It's treading where they are obviously unwanted. That's not a good way to do business or instill faith.
About ten years ago, Be wanted to have BeOS be an alternative OS you could run on Macs. Be did in fact get the first version running okay. But Apple was in the midst of one of its big hardware changes, so Be needed tech docs for the motherboard to do a really good job of it. Apple never supplied that information.
BeOS advocates at the time said: just go ahead and reverse engineer it. That's what the Linux people did. The powers that be at Be said: nope, we don't play that way. If Apple doesn't want us on their computers, then we're not going there. Be subsequently refocused on standard PC hardware.
And where's Be now? Dead. Where's Apple? Still acting like twits and preventing OS X from running on standard PC hardware, you still have to go to Apple to buy their hardware.
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. --Alan Kay
While MicroSoft expends all of their resources testing their OS with every possible piece of hardware and its associated drivers, Apple gets to focus on making great products. They don't have to wait on the hardware manufacturers to innovate, and they don't have to support their shoddy hardware and drivers. They also don't have to take the blame when it doesn't work. MicroSoft does (earned or not).
Apple gets to focus on making great products. They don't have to wait on the hardware manufacturers to innovate, and they don't have to support their shoddy hardware and drivers.
Not wanting to test your OS with a myriad of different hardware is one thing. Stopping VMWare from supporting it as a guest OS is another. There's no technical reason that I shouldn't be able to run OSX on top of VMWare (I know there's hacks to get it to work, but it's slow as molasses).
Apple is more than happy to allow VMWare to develop and sell Fusion so I can run Windows on top of Apple hardware. How is it that they don't allow me to run OSX on top of my Windows box?
This is an interesting example. I'd argue that if Be had not abandoned the Mac market they might have had a better fate than to be merely bought by, ironically, Palm!
About ten years ago, Be wanted to have BeOS be an alternative OS you could run on Macs. Be did in fact get the first version running okay. But Apple was in the midst of one of its big hardware changes, so Be needed tech docs for the motherboard to do a really good job of it. Apple never supplied that information.
BeOS advocates at the time said: just go ahead and reverse engineer it. That's what the Linux people did. The powers that be at Be said: nope, we don't play that way. If Apple doesn't want us on their computers, then we're not going there. Be subsequently refocused on standard PC hardware.