You thought they were dead; that Lord Jobs, Controller of our Destinies and Keeper of the Mac killed them off back in the old days of 1998 (like, when Macs were still beige! Eek!). What in the name of kernel panics am I referring to? Mac cloning.

The last I checked, Mac clones are still dead and Steve Jobs has dismissed the possibility of the return of Mac cloning. But then again, this is the same Apple that dismissed a flash-based iPod, a cheap headless Mac, the Intel x86 architecture, and a video iPod, yet here we are with the iPod Shuffle and iPod nano, Mac mini, a forthcoming switch to Intel chips, and the mythical video iPod. Heck, Apple even entered the Media Center PC ring to some extent with Front Row. Oh, and there’s that Mighty Mouse thing. What’s next, iPhone? A PDA? A Mac Tablet? I guess it’s safe to say that anything is possible.

Which is why when I saw an article on sillicon.com discussing the possibilities (or impossibilities, depending on how you look at it) of Mac cloning making a comeback, I started thinking, “What if...?” What if cloning was successful then? What if Apple rose Mac cloning from the grave in an all-out assault on Microsoft’s hegemony? What if what if what if?

What if Apple started cloning in the 80s? i think we’d be looking at two possibilities. The first possibility: Apple rules the OS market. Apple fills the Microsoft role and a number of smaller players—possibly including Microsoft—fight for the leftover scraps in the dumpster out back. Maybe Microsoft would be completely wiped off the map. The second possibility: a balanced OS market. No OS commands the market; instead three or four platforms duke it out on Wrestlemania and own a decent chunk of the market. Actually, there’s a third possibility: something completely different happens.

The mid 90s Mac cloning experiment was a mistake from the start. By the time clones had become more common, Apple’s financial foundation was about as solid and stable as Jell-o. The contracts apple drew up with clone makers didn’t help Apple any either. Cloning also fragmented an existing Mac market, as opposed to significantly expanding it. It was the wrong place and the wrong time, and it turned out to be a disaster. I’d go so far as to say that if Jobs didn’t kill most cloning in 1997, Apple would either not exist today or would be pushed out of the PC market. at the time, there was no other viable option. What if Apple decided against cloning in the first place? It’s hard to say. but I’d guess the hemorrhaging of 1996 and 1997 would have been no where near as severe as it turned out to be.

Times are different today. The iPod’s success has put Apple back on the map and back into the minds of consumers. Apple’s PC market share is showing signs of life. Mac OS X has delivered on the long-unfulfilled promise of a modern Mac OS. And Apple will be on Windows’ own turf--the x86 platform. So what if Apple jumped back into cloning? I think the first thing you would see is Apple learning from their mistake and demanding a bit more from each clone maker for each machine. The second thing: some controls on hardware components to ensure that OS X runs as seamlessly on a clone as an Apple Macintosh. Thirdly, you would see apple do what they’re doing--differentiating themselves from the rest of the PC industry by refusing to making commodity boxes and creating distinctive machines. There would still be a market for Apple’s distinctive hardware offerings. Fourthly, I think you would see cloning actually succeed. Interest in the Mac OS had been higher now than it has been in years, if ever. Even Dell—the largest PC manufacturer in the world, mind you—has expressed some interest in providing OS X for customers if Apple ever decided to open it up to licensing. Think about that for a second. This isn’t an obscure company like Power Computing willing to join Mac cloning, this is Dell.

As successful as it may be, however, Apple would lose their biggest current advantage: the ability to offer a fully integrated hardware-sogtware solution. On the flip side, opening the Mac OS to cloning could very well open up many doors to further the Macintosh as a platform (like double-digit market share). All that said, I don’t expect cloning anytime soon. Anything’s possible, but I’m not holding my breath.