At its Worldwide Developer Conference in California earlier this month, Apple Computer said it would not allow other PC manufacturers to license Mac OS X to their customers. The company’s Senior Vice President Phil Schiller added, "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac." Apple, however, would not do anything to prevent anyone from running Windows, though it won’t support it either. Despite that, Dell’s Founder and Chairman Michael Dell told Fortune magazine that the company would be ready to ship Mac OS X independently should Apple ever decided to make the move.

"If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers," wrote Dell in e-mail to the magazine.

Industry analysts suggested that Dell is very comfortable in offering operating systems other than Microsoft Windows even though it doesn’t promote such alternatives heavily. Dell has offered Red Hat Linux and Novell’s SuSE Linux in consumer oriented PCs, and NetWare in selected enterprise servers.

A Dell representative confirmed the e-mail and said the company is unsure whether it would offer Mac OS X on PCs, servers or both.

Apple declined to comment on the report.