There seems to be a big whup-to-hoo going on over Michael Dell’s recent email to Fortune about how happy his company would be to offer OS X to its customers should Apple choose to divorce OS X(86) from Apple hardware.

While I certainly missed the boat on commenting on the WWDC announcement (really, all I could possibly say that already hadn’t been said is that it was just another example of me divining the wrong prediction of Apple announcements, like the Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle), I’ve been percolating on it all the while - especially given my past experience at Be when it moved BeOS to x86.

Like many others, I don’t think this is a bad thing (I’m speaking about my post-percolation reaction here) - see IBM’s difficulties with providing processor development to Apple, etc. While I think I’ve proven the fact that I don’t have any inside information to explain my theories (refer to the aforementioned gaffes, if you please), I humbly think these analysts claiming that Apple will make OS X(86) available to other hardware manufacturers like Dell are completely off their rockers.

It’s no big secret that Apple’s bread & butter is their hardware sales - be it their computer lines or accessory lines (iPods, displays, etc). Heck they (successfully) charge $29 for a six-pack of children’s socks. Predicated on that fact, why, oh why, would Apple re-open the disaster it had with hardware licensees? Oh yeah, that’s right - there seems to be a communal case of amnesia going on with these analysts over Apple’s very limited (and failed) experience with licensing its OS to other hardware manufacturers. Apple’s hardware sales (remember, this was B.i.) slipped quite a bit when Daystar (they had a quad-processor system that was truly drool-worthy), Motorola, UMAX and Power Computing were making Macs. While Apple wasn’t exactly making the best hardware during that time, my experience with clone systems told me they were making the best Mac hardware at the time.

I’m still not certain what to think about Apple’s laissez-faire attitude about the possibility of installing Windows on Intel Macs. The consequences could be quite successful for Apple hardware sales (the only computers on the market to run both major OS’s?!), the potential to bring OS X down in flames is there as well (if you were a software shop developing for both OS’s and you saw that the same machine could run both OS’s, would you want to put in all the duplicated effort of both versions when you could just drop the OS X version and know that you still had virtually 100% of the CPU market covered - because, after all, Macs run Windows natively?). This isn’t about the fact that OS X is more secure than XP, that OS X is less of a PITA to maintain than XP; this is about decisions made by businesses on which Apple is dependent for the success of OS X. This lack of recognition is a core foundation of BeOS Myopia™ that, amazingly, still exists in individuals’ stupefaction that BeOS failed despite being a faster, “better” OS than Windows.

Michael Dell’s statement doesn’t surprise me at all. When Intel came to Be (or was it the other way around?) and bought a chunk of the company and offered a tremendous amount of resources to port BeOS to x86, that was a surprise. It was also a surprise that after all the hoops to jump through to get BeOS for Intel running properly that there was no degradation in performance (there might have been an increase, but my memory fails). While we had difficulties in getting hardware manufacturers signed (it was not difficult at all to wow executives while showing the trademark BeOS amazafantabulous demos screaming on the same hardware on which Windows simply plodded along, but getting the bundling commitment in the face of Microsoft’s inevitable wrath was nigh impossible). Be, Inc., as we all know was eventually choked into oblivion by the 800-lb gorilla, but there was a settlement in the consequential lawsuit. Perhaps that result, combined with Dell’s (and a few other manufacturers’) success on limited bundling of Linux as well as the fact that Mac OS X has a successful pool of commercial software is what is behind Dell’s comments.

Overall, I think Apple made the right decision in revealing Marklar and making the switch official. I believe that the transition will be only slightly bumpier for the end user than the 68k to PowerPC transition was (which was basically painless and invisible) and much less painful than the “Classic” OS to OS X transition was (or still is, if you’re still refusing to make the switch). Knowing from past experience, Intel is going to be a great partner in this transition - possibly even the best choice. The enthusiasm and assistance in porting BeOS I saw coming out of the chipmaker was really amazing. I have no doubts that Apple will be receiving the same - most likely more. And I think that the prospect of a lawsuit being brought against Apple by PC manufacturers, while possible, is ridiculous. Based on such “anti-competitive” reasoning, Apple could successfully sue all the software companies that don’t develop for OS X. Apple from the get-go has always offered a complete solution (hardware and software bundled together to provide the most user-friendly experience possible). I don’t understand why people think they are obligated in any legal sense to endanger their own existence by licensing against their will (just like I don’t think that they should be forced to license iTunes DRM to other portable music manufacturers - Sony and Microsoft aren’t being forced to license their music DRM to Apple). BMW isn’t forced to offer Ford engines in their cars, nor is Research in Motion (the company behind Blackberry) forced to offer a PalmOS handheld.

One last note… I have to admit amusement at how things are cycling around a little bit here in Apple’s history. First, IBM was the hardware enemy. Then, with it’s then-only CPU provider, Motorola, Apple announced a partnership that introduced PowerPC. Then the big enemy was Intel. Now, they’re Apple’s new best-buddy. Whether or not the juiciest premonitions are true (such as Apple’s new Macs will actually run on the new Tanglewood/Tukwila chip being developed by the last DEC Alpha team), this is going to be a fun ride.