William H. Magill on Thu, 6 Feb 2003 17:35:08 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Without OS X


On Thursday, February 6, 2003, at 04:16 PM, Paul wrote:
I guess Apple doesn't care about the person who already has OS X and decides to buy new hardware. Not much different from M$ in that respect. Why are Linux users who hate the M$ Tax willing to quietly pay the Apple Tax?

Apple is a classic "Iron Company" -- they sell hardware, not an OS. The OS is truly bundled in the price of the Hardware as corporate overhead. It's not an add-on cost. There is no Tax involved. Also, since apple is a hardware vendor, they do not sell ANY hardware without an OS installed -- it leaves Apple's factory that way.


The problem with the various court suits over Dell, Gateway, Compaq and all of the other x86 makers was that Microsoft forced them to pay a "tax" to Microsoft for every CPU sold, totally independent of what OS was installed on it, if they sold ANY system with any Microsoft OS installed. Microsoft was forcing these other hardware companies to "sell" a Microsoft OS pre-installed.

And as for the Linux community caring -- the "Linux community" "KNOWS" that Linux ONLY runs on an x86 box. Those of us that run "Linux" on something else, like my Alpha for example, have to put up with the fact that "real linux" comes from Red Hat, and you can't buy/or otherwise obtain a copy of Alpha Linux from them -- it only comes from Compaq. And most "Linux software" doesn't compile on Alpha without far too much effort compared to x86 systems. (Yeah, I run SuSE, so I'm even weirder. But they are not porting anymore either.)

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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