Aside from esoterical philosophical reason, what’s the problem with that?
Remember, Apple tried the “run the OS on whatever hardware you want” experiment already. It ended up as a support nightmare and almost killed Apple.
Given the persistent driver and support issues with Windows, I suspect that MS is wishing they’d controlled the HW and SW...
Remember, Apple tried the “run the OS on whatever hardware you want” experiment already. It ended up as a support nightmare and almost killed Apple.That's not accurate. Apple licensed manufacturers of "clones," but only under license and subject to strict hardware guidelines. What Apple hoped was that licensing clone vendors would allow other vendors to create new niches for the Mac -- sub-notebooks, rack-mounts, and so on. Didn't happen.
What did, in fact, happen was that the cloners poached the Mac user base rather than expand it. So they pulled the plug. That was one of many missteps in the interim between post-Steve and re-Steve. They had a bewildering array of boring beige boxes and an OS that was, while I still preferred it to Windows, moribund.
When Steve came back, his first big unveiling was the iMac. One box. Stylish and simple. Jobs said back in 1984 that the Macintosh ideal was that a computer should simply be another household device, like a toaster. The iMac fit that vision.
Every Apple product since the Grand Return of Steve has followed that basic ethic: Machines you work with, not work on.
