Mac OS X Cracked For PCs Again 319
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica and The Register are reporting the Apple Kernel 10.4.8 has been cracked using Apple's publicly available source trees. This is the first time Apple was hit by hackers again since Maxxuss silently left the scene.The funny thing about this is the hacker who cracked OSx has released his sources according to APSL. He told Ars Technica in an interview that he did this because he believes in freedom of information, but will this now harm Apple's opensourceness?" From the article: "Unfortunately, free and legal are not necessarily the same thing, and the EULA for OS X requires Mac hardware. However, there is an interesting comment on the blog, one that asserts the requirement of Mac hardware is a "post-sale" restriction. Such a restriction may not be applicable in certain countries, such as those of the European Union. Expect to see what Apple Legal thinks about that shortly."
Apple gets to get with the program (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X is a great OS. If more people could try it out, there'd be a lot more converts.
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If Apple was smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:3, Insightful)
That is true but that probably isn't why they aren't doing it. If they aren't doing it, it is because the people good at crunching financial numbers and analyzing potential market share are saying it won't increase their overall profit and value to stockholders.
Cracked = wrong word! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If Apple was smart... (Score:3, Insightful)
(You see this kind of nerd fallacy all the time. A record company dude just said the other day that the era of the music CD as we know it is dead. It took 2 nanoseconds for nerds to counter: CDs are here to say because of DRM and that their opposition to it was going to halt the migration away from this media in its tracks. Which is of course nonsense. Most people have no idea what DRM is and, until and unless it bites them in the ass, do not care.)
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:5, Insightful)
cracked? "hit by hackers"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple will do whatever they will do in response to it. If they're smart, they're just going to leave it alone: in the end, this really doesn't matter, since people by Macs for the whole package; OS X itself really isn't all that special.
Re:No GUI (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Post Sale Restrictions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:EULA (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple 0x86 Mac = Expensive, Boring 0x86 PC (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many ways Apple can (and probably will) tie OS X to Mac hardware. They've got people who can do it (to date, there has never been a crack for Logic 7 Pro and its USB dongle).
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:5, Insightful)
In this PC-centric world we now live in, people seem to have a problem understanding this concept, but go back at least at least a decade and this practice of selling "systems" was the norm, until the PC killed them all in the name of commodity. Amiga, Sun, SGI, Apple, NeXT, etc... Now Apple is the only system vendor that's still in the systems business. All others have either gone bankrupt, stopped selling systems altogether, or still attempt to sell what appears to be their older systems, only they're really just overpriced x86 boxen that run Windows or Linux.
Re:If Apple was smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
But as I've commented in earlier discussions on this topic, I also suspect Apple has projections on just what would happen if they turned Microsoft into a full-blown, no-pretense-of-partnership enemy. Because if Apple ever released OS X for non-Apple Intel hardware, Microsoft would perceive it -- correctly -- as the most serious assault on the Windows platform that they've ever faced. No offense is intended to Linux and *BSD variants by that; it's a simple recognition that OS X has much more "end user" friendliness and a much wider range of commercial applications (including some pretty big name ones) than any other Unix relative ever has, and Apple has one of the highest brand recognitions in the world.
Given how Microsoft has reacted to much less dangerous competition in the past, what do you think their response would be?
Yes, I know you were suggesting Apple could just release an OS X that had only license restrictions and "just happened" to be able to run on non-Apple hardware, nudge nudge wink wink. But if Apple sold enough copies of OS X to non-Mac owners to actually affect their bottom line, that would be enough to attract the attention of the industry press -- and of Microsoft. And at that point, if Apple didn't take very loud definitive actions to put a stop to it, it'd be effectively throwing down the gauntlet just as much as slapping "Now compatible with your Dell, HP and your crappy white box PC!" stickers on every OS X Leopard box.
It's nice to dream, but an OS X that just breezily installs on non-Apple hardware won't happen unless Apple decides they're willing to engage in a fight to the death with Microsoft.
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think Apple's margin on a computer is $50, you really need to think harder.
In reality, it's comfortably over 25%. So they'd need to price OS X at $300 or more just to make up for the money they were no longer making selling people a $1500 or more computer.
But it's worse than that. If they sold OS X for generic PCs, they'd have to support OS X on generic PCs, including all the shoddy PC hardware out there. They'd need to spend more on support, more on drivers, more on testing, and so on. There's a reason why Microsoft is so late shipping Vista, it's not just because of bad project management and poor decisions.
So realistically, they'd have to bump the price of OS X up to $400-500. And at that price, nobody would buy it.
Yes, if 50% of the PC market ran OS X, they could sell it for $50 and maintain today's profit levels. The problem is that there's no way to get to there from here without going through bankruptcy.
It's the branding, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple retail box OS: 'Full Retail' or 'Upgrade'? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have an old Power Mac G3. I have upgraded the memory, processor, and video card. Yet it is still undeniably 'Apple' hardware. If I remove the original Power Mac G3 motherboard, and insert a motherboard from an Intel Mac mini, replacing the memory, processor, and video card, (but keeping the original hard drive,) it is still Apple hardware, right? My license to have 10.4 on that computer is still valid, right? (After all, the mini came with a valid license as well.) But now I'm running an x86 version of 10.4. If I take the processor and RAM from the mini's motherboard, and put them in a 'generic' x86 motherboard that supports said processors, am I still using Apple hardware? I'm using the same processor as I was before, the same memory, the same hard drive. The only thing that has changed is the motherboard. (Say I wanted a real hardware parallel port or serial port for some reason, or I got a motherboard with a PCI Express slot.) Is my license still legal?
How about if I take the guts of the Power Mac G3, and put them into a generic ATX PC case? It doesn't have an Apple label on the outside, but it's 100% Apple hardware on the inside. Is it 'Apple-labeled'? If so, then what if I follow with the process above, replacing with a Mac mini motherboard, then replacing the Mac mini motherboard. Now, the only Apple-original hardware would be the processor, memory, and hard drive. But I started with completely legal versions of everything. Does mere moving of parts and replacing of parts make the license illegal?
Nowhere does Apple define 'Apple-labeled'.
Apple's OS 9 'retail' license speciically said that you had to install it on a computer that contained an existing legally licensed copy of the Mac OS. Meaning that OS 9's retail box was really an 'upgrade' license.
Re:Apple gets to get with the program (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking those numbers into account, Apple just reported something like $580 million in profit for the last quarter. Gateway (just slightly larger in market share) posted an $80 million loss. Dell (#1 in sales, moving roughly five times as many units as Apple) posted a $510 million profit for its last quarter. So we have two facts:
1 - Dell and Gateway (combined) sold roughly six times as many computers as Apple last quarter.
2 - Apple made roughly $150 million more profit than Dell and Gateway (combined) last quarter.
All in all, I think Apple will be delighted to remain a 'niche player' as long as they can rake in 80% of the money while only having to produce, ship, and support 20% of the machines.