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'If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers,' Michael Dell told Fortune .

Fortune reports that a number of PC makers have said that they are interested in licensing OS X. Sadly for them, the chance of Apple allowing them to do so are somewhere between remote and zero. Not only would it eat into Apple's core business, the sale of computer hardware, it would also risk fracturing the company's relationship with Microsoft and put the future of Office on the Mac at risk.

There are several ways that Apple can prevent the Intel-based version of OS X from running on other company's Intel-based machines, such as tying the OS to specific ROM chips or using a Trusted Platform Module chip to provide hardware-based identification and security.