Mac OS runs on Macs. In the PC-compatible market, you can not run Mac OS unless apple port it. Sheesh.
No, the OEM’s could not put any OS on, as MS made it their terms and conditions of supplying to OEMs that they would pay for a copy of windows for every box they shipped, regardless of whether the customer wanted windows. Thus every time you bought a box, you paid the MS Tax™. This is monopolistic behaviour. This behaviour has been curbed by litigation and prosecution. Where have you been for the last 5 years?
Sorry, Badger, I can’t go along with that. If I wanted to start my own company selling Intel-based computers, I could, and I wouldn’t NEED to put any MS software on it. Dell, et. al., had that same right, but they CHOSE to deal with MS. Because they knew it would sell.
And I reject the concept that PC-compatible computers form a “market”; personal and/or desktop computing is a market, just like automobiles. Wintel and Apple and Linux are all in the same market just like Ford and Chevy and Toyota are. Function comes first in the minds of customers, and that is what determines a market.
As for your point number 1, okay, you got me there…TRM
But if they wanted to sell MS software, they had to accept MS dictats concerning what else they could sell. This is MS abusing the popularity of their software to the detriment of their competitors (and consumers, by stifling said competition). This is illegal. This is monopolistic behaviour. And yes, you could start your own company selling intel-based computers, and no you wouldn’t have to put Windows on them, but if you wanted to, you would have to sign a dictatorial licence agreement with MS which would severely limit your ability to put other OSs on your products. Which is anticompetitive, monopolistic behaviour.
Well, fine then, reject it. Any justification? You can draw a line round pretty much any subset of products, and call it a market. Because PCs and Macs have different functionality, different user bases, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to separate the two of them in to sub-markets. Yes, the two markets combined form the broader market of desktop computing, but that does not stop PC-compatibles being a market in their own right. Just because there is a market for shoes doesn’t mean the market for trainers doesn’t exist. Differentiation by how products perform their function is important, IMO. On the other hand, SPOOFE’s examples were ridiculous because he drew a line around individual products and attempted to call them markets.
I find your use of the word “Wintel” quite telling, incidentally.
Thats the way it should be, and the way Apple and Linux users want it to be, but thats not reality. Not yet.
To reuse the car anaology, to the average computer user Apples are like electric cars to most of the average car buyer. They may heard of them, may even think that they are a good idea, but most of them wouldnt know where to buy one if they wanted one, and they dont consider them a realistic alternative. Both provide the same function, but two very differant things in the mind of the consumer.