Minority Report: Will Apple send in the clones?

Were Apple to once again start licensing its operating system to third-party 'Mac clone' hardware makers, it could reignite the OS wars. Yet whether Apple will go this route - and whether doing so would be smart - remains to been, says Seb Janacek.

In the months since Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the Mac was making the seismic shift from PowerPC to Intel processors, the murmurs about the possible resurrection of the clones programme have been getting louder - but will the talk come to anything?

The clones programme, whereby Apple licensed the Mac operating system to PC manufacturers to load on non-Apple hardware in return for a royalty on each computer sold, was abandoned in 1997 with the 'second coming' of Steve Jobs.

The origin of the whole strategy lies, remarkably, with Microsoft's Bill Gates. In July 1985 Gates sent a now infamous memo to Apple CEO John Sculley in which he admitted to be "enthusiastic about the benefits of licensing Mac technology" and urged them to consider licensing the Mac OS to third-party computer manufacturers.

Although the Apple management team resisted his advice initially, the seed was planted and the rambling clone licensing saga spanned the tenures of four Apple CEOs.

The first faltering steps were taken by John Sculley; Michael Spindler ushered in the first clone agreement and Gil Amelio took the scheme to his heart.

At the time of the first clone, Apple's management wanted a way of boosting the company's revenues and claw back its diminishing market share. The cloning options were tossed around the boardroom for several months as the company prepared plans to kick-start the programme, only to get cold feet at the last minute a number of times.

The first clone was finally announced at the start of 1995 and until Jobs' return in 1997 PowerPC-based clones running the Mac OS were available from a handful of manufacturers including Daystar, Motorola, Power Computing, Radius and Umax.

However, Apple's sales began to suffer as customers bought the cheaper and often faster clones rather than the company's own Macs and it became apparent that the programme was cannibalising the company's own products rather than taking a bite out of Wintel.

With a royalty of just $50 per computer sold, Apple felt it had ended up subsidising the clone manufacturers. When the programme finally ended, Jobs claimed the subsidy on each clone was in fact costing Apple several hundred dollars per machine.

Meanwhile, 10 years after Gates sent his memo to Apple, the Mac's market share had been eroded and Gates' ushered in Windows 95. It seemed to be 'game over' in the OS wars.

Apple has flatly denied that the imminent shift to Intel chips heralds a longer term strategy to license its operating system to PC manufacturers.

Adding further spice to the speculation, Steve Jobs claimed earlier this year that three major PC manufactures had already approached him regarding the licensing of the Apple OS.

Global PC market leader Dell is almost certain to have been one of them. The company's chairman Michael Dell admitted this summer that he would be interested in selling PCs loaded with OS X.

Dell told Fortune magazine: "If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers."

Advocates of a new clone programme claim the case is compelling and believe it affords the company the opportunity to renew hostilities in the OS wars at a time when Microsoft is relatively weak.

Ten years on from the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft's operating system is hamstrung by an ever-growing body of negative publicity about its system security problems and the enormous malware threat posed by a global army of virus writers.

With OS X, Apple has delivered an operating system is usable, attractive to consumers and above all stable and secure. Each new iteration of the cat-themed OS has won new fans and advocates.

While security experts claim a genuine OS X virus is a possibility, they also admit it's a very remote one given the robustness of the operating system's Unix core.

The next-generation and long-delayed Windows Vista, formerly known as Longhorn, is still some way from release. In fact, it's expected to make its debut at the same time that OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - the first version of the Mac OS to run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs - appears towards the end of 2006 or start of 2007.

At the time of the Intel announcement in June, Apple admitted it has been porting OS X to Intel since day one. Does this indicate a cautious approach to platform deployment or point to a longer-term strategy?

Speaking at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller insisted OS X would run on Apple hardware only. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," he said.

While the task of porting OS X on an Intel machine would be relatively straightforward - a number of enterprising hackers have already claimed to have done so - enabling the huge number of drivers, peripherals and application would be a far more onerous task for third-party developers worldwide.

As to the question of whether the clone programme will be resurrected any time soon the answer is 'not very likely' while Steve Jobs remains CEO of Apple.

The ending of the clones programme was one of Jobs' first actions in his tenure as interim CEO of Apple in 1997.

Jobs once described the clone makers as "leeches" and is unlikely to reopen the Cupertino doors to alternative PC manufacturers anytime soon, as the company makes the majority of its profit from hardware sales, not software.

Apple has always held that its success is based on the fact that it designs both hardware and software. With Apple's current focus on marrying the cutting-edge industrial design of its hardware with the elegance of its software, it would be a bitter pill to swallow to see OS X running on the archetypical 'beige box'.

Even if licensing the Mac OS is part of Apple's long-term plans, the company is in no hurry to open its operating system given the recent upturn in Mac unit sales and the likely boost in sales from Mactel machines.

Apple's last quarterly results reported a 48 per cent increase in Mac sales on the same period in 2004 - an above average rise, albeit in a booming PC market. It would need a desperate drop in Mac revenues for its CEO to even consider such an unpalatable option.

The romantics who await the next stage in the OS wars may have to settle for skirmish rather than an all-out attack from Apple.

When it finally arrives, Vista is likely to offer an 'OS X experience' for PC users. In the same way that Windows 95 was the first version of Windows which came close to emulating the spirit of the Mac OS, Vista will no doubt woo consumers with its OS X-esque translucent windows. Many interface features appear so similar to OS X as to make little difference to most PC owners anyway.

As for its own strategy, Apple already offers a low-cost Mac in the form of the Mac mini, one of the chief contenders to be the first incumbent of an Intel chip. With the Mac mini also one of the prime suspects for the basis of a future transformation into a media centre computer, the Mac maker has a few cards to play yet before considering desperate actions.

Given its early success, we can expect to see Apple's littlest Mac receive an identity and marketing makeover long before another clone hits the shelves.