No it’s not because of the holiday sales. The screenshot above shows the Psystar online store pulling out all their stock as part of the terms of settlement with Apple. As you may already know, you CAN get a Macintosh bundle outside Apple, but it’s going to cost you — and the cost has been paid by a battery of ongoing lawsuits filed by Apple against Psystar.
Apple is a unique technology company as they manufacture both the hardware and software to provide a top grade user experience which others have tried to hack and replicate into third party machines. Psystar is the most notorious for this.
The truth is, history is made by the victors and one can always argue that Apple is in a monopoly for its own software platform. With Windows, you can at least choose the machine you can install it in. For Snow Leopard, you’d need to run it on a Macintosh. Which is why perhaps the Rebel EFI app is still online, a program that permits you to install OS X Snow Leopard onto Intel based PC’s. It still isn’t part of the suit.
How long can Apple hold it off really? And in all honesty, at some point, who really cares? The main reason why Apple doesn’t charge such a premium for their OS purchase or upgrade is simply because you CAN’T run it on any other machine. If Apple charged say, USD $100 more for their software per piece, btu allowed you to run it on any machine, would you pay that premium?
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