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Mac OS X Tiger Accidentally Shipped Early
boarder8925 writes "Engadget reports: 'In many places around the world, Mac fans and Apple distributors received a shipment they weren't quite expecting: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger arrived at the door a full eight days ahead of schedule for some lucky folks who pre-ordered. Vendors PCMall/MacMall and ClubMac gave pre-order customers a treat by unleashing the OS ahead of schedule, quickly followed up by a 'recall' of the copies from PCMall.'"
At least one other "reseller" has received legal threats, but apparently they think they are immune.
What a shame, with all that money and R&D and little old Apple beat MS to the punchline. Now Windows is the last desktop OS that is 64 bit...
Our 64 bit Windows OS Just Works, barely
Makes me want to cry...
Your Average Joe
Three days old is now "old news"? I'm not sure you understand how Slashdot works. The editors don't break stories, they repost stories and the users comment on it.
Oh, and Steve wears New Balance shoes.
Maybe they shipped it out early, so that the store shelves would all be stocked by the time the release date came. I don't think they were supposed to open the box, and start selling the copies as soon as they recieved it.
When they annouced the release for the end of the month I called my retailer to secure a copy. He told me he would have it the following week, and that I could come and see a demonstration, but that he wouldn't sell any copy before the 29, having signed an embargo contract with Apple. I will have mine in 5 days.
8a428.
- oZ
// i am here.
I wouldn't even worry about it. If you're shipped an illegitimate version, then that's not the item you ordered. Under Federal law you have no duty to return an item you didn't order, and the supplier is still on the hook to deliver the merchandise you've already paid for.
If they want to be jerks about it, then do as you mentioned and dispute the charge. If Apple does in fact figure out some way to identify and exclude the early users from the support they're owed, they'd best make sure those people get a totally legitimate copy. Otherwise, they just grabbed the biggest shovel in the shed to dig a very public hole around themselves.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
What? You did ask...
I actually did a diff on the cp man page between panther and tiger. There is no significant different. maybe 4 lines or so changes outlining legacy mode for options -i and such.
/cartman
But there is however a significant changes from panther's cp to tiger's cp.
Apple's website outlines it this way: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/
HFS+ CLI file commands
Use command-line commands safely on HFS+ files. Utilities such as cp, mv, tar, rsync now use the same standard APIs as Spotlight and access control lists to handle resource forks properly.
This feature... is so huge. It made the upgrade to tiger worth it just by itself. Previously, unix CLI progs such as cp and mv didn't respect certain features of HFS+.
There are flags on HFS such as hidden, bundle, and custom icons. Also (most importantly) cp didn't respect HFS+ resource forks. This broke a lot of stuff when you tried to manage files with cp. You had to use stuff like CpMac and ditto which were piss poor lacking in features. (couldn't handle symlinks. when it got to broken symlinks, it would just die...)
New cp and mv and even rsync (yes!) uses different API now that respects everything and then some. (first class citizens again!)
Even further than just handling HFS+ correctly, this new cp will invoke Spotlight so that spotlight db is correct always no matter how you manage files. This is totally sweet.
Also this API will respect the new ACL functionality in tiger as well.
A few other notable features of Tiger for me are Xcode 2.0, GCC 4.0, new PDF support for forms and encryptions and such.
All that and ACL and the new CLI utils are less hyped but more important to unix users like me than Dashboard (which runs less than spectacularly on G3 600mhz iMac.)
If you have more than one hard drive or partitions, it's trivial to run the installer from the opened dmg without ever having to burn or run a DVD.
it cuts down on people who don't feel comfortable poking around in the installer packages, but simply putting it on a DVD isn't going to stop anyone who's determined.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
I can't speak to the release version, but I put a slightly older build I got from a torrent site (I will be buying the release version on Friday, I just wanted a look-see) on a 512MB 1.25GHz Mac mini as well as on a dual 2.0GHz G5 with 2GB RAM. On both machines, it is noticably faster than Panther overall.
It boots very quickly-- you barely get to see the splash screen with the progress bar before the desktop appears. The GUI is quite a bit more smooth and responsive. Dashboard fades in and out smoothly on both machines. The 'ripple' effect you see when opening a new Dashboard widget on a G5 is really cool. The RSS screensaver is equally breathtaking on both machines.
Just from a couple hours of messing around with it, I'd say that Apple has done a fantastic job making sure to not shortchange users of slightly older hardware who upgrade to Tiger-- they still get the steak, but with a little less sizzle.
Cornell's law site backs him up; unordered merchandise belongs to the recipient. (Interestingly, I had that link handy because one of the free stuff sites accidentally sent me two iPod shuffles instead of one, and I wanted to know my legal status with regard to the second one.)
USPS/ merch. htm
o ns/su brep88.html
/ title33 sec1101.html
http://www.usps.com/websites/depart/inspect
NY BBB
http://www.newyork.bbb.org/library/publicati
State of Maine
http://janus.state.me.us/legis/statutes/33
It's a postal regulation, an FTC regulation, a state law in all 50 states as far as I'm aware, and a federal law. If your name and address are on the address label... it's yours, even if you didn't order it.
----- Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious. - Paul Valery
As others have pointed out, it is the law. It comes from sound public policy considerations. Back in the day, before the law, crooks would send people stuff they had not ordered and try to charge them for it. The crooks would, of course, not pay to have it returned or pay for your time in dealing with something you did not order. So, to stop scams like this if someone sends you something you did not order you have no obligations -- in fact, you now own it (if you want).
There was a time in American history when the legislatures actually made laws to the benefit of people.
My Mac mini shipped on the 16th and had 10.3.7 installed. I was eligible to upgrade to 10.4 for $9.95 with their up to date program.
I'm not going to outline how to do it, but from a purely technical standpoint the gist of it is you can completely ignore the "install mac os x" app that you're supposed to use. that app isn't the installer, it just sets the OS X DVD as your startup disk and restarts.
.dmg to your ipod, for example, and boot from that as if it were the installer DVD with all of its abilities. that's the problem with trying to stop piracy through methods like only selling a DVD version - it pisses off people who don't have DVD players and are legitimately trying to buy it, while people who wanted to pirate it are going to find a way to do it anyway, and probably not with much more annoyance than doing it the way it was intended.
this is the case with Tiger, Panther, and probably jaguar (can't remember that far back, but i'd be surprised if it's different), but the actual installer is buried within the installer packages elsewhere on the DVD/dmg. Just by looking at the names it's generally not hard to find the "umbrella" installer that would be launched had you restarted with the DVD.
as is the case with many installers of complex applications in OS X, the "umbrella" installer (as I call it, don't know the real term) is in fact a collection of installers for different components. For example, the OS X CD has individual installers for iTunes, iCal, etc etc, which can be run independently if you do them manually, or automatically from within the "umbrella".
As another reply mentioned (but i'm too lazy to respond to multiple messages), installing without burning/booting with a DVD does mean you need to already have a sperate partition or hard drive to be installed on. A hurdle, but not a huge one.. owning multiple hard drives isn't uncommon.
actually, when you get right down to it there are a hundred ways to trick "anti-piracy" measures like these. You could transfer/expand the installer
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
You've gotten some pretty good responses, but if you're not using a Mac I fear they are pretty obscure. So let me take a shot at it.
Before MacOS 10, the Apple file system split files into two segments: A data fork, which looked basically like a conventional DOS/Unix file, and a resource fork, which was a sort of mini-database letting you structure your file contents. This was particularly useful in executable programs; the resource fork would contain icons, menu definitions and the like. It would also contain the program that created the file (the "creator code"). When you double-clicked a file, the system would look at the creator code, find the corresponding application and start it up. This was a much slicker system than file extensions because the file could be called anything you wanted and the association with a program was automatic and unchangeable unless you were familiar with system internals.
A program called ResEdit let you change these definitions and you could do things like define different keyboard shortcuts by playing around with the menu definitions.
This was also used by programs to create data file formats. This was very nice, because if those files contained information in standard Apple formats, it could be easily read and modified by ResEdit and similar programs. So the movie files created by Final Cut Pro, for example, had a lot of the information in the resource fork which made debugging and reading these files a lot easier than the alternatives.
MacOS X attempted to get rid of this entirely, because of a significant problem: Resource forks don't exist in the Windows or Unix world, so copying Mac files to other operating systems was a bit of a non-starter. So in MacOS X, we have file extensions, just like in Windows and Unix, instead of creator codes in the resource fork. You can argue until you're blue in the face by saying resource forks are a much more elegant way to deal with the situation, and you'd be right. But at the same time it hardly matters since most people need to exchange data with Windows computers.
Naturally, MacOS X retained support for the resource fork so that applications such as Final Cut Pro could continue to use it. However, they discouraged use of resource forks in future applications.
The problem was that they didn't tell the Unix utilities like cp about the resource fork. Instead, the utilities would copy all the data fork but not the resources. So if you had a Final Cut Pro file using the resource fork, you could cp it to another folder and the file would not work when you tried opening it.
So in Tiger they have fixed this problem, and the resource forks are now retained, so I can feel free to use cp et al to copy all Mac files, including those with resource forks.
This is, of course, a major victory for people like me who like to use the Unix utilities for file management.
D
Sometimes I am not allowed to browse directories I know are there.
/usr, /sbin, /etc, those are hidden so as not to confuse newbies or become a target for people who stupidly delete things they think are cluttering up their hard drive without considering they might be important.
.hidden file in the root directory of the hard drive.
Such as? If you're talking about stuff like
You can get to those directories by doing "Go to Folder..." from the Finder's "Go" menu, or make them visible by editing the
As for a link, check out macosxhints.com.
~Philly
What it boils down to is that it is *not* illegal (in sweden) to tell people *where* you get ahold of illegal material.
It is also *not* illegal to host the location (physically speaking) where illegal activities take place.
In other words, if I run a bar, and Joe The Pimp sells his Bitches in my bar, I'm not the one in trouble.
I'm not sure who their legal counsel is, but since the Pirate Bay people are related to Piratbyrån (group of activists), I'm fairly sure it's not advise from mom/dad.
If there wasn't a serious backing of the statements made by Pirate Bay, I think Piratbyrån would stay very far away from them.
The initial amount of tech support that goes into a product the first few months it launches is not the same that is required down the line. There will be a lot of "seasonal" tech support at Apple because of the deluge caused by a new OS. Sometimes these are simple questions answered by reading the "What's New?" part in help but people don't always do that. They have to get ready for this.
To be fair to all distributors Apple gives time for the shipping of their product to get to all outlets before giving the go ahead. It would not be fair to CompUSA if Frys was able to sell their copy sooner just because they got a quicker shipment from Apple. This also lets outlets design their own "release party". Interestingly enough, Apple is not doing a midnight launch, but a 6PM launch which makes it a great event for any store to throw.
There's lots of really good reasons why there are "release dates" and those are just 2.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
I am a former Mac Genius, and some current Mac Genius friends of mine have told me that they were instructed to support people who got early copies.
It boots very quickly-- you barely get to see the splash screen with the progress bar before the desktop appears.
That's launchd at work. Getting rid of init and all those separate boot scripts really sped things up.
No, it's a fail-safe method. To keep the system from overheating, the fans default to running at full speed unless they're told to spin at a lower speed. An embedded controller would just be more expensive, more complex, and less flexible.
Windows expand to fill either the window dimensions or enough space to fit all their contents without scrolling, whichever is smaller (some apps don't widen their windows to fill the whole width of the screen).
/Applications, ~/Applications, or /Network/Applications whose name matched appname (without ".app"; e.g. "open -a Firefox" will open Firefox). Lastly, "open -e file" will open that file in TextEdit. Good for editing files text/config/ascii files by hand, but note that TextEdit will always render HTML and rtf (and maybe now MS Word) files, so if you want to beat on those you'll need something else.
Also, the open(1) command is your friend. "open filename" with open that file using whatever the registered application for it is (just like it was double-clicked in the finder). "open -a appname" will try to find an application in
Someone else who replied told you about how cmd-tab and cmd-backtick work; also, you should learn to love the flexibility of hiding entire apps versus minimizing windows. And if you want to minimize (or expand, or close) all of an apps windows at once, hold option and click the relevant box.
Well, let's go back some years to find swedish inventor Håkan Lans creating PC color graphics, a useable computer pointing device, safe flight control (through something resembling "P2P GPS") - who has tried to hinder his creativity? US government agencies and major US corps.
Let's move on and find Ericsson software engineers creating AXE telephone switches, Bluetooth etc. Keep up, and we find Lavasofts Ad-Aware helping out most n00bs from getting the most out of skunkware. Pointsec, a swedish company producing the industry top class encryption sw (note: biggest customer is teh US military!). Yes, KaZaA and Skype are also created by swedes, ironic - isn't it!
Oh, did you know who actually made most of super-US bimbo Britney Spears smash hits? A swede called Max Martin. Go figure!
The more you know, the less you need. [Admin added: from me.]
Actually the first of the setup screens comes up when the startup video cuts to black, letting the music play you in to the setup process.
No, he's basically right. I mean, if you ignore the fact that he seems not to have actually read my comment. There are forty million Macs out there in active use, according to our market-research guys. Something like three out of four of those sold without DVD-reading drives in them.
Now, something like three out of four OF THOSE can't even run Tiger anyway. It's not like somebody's going to go running Tiger on a Power Mac 9600. So it's not like we're saying that three out of four Tiger buyers will have to do the media exchange thing. Corporate tells us that they estimate it'll be closer to one in twenty. Which is fine.
But it all boils down to this: We put Tiger on a DVD instead of four CDs because we wanted to. That's all there is to it.
With digital distribution now finally catching on, it would be in the best interest of most companies to release when it's done.. I'd much prefer to download a (legal) burnable disc image than have to wait for a box to show up.
There are a LOT of reasons why Apple doesn't just dump their product on the website the day it's done. For one, regardless of whether you personally would download a 4gb DVD image, most sales will still be through brick-and-mortar stores. Unless Apple wants to alienate (and likely lose) all third party retailers, every copy has to be available on the same date.
Also, I'm sure Apple has great servers, but the day the Mini was announced there was noticable lag. There's no way they could handle hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people trying to grab that large of a file at once. Bittorrent is an option for linux distros, since the base is obviously more tech savvy, but for the general public the client would have to be automatic and included in the software update to be usable.
And of course, Apple is a for-profit company. Say what you will about marketing and hype, making the release date a big event is just good business. Not to mention the fact that when they have them in the store, the customer is likely to pick up a laptop battery or iPod shuffle, or look longingly at a new Powerbook and realize how dated their three or four year old system is.
MHO much piracy is due to impatient souls who simply can't wait for the release. Music is a great exmaple of this. I say when it goes gold, release it. Many of these downloaders would probably pay for it.
Why aren't movies released the day they're finished? Why aren't DVDs available while the movie's still in the theaters? Hype works. Why doesn't anyone notice indie bands who're better than anything on the top 40 charts? Because they don't have a huge record label's marketing machine behind them.
Anyway, in the end most piracy is people wanting something for free. I see a lot more games, movies and albums that have been out for years on the torrent sites than new releases or bootlegs of yet-to-be-released products.
No, this is not Apple. It is a third-party retailer - PCMall - who are recalling the copies. Apple has made no statement that these early copies would not be supported - that's probably just BS made up by PCMall to cover their ass.
... and then they built the supercollider.
We are giving it away under the same license under which we release Darwin 8.
As I understand it, this means the Linux guys can't use it.
If true, this is not even remotely accidental.
Because for something like 19 out of 20 buyers, those CDs would have been a complete waste.
We just got criticized, unjustly, in the press by an environmental group because we don't pay to recycle our customers' computers. Imagine the field day they would have had if we'd shipped out 50 million unneeded CDs.
Well, they did offer to throw in a free copy of iWork '05 if you returned Tiger and waited another week to receive it again. So who knows? At least one or two people very well might have taken them up on the offer - figuring they get a decent free bonus out of the deal, and there's no pressing need to run a new OS 7 or 8 days before everyone else starts installing it.
I've already answered all these questions. I'm going to answer them again just for you because you were oh so friendly.
1. If you want to exchange by mail, you have to pay shipping.
2. I'm really not all that interested in whether you got the memo about in-store exchanges or not.
3. We're not putting CDs in separate packages because the cost associated with manufacturing and stocking a separate SKU is amazing.
4. We're not putting CDs in with the DVDs because something like 19 out of 20 of the people who buy Tiger will not use the CDs, meaning those CDs would be a complete waste.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/32310 :)
First they rip-off BSD
I believe you greatly misjudge the situation. Do you think FreeBSD is worse off because of Mac OS X?
In any case, do you know Jordan Hubbard is an engineering manager at Apple?
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Nope,
Drug possession offenses are strict liability offenses. Meaning no culpability is required nor intent. See for example of a man who bought a car from the feds that still had cocaine in it charged with possession.
Other examples of strict liability are speeding,and having sex with a minor.
You are right though in stolen possession cases, you must know or have reason to know that what you have is stolen to be charged with possession of stolen goods.
Oh yes they are! If you upgrade the processor to a G3 or better, you can use XPostFacto you can run OS X on ancient powermacs. You can even run Jaguar on a fast PPC 604 with this terrific patch!
I plan to buy a copy of Tiger and load it onto my hot-rodded Frankenmac 7600 just as soon as it's practical.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994