If Apple offered a version of OS X for ANY PC would you buy it?

[stomachmonkey]

I'm the lone vote for Apple hardware.

With Apple hardware and an Apple OS you are significantly less likely to encounter instability related to hardware variances.

It's one of the reasons that Macs used to be pricier than they are today. Every chip on the board was proprietary which also caused a lot of the supply and manufacturing issues that used to plague Apple.

Now they have a happy balance, consistency in architecture and no more supply issues.

[mikester]

My general perspective is that I have only bought one name brand computer and it was a rip off. I got less and paid more; never done it since and I likely never will again.

I also have had very very few instability problems in building my own PCs and even fewer using W2k and WXP; I would almost say I've never had a BSOD in XP but it isn't true. I had a driver instability with a RAID card recently (that was unsupported so duh!) and every time I tried to go into the disk manager it would BSOD violently.

I'm very happy with XP; But I would love a dual boot system so that I could do the Video happy things I struggle with in Windows that are much easier in the MAC world. I had an iBook through work recently but it was just tooooooo slow - it seemed that the hard drive though sizeable was performing at what I would expect a 4800rpm drive to perform at. We bought some IBMs after that and I haven't looked back. Now I run Linux in a VMWARe machine to do my UNIX business on my laptop (I would run it natively but the wireless support for my particular IBM is rough so it's just easier in VM).

I can't see spending the money on a Mac, just can't see it. I'm an economical kind of guy (Read "CHEAP") and I can't justify the money on their hardware but I can easily justify the money on their OS. I think there are likely a lot of people out there like me and if Apple did this while they might loose some hardware sales they would gain in leaps and bounds in the desktop software sales department. Not just their OS but all the software they sell.

[CamB]

I haven't had any problem (that I remember) on either the home PC I'm typing this on or my work Compaq laptop (now 2yo), other than the laptop's harddrive giving up after 6 months (not Microsoft's fault!).

Using Outlook/Word/Excel/Firefox, I have no instability at all. I think the last abnormal behaviour I had was with GIMP2 (free image manipulation program) crashing, but again, no problem with XP continuing to run just fine.

Oh yeah, and friggin' Acrobat Reader locks up a fair amount inside of Firefox (and inside Explorer before that). Ctrl-Alt-Del and stopping the process fixes it though.

Not enough RAM or a really slow CPU can really spoil the party though, especially if you're impatient.

[masraum]

Adobe Acrobat sucks, it's a worse resource hog than most MS software, takes forever to load, and often doesn't "unload".

Other than the occasional app problem my XP is extremely stable.

MS could build/be a rock solid platform like Apple, Sun/Solaris, etc.... if the hardware that it worked with was rigidly limited regulated. If Solaris or OSX worked with any $10 taiwan made generic video card, NIC, sound card, etc.... they'd be less stable than they are now.

I've been using XP for years, usually on several computers at a time, usually on at least one computer that barely supports the apps that I run it on, including Outlook, the rest of Office, Photoshop, games, loads of other apps big, little, free, etc..., and in that time I bet I've had less than 5 blue screens. My home PC is on 24x7. Actually I take that back. I tried installing the software for an Ipod that I bought for my daughter. I got blue screens for 24 hours. I then restored the system to the config that it had before the Ipod software and it's been fine since.

[djmcmath]

It wasn't actually the BSODs that drove me from MS. It was the "I forgot about your network, would you mind reminding me how I'm supposed to talk to the outside?" And the "Gosh, I know you put files over here, but I can't read any of them anymore." Or my favorite, "Yes, I know that device worked yesterday, but today it doesn't. Perhaps if you re-installed the drivers? Again? And again? Differently this time?"

I'll grant that XP didn't usually crash or die on me, but the random stupidity that the OS threw at me just did me in.