Open Computer (Photos: Psystar's Mac clones)

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same thing that happened to the early Mac clones

Pretty much what some people say Apple should do now - superior competition from Apple itself.

In those days a "Mac clone" was a real, no-kidding Macintosh motherboard modified to support IBM peripherals like external monitors, and installed in an IBM-compatible case.

There WERE non-Apple motherboards in Mac clones, which were almost instantly made illegal as the firmware infringed on Apple patents.

Apple simply brought out the "Macintosh II," which also supported external and even third-party monitors and other peripherals. This removed any advantages offered by the early Mac clones (at that time, the main drawback of the Mac was that you were limited either to the monitor built into your Macintosh's case or to a small selection of external monitors sold by Apple).

When you could get a large screen (in those days, 19 to 21 inch diagonal) monitor from NEC or Princeton to work with your Apple system, people found that they were more comfortable buying from Apple directly than from people who got Mac motherboards and re-packaged them into modular systems.

There was a lot of talk about convergence of Apple and IBM-compatible architectures back in the late 1980s to early 1990s.

It started becoming more than talk when the USB serial port became common to both families of PCs. Now Apple has walked away from Motorola chipsets and joined the Intel throng. Who knows? Maybe Apple and Microsoft will find common ground at some point in the future?

I wouldn't be surprised to learn at some point in the future that the functions of user interface and system operation become separate and are handled by completely separate software. This would allow people who like the Mac interface to use it on a system which is otherwise entirely Apple-free with little or no penalty in performance.

At that point, why should Apple care who runs their OS as long as they're getting paid royalties on the OS itself? A quarter or even a tenth of a wedding cake is better than ALL of a cupcake.

Posted by: jlafitte   Posted on: 04/15/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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