[OT] EULA and legality

[Richard Gaskin]

Shawn Blc wrote:

On Saturday, September 8, 2012, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >> I would venture to guess that Apple's justification for not allowing
 >> purchasers of OS X to run it on hardware of their own choice is that
 >> the price of the Apple-branded computer effectively subsidizes part
 >> of the cost of the OS.
 >
 > BS.  Nowadays there's no need to subsidize a product
 > (software/hardware).
 > Companies only do it to draw attention and potential gain.

I suppose that's a possibility, and I can't claim to have sufficient 
knowledge of Apple's internal costs to be able to say.

But in all fairness, the price of OS X is a fraction of the price of 
Windows.

Given that Microsoft is able to amortize the R&D and marketing costs of 
Windows across some 87% of computers while Apple must amortize across 
only ~10%, and that Apple has higher margins than Microsoft, if the 
purchase price of the OS alone were to be seen as fully covering the 
vendor's costs we would expect Apple to charge many times more for its 
OS products than Microsoft does.

Most of Apple's Mac money comes from markup on hardware.  The average 
price of a Mac is roughly double that of a PC*.  Sure, they spend a lot 
on expensive fabrication for their laptop cases, but most of the 
internals are off-the-shelf components, the same CPUs, GPUs, RAM, audio 
and network chipsets, etc. that other PC vendors use.  Even with their 
expensive fabrication, their price on the hardware provides them with 
the highest margins in the industry by far.

Given that they make so much money on hardware markup and price their OS 
so much lower than Microsoft who depends on OS sales alone, it seems 
reasonable to suggest that some of the unusually high hardware revenue 
is offsetting the unusually low OS revenue.

If anyone here has had the time to go through the shareholder details 
Apple provides which may suggest otherwise, I'd be interested in any 
data which shows that this view is incorrect.  It may well be, it's just 
a hunch, but from what little I know it doesn't seem particularly 
outlandish.


* 
<http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/06/24/apple_may_make_more_profit_selling_one_mac_than_hp_does_from_7_pcs.html>

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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