If you're talking about the incremental cost of making the AppleTV version of OS X, then fine. But there was a mini mentioned above, and that has full-blown OS X on it, and apple has spent billions developing OS X over the past decade or so. <br>
<br>So if anything, I'm getting confused comparing Apples to Apples. :) <br><br>And you are right, windows is a fixed cost for acer, while OS X is a variable cost for Apple. <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Feb 11, 2008 2:38 PM, Kisner, Thomas <<a href="mailto:tkisner@necunified.com">tkisner@necunified.com</a>> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div class="Ih2E3d"><br>>> $100 for windows/$100 for Mac OS X....I don't think that explains it.<br>
<br>>In the case of OSX it is Apple paying itself, with a PC it is Microsoft<br><br>>charging a manufacturer.<br>><br>>A very different set of circumstances.<br>><br>>Dare I say it, you are comparing apples and rotten tomatoes.<br>
<br></div>I don't want to argue about this but...but it's sorta fixed cost verses<br>a variable cost issue.<br><br>I don't know what Microsoft is charging Acer for an OEM copy of Windows,<br>but it's something to the bottom line of every box that they must add on<br>
to the price. Apple has R&D into OSX, but how much spread across how<br>ever many units they ship?<br><br>I think the applicable cost here is the money they spent stripping down<br>OSX (something they already own) and customizing it for AppleTV. It may<br>
be a small team of people, or maybe one guy? Let go on the very high<br>end and say they have spent $1 million dollars on salaries for a team<br>that did nothing but customize OSX for AppleTV. So, if they sell 1<br>million of them, the fixed cost per unit is 1 dollar. If they sell 2<br>
million of them it's .50 per unit. They just need to have enough margin<br>in each one they sell to cover the cost plus some profit.<br><br>Compare that to Acer. Lets say they got a sweet deal from Microsoft and<br>
they are only paying $50 per copy of Windows. That's $50 variable they<br>have to add on to every box just to break even. You add a little bit of<br>margin to that...<br><br>Hardware in the Acer box is probably more expensive, but much of the<br>
$100 cost difference has got to be directly attributable to Windows,<br>which is why I made that comment.<br><div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>mythtv-users mailing list<br>
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