A brief Daring Fireball impression

My comments here will surely soon pale in comparison to what I expect will be John Gruber's ever more eloquent and studied analysis, but until then, here's my take on a few bits from this article about Psystar.

Apple, the publicly traded company (not "Jobs" or some "executives" whom I don't believe issued some statement that the author is quoting), is in the business of making money. Apple must believe that it makes more money doing things the way it does them. Not licensing clones in that framework isn't because of a "threat," it's simply a business decision. The threat Apple might perceive in this context (as would any business) would be another company's illegally selling products with Apple's name on them.

Apple must like the "only-Apple-wins" business model of earning money better. A lot of other businesses in the capitalist system pursue this model also (instead of trying to help other companies make money). So far Apple has been doing pretty well I hear. I will leave the research in that area as an exercise for the reader.

UPDATE: Kontra at Counternotions nicely encapsulates this phenomenon this way: "For the we-don't-grok-hardware+software+service-integration crowd this hope will never die, business models be damned."