Mac just because they like their iPod/iPhone so much).