Building the $200 Mac

With the new Mac OSX (Tiger) designed to run on Intel chipsets, hundreds are turning cheap PCs into $200 Macintoshes. Does this mean Apple will sell their low-end Macs (with prices currently beginning at $500) at the K-mart rate of $200? Almost certainly not. But if this practice catches on, Apple will need to have a competitive offering at around that price point. Otherwise, a mailorder industry for cut-rate Apple compatible "clones" may spring up overnight.

Or, Apple might install a hardware 'key' so that only machines containing that key may have OSX installed. In that case, we'd look for workarounds online. Either way, we expect cheaper Mac minis ($300?) to directly compete with cheap PCs in the next 18 months.

Also: A review of the performance of the OSX beta on Intel x86.

Categories: Apple+Macintosh