Item the tenth: This is the most awe-inspiring stealth marketing move Ive ever seen.
Think about it. Apple releases a developers-only preview release of Mac OS X for Intel. Its a fully functional release of the operating system, not a beta or prerelease copy. It will work reliably, and it will run the vast majority of existing Mac applications unmodified via the Rosetta translation technology. But because this is a one-off developer release, its of very little value to computer owners. Future software updates, like the soon-to-be-released 10.4.2 update, wont install. Existing Mac software will run, but it will run in translation, which means it will be frustratingly slow. But according to reports, Apples bundled iLife applications, major selling points for the Mac operating system, are already Intel-native and run at full speed.
Given Apples experiences with software piracy, particularly the rampant software piracy that spread developer builds of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger all over the Internet this past spring, Apples management from the top down knows full well that this developer preview will be in the hands of every kid with a cable modem within days of its release. Most of them will be able to install it on their own computers and run it and the full suite of iLife 05 applications at full speed, and run most existing Mac software in translation.
As a result, Apple will give thousands, possibly millions, of people a taste of Mac OS X running full speed on their own PCs.
Apples giving their potential future customers a free taste, thats what theyre doing. Its a try-before-you-buy deal.
Its possible that any one of the ten items above well, except number one is wrong either in detail or completely. Its possible that Im totally off-base here. But I dont think so. I think theres a possibility, a very real possibility, that Im right about this. And that thought gives me the chills. In a good way.