Mac OS on a Dell? Dell in favor, Apple opposed

IDG News Service - If Apple Computer Inc. ever decides to let its Mac OS X operating system outside of its confines, the company can count Dell Inc. founder and chairman Michael Dell as a possible customer.

With the recent news that Apple plans to become a fellow customer of Intel Corp. for x86 processors, Dell has expressed interest in selling Mac OS X-based PCs, he said in an e-mail to Fortune published on the magazine's Web site yesterday.

"If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," Dell wrote in the e-mail. A Dell spokesman confirmed that the e-mail exchange took place.

Apple, however, is not keen on striking a deal with the world's largest PC vendor.

"Mac OS X will only run on Macs. Apple has no plans to sell Mac OS X software to run on PCs," an Apple spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to questions about Dell.

Dell's interest in Mac OS X raises numerous questions about how such a partnership would work. Dell's current PC product strategy is famously one-sided: Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and Intel's processors for all. Dell executives believe this arrangement allows them to keep their operating costs as low as possible.

However, Mac OS X, with its Unix underpinnings and secure reputation, might pique the interests of many IT managers looking for a low-cost PC that is easy to maintain. And Dell's position as the industry market share leader could expose Mac OS to a much wider range of users.

But Apple can't afford to let Mac OS X loose right now, said Roger Kay, vice president of client computing at IDC in Framingham, Mass. If Mac OS X could be separated from Apple's hardware, hackers would have pirated copies of the operating system out on the streets with little delay, he said. This would cause great harm to Apple's business model, which emphasizes its tight control over the entire combination of hardware and software as a premium product, he said.


At least one analyst believes that Apple is due for a day of reckoning with this strategy, especially now that it plans to move to x86 chips. Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif., thinks it is only a matter of time before someone in the PC industry sues Apple for "tying" its operating system to a specific type of hardware available only from Apple.

Digidyne Corp., then a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp., successfully pursued