Hey Melly..

May be you should do a bit of research and find out what happened when the Apple clones were produced in the mid-90s and how Apple lost in hardware production as well as system stability because of many different hardware compatibilities!

I still don't understand why stock bloggers need to babble about strategic direction.. you didn't think there was no one at Apple who ever thought about your wonderful idea of producing mac clones?

I hope Apple will never EVER let that happen.. because Apple computers will eventually become like PCs, unstable and a pain!!!

Go Stevo.. we love you!

PS: one thing stock bloggers need to remember is people who own AAPL stocks are Apple fanatics.

Well, good to see you're doing your research. Not.
Apple licensed clones in the past, about 10 years ago, and it was a dismal failure. Why try it again? Unless Dell is building keyboards with the command key, sounds like a receipt to confuse the user.

Given Apples' control freak traits, should such a think ever come to happen it would be in certain strict circumstances.

What are we seeing today? Apple's success is due to its absolutely tight ship attitude. That posture resulted in a much better Virus free operating System, a very secure and obviously successful new handheld computing platform everything based in tight control with a different name - ecosystem.

Why is Windows such a crap and hell-on-earth experience? Because it is the exact opposite of Apple's tightly controlled organization. Being a greedy operation, they overlook a lot of things to get the money in their hands leading to the chaos we witness today. Apple on the other hand proved that it is possible to be amazingly profitable and still thrive in a controlled environment.

I believe, given certain conditions be secured, that Apple could release then named Apple OS to certain specific hardware manufacturers. I believe it will do it. I believe it will not have a choice but doing it.

But the time is not here yet. Maybe it is coming soon with OS 10.6.

I think Apple will wait until its international sales from its new ~100 sales partners (the cellphone network carriers all over the world) are stabilized and running smoothly and the iPhone line of handheld computers a massive success to then turn its attention to this issue and strike MS in the jugular while it's at its knees after tripping on its own shoe laces with Vista blunders and all that.

PsyStar is a piracy operation in the way that is not of the best interest to Apple. Apple doesn't persecute individuals for piracy, they have even helped the hacking group that helped put Mac OS X working with PC clones, per their own words. If there would be a serious effort from legit business minded youngsters that want to promote the excellence of Apple's software and make a buck while doing so, then I'm sure Apple would have no qualms and would probably even support them. But not these fishy guys, they in it for the dough and disrespect everything and everyone - they're using the x86 group's compilation to produce their clones and haven't even asked for permission much less than crediting their effort!

The reason Apple has the edge on the personal computer market right now is that they can innovate and evolve the hardware AND the software simultaneously, and so design both for each other. The lack of this cohesive design strategy is one of the main reasons that M$-based PC manufacturers struggle with compatibility issues, and the largest reason that M$ has to release system updates almost daily. When the software and hardware are built from the ground up to work with each other, there are no incompatibility issues.

Apple would be more foolish than even M$ to license its OS now; they've been there, lost revenue, and they've also seen the (de)evolution of M$'s OS saga and incompatibility issues. To jump in the same boat now would be the most ignorant thing since Enron and carbon dating.