05-07-2015, 05:26 PM
N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=silvarios]
[quote=mrlynn]
[quote=Robert M]
. . . And, that's the thing. There are a tremendous number of nice Windows boxes out there. If it was easy without hacking and such to throw the Mac OS onto a machine made by a different manufacturer, I'd've jumped ship a long time ago. We're talking boot off a drive, run the installer, done kind of simplicity. I've looked at the instructions for creating a hackintosh and it definitely isn't that simple.
And that's why Steve killed the Mac clones, like my J700.
/Mr Lynn
Yep. Too bad really. Especially since the Mac is such a small component of Apple's current revenue.
At the time when Steve killed the clones, Mac sales were a MUCH bigger component of Apple's revenue. In fact, the iMac saved Apple; if clones had still been in the mix, that might not have happened.
Given the company now, that doesn't bother me (not in the market for expensive phones, watches, and headphones, and there are increasingly few Mac models that check enough boxes for me). As an aside, portables became the big sellers not many years after the iMac launch and the clone manufacturers were not licensed to make portables. Apple could have done well selling iMacs, PowerBooks, and later, iBooks. Apple thought all the money was in high end desktops when it turns out that was a rapidly shrinking market.
Edit: Given the lack of AIO clones (I can't think of a single model ever shipped), I wonder if the cloners had license to make those either? Given iMacs were wildly successful and Apple portables were increasingly important (roughly even by 2004), I'm still not sure Apple couldn't have figured out an ongoing clone license. Guess we will never know. Great point by the way. Thanks for bringing it up.