Apple should just send in the clones

As I write (on Tuesday), nobody seems to have received any computers from Psystar, more than a week after it said it would have them out the door in 48 hours. Still, patience is a virtue.

But even if Psystar's adventures are some sort of bizarro version of everyone's favourite business game, they have demonstrated one thing very clearly: there is huge pent-up demand for cheaper Apple gear. Forums abound with people saying: "I'd love to buy an Apple machine, but I just can't afford it. And the ones they're offering don't do what I want." The customers clearly want to have a wider choice, especially at the bottom end. And in the middle, actually, where they want a midrange tower rather than the supercharged Mac Pro towers that Apple offers.

The ironic thing is that too much choice nearly killed Apple. When Steve Jobs returned there, more than a decade ago, he proclaimed himself mystified by its bewildering range of desktop computers - the Performa, the Quadra, the LC, the Power Macintosh. "What's the difference?" he asked, and binned the lot - to be replaced by the "grid of four": portables and desktops, for pros and consumers. He also killed the clone makers that Apple estimated had taken 10% of its business.

But if people want a bargain-basement machine then Apple is leaving money on the table by not offering it. If enough startups make cloned Macs, Apple gets just $129 per machine (the price of Leopard at retail) - or perhaps only the wholesale price (which, Sir Alan would tell you, is probably two-fifths of the retail price, or $51.60). Apple's 10K stock filing shows that its net sales per computer sold are $1,532 (compared to $181 per iPod sold). We can't be sure how much profit each generates, but it seems a fair assumption that it's more than $129, or $51.60. Letting people make clones is financially bad news for Apple. With more than $18bn in the bank, it could afford to shave its margins to stave off cloners.

Now, mea errata. In previous columns here, I've complained about the instability of OS X 10.5, aka "Leopard". Turns out I was wrong. The machine I'd installed it on had a known memory board fault. Once that was fixed, the problems vanished. ("D'ya think it was tin whiskers?" asked a colleague. Well, it might have been, but how would we know?)

That though raises the question of how many other people who've had problems with Leopard actually had problems with Apple's hardware. I realised that every Apple my family has owned has had some problem - two failed logic boards, one broken Firewire port, one cosmetic crack; and a work colleague just told me of his wife's bust MacBook. Yes, a logic board again.

On consideration, Apple might not like clones. But it might be that everyone else really is ready for them. Someone call the Apprentices!