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If Apple releases OS X for PCs, how much would you pay?

How much would you pay?

  • Nothing. I want it for free.

    Votes: 24 24.5%

  • $20

    Votes: 2 2.0%

  • $50

    Votes: 12 12.2%

  • $100

    Votes: 39 39.8%

  • The same price as Windows 10 Professional Edition

    Votes: 21 21.4%
  • Total voters
    98
mw360 said:
Why would Apple do this? It makes no sense. It would instantly crash the value of Macs. OSX machines would engage in an immediate race to the bottom and soon enough they'd all be plastic and icky.
Click to expand...

If Apple certified a few high-end workstations for Apple OSX, along with a limited number of high-value option cards (GPUs, Fibre Channel, 40GbE Ethernet, ...), the "value crash" would not occur.

The certified workstations would still be more expensive than most of Apple's own machines.
 
AidenShaw said:
If Apple certified a few high-end workstations for Apple OSX, along with a limited number of high-value option cards (GPUs, Fibre Channel, 40GbE Ethernet, ...), the "value crash" would not occur.

The certified workstations would still be more expensive than most of Apple's own machines.
Click to expand...
True. It's the workstation market after all.
 
I hope it never happens. I'm sorry, but the idea is repulsive. Apple needs sales from the Mac hardware to fund OS X research. But I see that Apple needs to make the Mac computers much better.

Just my opinion.
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Noooo, Power Computing (?) were making a **** load of money and selling quad CPU Macs. They produced the only Mac workstations that could compete against Irix and NT boxes. But the OS was let down by **** frameworks and cooperative multitasking that crashed too often.
Click to expand...

Apple could not compete against the clones 20 years ago? No wonder Steve Jobs ended the clones in '97.

I have heard that MacOS back then had multitasking issues, mercifully corrected by replacing OS9 with NextOS (i.e. Mac OSX).
 
SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Obviously I'd want it for free like anyone would but if I'm willing to pay full price for Windows 10 on Bootcamp it would be hypocritical for me not to pay the same price to install OSX on workstation I build myself. So I voted for the same cost as Win Pro. Anyway, it would be a business expense so what's the damage.
Click to expand...
This is my reasoning as well. If I'm paying $100 for a Windows copy for my custom build PC then I would definitely pay $100 for OS for my custom build.
 
riviera74 said:
Apple could not compete against the clones 20 years ago? No wonder Steve Jobs ended the clones in '97.

I have heard that MacOS back then had multitasking issues, mercifully corrected by replacing OS9 with NextOS (i.e. Mac OSX).
Click to expand...

Apple Macs were **** back then. Cute, friendly, but very expensive crap.
 
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Hmm. I had a used IIci, and a used Quadra 840AV, and then a 7300-PPC that were great and very stable machines for 1997. They ran Opcode Studio Vision Pro 3.5 and Digidesign's Sound Designer II very well. I think I was using System 8.6, but I'm not sure. The IIci and the Quadra had NuBus slots (I had an AudioMedia II card) while the 7300 had PCI slots for my ATI Rage and an AudioMedia card. On the 7300-PPC, Pro Tools 4.3 was great at the time.
 
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SoyCapitanSoyCapitan said:
Obviously I'd want it for free like anyone would but if I'm willing to pay full price for Windows 10 on Bootcamp it would be hypocritical for me not to pay the same price to install OSX on workstation I build myself. So I voted for the same cost as Win Pro. Anyway, it would be a business expense so what's the damage.
Click to expand...

I'm less inclined to pay a premium for this new annual release schedule. I paid full price for Panther when it came out, but it had several years of updates and a lot of utility and stability for (2001?) that still runs a G4/533 and Pro Tools 6.4. It sounds creaky, but it's a good tool. -Especially for A/V file rescues that don't translate into Compressor or the latest version of QuickTime.
 
JamesPDX said:
I'm less inclined to pay a premium for this new annual release schedule. I paid full price for Panther when it came out, but it had several years of updates and a lot of utility and stability for (2001?) that still runs a G4/533 and Pro Tools 6.4. It sounds creaky, but it's a good tool. -Especially for A/V file rescues that don't translate into Compressor or the latest version of QuickTime.
Click to expand...
If it works there's no need to upgrade.
 
H2SO4 said:
I think that’s pretty much a non issue. I don’t believe it would take a lot of work for Apple to make it almost universal.
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I think it is a big deal with the same issues Windows has currently. Secondly, Apple will never do this as they are only stimulating third party hardware sales at their own expense. So this is never going to happen.
 
mw360 said:
Why would Apple do this? It makes no sense. It would instantly crash the value of Macs. OSX machines would engage in an immediate race to the bottom and soon enough they'd all be plastic and icky. Nobody in the PC world is making Apple sized profits. Nicely designed aluminium alone isn't enough to command a price tags double the competition. The OSX exclusively drives up the Mac value.

And please don't say it would drive users to iCloud. iCloud revenue is nothing to Apple. iCloud exists to provide essential features to Apple users, and in return will periodly tell users their kit is too old and needs to be replaced. It's why their services are so sucky compared to those who make their living off it. It's not a genuine business, it's a hardware sales strategy. Free software like OSX and iOS exists also to drive users to iCloud for the same reason.
Click to expand...

What's not good with iCloud? I see no differences between Dropbox and iCloud. Please explain.
 
JGRE said:
What's not good with iCloud? I see no differences between Dropbox and iCloud. Please explain.
Click to expand...

Well there's that time when resetting your iPhone would delete all your documents on iCloud, and then sync the deletion to all your devices and computers, and it turned out Time Machine didn't back up iCloud documents (because they're safe in the cloud) and there was no user-facing way to recover deleted files, and even the Apple engineers couldn't figure out where they had gone or where the backups were.

There's more, but it's OT really so I'll leave you the last word.
 
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mw360 said:
Well there's that time when resetting your iPhone would delete all your documents on iCloud, and then sync the deletion to all your devices and computers, and it turned out Time Machine didn't back up iCloud documents (because they're safe in the cloud) and there was no user-facing way to recover deleted files, and even the Apple engineers couldn't figure out where they had gone or where the backups were.

There's more, but it's OT really so I'll leave you the last word.
Click to expand...

Where does "OT" stand for?
 
AidenShaw said:
If Apple certified a few high-end workstations for Apple OSX, along with a limited number of high-value option cards (GPUs, Fibre Channel, 40GbE Ethernet, ...), the "value crash" would not occur.

The certified workstations would still be more expensive than most of Apple's own machines.
Click to expand...
That could only happen if those workstations had soldered on processors, RAM and a hard drive that requires seven highly skilled engineers to upgrade.

I would happily pay $100 (or €129, more like) but as people said before such Mac OS would require drivers for any ol' piece of crap and effectively turn Mac OS into Windows with somewhat different UI.
 
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For the ones that need it, price is irrelevant. Hell I'd pay $1000 to get OSX on an officially supported 3rd party workstation.
 
The recent poll questions are entirely wrong. The correct questions are:

If Apple revived the cMP and equipped it with enough slots and sockets to let you build the machine of your dreams, and then priced it competitively with a no-name PC clone, would you finally be happy?

If Apple killed iOS, discontinued iPhones, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iTunes, and other such distractions, and loaded OS X onto what we currently call iPads, would you finally be happy?

(And if Apple did release OS X for PCs, I'd pay zero, because I wouldn't load OS X onto a PC any more than I would try to install a Ford engine in a Chevrolet.)
 
throAU said:
It won't happen.

But i WOULD pay 100 bucks or more for it. But i would NOT deal with product activation.
Click to expand...

That would be their choice, but whenever I see someone who is against activation I have to ask : if you were a software developer would you distribute your software without activation?
 
riviera74 said:
I have heard that MacOS back then had multitasking issues, mercifully corrected by replacing OS9 with NextOS (i.e. Mac OSX).
Click to expand...

MacOS 9 and below used cooperative multitasking as opposed to Unix's preemptive multitasking. NextOS's Unix foundation brought preemptive multitasking to the Mac and that was the end of type 11 errors, for those who were there ;). However that didn't make the OS unusable in any way.
 
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