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Originally Posted by zinglebarb
What about hard drives,graphics cards,memory,optical drives?????so a mac is a mix of there own hard ware and other peices cobbled together from many different manufacturers
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None of the hardware is Apple. The chips and mobo is made by IBM. In my powerbook, my HD is made by Mat*****a and my HD is Hitachi. The graphics card is by Nvidia. I don't know about the RAM, it doesn't say. The only thing on there that is built by Apple is the case (and screen).
Semi-on: You're right that we'll never see full OSX for x86 (you can download Darwin for x86, but that doesn't include the GUI), but the fact that you say Apple would go out of business if they released OSX onto x86, shows you how much markup is in all that over-engineered casings. Look at the Ipod, despite it being about 100 quid more than the Creative Zen, (the difference is still about 60 quid now, the Creative doesn't try and rip off its customers like apple does) and that Itunes is rubbish, and it has the ridiculous DRM built in, people were still willing to pay it. They won't go bust. Maybe Jobs is worried if they do offer it for x86, so many people will buy it, that it will become a target for hackers and exploiters. People can't always afford to buy Apples on top of PCs but if they offer the OS, so people could dual boot, they marketshare would increase, and the range of software for Apples would increase too.
If you think that Mac Mini is cheap, just imagine the same components, from the manufacturer, in a regular £20 budget case... How much would it be?
Come to think of it... If I could get hold of a PowerPC chip & mobo from IBM, hopefully in ATX form factor, then I wonder if I could build an Apple myself at a bit more reasonable price?
