[ On Thursday, February 21, 2002 at 16:28:28 (-0800), paul beard wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: IP: Wal-Mart PC, Operating System *Not* Included: $399 (fwd)
>
> As does Sun:

Yeah, of course.  Sun's even tried at least twice to do their own GUI
too (SunWindows, which would make it at least three, doesn't really
count -- it had foundations in separate work done before X11 IIRC).

That's why I said "Apple's doing _what_almost_everybody__but__M$_ have
done all along in this industry!"

> that's where the money is . . . .

Not necessarily.  M$ has proven there's quite a bit of money in software
alone.  Of course they cheated.  In effect they just farmed out the
hardware side of the business to the clone makers, and they still made
money from the sale of every PC regardless of what OS runs on that
hardware today.

> I dunno how well 
> Darwin runs on Intel, might have to try it. It is out there, after 
> all, just minus the Aqua GUI bits.

Exactly my point!  ;-) Apple's entire platform could easily run on
suitably powerful iAPX86 (or even sparc64, DEC Alpha, MIPS, etc., etc.,
etc.) hardware if they wanted to reduce their overhead and compete
solely in the software marketplace.

> Had to resort? That's  a bit strong. No one *has* to cheat to 
> play, merely to ensure "winning" however that's defined.

again, exactly my point -- though of course this one's a side point....  ;-)

> Ugh, why would they want that?

Wallmart might want to take over M$ either to get bigger and even more
powerful; or maybe it would be to stomp out M$.  Their current decision
to sell an OS-free PC may give some indication about their preference
for the latter option....  ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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