Some economic analysis of Apple's move to x86

[Mike Hearn]

On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 20:22 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
> This is true.  However, Apple still has their main disutility working
> against them - much higher prices, both due to software and hardware
> costs.  That's something they'll never be able to compete with Linux on,
> since Linux is free and hardware costs are at most the same as Mac.

Linux is only really free if you build your own computer which is more
expensive than buying one pre-made since a few years now. If you buy a
computer then you have to buy either a Windows or MacOS X license with
it, so Linux ends up costing more (in terms of time) than either
competitor. That'll remain true until it's widely pre-loaded onto
hardware.

Well, we'll see where this goes. I'm not really convinced it's a good
thing but seeing as how the license allows for it, it's a somewhat
academic point anyway.

thanks -mike