Don't want to start a flame fest, and don't necessarily want to make a Hackintosh thread, but I was sitting here typing this on an Aspire One running 10.5.6 and had a hell of an idea pop into my head. It's a well known fact that Apple restricts OS X to Mac hardware only due to the loss of hardware sales and myriad of support nightmares sales of OS X to the PC marketplace would cause.
However, there are certain market segments Apple seems hesitant to penetrate, i.e. the small netbook market (the MB Air is NOT that compact, its just thin). And OS X is about 99% ready to run on these 945-based machines. So why not license OS X to netbook vendors running a specific hardware platform and tie it to the serial number in the BIOS to ensure it wouldn't easily install on other PCs (i.e. the OEM Aspire One version of OS X's install disc would refuse to boot on a non-Aspire One machine)
This would enable Apple to make money selling an OS to a market they have no interest in entering, and would keep the hardware on a level playing field. Aspire One is an Aspire One, it's not like you can pop a new videocard and motherboard in there and make it suddenly incompatible.
However, there are certain market segments Apple seems hesitant to penetrate, i.e. the small netbook market (the MB Air is NOT that compact, its just thin). And OS X is about 99% ready to run on these 945-based machines. So why not license OS X to netbook vendors running a specific hardware platform and tie it to the serial number in the BIOS to ensure it wouldn't easily install on other PCs (i.e. the OEM Aspire One version of OS X's install disc would refuse to boot on a non-Aspire One machine)
This would enable Apple to make money selling an OS to a market they have no interest in entering, and would keep the hardware on a level playing field. Aspire One is an Aspire One, it's not like you can pop a new videocard and motherboard in there and make it suddenly incompatible.