I wish Apple would sell OSX licenses directly to customers. It would sidestep the whole clone thing, let enthusiasts build proper hackintoshes, and make it legal for businesses to support consumers who go down that route. Sure, make it illegal to OEM or to install for a third party; don't provide any support whatsoever; but let the hackers play without fear. I bet that awesome things would happen.
The Mac's entire brand identity can be summarized in three words: "It Just Works." Any time people see a machine running MacOS where those words are not true, it damages the entire brand.
Thus Apple is happy to forgo the extra revenue they could get by selling MacOS separately, since by doing so they can ensure that the world is not full of crappy beige boxes slapped together by incompetent OEMs sourcing parts from the lowest bidders with the word "Mac" attached to them.
I think that's only part of it. A larger part is that Apple is a hardware company. The profits come from the hardware. To sell the OS separately at a price that would justify the loss in profit from hardware wouldn't be feasible, particularly given its market share. Compare with Microsoft, which was able to profit largely because of its dominance.
It just work except when the System 7.5.3 was out and powerPC & 68K were coexisting.
The 'it just work' notably required to go in some arcane control to unfragment memory (yes RAM), and to do ctrl+ apple? + esc to kill unresponsive .... Adobe photoshop or illustrator on the PPC 7500 I used to maintain. THE application one needed.
The colometry profile for scanners and printers where not top notch, and well, real mac users (the one with a job) had to play with the devil switches and terminators on SCSI devices to put their work on external media...
We talk about graphist in the 90's here, not hardcore geeks.
The "it just works" was a lie. It was way more an expensive status tool.
The only stuff that differentiated mac users from PC users, was how much software they were cracking and sharing without any concerns or moral questions.
I sometimes feel the predominance of mac users among "top geeks" is a bad sign.
The stability of modern operating systems indeed makes it easy to forget how often we dealt with system crashes (remember the bomb?), especially with resource intensive applications, and even more so when switching between them.
Yet a lot of work indeed got done. The number of newspaper design departments and graphic artists who relied on Macs is hard to underestimate. It was much more than just an expensive status tool. Back in the day, the Mac was a tool that a lot of people relied on, in spite of its flaws.
Apple doesn't take (much) action now, because it doesn't really affect their ecosystem. If businesses could support consumers that went down that route, it would eventually be easy to install Mac OS on arbitrary computers. Apple would definitely not be making money on that.
Hackers already play without fear. Apple rarely takes action, unless money is exchanging hands. But it's all about the consumer market in this case.
I stilll somehow feel this could become a support burden. Also it'd kill their highest end Mac market
(I certainly am not saying that their inability to seemingly update these Mac pros or even have a decent iMac pro alternative is beyond what I mean here. I feel that pain)
I wonder however if they charge a fat sum for it like they did back in the day for Snow Leopard Server if the margin would supplant some of that
But that's the problem - as you say, they don't really have or even want that market anymore. Their real high-end is now the laptops, which were never cloned even when they could be (because it's a humongous can of worms). Nobody in his right mind today would buy a Mac Pro or an iMac for computation, their value proposition in that area is ridiculous - they get bought by hotels, boutiques and architects for their design aesthetic. These people will never buy ugly clones or even know what a hackintosh is. There is nothing left that can be cannibalised by clones.
If Apple "liberalised" their enthusiasts' market, they'd gain huge goodwill, sustain their own ecosystem, make a few quid on licenses (nobody said they have to be cheap), and possibly even get software for free (think OSS drivers for devices they'd otherwise not have the resources to write or support). With all the telemetry they have today, they'd know at a glance things like popular architectures, OS performance on devices they've not tested, etc etc. And of course, the minute they see a market shift they don't like, they could pull it again. They certainly have a bit of cash they can burn on this sort of thing, sitting in those Bermuda accounts.
Maybe they could tie it to their developer accounts. I don't have one at the moment, but if I knew that it could give me an easy way to hackintosh, I'd be over it like white on rice.
One thing is for sure. Under no circumstance should they allow OEMs to make Mac hardware. I'd even go as far as to say to control for this all hardware that could be build by the end user (which could be a business or person I suppose) must be certified through the MFI program. If I was postulating a way for this to work, the only way I see it working is:
1) They charge yearly for the priviledge through either the developer accounts and deployment accounts (for businesses and individual devs) and direct sales. I would say to make up for any potential lost margin we are talking $400-700 for this. Just like back in the OS X server days.
2) I imagine all hardware will need to -no must need to- be MFI certified and likely I could imagine Apple not only getting their cut from that but perhaps every MFI part sold will have a hearse are chip that ensures authenticity and compatibility
3) this will never be something OEMs could partake in. As a stipulation for the MFI program I could see them stating that hardware can't be sold to OEMs only direct purchases.
In the most realistic scenario I can come up with that's how it would work. Even then I doubt Apple wants to or could otherwise make it viable. It could potentially do so much brand damage otherwise
