Clueless Mac Commentator Strikes Again

Is everyone ready for their clueless inflammatory Apple rumor of the week? I thought so. Dvorak today tries to make the claim that Apple is preparing for the ultimate customer betrayal - switching all Macs to run Windoze. It's all about market-share, allegedly.

Apple has always said it was a hardware company, not a software company. Now with the cash cow iPod line, it can afford to drop expensive OS development and just make jazzy, high-margin Windows computers to finally get beyond that five-percent market share and compete directly with Dell, HP, and the stodgy Chinese makers.
To preserve the Mac's slick cachet, there is no reason an executive software layer couldn't be fitted onto Windows to keep the Mac look and feel. Various tweaks could even improve the OS itself. From the Mac to the iPod, it's the GUI that makes Apple software distinctive. Apple popularized the modern GUI. Why not specialize in it and leave the grunt work to Microsoft? It would help the bottom line and put Apple on the fast track to real growth.

Let me be the first to say that this is NOT going to happen. First, it completely goes against the Steve Jobs mantra of "controlling the whole widget." Second, if Apple wanted to mint a MacOS that ran on Windows, or ran Windows, it had its chance with MacOS X. Third, the only way to really compete in the Windows PC space is to keep margins low and prices low - this is why Dell beats out almost everyone else - and this is not how Apple's model works. Fourth, Apple knows that making yourself 100% dependent upon Windows is a recipe for disaster - this is why they released iWork as a Microsoft Office competitor.

Of course, if you asked me a year ago, I would also have said a switch to Intel was impossible.