Why do submitters always have to end their submission with the usual "Is this XXXX or is it YYYY?" It's so inane and pointless. Just submit the story without trying to inject your opinion with an idiotic question at the end.

I can see one day in a slashdot story: "Is this a sign from God or the mark of the beast?" Please stop. You make the baby Jesus cry.

Most computer users are stupid. They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks." Never mind that the software was targetted at a specific hardware platform, that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user. Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is DESIGNED to work primarily with one specific hardware set, but would have nothing stopping them from running OSX into the ground with everyone they know.

Think about it. One of the reasons Windows can be so annoying is that there are a bazillion different configurations. Apple can keep OS X running smoothly because they know exactly what's inside their machines. Once it gets put on a Dell, some idiot's going to complain about how buggy OS X is because it doesn't run on his own personal cobbled-together POS.

I wouldn't call it very "hidden" though. Here I was thinking of something ROT13 encrypted, or at least baked into a TPM-related file. Not a file they've dropped into /System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext as XML. Actually, since it was in XML, I have to wonder if it's not intended to show up at some place in the OS as a warning.

Except in that case there was some unfair monopoly issues involved.

In apples case, the market share is far to small to be even considered for that.. So they can bundle as much as they want.

I recall a company in the past that wouldn't sell you their software unless you purchased their hardrware. They were taken to court and forced to unbundle the OS from the Hardware since the OS was capable for running on other hardware. I can't recall the company name off hand but I feel someone will to do the same to Apple.

People who don't understand monopoly law should have their fingers hacked off so they don't post such stupid comments.

Look, I know some people like to bash Apple because they tie the OS to the hardware. Bash away on that argument I don't care, on several levels you are right. But your not so subtle implication is that somehow Apple's situation is the same as Microsoft's is a fundamental lack of brain matter for anyone who's posted on slashdot.

Apple is NOT a monopoly, Microsoft IS a monopoly. The first step to understanding monopolies is quite simply that the rules change once you are a monopoly. Monopolies wield incredible power and pervert the forces of a free market into something that is definitely not a free market. Everyone argument ever made that is anti-Microsoft is based on this premise. Bassed on that, Microsoft's actions are typically illegal, while Apple's actions at worst are quite simply immoral. It doesn't make them any less annoying, but under law they aren't illegal, because market forces have the opportunity to break that bundling package if someone with a better business model (that's not illegal) comes along.

Go back to the shallow end of the gene pool where you belong. John Dvorak has a seat next to him waiting for you.

Bullshit.

Which is better for Apple, a customer that has a normal x86 PC, buys an iMac, and copies the OS to the PC so that he can run OS X on both, or someone who just doesn't ever buy an iMac at all?

Currently, they only sell the PPC version, but let's assume they'll offer the next release to Intel Mac users.

You could challenge them now, if you bought a non-Apple PPC (e.g. Pegasos or Amiga).

But Linux runs on 30 different *architectures* each with a bazillion configurations (Linux runs on PC hardware with all it's configurations), but also on Motorola (680x0/880x0) processors (Windows doesn't), Sparc and Sparc/64 hardware (Windows doesn't), Mips processors (Windows doesn't), Alpha processors (Windows hasn't since NT3), Power processors including the Power PC and newer versions like the Power/440 (Windows doesn't), along with the traditional Pentium line (celeron/Xeon), Itanium(2), and AMD Athlon/Opteron and runs it all *very much better* than windows. The issue isn't the number of architectures and configurations, the issue is software quality vs. rushing junk with bugs out the door to meet a shipping/sales target.

it's an absolute necessity to lock down OS X from PC use. Apple has, after a series of costly mistakes (i.e. believing that a major corporation like IBM would actually spend money to actively develop a chip that has less that 4% market share) backed themselves into a corner when it comes to software and hardware development. Not to say they aren't good at either of those, but they now serve a very focused and very concentrated user base, consisting mainly of schools and, of course, artists of every kind. The cost is that to continue making the products they do, they must charge a relative premium.
        And if their (excellent) software were suddenly available for the $350 dollar PC you bought from dell (don't tell me no one in their right mind would dare put the holy OS X on a dell... there are enough people not in their right mind to make that common practice) their computer market would be cut in half because frankly; every school, business and especially those poor ass artists, would love to run a safer and more creative friendly platform on a cheaper computer.
        Now, maybe they could make more money if they just dropped computer development completely, but I think someone over at Apple believes that they can start to take some more serious market share back... and with the Intel Macs, it looks as though they can.

Apple management wants to protect its hardware profits, so Apple lawyers are threatening to sue anyone who attempts to hack the Mac OS onto some common PC hardware.

Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?

Hence, Apple management is flashing its lawyers in front of all the hackers.

Apple management will fail in its attempts to thwart the hackers. The hackers are clever, and some web site in Mongolia will soon feature a new download that enables you to run the new Mac OS on a regular PC. Are there extradition agreements between Mongolia and the USA?

Given that Apple management has embraced the x86, Jobs and his ilk should just admit that the value of Apple is its OS and jettison the hardware business. Apple could morph into a pure software house specializing in multimedia OSes, software for music gadgets like iPods and Sony MP3 players, etc. Sony just builds the hardware and licenses Apple's software for the new Sony MP3 players.

It's the Doom 3 Effect -- Millions of people bittorrented the game 3 days before it hit retail shelves, and then felt like they had to justify the reason they didn't want to pay for it. So the overwhelming reaction was negative. Meanwhile, Half-Life 2 was DRM delivered to paying customers, who of course had a overwhelmingly positive reaction.

Yes, that's a much more rational and likely explanation for the opinions on those two games than the fact that Half-Life 2 was good game and that Doom III was a pretty tech demo with shit game-play.

That's nice. Apple was bleeding money before the clones were cancelled. It is not in Apple's best interest to do the clone thing. They loose the hardware margins and gain a huge amount of support costs. Apple had to support all of those Clone users for "free".

MSFT is in a different position. They have the OEMs by the balls but do not actually make any hardware themselves.

Apple could morph into a pure software house specializing in multimedia OSes

And instantly be crushed by Microsoft.

Isn't Apple just creating scarcity in order to force their products to be novel cool? This is the same strategy Krispy-Kreme uses. If only a few people have/(can have) something, it must be good.

It looks like they tried commodity cool with the iPods and realized it is possible to replace scarcity by good design and still keep something desirable. Maybe that is why they switched to intel -- to see if the same can go for an OS. Don't want to be to consiratorial, but didn't Gates invest 100million in Apple some years back? Maybe that is the only reason Apple is trying to protect OSX from hackers -- it was a deal with MS to stay out of their market, which, face it, is BUILT on pirated copies of Windows that produce a monopoly. If MS secured Windows, would it still have a monopoly?

This is stupid on so many levels, I can't figure out the insightful mod.

They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks."

Because the hardware support in OSX is rather finite, it won't just 'install on a typical PC'. To get it to run on a non-Apple machine, it would require a good amount of research in supported hardware and/or the ability to install BSD drivers, nevermind circumventing any DRM. Should a pirated version appear which handles all of the hardware issues (which I think is unlikely), the desire and ability to locate it is beyond the typical computer user. You're simultaneously implying reasonably advanced knowledge and ignorance.

Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is DESIGNED to work primarily with one specific hardware set

Just plain wrong. Apple prevents piracy of the OS and support of generic hardware because Apple is a hardware company at heart. Remember the Apple clones? The company isn't inherently against licensing its software , it just hasn't figured out a workable buisness model to do so.

that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user

How on earth can you come to the conclusion that American computer is stupid? The US drives the entire indistry and is home to MIT, Berkely, Stanford, Caltech, IBM, Apple, Micosoft, Sun, Oracle, and countless more. Posting on slashdot, I assume the basis of comparison is Europe? OK, SAP is in Germany and the Scandanavian countries have great state-sponsored telecommunications... but what else? Oh, maybe the the zombie PC capital of the planet [symantec.com]? Slashdot seems to be full of self-hating Americans who have never flown oversees and think a crumbling socalist economy is utopia, and smug Europeans who think all Americans are rednecks, despite all of their entertainment & IT coming from SanFran/Boston/NYC/LA.

Yes, we missed out on paying a huge IBM tax on single-user machines that would have been intentionally crippled to keep them away from IBM's midrange systems. That would have been great.

Instead, PCs developed real server hardware and real server OSes (including Linux and Windows NT), that IBM would never have provided (and didn't, until the market forced them to change their ways).

That's a pretty contrived argument.

If the customer has bought an Apple computer and then copies the OS from one Mac to another, then I agree with your point.

If, as I feel is vastly more likely, the customer copies OS X without ever purchasing either a single copy or anything from Apple, then the customer has no right to complain to Apple, and is not in fact a customer at all.

It'd be nice to think that all pirates are just pirating between copies they own. A bit naive though.

Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x86?

It would be nice to be able to run OSX on the desktop without buying new hardware, I've been quite happy with it on the laptop. But I fear that supporting the near-infinite number of configurations would introduce stability problems and slow Apple's rate of development... which is a big reason that its attractive in the first place.

Honestly, the only reason I'd want to run OSX on generic x86 is simply because I don't like ANY of Apple's desktop setups. The Mac Mini is underpowered with a G4 and 64 meg video card, I don't like the concept of married Computers/Displays a la iMac, and the PowerMac is kind of overkill for my purposes. I mean, am I really the only one that wants (one) reasonable CPU & a nice (upgradable) video card of occasional gaming in a seperate tower so that I can upgrade thie display seperatley and use the machine as a server when its outlived its usefullness as a desktop?

Where did he imply that mIRC is a network? You're only reading it as such. He's talking about the mIRC client and a string in the executable.

Windows is alright and OSX is pretty, but I love GNU.

I've noticed, Microsoft sure spends a lot of time and money patching their OS and making sure hackers like me can't easily activate it when we move our harddrives between PCs. And Apple has been trying hard to keep me from copying any of those songs my friends purchase from iTunes. And now OSX will only run on Apple x86 hardware, even though it may have drivers for another PC and be able to run just find on it. Some people might even be willing to pay the $130 retail price to be able to use it. But that's not for me.

If I want it I know I can get it. You see, I have friends that know all about Windows XP activation and how to get around it. And they know all about OSX and how to crack it too. I can even steal music from iTunes. But why don't I?

Because I love GNU. I love the effort a bunch of people are putting into this system. And you know something? None of that effort, none of that time or money is going towards DRM or any lockin/lockout, activation, CD-KEY authorization or other form of authoritarian copy prevention technology that might one day cost me time and money when I try to use the software in a way other than its original intended purpose. Plus we get access to the source code. And on top of all of that, we get the right to modify and resell it.

I'd love to see Microsoft or Apple compete with that. But I know they won't. They can't. Capitalism won't let them. Not until its too late.

Ahh, you poor fool. There is no concept of intellectual property, except that which was rejected in ancient times as terrible idea that would cause nothing but suffering. The copyright and patent systems of the world are based on the concept of utilitarianism where the goal is to encourage the creation of future works by securing limited monopolies to current creators. As such, any applications of those systems should be, and often used to be, reevaluated under the concept of what is the public interest. But those days are now over as the public interest has fallen to the special interests.

A huge portion of what makes the Mac OS X so valuable is the user experience that goes with it. A decent portion of the user experience lies in the hardware integration, and in the quality of the hardware on which it runs. If I had OS X running on my previous laptop (Toshiba Satellite 3000-something, I think), for instance... It was a great laptop, but the hardware is just not the same caliber as that which Apple sells. More importantly, OS X is not DESIGNED for the Toshiba Satellite line, nor is the Satellite designed for OS X. Apple has no control over the environment in which the system is running and therefore opens their system up to decreased responsiveness or even stability, as the case may be.

Excellent software on shoddy hardware still makes for a poor user experience.

Apple management will fail in its attempts to thwart the hackers.

The hackers and a handful of tech savy users that want OS X on generic hardware are irrelevant. All Apple needs to do is prevent someone with the skills of an average user from being able to get Mac OS X working reliably on generic hardware. The generic PCs running Mac OS X will be novelties, more conversation pieces than serious work environments. There will not be a robust set of drivers, merely what ships on geniune Apple hardware. Apple can break the hack used to get it to work every system software update. It will be a somewhat unreliable machine, unavailable for days at a time while hackers reverse engineer and workaround the latest software update. Will they do so, sure, but it will be irrelevant to mainstream users.

Driving a boat for 15 mins in HL2 was more eye-pleasing than walking through dark, dark hallways for 5 minutes in Doom 3.

I liked both too - Doom 3 was seriously scary a few times if played on a large screen at night with surround sound at full blast. It reminded me of playing Doom 1 all those years ago. However, the darkness got a bit boring after a while. Without the flashlight mod it became almost unplayable after a while.

HL2, on the other hand, had a much better storyline - no matter how linear the gameplay - and, IMHO, prettier / more realistic graphics and physics. It made you care about some of the characters, like a good movie or book does. The Doom storyline has been rehashed so many times it's not even fun as a joke anymore.

You just don't get it, do you?
Apple aren't selling you an OS that will potentially run on a PC.
They are selling you a turn-key solution. They are selling you something that works out-of-the-box.
They are selling you the end-user experience.

A Mac is not a Mac because of the chips inside it, a Mac is the whole shebang - the _quality_ of the hardware, the integration of the software, the whole user experience.

There is no way known it will be as simple as entering a serial number to run it on your whitebox PC. This just ain't gonna happen. Apple aren't at all interested in supporting your BogoComm WinModem and your SuperWin ATA to PS/2 bridge adapter. They support OS X on a known hardware base platform and it makes everyone's life easier. Apple are happy as they have a known target to develop for. Users are happy because they know it will Just Work (tm) and Techs/Developers are happy because it's easier to support a known configuration.

If you're likely to become irate that you can't install OS X on your PC then you're not the target market for Apple's product anyway.

Freedoms are not things that are granted by governments. If I need to explain this to you then you're beyond help.

Judging by the developer builds, a very large percentage -- around 50% -- of new PCs are capable of running OS X (with maybe minor problems like the sound chip). The days of PC hardware being really diverse are long gone.

Microsoft's OEM program basically requires that all of the hardware drivers are certified by them. Something along those lines, except Apple could afford to be more strict. I don't think they'll do it for years though.

The grandfather post said nothing about monopolies, just binding software to specific hardware. Two different things. It seems to me that the point was that if you buy a piece of software, you buy a right to run it on whatever you want. Hence, emulators are not illegal, but roms are.

Perhaps you should read a post before posting a hysterical comeback with eugenic overtones. I'll go play in the shallow end, you and ESR can do what you please in the patio section.

Rights are not granted by governments either! Some rights are guarenteed by the US constitution as a measure to prevent the states from enacting laws which violate those rights, but that does not mean that the citizens of the US have no other rights than those listed in the Bill of Rights. Quite the opposite.

What's in it for Apple to allow other hardware companies to sell OS X?

Who cares? What's in it for us to allow Apple the power to control what we can and can't do with OS X? If Apple wants to sell a product then they need someone to sell it to and as long as software consumers continue to accept these "no rights but those we allow" stance currently offered by Apple and other software companies they will continue to make money. So I say, why stand for it?

Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?

But the real story is the one that nobody seems to notice, for the last 15 years Microsoft has made all the profits that the computer resellers should have been making. Their large bulk is entirely made up of the razor-thin margins everybody else accepts for them. Bill Gates brags about brining the PC "ecosystem" to the world, cheap commodity computers that you can throw together and whip out of almost anything. What he doesn't mention is that he planned the whole thing back when Microsoft first sold DOS to IBM... we'll profit from everybody else's hard work. Everytime you see a hardware manufacturer go out of business, it's just a few hundred million MS got instead of them. The world was suckered in by them, if we had kept the old model of different companies making different operating systems the world could have been much nicer these days and the internet would definitely be more standardized. Imagine if MS hadn't killed BE... instead of Intel and MS ruling the desktop market for so long and forcing single threaded high-Megahurtz toaster oven computers on the world, we could have had BeOS 7 systems with Quad PPC chips with 4 cores on each by now. Imagine if Amiga could have stayed profitable... this whole stupid soap-opera episode of D'oh! Finally making the Pentium M could have been avoided. There's be a lot more nice OS' out there and some great hardware choices but... commodity won, and so did Bill. I really hope Apple can get people to think about quality once again.

In return, Microsoft will continue giving Apple free money

I don't know what money you're talking about, but if it's in return for something then it's not free.

I hate to break it to you, but there's no "concept," as you put it, of real property either. These are just convenient labels we apply to things in order to make life more pleasant for ourselves by enabling commerce and facilitating the creation of common grounds. I think some guy named Saussure elaborates on this idea using more academic (read: continental philosophers') jargon, if you're that kind of guy.

Apple could be any kind of company it wants. I'm sure they'd do fine, from a business perspective, if they ditched OS X tomorrow and began manufacturing commodity PCs. Just like they'd do fine converting their business to software-only. But in either case, there'd be no more Mac platform. In the one case, there'd be a Mac OS that everyone would use with manufacturer-included mushy keyboards and gaudy fifty-button mice with cords as thick as hangman's rope. Your hardware would arrive in a brown cardboard box full of packing peanuts. In the other, you'd have quality hardware (for which you paid the Apple-brand premium) on which you'd be running Windows or Linux... 'nuff said.

Your definition of "platform" fails to include the total user experience, which is exactly what Apple aims to do. The hardware on this platform is inseparable from the stuff that shows up on your display.

None of this implies that Apple can't license its platform to other manufacturers (or software developers, for that matter). Just that what Apple's selling is a platform, not "software" or "hardware." I guess this is all kind of abstract, anyway.

Imagine a world where food can be made in an inexpensive solar powered replicator but people still starve because the software used by these devices is "protected" by copyright and DRM. That's the argument for "Intellectual Property". If you're for IP then you're for the complete control over a work by the owner of that work. If that's not your position, if you can imagine just one situation where the owner of the work should not have complete control over that work then, please, don't use the term. The decisions we make now about infinitely reproducable software will determine what is acceptable to our children's children when everything is infinitely reproducable. Already the idea that officials should have the right to invade our homes to ensure we are abiding by licensing agreements is considered reasonable to most people.

This message is in a kernel extension (kext). I don't think this is a "hidden" message so much as it might be a kernel message that displays when OS X doesn't detect its own Apple hardware. When people start hacking OS X to run on generic PCs, I wonder if this message is what will display somewhere on bootup.

I honestly don't see what makes Microsoft a monopoly

It wouldn't be the 90% marketshare, would it?

Come on mods. My point is: What dictionary.com define monopoly as has nothing to do with what a monopoly is legally defined as.

I am 95% sure that I will not buy an intel mac of any sort, simply because they contain TPM. TPM is a showstopper for me. Apple, you listening? I love OS X but I have no problems using Linux instead. Freedom is more important than convenience.

The TPM is used only to make sure it's OK to run OSX on that box...

Apple has publically stated they do not care if you run anything else (like Windows or Linux) on an Apple Intel box.

TPM you see, is a tool. And like any tool it can be used for good or for ill. Now while it's an open question of weather you having to work around it to run OS X on a non-Apple Intel box is for good or ill, it's certainly less annoying than if Apple had used TPM to lock the box down so that ONLY OS X could run on it.

"Imagine a world where food can be made in an inexpensive solar powered replicator but people still starve because the software used by these devices is "protected" by copyright and DRM. That's the argument for "Intellectual Property"."

That's a textbook definition of a straw man argument. Nobody who wants the right to make money off of their ideas also wants people to starve. Shame on you for even implying that.

"If you're for IP then you're for the complete control over a work by the owner of that work.

And when George Bush and his ilk use the "if you're not with us, you're with the terrorists," line, it's obvious bullshit, too.

If you want to save some money by buying a cheap Intel PC at Wal-Mart and installing OSX on it rather than paying Apple's high margins, then groovy -- go for it, if that's what you want to do. This makes you a careful consumer, not some crusader for human rights. If you'd rather keep the money for yourself, than give it to some purveyor of computing hardware or operating system software or record company or film studio, and this fits with your moral compass, then you're simply looking out for your own bottom line. It's saving a few bucks, not the Montomery Freedom March.

Who cares? What's in it for us to allow Apple the power to control what we can and can't do with OS X?

What's in it for you is that you get to use their software. For the vast majority of Apple's customers, this is perfectly acceptable; they merely want to use OS X, and they don't particularly care whether Apple, Dell, or their techie friend built it.

Since Apple built OS X, they get to choose the terms under which they distribute it. If those terms are unacceptable to you, feel free to use another operating system.

If Apple wants to sell a product then they need someone to sell it to and as long as software consumers continue to accept these "no rights but those we allow" stance currently offered by Apple and other software companies they will continue to make money. So I say, why stand for it?

You don't have to stand for it. Use Linux or BSD (or even Windows, if all you're concerned about is using generic x86 boxes). The reason people "stand for it" is that they see the value of using OS X to be greater than the value of using their operating system on different hardware configurations (for most people, the latter has practically zero value because they don't care).

The point is that most people just want to *use* software, not tinker with it. The software companies you mention will continue restricting user's rights as long as this is true, and because nerds will always represent a small minority of the general public, it always will be true.

I know this is highly tangential, but I see this phrase all over and it infuriates me...

Ignorance of the law is no excuse, and it never has been.

But it *should* be. It is unjust to hold someone accountable for violations of rules they were unaware of. Modern law is so complex that no one (even people with many years of legal training) can be truly aware of them all - even professional lawyers use comprehensive reference texts regularly. Consequently we have a lot of people being held accountable for violations of esoteric codes they cannot reasonably be expected to know about. This is one of the fundamental problems of pretty much all modern governments, and it's not a very big improvement from the arbitrary rulings of the monarchs and dictators of non-constitutional governments past. I am sure that myself and almost every single person reading this is guilty of something that they are not aware of. This leads to a condition where everyone is a criminal and can always be brought up on charges of *something* if they annoy the powers that be enough - a situation just inviting government abuse of power.

The solution? Simple. Fewer (and simpler) laws, that have logical backing to support them and as such should seem common sense almost universally. Then you can expect people to know the law in full, and can be justified in holding them accountable to it.

Sorry again for the tangent. This subject is a pet peeve of mine.

How is installing software "stealing"?

Stop trying to redefine words.

If you're for IP then you're for the complete control over a work by the owner of that work.

And if you're for "normal" property, then you're for the complete control over a physical item by the owner of that item. To follow on your example, if someone is having a heart attack and theirs friends ask if they can use your car to drive him to the closest hospital, obviously you'll just have to say "uh, no, that's MY car, that's MY petrol, I paid for it, get lost". Cos you see, obviously that's what "property" means. If you don't feel that way then obviously you don't support property, so stop using the term !

</sarcasm>

Thomas-

It always amuses me when somebody points out someone's egregious spelling error and then promptly makes one of their own.

In fairness, and for the sake of pedantry, the grandparent was not actually pointing out a spelling error in the great-grandparent's post, rather just seeking clarification as to which meaning was intended. This seems prudent, given that the average Slashdotter's spelling skills are especially poor of late.

iqu :)