Arc, you should refer to Mac OS's EULA for that answer. Each company have their own policy, so you can't say because Microsoft sells Windows to anyone that has x86/x64 computers, then Apple must do the same.
Yes, but the problem comes from hypocrisy and double standards.
If you notice, MAc comes with Safari and not much hoopla is made about it, but Windows with IE is just absolute tyranny. "How could they? Those *******os".
Mac runs on Intel, kingston, seagate (you get the drift) hardware, NOT on apple made hardware.
Mac OSx CAN run on a normal PC, but is illegal.
Yet, MS Licensing is the more tyrannical and ought to be shunned to oblivion scheme.
If this were a Mac world, you would not have much if any say in what you do with your PC as to hardware and upgrading. However, they might (big maybe) be more affordable.
Yet, MS are the monsters.
I agree with some of your opinion, let me tell you my perspective of the matter...
1. About the web browser, yeah... Absolutely right, but Apple's Safari have a tiny tiny small market to start with, so it's the "challenger" to Microsoft's IE. The EU regulator wants to boost browser diversity in Europe, so the most likely target is the "elephant share holder" of browser wars, IE. It's not like you can't install another browser in Macs, but the point of EU regulators was, IE was embedded way too deep into Windows (all pre Vista generation), so even if you install Firefox, if you typed an URL in the Explorer's address bar, Explorer magically transforms to Internet Explorer (remember, all pre Vista can do this, XP after SP2 is hacked by MS so that if you put URL, it will run the iexplore.exe process instead of using Explorer's internal web browser components). Microsoft does make amends by somewhat partially disabling "Explorer" and "Internet Explorer" integration, too bad.. It was already too long and too late at that time.
2. Mac runs on Intel *chips*, uses kingstone's *chips*, uses seagate's *harddrive*, but Macs are more than just intel, kingston, and seagate products put together. If you already notice, Macs uses the Next Generation Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, making BIOSes look beyond archaic. No more you need to install drivers or wait "BIOS" to prepare your hardware before handing over it to OS's bootloader (which in time will be taken over by drivers). uEFI even can speedup your boot up process by pre-booting your OS, loading your OS's kernel while in initialization mode. Comparing Mac's uEFI and BIOS is already enough to show that it is BY FAR is more advanced than my PC, or your PC, or anyone's PC. No more you need to hustle with IRQs, or pre-mapping your OS bootloader, writing MBRs, etc... Booting an OS is handled by the uEFI, choosing OS is handled by uEFI, accessing your hardware is provided by uEFI, you can even access basic network using uEFI (network package is required), OR you can boot your computer using a SAN directly from uEFI (iSCSI, network package is required, boot your diskless computer directly off a network storage, accessing a iSCSI storage over through uEFI is like detecting a network share using BIOS, which is IMPOSSIBLE). IBM x3650 M2 Server series uses uEFI, the uEFI boot up process took almost 5 minutes before you can POWER UP the server, but in exchange of that handicap, you get true remote management through uEFI interface (combined with IMM, you can even see the it's "Display" without even need to plug in a LCD monitor), can directly access SAN storage from uEFI, and most of the health monitoring features can finally "Predictive Failure Analysis". It knows when your processor is about to die on you, it knows if your memory is about to go away to memory heaven...
That combined with the attention of detail of computer building... the case doesn't rattle, it's very sturdy by design, and is hard to crack open (except for Mac Pros)...
Mac OS
*CANNOT and WILL NOT*, I repeat,
*CANNOT and WILL NOT* run on BIOS based computers. BUT, because Darwin Kernel is open source, you can change the part that interfaces with uEFI to use BIOS interface, but by doing that, you are raising a many issues in the basic day to day operation of MacOS. Fortunately most of the kernel extensions must be BIOS compatible (fortunately, most of that .kext are included in MacOS installation disk, but not all). Some will have problems with Network adapters (the hardware manufacturer doesn't provide the .kext [or driver in our language] that's compatible with BIOS), Some will sleep but never wakes up (ACPI is somewhat supported, but not perfect). Maybe in part, Apple doesn't want to make regular PC users to run MacOS, but from another perspective, uEFI does provide a much smoother computing experience for Apple's users. The Power uEFI possess is just out of this world (for us BIOS users). I envy uEFI...
3. Microsoft licensing is somewhat "limited" compared to other solutions... but what can we do, it's the OS where "Games for Windows" work... And is still the most used Desktop OS out there. What can we do...
4. Regarding upgrading... I personally confused with "upgrade" term. I for one, build all of my computers from scratch for almost 10 years. From my own personal experience on my own computers, upgrades are defined as throwing the motherboard, processor, memory then put the new ones in (in the AGP times). Then, on the AGP/PCIe transition time, throw motherboard, memory, processor, gfx card, put the new ones in. Is it considered as an upgrade, to some of us... yes, to me, it's like buying a whole new computer. You need to reinstall the OS, install new driver sets, configure a whole new set of devices, optimize settings, etc... That's what you do with NEW computers, not upgraded computers...
The only thing that remained is the storage device (harddisk, optical drives, anything storage related). The latest card I bought for this computer was the GTX285 to drive my two of my 24" incher, and that doesn't count as an upgrade, because I already have 8800GT before, I add a new display adapter, not upgrade.
It'd be better be off buying a new computer, and transfer files over as easy as possible back then than to "upgrade". The effort to move everything is much more expensive than the hardware upgrade cost. Not to mention the glitches that will arise upon configuring... The headache of "why is it BSOD-ing in Windows7 while it was OK in Vista"-like problems... but that's just me
zzz2496
, my experience with IBM x3650 M2 made me drool over uEFI. Seeing an iSCSI target in the uEFI menu shocked me to the bone. I tried it to connect to my FreeNas Virtual machine serving an iSCSI volume, it's able to connect and I was setting up the server over network, installing OS over remote KVM session through IMM, and installing the OS to a network disk !!! Anyway, for all I know, the only uEFI enabled mainboard from Intel is the new P55 desktop board (DP55KG iirc), but the RAID on that board doesn't allow volumes above 2TB to be used as a boot volume, and the features is somewhat lacking... About IRQ, all I know, I had plenty of irritating issues when setting up IBM x3500 (BIOS based) to use an FC card...
