Thursday, November 10, 2005

Lots of talk about OS wars when Apple releases OSX that works on Intel chips -- here's the best post I've seen

The post on TUAW pulls no punches in discussing whether or not there will be an OS war between Apple and Microsoft when Apple finally releases OSX that runs on Intel chipsets. Here’s an interesting point from the post:

. . . understand that the average consumer doesn't care what processor is in their computer, nor do they understand the differences between families of processors. They barely understand megahertz speeds. The jargon we're all familiar with (by necessity) is lost to them: CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, megahertz, gigahertz, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, DPI, TWAIN...we may as well be speaking a foreign language. And the manufacturers haven't made it much easier with every season introducing new trademarked words like Itanium, Celeron, Pentium, G4, G5, Inspiron...ad nauseum. But here's what the general public does understand about computers: that software I picked on the shelf there won't run on this here computer?

Further to the point above, lots of consumer behavior is based on price. Perhaps, as the post points out, that’s why Dell really wants Apple to license OSX to Dell machines.

I think the post makes the most viable prediction for what Apple is going to do: Apple wants a machine that can simultaneously run OSX and Windows. What’s the justification? The post points to a patent filed by Apple to do just what I stated.

Of course, we could all be wrong. Who knows what is going round and round in the brain of Steve Jobs. I can tell you that I would love to be able to use OSX for the majority of the stuff that I do on a daily basis and only have to switch over to Windows when I absolutely needed to use a Windows program. Furthermore, I would love to turn some of the old Windows machines that I have sitting around into OSX machines.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Link

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