Why Apple should let HP build its workstations

Creative COW Forum Thread started by Ron Lindebloom

I had to smile reading the people on the original thread below speculating about the possibility of officially licensed Mac OS on an HP Workstation.

For years, Tim Wilson and I have talked about the idea of HP providing workstations that run the Mac OS. (Not every PC manufacturer, just HP.)

Why HP?

It is why we actively focused on getting them involved at the COW. We believe that when the smoke clears, the most rabid Mac professionals on the planet -- the ones running über-powerful systems that need slots, cards, etc. -- will find themselves dancing with Apple and HP. Either as dual platform shops, or if it goes as we suspect, Apple will license a sole PC vendor to work with. We think that will be HP.

Over the years as Tim Wilson and I have hammered on where the growing "i-focusing" at Apple would take things, Tim said to me one day that "There is now just one true workstation left: HP's Z series, that's it."

It had been years since Apple built a new one. They had killed XServe. They had swept away things like XSan, Shake, FCP, Color and other pro initiatives.

It was not hard to envision an Apple in which they would not want to lose their highest end customers, while simultaneously finding themselves becoming ever increasingly unwilling to directly supply them.

Why? For the very same reasons that had killed all the products mentioned two paragraphs back.

Click here to read Ron's full post and all the great posts in the thread.