Apple did to that long ago with MacOS 7. It didn't work so well, since they undercut sales of their own hardware. Jobs killed the licensing when he returned to the company. Today, OS X is good enough that is still gets people to buy their outdated hardware. They'd be crazy to license it and give up that lockin. It's not a good situation, but we're not going to see OS X licensed to other manufacturers anytime soon.
Yes, the OS is great, but at this point the hardware is so unacceptable that they're going to lose all my business. If they split the OS out they'd at least get me to pay for that part.
Different use cases will have different hardware demands. I was a web developer don't give two shits about the hardware. Or at least present hardware is good enough for me.
Mid-2012 MBP with SSD, retina, and 16gb here. I've got an HDMI port, SD card reader, two USB ports, two thunderbolt ports, magsafe power, and a proper, reliable keyboard. I despair at the current crop of mac hardware. If this machine dies on me before some decent mac hardware arrives, I'm not sure what i'll do - but it definitely won't involve buying a new macbook with the touchbar, stupid keyboards, and no ports.
I switched from Windows to Mac in autumn-2013. I really hope that either Apple get their act together or that Microsoft ecosystem finally get the simple things such as hibernate and trackpads working properly before this machine gives up the ghost.
I used to have the hibernate issue with my previous retina Macbook Pro. Haven't had any such issues since I upgraded to the touchbar one. Never had any trackpad issues.
Mid-2012 MBP with SSD, retina, and 16gb here. I've got an HDMI port, SD card reader, two USB ports, two thunderbolt ports, magsafe power, and a proper, reliable keyboard. I despair at the current crop of mac hardware. If this machine dies on me before some decent mac hardware arrives, I'm not sure what i'll do - but it definitely won't involve buying a new macbook with the touchbar, stupid keyboards, and no ports.
Having upgraded from the non-touch bar MacBook Pro (unwillingly, I might add, the old one died and it's a work machine so the replacement wasn't chosen by me), I'm surprised how disgruntled people are with it. While I'm not a fan of the touchbar either, everything else is for me either a micro-annoyance - for example, the need for a couple of adapters which most of the time I don't need anyway, or a total non-issue: keyboard works totally fine, I actually prefer the larger keys, and the USB-C charger is so much better for me - I had gone through countless of the magsafe ones due to the cable breaking where it connects with the charger, the design of this ones resolves that issue, plus I can replace the cable itself if necessary (say if my cat chews it up, which also happened in the past).
Also, there are third-party power adapters that are cheaper, car adapters that actually work for it now, I can charge it from a battery pack etc. Really, for me USB-C charging easily makes up for all the other downsides. That, and auto-sleep/hibernate finally working flawlessly.
As an iPhone user I agree. I often look at how feature packed while cheap Android devices are. The only thing that keeps me from switching is Google and that I don't have the time to bother with alternative ROMs anymore.
I'm probably in the extreme minority here, but I actually think iOS lately feels too complex. There are still features it's missing that I'd like, but I often long for the simpler days of earlier iOS versions. Too many different overlapping interfaces (e.g. lock screen vs. Notification Center), types of notifications, interaction models (tap vs. 3D Touch vs. hold), and overloaded basic apps (e.g., apps inside of Mess…
I don't think that's too unreasonable. I only spent a short amount of time with iOS, but I soon gained the impression that it was unintuitive and that there was perhaps an emphasis on superficially clever stuff at the expense of keeping on top of fundamental user expectations and patterns. Things like 3D Touch don't matter to me when the user experience is much more constrained by a philosophy that discourages customisation and convention.
From a business standpoint, it's hard for Apple to justify investing in a product like that contributes a small and diminishing fraction of their revenue.
What a ridiculous statement. It's over 9% of their (giant) business, it would be a Fortune 500 company itself if not part of Apple.