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by Haul4ss
3369 days ago
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Because that's not Apple's business model? They did the licensing thing in the mid-90s. Mac clones were a thing. To license macOS means to support infinite hardware variations, and to rely on OEMs not to suck. It is an impossible technical problem for a company whose whole ethos revolves around integration of h/w and s/w. |
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Kind of.
Apple had to approve any clone designs. It wasn't as willy-nilly as the PC market. At the time Apple allowed cloning, Apple itself had a large number of varying models to support.
Apple's big problem was that the clones were faster and cheaper. For example, the Umax C500 was available up to 240 Mhz while the PowerMac 4400 was only available up to 200 Mhz and the Umax machine was $400 less expensive and that was on the low end.
Power Computing's clones were high end and either matched or outperformed their Apple equivalents for less money. The PowerTower 200e was released the same day as the PowerMac 9500/200 and it was $1300 less expensive.
In the really high end, the Daystar Genesis MP smoked everything in Apple's product lineup.
The cloners were bad for Apple but only because Apple couldn't compete with them. Developing both the hardware and the software was too expensive for them to not be able to make all of the profit on every sale.