The REALLY boggling thing to me is that Apple almost certainly
makes MORE
profit off of a $999 copy of Mac OS X Server than off a $2999 Xserve
I wouldn't be so certain about that. They have a whole lot more
manpower in developing software than hardware. This has been a
trend in computers since the 70's. HW is cheap, good SW is not. I
bet Apple loses money on OS X, from a pure sales perspective. There
re other reasons to keep at it however since it runs your iPod,
iPhone, Apple TV, ...
Apple loses money on pretty-much every piece of software it
produces. I think ClarisWorks finally went cash-positive after
something like 15 years. Remember that Apple is a hardware company.
It makes its money on hardware and the only reason it produces
software is to convince people to buy the hardware. Final Cut Pro ?
Priced below development costs. iTunes Store ? Priced below
development and running costs.
That's the reason that the components of an iPod touch costs about
half what an iPod touch costs: you're paying for the development of
an OS that will supply OpenGL, a video player and a web browser which
can run on an ARM processor without chewing up battery-life. That's
pretty miraculous and it isn't going to be cheap to get it working
right.
Simon
--
Simon Slavin Fylde Building Room C11
Computing Development Officer 01524 65201 x 93569
Psychology Department
University of Lancaster
