He seems to be neglecting the most difficult aspect of releasing your own OS: getting most developers to port/write software for it.
Apple has followed a peculiar path that has allowed it to successfully accomplish this, but it is very difficult to imagine how Dell could successfully found their own operating system at present.
Moreover, I'm not convinced the recommendation to license their operating system is motivated by herd mentality. It's probably just that people did not believe Apple could get as big a market-share for its own machines as it appears to be getting. As for the recommendation to put Windows on their machines, that just seems, well, stupid, but perhaps I am missing something.
That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS. Eventually you could get everything for Windows and software at random for another OS. The equilibrium here seems to be a for a single dominant OS maker.
Reminds me of the Dvorak v. Qwerty keyboard layouts. The market has space for a single dominant keyboard type. Individuals can choose between Dvorak (and variants) or Qwerty, but since so many people use Qwerty, everything is designed based on that. If Dvorak reaches a tipping point, everyone would likely abandon Qwerty.
Does anyone thing the expansion of open source makes it more likely that the OS market is trending towards being a multi-power field?
That's kind of the key idea behind Microsoft's building of its monopoly: paying developers to produce software for its OS.
Well, it is more subtle than that. If you are a large corporation, you might have 100,000 desktops, and since Windows came out you might have bought 0.5-1M licenses. That's an awful lot. Why would you do this? Because the software you absolutely depend on to run this business is written internally, and the cost of doing this in a Microsoft tool like VB (historically) is low enough to make it worthwhile. Microsoft has always cultivated its developer ecosystem well. Apple are good now, but I remember the dark days of the 90s when you never knew when a key Apple technology you depended on they would simply abandon (e.g. OpenDoc).
Apple has followed a peculiar path that has allowed it to successfully accomplish this, but it is very difficult to imagine how Dell could successfully found their own operating system at present.
Moreover, I'm not convinced the recommendation to license their operating system is motivated by herd mentality. It's probably just that people did not believe Apple could get as big a market-share for its own machines as it appears to be getting. As for the recommendation to put Windows on their machines, that just seems, well, stupid, but perhaps I am missing something.