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Is Piracy the Pathway to Apple Profit?
An anonymous reader writes "Over at Apple Matters Chris Seibold writes an interesting piece hypothesizing that Apple's strategy may bank on people pirating OS X for their Intel boxes."
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Worked for MS :) /flame on
"Old man yells at systemd"
Hasn't this always been the arguement used by those downloading mp3's from various p2p places?
Try first, buy later. Trust the customer.
Methodologies always spouted by the marketeers, never used in practice.
Why not just release it as free, semi-open source software, and completely put microsoft out of business.
Slashdotted before the first comment was even posted.
Is this the sign that Apple is going MS way? Another reason to choose Linux.
And then if people want more where that little bait came from, why, they'll just have to switch :D
Is there a .torrent already?
Serisouly, this very same issue has been discussed in ever Apple story on /. in the last week (yes, in every last one of the about million stories there were.)
And if you remember the story about the OSX for Intel torrent (which seems to have been fake), you'll find about 500 comments about this very issue.
Seriously, this is getting boring.
Why not just wait till the first Apples with IntelInside hit the market, then we'll know for sure.
Considering that Apple is probably going to use the DRM features of the Pentium M chip to lock OS X to Apple-branded computers.
You can tell the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
...we might be using Machintoshes as PCs now. So, why not? It's never too late to start... but how long will it take before we get 50% Apple and 50% Windows market share?
"Apple is switching to Intel. This has some interesting ramifications, one of the foremost is that you will now, in all probability, be able download a copy of OS X on a P2P site and run it on any plain vanilla Wintel box by employing some sort of hack."
So he's assuming that you'll be able to hack OSX so it can run on non-MAC hardware. Just pointing this out because when I first read this story I was thinking: "OSZ can run on my PC now???".
Piracy of the OS means that its userbase will increase exponentially. Then there are more people to lock in and sell other products to. I guess a few of the people who switch to OS X will also start to like iWork and some of the other apps that OS X allows them to run. More people using Apple's software will only benefit Apple.
The people who run pirate copies will probably be the people who would never buy it anyway since they already have Windows... probably the same people that think they got Windows for free with their computer.
Follow me
I Tried BSD with KDE and Afterstep and then Linux with KDE and GNOME. I went with my tail between my legs back to Windows. If, say, a copy of OS X for Intel 'landed in my lap', it worked on my plane Jane vanilla clone box, and it's as good as I hear it is and then reasonably priced, I would eventually buy it.
This would only increase the chance that User X and Y complain about Widget Z not working correctly like you see on Wintel boxes. That would be a slow but sure path of tarnishing their brand.
Fry: "Is that an invitation?"
Ok so where exactly did Steve Jobs say it would be a PC inside. He said Intel CPU's. Now given they are taking over a year to redesign the insides from PPC CPU to Intel CPU I doubt it'll be stock PC hardware in there.
Also Apple is at heart a hardware company. If they start using off the shelf PC type architecture why buy a Mac when all you need is the O/S?
I reckon it'll be Intel CPU's, but still speciallised hardware so you still have to buy hardware from Apple.
Let me be the first to say, that even if I could find 0SX free for my Intel box, I'd still pay for it. I've been clamoring for a way to run that system without buying a Mac ever since it came out.
But I agree, with frgough: Apple will probably lock it down to run on Apple-brand only.
It really is too bad. I would only need to boot into XP on the rare occasion that Wine isn't compatible with something in OSX...
That's remarkably similar to a post made earlier today:4 6&cid=12811069
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1526
Apple computer: Is Piracy the Pathway to Profits?
by Chris Seibold
Jun 13, 2005
If you remember the heady days of the first incarnation of Napster chances are you downloaded a song and later discarded the foul bit of pop. Chances are also pretty strong that you downloaded a song and ended up buying the compact disc from your local music store. For me the discarded song was Come on Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners. I am sure the music industry chalks that up to a lost CD sale, but honestly, there was no way I was ever going to buy any music by Dexy and his intrepid band of late night dashers. On the other and when I downloaded Devil's Haircut by Beck I went out and actually purchased the entire CD. The above is a simplification of how piracy can actually move product. Chances are very good that without the illicit download one less copy of Odelay would have been sold. So, for no great investment on his part, Beck sold one more album that he normally would have thanks to being pirated. Software companies have understood this concept for quite some time. They will grudgingly put up with piracy if it sells more copies in the long or if it prevents a competitor from gaining a foothold. Say, for example, someone company produces a legitimate competitor to Adobe Photoshop. The new product feature all of the pixel manipulating goodness of Photoshop but retails for half the price. In basic economic theory the new product would soon displace Photoshop as the image editor of choice. In reality that is not necessarily the case. If Adobe Photoshop gets passed around on P2P sites there is no incentive for theft happy users to try the new competitor, both are stolen and to the end user stolen=free. Years later the one pirate removes the eye patch and becomes burdened with kids and full employment. Suddenly spending hours on the internet looking for registration codes and illegal copies no longer holds the same appeal, it has become easier and safer just to purchase a legitimate copy. Which brings us to the question of Apple computer and piracy. You, as a reader of fine Apple oriented commentary, are no doubt aware of the recent announcement that Apple is switching to Intel. This has some interesting ramifications, one of the foremost is that you will now, in all probability, be able download a copy of OS X on a P2P site and run it on any plain vanilla Wintel box by employing some sort of hack. To many Apple fans this is a nightmare scenario. "Why" they wonder "would anyone ever buy another Mac if they can run OS X on a Wintel box?" Before considering why people might still buy Macs even if they could hack a Wintel to do the job let us consider the benefits of OS X piracy. For years interested parties have heard people complain: "Macs are too expensive." At this moment most people are thinking about only of the retail price. This is a mistake, the cost of Macs to a fence sitting switcher encompasses much more than the price tag. To get in the world of Mac you have to be willing to take a massive leap of faith. You must be convinced that a Mac will serve all your computing needs admirably and you probably have to accept that as a truth without extensively using a Macintosh. It is also wise to remember that for most computer users it is an "either/or" decision, not many have the resources necessary to grab a Windows for safety and a Mac just to decide if it a suitable OS. Faced with a decision like that it is not hard to understand why people, time and time again, choose the OS with the greatest amount of familiarity. With rampant piracy suddenly this is not an issue. People can play with OS X on their Wintel box and make an informed decision when they make their next computer purchase. It is not hard to imagine that actually being able to use OS X for a significant period of time might result in more switchers than Apple's ads ever dreamed of producing. Here one suspects Apple will face a careful balancing act. If hacking a PC to run OS X is trivially easy then sales will certainly suffer. If OS X is uncracka
"He said it was just a name!"
"What he meant is that Troll Island is actually a peninsula."
mirrordot link: http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/a275d1e2b1ec65915 edb446546758a8b/index.html
How long before my next machine comes with the words "Don't steal operating systems" on the plastic wrap?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
...or Apple might have gone bankrupt, because nobody would be paying $lots for Mac hardware, whose high profit margins have financed lots of R&D over the years.
No, I don't think so. Ignoring the huge sweeping generalisations that are bound to happen in this thread, I add my own -
... marketshare. Nope, this won't work anymore.
Peaople of a certain mindset:
When you can't pirate something you buy it or don't use it. Apple gains in hardware and software sales.
When you can pirate something you use it for free. Apple gains in
Apple is a Hardware and Software vendor. When MS 'allowed' Windows 3.1/95 to be copied so freely (read without restriction) they were, and with a few exceptions still are, a Software company only. Apple has the additional issue of not selling much Mac hardware now until the Intel Mac comes out, surviving on reserves, software and the iPod.
Apple has a lot more to lose if it tries this. That and the world has moved on; these are different times.
In developing countries like India and China, upto 80% of the software is still pirated. Ofcourse, that could be termed as a downside, but look at the upside for companies like Microsoft.
You now have almost a captive consumer ( 2 billion of them!) who knows nothing but working on microsoft windows, and its related software.
This in a way is a good marketing strategy: give free samples enough to get people hooked on ( like dope!), and then charge.
- Sh!t
Why won't Apple simply put out a version of OS X that can run on any basic intel box. It seems to me that many people would purchase the OS and then Apple could make plenty of money off of not only the OS sales, but also on the other OS X applications they will sell.
I can't see their hardware sales offsetting the profit that could be had by a large boost in marketshare that would be generated by not hardware locking in the OS.
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." -Zapp Brannigan
Let's hear it for iPiracy.
Posting AC for no karma whoring.
Apple computer: Is Piracy the Pathway to Profits?
by Chris Seibold
Jun 13, 2005
If you remember the heady days of the first incarnation of Napster chances are you downloaded a song and later discarded the foul bit of pop. Chances are also pretty strong that you downloaded a song and ended up buying the compact disc from your local music store. For me the discarded song was Come on Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners. I am sure the music industry chalks that up to a lost CD sale, but honestly, there was no way I was ever going to buy any music by Dexy and his intrepid band of late night dashers. On the other and when I downloaded Devil's Haircut by Beck I went out and actually purchased the entire CD.
The above is a simplification of how piracy can actually move product. Chances are very good that without the illicit download one less copy of Odelay would have been sold. So, for no great investment on his part, Beck sold one more album that he normally would have thanks to being pirated. Software companies have understood this concept for quite some time. They will grudgingly put up with piracy if it sells more copies in the long or if it prevents a competitor from gaining a foothold. Say, for example, someone company produces a legitimate competitor to Adobe Photoshop. The new product feature all of the pixel manipulating goodness of Photoshop but retails for half the price. In basic economic theory the new product would soon displace Photoshop as the image editor of choice. In reality that is not necessarily the case. If Adobe Photoshop gets passed around on P2P sites there is no incentive for theft happy users to try the new competitor, both are stolen and to the end user stolen=free. Years later the one pirate removes the eye patch and becomes burdened with kids and full employment. Suddenly spending hours on the internet looking for registration codes and illegal copies no longer holds the same appeal, it has become easier and safer just to purchase a legitimate copy.
Which brings us to the question of Apple computer and piracy. You, as a reader of fine Apple oriented commentary, are no doubt aware of the recent announcement that Apple is switching to Intel. This has some interesting ramifications, one of the foremost is that you will now, in all probability, be able download a copy of OS X on a P2P site and run it on any plain vanilla Wintel box by employing some sort of hack. To many Apple fans this is a nightmare scenario. "Why" they wonder "would anyone ever buy another Mac if they can run OS X on a Wintel box?"
Before considering why people might still buy Macs even if they could hack a Wintel to do the job let us consider the benefits of OS X piracy. For years interested parties have heard people complain: "Macs are too expensive." At this moment most people are thinking about only of the retail price. This is a mistake, the cost of Macs to a fence sitting switcher encompasses much more than the price tag. To get in the world of Mac you have to be willing to take a massive leap of faith. You must be convinced that a Mac will serve all your computing needs admirably and you probably have to accept that as a truth without extensively using a Macintosh. It is also wise to remember that for most computer users it is an "either/or" decision, not many have the resources necessary to grab a Windows for safety and a Mac just to decide if it a suitable OS. Faced with a decision like that it is not hard to understand why people, time and time again, choose the OS with the greatest amount of familiarity. With rampant piracy suddenly this is not an issue. People can play with OS X on their Wintel box and make an informed decision when they make their next computer purchase. It is not hard to imagine that actually being able to use OS X for a significant period of time might result in more switchers than Apple's ads ever dreamed of producing.
Here one suspects Apple will face a careful balancing act. If hacking a PC to run OS X is triv
FInally OSx will start to be hacked then viruses will pop everywhere!
Wahou! in yer fac MAc users.
Since TFA seems to be down already, I assume it is talking about allowing the release of Tiger for Intel to propogate on BitTorrent networks. Perhaps Apple is allowing for this to give curious Windows users a taste of OS X and it's suite of apps, but this certainly would not continue when the final version is released.
Apple could not easily survive as a software company. Apple has been a hardware company for it's duration. Remember back in 1997, when Apple almost died? Steve Jobs had to kill the clones because Apple could not compete with the cheap hardware. Arguably, Apple is in a much stronger position to sell software due to it's larger user base, better public image, etc., but I don't think Apple would profit as much.
Apple is a hardware company that might be hoping that some users download the torrent, fall in love with OS X, and buy an Intel Mac in a year. Or maybe this whole thing is overzealous speculation on the part of imaginative bloggers. Either way, Apple will remain a hardware company and provide an integrated computing solution that is clean, solid, and attractive.
Supposedly Developers already have a version that runs on PC's. I think thats the version thats been leaked.
...to prevent the obvious karma-whoring?
lets hope not. I mean a company, HOPING that the general population will steal from them in order to gain market share? What kind up stupid fucked up thinking is that? I doubt that will happen anyway once little Jimmy fails to install half life 2 on his new operating system.
Jonathanjk.com
Makes sense to me, it worked for Microsoft in a way!
:D
If it helps I'll download a copy
Seems to me if Apple release their OS for the x86, a lot more people would have heard of Apple and be willing to consider 'em as an upgrade to their own pc maybe, or buying a 'Intel' Apple. I'm guessing it probably will be faster too.
More people that try it, more people will buy and stay with Apple, and maybe try other OS's. At least it's going to bring Microsoft's monopoly down a tad!
D
If Apple doesn't start filing lawsuits against P2P users in a reasonable amount of time (say, a month?), then I'll give some credence to this theory.
On a similar note, if they can get CrossOver Office and/or Cedega running on OSX86, I fully expect Ballmer to shit a brick, a-la Bender.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
First of all, I remember reading that OSX will only work on the Apple computers, and while a crack may exist, one would have to wonder how long it will be until such a fix would be mostly bug free.
The other problem with that idea is that people are going to have to download new programs because being an intel computer of any type doesn't allow you to install the same software on Windows as you do on Unix. OSX is a BSD Unix system after all. This may not be a very good toy unless people are downloading it to make a complete switch pending any advancement in cross-platform software.
Lastly, how many people can you think of running pirated WindozeXP that were so impressed with the product that they bought it? It may work for CDs in a good number of cases, but I can't see that happening as much as this article hopes on an OS level. It may help to increase publicity, which will garner some increase in sales, but nothing like the fame achieved by The Grey Album.
If it works out for Apple in the end, then kudos, but with increased DRM practices and the great deal of elitism among the diehard mac fans, one would have to wonder about the possibility of two camps of mac fans if the piracy worked. Imageine authentic vs. underground fans disputing like Linux vs. BSD users sometimes do...
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Or maybe IBM just couldn't supply the chips that they promised. Nothing to see here...
What people really need is Gentoo/*BSD!
...but I think the main problem is not how this could help Apple, but how Apple will respond. It will probably depend on the hacking of OSX to Wintel boxes not gaining too much popularity, real or perceived.
If the perception is something like "only one out of 1,000 users know how to do this, and only one of out 10 of those actually have the time and energy to try," then I really doubt we'll see a concerted, RIAA/MPAA style response to this.
Give it time, though - ESPECIALLY if Longhorn has a lot of inital bugs to work out, or if enough "chatter" builds for OSX vs. Windows much like it did for Firefox vs. IE ("try this on your machine, it's safer and easier to use") and you could see a bunch of users test driving an OSX installation.
That, plus any larger amount of warez available for Max, and / or enough publicity, would probably force Apple to at least make a public show of discouraging the pirates just to save face; at worst we could see the type of intentional software breakage & DRM the article talks about.
One final thought? What if this opens the Pandora's Box of Mac viruses, once a bunch of script kiddies get their hands on OSX and start picking it apart? Those 1337 types who couldn't afford a Mac, or couldn't be bothered to find one someplace, might decide their time has come.
However, Apple is not a software company like Microsoft (was) and they don't have the large base of businesses and OEMs to subsidize the home piracy market. If OS X is hacked to run on commodity x86 hardware and is available via P2P, Apple will either add serious DRM to their application and OS software (something they've avoided thus far) or face extinction. How will they continue to innovate when they suddenly have an increased market share but one paying for either their hardware or their software?
Pathway to Apple Profit?
Apple needs no pathway to profit - it is profitable as a hardware company. They need software only as a selling point for their hardware. Releasing MacOS X compatible with standard non-brand PC's would undermine their hardware sales - and it would be a pathway to ginormous losses like they had in 1997 and 1998, when they allowed cloning. They are profitable since then precisely because Jobs killed clones. Do you seriously believe he did it only to reintroduce Mac cloning ten years later?
...out on my own machine at home. I have been looking into other operating systems lately, just from an experimental standpoint. Knoppix 3.7 is the only distro that I've tried that currently runs on my scsi only system. If OS-X could see both my processors and run from a scsi only system, I'd be happy. I know in the old days Mac hardware was scsi. Has this changed in the recent years?
SYS 64738
It's no secret that the reason for Apple's comeback was the iPod, who's popularity was primarily due to rampant music piracy. Come on, does anyone really think a college kid purchased 10,000 songs for their iPod at $0.99 each?
Apple is also a company used to having their software run on a pre-determined combination of hardware and software. I suspect these dev kits are no exception. Even if it somehow leaks out, I highly doubt it will work on any 'ol wintel PC simply due to a lack of drivers.
www.lonseidman.com
1) port to intel 2) sell chips with embedded OSX a la Transmeta 3) profit!
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
on standard PC hardware, the market share of Apple would blossom (pun intended).
I would definately pay for a license to run the OSX software to run on PC hardware.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Apple should be pushing their software. Everyone on Slashdot who's used OSX (any Unix aficionado, anyway) can't shut up about how it is the way to do desktop Unix.
Apple is commoditizing their own hardware. That's what the whole move to Intel is about. So arguing that they're a hardware company first and a software company second isn't as true anymore. Are they a consumer electronics company first, computer hardware company second and software company third because their current big moneymaker is the iPod?
People are sick of Microsoft. This much is true. The interesting thing is that it's not just the geeks anymore (see Firefox). Apple giving users an alternative -- especially the friendly, Apple alternative -- and partnering with Dell would make a huge impact. But to do it, they have to work on commodity hardware -- even boxes that enthusiasts put together themselves. Period.
Oh, and would somebody change the G5 icon now?
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
The original premise was that an x86 release for generic x86 hardware (non Apple firmware) was already released. This however turned out to be a hoax. I doubt Apple is trying to make a revolution giving an OS away.
Since the article has been slashdotted, I can only assume that Apple plan on suing anyone and everyone who even think about pirating OS X. Go-go Apple legal dept.!
An option for Apple, if they are looking for an offering in the try-before-you-buy market, is to offer an OSX Live CD for download. This would give x86 users a chance to legally get a taste for OSX before dropping $500 on a Mac Mini (or a pricier Dual-G5).
You have to consider that the only thing that would keep x86 OS X applications from running on vanilla x86 systems would be OS and driver issues, not issues inherent in the applications themselves.
If Apple wanted to transform themselves from a hardware company to a software company, what better way to do it than:
1.) Create machines on a closed x86 platform.
2.) Wait until the platform is well supported by 3rd party software and hardware vendors, and you've built up a large enough market share and you have a large enough catalogue of software offerings established to survive as a software vendor alone.
3.) After you've developed an ecosystem around your platform, release a version of OS X that runs on generic x86 boxes, and at that point it's too damn late for Microsoft or anyone else to do anything about it.
4.) Profit!
Wasn't that one of Microsoft's methods until they gained total market dominance and locked their Windows licenses to the user's hardware?
Although there is a MacOSX developer-version that will run on a particular Macintosh "P.C.," it may not run on your regular vanilla P.C.
But what's worse is that it might run on vanilla P.C., but badly. I can see it now: punks downloading Mac OSX "for free" and having it either crash, or have Quartz disabled, or otherwise run funky. Then the fallout on many a P.C. site/blog will be all about how OSX is crap and can't run well on a Dell.
In short, this could turn out to be bad publicity, if there is such a thing.
I think for a lot of people, myself included, switching to a different operating system would mean having to discard the thousands of dollars of software I've purchased in the past and repurchase it. It would take at a minimum a whole software generation (however long that is) for OSX to overtake Windows in the market for that reason, I would think.
There is a crew that worked on this...
Most of it runs on x86 already and you can download it here!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
No no no. It is an illegal "release". There won't be serious complaints.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
The author's head is so far up his ass he can't see that he's being overly idealistic. I highly doubt most software pirates ever "try" the product and then buy it. Perhaps the honest few, but beyond that, I would wager a bet that nary a user shells out the scrilla once they've pirated a product. People are cheap, they will not buy what they can get for free unless adequately motivated to (i.e. Law suits, a la RIAA).
Say what? People will buy a Mac box instead of running it on a Wal-Mart box to avoid compatibility breaks with OS updates? Has this person never met a determined satellite pirate?
that Apple sucked back then.
A x86 version of OS X would be a hell of a lot more popular now than OS 8 was.
Apple's market may increase, but not "exponentially".
Microsoft maintains its market largely on the backs of the monoculture. Linux is already free, but has made only trivial incursions into the desktop market. That's because many people who want Windows want it because it's compatible with the other Windows boxes among their friends/coworkers. They get software; they get advice; they get the ability to connect on a Windows network which talks to other Windows boxes better than it talks to anything else.
There's another reason: Windows is "free", in the sense that it comes on your box without any effort. Another excellent piece of free software, Firefox, has made only a tiny incursion into the IE market, because IE comes for free. Yes, there will be those who would put pirated OS X on their boxes, but they would be far, far outweighed by the number of people who are perfectly content to keep whatever their box came with.
If there were a good source of Windows-less Intel boxes, maybe there would be more OS X piracy, but even then, not all that much: most people are perfectly happy to pay for Dell to pre-install Windows and let it be done with that. And they'd still have to go out to get the rest of their software, since their Windows base of games and apps won't port.
The few OS X-hacked boxes among Slashdot users are not going to decrease the monoculture to the point where ordinary users are going to think of OS X as an important alternative. Even if it doubles the existing base that's only 10% market share for Apple, which still makes them a trivial minority.
I think Apple's plan has a lot more to do with people just liking OS X well enough to pay for it than playing some dangerous game of "letting" people "steal" your software.
A few weeks back there were a few people who noticed a lot of Firefox stories on /., but now I notice a 'few' Apple-related stories the last three days:
"Apple: Adding 2 Extra Drives to a G5"
"Apple: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger for x86 Leaked?"
"Apple: Jamie Zawinski Switches to Mac OS X"
"Apple: Apple May be Intel Show Pony"
"Apple: Nokia Develops a New Browser on Apple WebKit"
"Apple: Steve Jobs In Praise of Dropping Out"
"Apple: Is Piracy the Pathway to Apple Profit?"
And don't download them, you can find them on torrentspy and torrentreactor, the problem is that the >900MB one is a goatse.cx picture weighting 1GB once uncompressed and the other one, >600MB, is stuck at 13% for everyone, plus 600MB for MacOsX is dreaming wide awake, Tiger weights alot so don't expect it to be that small even compressed.
:)
What I mean is that all those article you read about osX being pirated are wishfull thinking, which is then used as a fun opportunity for malware writers.
If you want to create a buzz about osX on x86 this is the worst way, wait till you have actually found a working copy, personnaly found it, not being told about it and then talk about it. Right now those stories are pissing people off because all they get is a wide opened ass or an interminable wait... and I really don't understand how can this help Apple sell more MacOsX or create a buzz before releasing it. If you want this type of marketing to work don't spoil it before it happens because once the good copy is out there people will be very hesitant to get it... and the marketing tactic will fail, and we don't want that
While I still believe that Apple is very unlikely to allow MacOS X to run on non-Apple hardware, there is a scenario in which this makes sense. Conventional wisdom says that Apple wants to continue making money by selling hardware and software bundled together at a good profit margin. Running on Intel has the potential to allow Apple to more easily maintain their profit margin (or increase it) because presumably they are getting Intel chips for less than they were getting PPC chips.
But suppose that even with all of that being true, selling computer hardware is still a losing proposition? Even if Macs and iPods are made in China right now, maybe trying to make money on hardware just doesn't add up for Apple. Perhaps they'll pull a Lenovo move like IBM did and basically sell off the manufacturing business in order to focus on software where the profit margins are much higher. An Apple Lenovo would keep making Intel based Macs and Apple itself would make money from licensing MacOS X for those machines. Apple could then sell MacOS X for non-Apple hardware and still have Apple branded hardware in the market without all of the risk and headache.
Of course this is all wild speculation. They may already have similar arrangements with their manufacturers.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Right now Apple is a hardware company, but look at their two hardware lines. First you have their Macs. Traditionally their bread and butter, they sell high end high quality computers. If you wanted the OS you buy the hardware.
Now look at their other line, the iPod. The iPod is a means to drive people to their iTunes store. They lose money on the iPod to drive people to the store to make money on that. It's a completely different model.
From a money making standpoint they are two different companies. Is Steve poised to change the way Apple does business? The way hardware works these days, your hardware does not matter as much as it used to. What matters is the face of your computer, which is your OS. And what if Steve makes a huge push by selling Mac OS X on intel for any intel platform? What if 5 percent of the market switches because they are tired of Microsoft? What if 10 percent switch? That's an absolutely huge bump in market share, and that translates to very nice profits.
That being said, I doubt if they switch to this model that "piracy" is the way they are going. Might be nice to seed this to the geeks, but look forward to Apple instituting DRM in OS X to cut down on copying. Right now OS X has little copy protection, though to effectively pirate the tiger installer you need to have a DVD writer.
(Yes I know this because a friend of mine wanted my 10.4 installer but only had a CD drive, and I had a DVD-CD combo drive and Apple only put a DVD installer into the box, you have to send away for the CDs and pay a media fee. So I wanted to try to make a disk image and have copy the image to his Mac but the installer requires you reboot from your CD/DVD drive and since it wasn't on that drive, it wouldn't let us install. Yes I'm a dirty pirate for wanting to let my friend install 10.4 using my DVD so sue me!)
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
No, your statement was not a flame. There are several "incidents" that have helped to solidify Microsoft's dominanace, and piracy can most certainly be attributed to that.
The aformentioned incident about Windows 3.1 is most certainly valid. Look at how many people pirated numerous versions of Windows since the early 1990s. This allowed people to become familiar with the operating system. Then, when it came time for people to purchase a new system, what operating system do you think they would have gotten with it (assuming that they had a choice)? Some operating system that was unknown to the general populous, like OS/2, or something that they already knew well because they had been using a pirated version? Since the operating system came with the PC, Microsoft got a fee for that PC sale. So, whereas MS didn't profit from the initial piracy, they still made a sale later on and further addicted the user to Windows.
I still firmly believe that the "crack" for the Kinko's version of MS Office several years ago was planned. For those who don't know or don't remember, U.S. printing franchise Kinko's had a "special" 30-day, full-usage CD for MS Office (I forget the specific version) for something like $5. Shortly thereafter a crack was released that broke the 30-day protection. The change was a simple modification to a DLL file and a huge nuber of these discs were sold. I'm generally not a conspiracy theorist, but if there was a lot of concern for the "protection" of the "demo" software, Microsoft would (or should) have made it more difficult than a DLL file for protection. I also heard nothing afterwards about prosecuting the one who released the crack. So, for a few bucks per cracked disc, Microsoft snared how many hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people into Microsoft Office. I'd just about guarantee that the vast majority of those people are still using a version of MS Office. Whether those versions are pirated or not is another matter, but I'll bet that many of them are not.
I really would like to know how much of Microsoft's current dominance is due to past piracy. I'll bet that Microsoft would not be anywhere close to where it is now if there was no such thing as software piracy.
And how many of us have pirated a number of games that we otherwise would not have bought but were so impressive that we purchased what was downloaded and/or purchased any of its sequels or expansion packs? I would think many of us.
I honestly think that there can be an argument made that piracy can under certain circumstances make a product more popular, and Microsoft's dominance is certainly what should be offered as proof of that. I would be willing to bet that Apple would be in the same situation. I know a number of people that I work with (myself included) who would love to work with OS X but are not willing to purchase an additional piece of hardware that we might not be interested in afterwards. But we'd be glad to try it out on one of my Athlon XP/64 systems.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Jobs has always been a hardware guy. He sees the value in tight integration and limited configurations. I'd say a lot of the trouble M$ is in with Windows is the fact that there's too much hardware out there. It has to somehow support everything.
Granted, M$ has billions more than Apple, but in the arena of public opinion, Apple is much 'cooler' than M$ because of design. Plus, Apple can also tout that it just works. Something M$ cannot. Apple stands on the shoulders of others like BSD, Apache, Samba, Java - stuff that other people have already figured out and therefore, Apple does not have to reinvent. And some things like BSD have a lot of security time logged, so Apple doesn't have to deal with these issues. M$ is just the opposite - for a recent example of this see the Acrylic image app.
Sure, Apple, like any company, is all about profit. But at the same time, because of Jobs, they have a mission: to make things that don't suck and to really innovate instead of paying it lip service and patch security holes. So for Apple to make (quite) a few billion dollars less and have a better user experience is worth much more to them.
I know this sounds cliche, but if you've ever used a Mac for some time you would know what I'm talking about. When I plug in a new mouse or whatever, there's no windows popping up nagging me to do something and I surely don't have to compile any drivers myself. So to me, even from a programmers point of view, it just works. Why mess with that just for more market share and added complexity?
Apple is also a hardware company, they make most of their money by selling the only computers that can run the software that they sell (by my estimates Apple currently owns, oh, about 100% of the Macintosh market).
Open-source OS X and you not only lose your OS Revenues, you lose the hardware monopoly.
What's left? iPods and iTunes downloads? Hard to afford the Steve's Gulfstream on that revenue.
Isn't this at least part of their formula for success with iTunes?
Honestly, who is actually going to *buy* enough music off of iTunes to fill an entire 40 gig iPod
Searching for "mac.osx.tiger.x86.xiso" on an unammed site results in this: There has been an error with your search This search query has been blocked at the request of the copyright holder, in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")
An Apple OS for regular x86 boxen will only destroy their good reputation and hurt them big time.
If you take a copy of something, but don't profit finacially from that product, where is the harm?
As I see there are three ways of making money out of software
Its the last one that I'd like to focus on. If you create a generic tool, that requires little support, perhaps the only way you can profit is by selling a licence to profit. By this I mean giving away the software and source code under a licence that prohibits the modification and use of that software for profit. This way people are free to use and learn a product before being commited to buy a product. If you are caught using the software for profit you can be sued, but normal business practice should be to procure a licence once the product has been approved for use.
Doesn't that feel fairer? I mean, if Joe Student downloads a copy of Final Cut Pro, uses it to create the movie that gets him noticed... he's gonna buy Final Cut Pro when he gets paid. Why should he pay upfront for software that he has no idea if he'll like, or will do what he needs, especially when the amount of money is more than he earns in a year.
Bean counters will hate this, but seriously software makes no money if there is no market. The more people that use the software the bigger the market. The only people who should pay to use a tool that costs you nothing to make or distribute, but $millions to develop are thoses that profit from it themselves. Charging the little guy to learn to use your product is stupid. Charging the big guys to teach you that product and provide it as a tool... thats good money.
The question is how do you get them to pay? Honesty and litigation - the same as we do now.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I keep seeing the term "PC" being used to describe what is not a mac... PC stands for Personal Computer, a mac is a PC, a windows box is a PC, an Atari is a PC, an Amiga is a PC. I lump all of you who use the term PC to refer only to windows machines in with the group of people who use the term Hacker in place of Cracker
What unnamed site? Its rather useless if you dont mention it.
I think the ideal may be more along the lines of 30% Apple, 30% Windows, 30% Linux, 10% (Something mysterious and new???)
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Somehow, I doubt that OSX will be available on ordinary PCs. Ther is SUCH a variety of PC hardware, this would be unlikely.
Gee, you have a nVidia card? OSX only supports ATI.
Whoops. nForce chipset. Sorry.
Looks like your Athlon 64 does not support SSE3. Now, you software will crash for your amusement. Enjoy!
It is not that Apple could NOT support all of those devices. It is just that Apple is not likely to put the work into it, because they want people to buy THEIR hardware. I suppose that you MIGHT be able to build a PC made just to run OSX (using the components that have drivers), but that would have to be deliberate. Or, you could get lucky and have just the right hardware, but that would be unlikely.
Oh, one more thing. Don't expect 3rd party drivers for mobos. If it is impossible to buy OSX by itself, no mobo manufacturer will support it. Video cards MIGHT be another story. I can imagine nVidia and ATI writing their own Mac drivers if this x86 thing takes off.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be VERY wrong about this whole thing.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Apple has to do MUCH less of this, because the OS comes preinstalled on their boxes.
If Apple let random folks install their OS on random "beige boxes", many people would have a sub-optimal experiences and will conclucde "OSX is the sh1tz".
I think Apple's better off tacitly allowing XP to run nicely on their hardware, but not to worry about the other way 'round. Even die-hard Mac haters may like to buy Powerbooks to run XP on. And who knows, they may at least give OSX a whirl.
Best Buy can have you arrested
Everyone is talking about running OSX on their pc's. Wouldn't it be much more interesting to talk about running Windows on your Apple Hardware?
Which do you think is more probable.. People switching to OSX because they pirated a copy off the Internet and formatted their drive and installed a new OS. Or, people buy Apple Intel hardware with OSX 1.5, and purchase a box of Longhorn. Microsoft already owns and publishes Virtual PC for Mac users, why wouldn't they make a version of Windows native for Apple Intel hardware.
Imagine you buy a dual core Intel from Apple with a decent ATI/NVIDIA 3D Accelerator, comparable to whatever the standard Wintel boxes are running. This is going to be running OSX 10.5 Leopard out of the box, but you also purchase a boxed copy of Longhorn. Dual boot or even integrated into OSX, full speed Windows, same as that Dell on the desk next to it. It has the best OS on the market and capability of running GAMES and every Win title on the market at full speed through Windows. Not emulation, but actual Windows running on Intel hardware.
If this scenario ever came to be, I'm with Apple hardware all the way.
the only way this would work is if it was legitimately released for generic Intel boxes, and not without a massive amount of effort on Apple's part. OSX would be entirely useless to most people without driver support for devices like soundcards, winmodems, gfx cards et al. OSX uers on generic Intel machines everywhere would complain "It doesn't Just Work afterall!".
solutions might include 1) hardware vendors writing drivers, (something they wouldn't do illegally. 2) the BSD community working flat-out to catch up to Linux's massive driver base albeit on a dubious premise (good luck).
it's more likely we'll see Darwin itself spreading (again years behind Linux where drivers are concerned), with an X11 DE like KDE or Gnome, which would somewhat defeat the purpose of people wanting to toy with OSX's proprietary Aqua UI.
If I follow your logic, then Dell isn't a hardware company, and probably HP neither. They too buy ram, processor, harddisks, screens, etc. Then they make a custom case, custom keyboard, and that's it.
For the moment, Apple is both a hardware and software company.
From TFA: Why they wonder would anyone ever buy another Mac if they can run OS X on a Wintel box?
I, for one, have always felt that Apple hardware is a higher quality hardware. I would buy an Intel Apple machine to load Slackware on it. (Something that's difficult enough for me that I just use Kubuntu currently, which is not as stable as Slackware.)
So, yes, I would very much like to have an Intel Apple machine, and no, I would not run OS X on it.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
I don't know that it helps Apple if OS X is pirated. But it is possible that every pirated copy of Mac OS X means one less windows copy sold.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
that the Bittorrent leak of OS X PPC was entirely bogus, so the whole premise of the article is off.
People mention that Microsoft "allowed" people to pirate Windows for years to increase marketshare and increase sales. It's true that having more systems out there running Windows means more potential marketshare for other apps like Office. However, if someone pirates Windows, why would they not pirate Office, too? So I just don't buy that MS ever encouraged people to pirate Windows.
As you point out, though, Apple has nothing to gain from pirated versions of OS X. If you pirated Tiger, chances are good that you'll pirate succeeding versions of the OS, as well. So, even if Apple did come out with a shrink-wrapped version of OS X for any x86 system, where's the profit potential? It's not there.
Keep in mind, too, that hacked versions of OS X will do more harm than good. Video drivers will be messed up, sound drivers, network cards will not work, and a slew of other problems that Apple never addressed because they didn't intend OS X to run on your particular setup. So, in the end, people who hack OS X will have a lot of frustration with all of the kernel panics and non-working hardware. Is that the experience that Apple wants people to have with their product? Hell no. This is the company that is so anal about the presentation of their product that they even design the user experience just opening the friggen cardboard box!
Its nothing people! It means nothing to anyone that does not already own a mac or who was going to buy one in the next 5 years.
Those people are probably a little miffed.
Apple will have lots of its OS in ROM like the old days. No ROM, No play. So no whitebox OSX support. It wont boot, it wont work. So forget about it.
Apple is not going to make OSX run on any old wintel hardware. They dont want to support all the buggy hardware out there. And the hardware manufacturers do not want to write OSX drivers for their chipsets, video cards, capture cards, and everything else.
So move along. Its over.
Dont worry. MS will get around to making their software tolerable, and then you wont be as interested in OSX anymore.
So be patient.
Oh, and Apple would be making a big mistake if they let Windows run on their boxes. Once users are spending more time in windows than in OSX, Apple has nothing left to sell.
It worked for Microsoft. Why wouldn't it work for Apple? Unlike MS today, they actually have something that the majority of computer enthusiasts would like to have, if not regularly use. Then their friends and family see it... voila. Free advertising and tech support.
Don't for one second think that "Apple is a hardware company". I'm not sure where you ge this idea; is it Apple marketing rhetoric from back in the pre-OS X days when their OS was absolute shit in terms of proper features and stability, or as an excuse for a full range of applications? Looking at it now or hte past couple eyars, I don't recall much talk about Apple hardware (at least in preference over MacOS X) since the G3 came out in, what... 1999? Quite a bit less for the G4, and even less so for the G5.
Face it. Apple is not a hardware company anymore. They're an appliance company. Their OS and their design is indeed what they market and sell, not their hardware.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19980806. html
(after some paragraphs about iMac)
Are Alliterative Headlines Hopelessly Hokey?
Search your feelings, Slashdot editors.
The site is www.google.com, but don't tell them I told you -Anonymous Coward
I don't see why Apple would leak the software on purpose like some claim. They could also give the first version of osx86 away for free, and gain a lot of support and media attention for that move, instead of the "oh, look, it's leaked on the Internet"-approach.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Which DRM features are you referring to?
I have no doubt that Apple is going to disable OS X from installing on non-Apple machines, but I hadn't heard they could do so using something built into the Pentium M. I figured it would be through a custom BIOS or something.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I think the ideal may be more along the lines of 30% Apple, 30% Windows, 30% Linux, 10% (Something mysterious and new???)
Ideal??? Apparently, you don't remember the good ol' days of the Commodore/AppleII/PC clones/Amiga/PCjr/Tandy. Some people would have to run multiple computers at the same time because vendors didn't make software on all platforms. It was a nightmare for software developers, for IT people, and for users. Back in that day, if you wanted to buy boxed software, you had to read the minimum system requirement very very carefully because there were so many different platforms and configurations. You couldn't just buy a piece of software at some shithole like Wal-Mart and be sure that it was going to work on your PC.
So, to sum up... we already saw this in the 80's. And you see where it evolved to?
I don't respond to AC's.
Steve wouldn't lie to us, would he?
But I bet they still sue people when they catch them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Apple piracy
It makes sense. I can almost imagine the advertising slogan:
One mouse button *
One eye patch
One way
Piracy is a useful, if dodgy method for any company to gain market share in a new market. Apple do not currently rely upon MacOS Intel for funding, so it will not affect their bottom line for a few years.
*Yeah, yeah. Macs can use two buttons.
Personally I think there'd be a lot less of a problem this time around because people don't have to start almost from scratch to write the same program for different platforms anymore. Cross platform development has gone a long ways in the past 5 years, let alone the past 20.
Let's assume for a minute that Apple does decide to lock down OSX86, and upon it's release the hackers jump in start trying to make it runnable on generic PCs. Why does everyone automatically that this hack would be easy to implement? Take for example the example of the XBOX. Architecturally speaking, the design of an XBOX is quite similar to that of a standard PC, yet after more than three years of intense development, no commercial version of windows has EVER run natively on the XBOX. Sure, you can run Windows 98 on an XBOX, but not without an emulator like BOCHS. If the XBOX hacking community cannot get windows to run on a X86 based XBOX architecture (which, I may add is based on 20+ years of well known design), how in the heck can we expect a hack to run on software that has been designed for a brand new, never before seen apple-X86 architecture?
Using a nice round number of $1500 as an average Mac price, and knowing that Apple typically reports mark-ups in the 25 point range, with another ~$100 going to the retailer/distributor (that's probably high), we can calculate what Apple actually pays for the computer: .25 margin.
((Selling price - $100 markup) - COST)/COST =
That yields $1,120.00 for the COST. Assuming that Apple has factored in some value for OS X and iLife into that, Apple is making about $250 per Mac. Now, part of that assumption about the value of OS X is that Apple is probably nearly loss-leadering the OS (they'll get you on the upgrade anyhow). So, we can safely appraise the COST of OS X and iLife to be in the $30-$50 range, combined; I'd venture further than they're probably equal. So out of a $150 price tag for OS X (which we know Amazon sells for $115, Apple takes in a little less than $85, subtracting development COST and packaging materials COST.
What does this mean? Well, roughly, if you buy a Mac from Apple, they take in $250. If you buy OS X at the current price, they take in $85. That's a big difference, and keep in mind that since OS X currently runs only a Mac they've already made the $250 at some point, too!
OTOH, the question to ask is what is the sustainable asking price for OS X on an x86 whitebox? Windows XP Home is only available as an upgrade at Amazon for $98. Windows XP Pro, non-upgrade version, is $280. I'd say that OS X fits in between the two, feature-wise. Competively priced, they might be able to go $199. At that price, with current development and packaging costs, they could be making, say, $165 per sale. That's nearly double what they make on a "Mac" OS X sale, and two-thirds what they make on a Mac hardware sale.
If they could double their market share (4% of the overall computer market??) they would have converted to a more profitable, less volatile business model. (Well, from one point of view---competing directly with M$ can never be called less volatile!)
So, are you willing to pay $200 for OS X on your white boxen?
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
I know that if I "stumbled" upon OSx86, it might "end up" on my computer...
Its because OSX actually works (and I'm sure Apple will make sure it works perfectly on their hardware - consequently on most of the other x86 stuff too)...
Bring on the free advertising...
Sleep: A completely inadequate substitution for Caffeine.
let all the geeks do the hardwork of porting various hardware configs and such (i know little what im talking about here, but this sounds right). That way apple can just reverse steal the code in 3 years when they decide to support x86 and freeze over hell.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
They'll probably have Intel make the Macintosh chips different so that OSX can't run on *86.
/. elite have to accept that MS Office has a very dominant market share.
The reason I say this is that in the *86 market people want cheap hardware. If you can run OSX on a generic, $300 *86 then Apple's hardware sales will nose dive into the toilet. They will be finished as a computer manufacturer. Maybe their laptop line will survive, but their workstation products will be finished. And I don't think they want that.
Besides, MS is really powerful, AND they own part of Apple anyways. Even if OSX came out for the *86 MS would find a way to kill or molest the usefulness out of it.
They could start by killing the Office for Mac products. That alone would severly damage Mac sales to businesses that rely on MS Office, which is 99% of small business and a majority of large business.
Even the
OSX on the *86 is nice to dream about, but, unfortunately, it's not going to happen.
Fallout? From what? The obvious retort to such an assertion is that it's not supposed to run on a Dell. It's not supposed to run on anything but Apple-branded hardware.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Or maybee people will put windows on apple's intel boxes instead. Sure is something I would do.
The media reacts as if every move by Steve Jobs is a stroke of genius. Admittedly he's a smart guy, but Apple *had* to switch to Intel, they had no choice. Too many people were waiting for the G5 Powerbook, or waiting for faster Macs to replace their older machines. AMD has the same supply issues as IBM. Where could they go?
If there's no hardware DRM copy protection on the Intel Tiger build, it's probably because they had to rush these systems out the door, rather than wait for these issues to get sorted out. This time around Apple wants the developers to get it right, so they need all the time they can get.
...is a reminder that Apple Computer still exists.
How can you call Dell a hardware company? Because they put everything in a well designed box? All the components are 3rd party... Dell doesn't make processors, Dell doesn't make memory, Dell doesn't make harddrives or video cards or sound cards. They buy them from hardware companies, put them in a shiny box and then run *their software* on it.
Cross platform development has gone a long ways in the past 5 years, let alone the past 20.
Please don't tell me you're talking about client-side Java...
I don't respond to AC's.
[teflon-suit]
Piracy is a good way of advertisement until it becomes rampant! In the good ol' days people did pirate and did so because lack of money in college. However, what is different these days is that people pirate because they expect it! People are blatant about piracy and are not afraid to say they are pirating!
This is a big shift and has caused people to pirate and not pay on principle. I find this especially true among the Open Source Free-Loaders. Please understand me properly as these people who use Open Source, cry about the virtues and how everything should be Free and Open Source, but do not contribute back in any form. I find these people to be too damm cheap and use the Open Source cloak as way to explain their actions, which includes rampant piracy.
Now regarding the comment about not loosing any money because, you would have never bought the software in the first place. My answer is, why is that software being used in the first place? If said software holds no value, then why is being used? Because if said software is used, then it holds some value, and therefore must be paid for. If somebody does not pay and uses this as an excuse it is called theft! For example, go to magazine shop or book store and say, "Hey I am not going to buy these magazines or books, but I want to spend the day here." I am sure that you will be escorted off the premises. Stores, and companies are friendly and try to be helpful, but do expect you to buy something! We seem to have forgotten the latter!
[/teflon-suit]
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Sun would love you to buy their great Sparc-based machines that run Solaris well, totally supported hardware, all kinds of bells-n-whistles, etc.
But you don't want to run Sparc? Okay, here's Solaris for the x86. Sure you can run it on any machine, but we only support the following hardware and anything else falls under the "deal with it or fix it yourself" variety.
I can imagine Apple taking a similar tack: We sell the hardware, but we're not necessarily goign to make it hard to run on a run-of-the-mill PC, so long as you understand that your milage may vary.
I would think this would be an even bigger win than the Sun example above because it's not two different chips, so you can "trade up" from your PC to Apple hardware without recompiling anything, or having to buy a separate processor version.
If we take the experience with the IBM PCs in the 80's as our template I think it is easy to see that cloning and piracy don't contribute to the success of individual hardware companies.
IBM owned the PC market up until the late 80s but the evolution of cloned hardware destroyed their business. It was Microsoft who made their fortune from cloned hardware not IBM. Microsoft may have benefited from software piracy but they held a unique position of being able to get reliably paid for their products by large institutions like OEMs, corporations and government entities. Pirated copies of their software didn't effect their principle revenue streams because MS didn't have a reliable mechanism for getting people who did pirate to pay in the first place.
I don't see Apple benefiting from clones (de facto or formal) or pirated software. Cloned hardware would cannibalize Apple's own sales. Clones would not functions as well as real Macs which would damage the brand. Trying to recoup by selling the OS and other software like iLife would require serialization and all the headaches that entails in addition to support issues.
Perhaps Apple could gain an edge by capturing the small but influential "hacker" market. People who enjoy futzing with Linux might be willing to suffer the headaches of running MacOS X on unsupported hardware. Beyond that, however, I don't see much advantage.
By the time the OS is ready, Intel will have the Dual Core Desktop Pentium M available.
r s
Jobs has already stated that the Pentium M is a better product than the G5, because of thermal concerns. Hence, most boxes will likely ship with the 32bit, 64bit for workstations, and low power for laptops.
Check this http://arstechnica.com/columns/mac/mac-20050608.a
You must not have bought something recently from Apple at retail. All of their hardware comes encased in this thin, custom-cut and form fitting cellophane wrap within all the other packaging.
It's pretty classy, but sort of a pain if you don't get it in the trash right away because the adhesive strips that close it up stick to everything!
I don't know if the desktops do but I know that my Powerbook, Mac Mini, iPods, iSight, and the Apple keyboard I bought all had it.
There's a pattern of behavior that you can see in many parts of American society (probably others as well). Normal people will on occassion knowingly break the law - even organize for the task - if it appears that the broader group disagrees with the laws intent.
For example, farmers in low-yield areas often grow a little pot behind the barn to make the mortage. It's a shared secret among all the farmers - they often all do it in a bad year - but any moves by the sherriff to crack down on the behavior will result in a swift voting out in the next election. The farmers know it's illegal, but the don't believe it's wrong in the greater scheme.
Apple's problem is that for the next 6-12 months at least, and maybe longer, depending on perceptions, Mac OS X for x86 will exist, but cannot be bought. The product itself is not illegal or dangerous. Normal people will start to pirate it, easily making the rationalization that they'd buy it if they could. See music downloads and movie/tv downloads as precedents of this behavior.
Even when x86 Macs start shipping, the problem may continue because you can't run OS X on any ol' PC, so cracked and pirated versions may continue.
So regardless of whether Apple wants it, or thinks it will benefit them, they've created a condition where there is no question that normally rule-abiding people will pirate it. Surely they realize this - they're not stupid.
So, to sum up... we already saw this in the 80's. And you see where it evolved to? .. it evolved into the console market today, where there are 3 or 4 competing 'platforms' and your PS2 games won't run on the XBox.
I don't call that a nightmare.. I call it choice.
Well, the explosion of Microsoft was in no doubt aided and abetted by software piracy. How many of us took home those Win31 floppies and all those Office floppies from work?
The sequel, Doom, proved to be the most popular game in history. And how many of you paid $50-60 US or more sight unseen for Doom 3?
My blog
Anyone who say priacy is what Apple wants hasn't looked at how Apple makes its money. Selling hardware is their main source of income not OS X or software in general. Doing everything they can to make OS X only run on Apple boxes makes them money. Having the Intel Apple boxes dual boot Windows will help sell Apple boxes.
I don't think Apple wants to turn into main a software company.
However, if you sell demos that happen to get cracked and this drives out the competition then its all legal and you can't get sued in a trust case.
Exactly. That gives the perfect alibi. "No, no, we expected people to use it and buy it afterwards! It's not our fault that hundreds of thousands of people now use our products for $5 and a crack instead of our competitor's $200 version! We are just so very much the real victim here!"
Right.
But think about it. Apple releases their operating system for Intel/AMD. Millions of people pirate it and install it on their own systems. Millions of people now become familiar with OS X for x86 and like what they see. Apple convinces major PC vendors to offer OS X for x86 as an option for new systems. Millions of people purchase their next system with OS X. Licensing fees for Apple; higher demand for Apple software and Apple products.
All hypothetical? Perhaps. But look at history. That's exactly what happened to Microsoft.
Between Windows, Apple OS, and Linux, real competition for the desktop could actually return which should be better for the consumer through genuine innovation (as per the real definition of innovation, not Microsoft's definition) to one-up the competition.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
the playstation2 rose to fame with piracy too.....
The same rationalization is floated at all the warez and P2P sites, and it just doesn't hold water. The network effect may be real (up-front loss in sales yields free advertising and subsequent monetary transaction), but it is neither as large or as desirable as they make it out to be. First, if you can download game ABC from the network, play through it in 2 weeks for free, what incentive do you ever have to buy it down the road? What is the point of letting 100,000 people get your game for free only to convert 1,000 of them -- when it's more likely that 5,000 would have forked over the cash had it not been so easy to Google or torrent? Productivity and utility software is a little harder, because its long life usually means that there are several upgrades/updates that invalidate a pirated code, and give someone another chance to "go straight", but there are no hard statistics either way. No, the "lost sales" never quite jive with the numbers the BSA always publishes, but you have to be naive to think that warezed software is anywhere close to effective in getting users to fork over money.
Next, the software industry does not rely on piracy to sell product -- the argument is crap. There are plenty of ways to leverage the network effect without shooting themselves in the foot: time or feature limited demos, shareware, light versions, free framework/pay-for plugins, competitive upgrades, bundling, educational discounts, site licenses, support contracts, etc. etc. These companies desperately want to put their software in front of you, they want you to learn it, love it, advocate it, but they aren't dumb enough to give you the keys to the store without something in return. Adobe Photoshop will still be king even if it wasn't splashed over all the P2P networks, because it's a professional tool and businesses will still fork over the big money to buy it -- regardless of whether Jimmy warezed it or got the $50 version at the campus bookstore. Jimmy isn't the market, and he's deluding himself if he thinks he's doing Adobe a favor.
No, Apple isn't going to rely on warezed versions of the MacOS to build marketshare -- they already have iPods, iTunes, pretty iMacs, and plenty of rabid press to remind people how user-friendly the Mac is. They will produce consumer-friendly x86 iMacs, they will continue to make great laptops, and they will continue to push the MacOS against Longhorn. They will probably license the MacOS to bundle with other x86 computers (HP, Sony) to get even more people on board (but not for free).
Now, the technical hurdles involved in tying the hardware to the OS and vice versa are pretty large. In the end, Apple will be unable to stop people from running Windows on their Mac-branded hardware (Apple still gets their hardware cut) or from running the MacOS on their commodity hardware (Apple still gets a software cut) -- Darwin and Windows hackers will see to it. It doesn't mean they will embrace it, let alone turn a blind eye to piracy as a way to build marketshare, but they will pick their battles and make sure to grab a little revenue where they can. Ideally, when Longhorn ships, people will go to CompUSA or Fry's, and see it sitting next to Tiger on the shelf -- they will think back over all the virus/trojan/worm hassles they've had with Windows, and then decide how to spend their $129. Now thatis the network effect in action.
Think about iTunes -- it's a pretty good solution that makes it easy to find, try, and buy cheap music. Apple has put up reasonable barriers so that they can still get the music industry on board without alienating users. You can certainly buy an album on the cheap, burn it, and give it to your friends or post it to P2P -- but how many people actually do that? It's not worth the hassle for moderate quality music. Sure, the freedom is there to reassure users, but Apple sticks to the corporate line that piracy is bad and easy/cheap is good. Now, the MP3 market may have been forged by P2P, but Apple has done a pretty good job making it profitable without giving away the keys to the store.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
I do remember BeOS R5 PE. I installed it on my PowerComputing 150. The problem with their business model wasn't that they gave away a version for free. I think the problem was that there weren't a lot of compelling applications available for BeOS. It was way cool. It did real multitasking-- that was the big 'gee-whiz' for me.
This situation with Apple is different. They've already achieved a critical mass of applications for MacOS X. If people were to install a free version, they'd recognize the credibility of the OS in day-to-day use. BeOS just didn't get over that hurdle.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
So what has changed today? There still are minimum system requirements for every software package out there. it was nice to have a wide choice of platforms, rather then essentially 2.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
FYI, the Developer Transition Kit machines DO NOT contain a Phoenix BIOS, as has been incorrectly reported by xlr8yourmac and regurgitated elsewhere.
They contain a standard Intel-branded BIOS (EV91510A.86X.0450).
viral marketing for Apple.
Apple makes hardware boxes, they make their money off their boxes. They don't support every other box out there. They don't have to either.
OS X has "Software Update" (second item on the Apple menu at the top left of the screen or in the system section of the "System Preferences") which calls home once a month (or weekly or daily) at least.
They can get the geshtalt of the box (including the CPU ID) to verify that's its a legitimate request from a box that they have sold (25M to 100M box IDs is almost nothing to store as a DB key) instead of some clone.
If its a clone they can just pop-up the system browser to an Apple page explaining this and inviting them to buy Mac hardware.
This would be a great thing for Apple because it would allow them to preserve the integrity of their company (See we don't encourage ripping us off!) their market share, (clones don't run software update so they need constant re-cloning,) and mindset (buy Apple from the start.)
The idea is not to snuff out the clones (there'll always be some way to clone a computer) but to discourage the practice by encouraging the purchase from Apple option.
Apple has NOTHING to lose this time 'round.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
With Apple moving to x86 pc's, Apple system will no longer be to differentiate from stock x-86 system from Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. Apple can no longer argue that thier systems are more powerful than the comptetition. So, what's going to be selling point? Mac OS X. With it, Apple will be able to highlight the strengths they have ove the Windows OEM. But, Apple will have to get that message to the consumer buying his next PC. Apple store perform that function now by letting consumers play with the system but this not very efficient considering Apple stores are in limited locations. So, they should leverage the internet and allow users play with mac osx on their own desktops.
Apple shouldn't turn a blind eye rampant to piracy. But, they should take a more proactive approach that they largely control. They could release a live DVD or CD of Mac OSX. Something that illustrates the strengths of Mac OS X but leaves it largely useless on an whitebox PC.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
All they need to do is support a very narrow range of hardware, so OS X won't run on 99% of non-Apple PCs.
You mean like Solaris x86? Maybe Apple can get some tips on how to restrict PC-based hardware from Sun Microsystems. They're masters at it.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
By putting out a developer image that they know works on generic PCs and then moving to a TCPM version later, they are enabling piracy in the short term without having to be seen as the bad guy yanking the freebie away later.
This is the best of both worlds for them. Everyone can use the dev version and then they'll have to pay for the hardware to get the new OS.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Many people will always pay a little more for the feeling of a better computer. Many people are also willing to pay more for a better looking computer case. Alienware, Falcon-NW, and Voodoo-PC are good examples of places selling "better looking" and "xtreme" computers.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Posted in the IT section, not sure it made the main page.
superceeded
Either way, Apple will remain a hardware company and provide an integrated computing solution that is clean, solid, and attractive.
This gets modded insightful? Should be modded redundant.
Apple just a hardware company? They develop and ship the best OS, as well as a few apps, including what some say are the easiest/most clear and powerful video editing apps.
Dell is a hardware company. Gateway is a hardware company.
Apple produces an operating system, MAJOR applications, as well as nicely designed (though some models pricey) hardware.
Is Piracy the Pathway to Profit?
How is this question not moot once the very next slashdot story is posted.
It seems that Apple has chosen to use the Trusted Platform Module chip to ensure that Mac OS X can only run on Apple Hardware. The report from vnunet states that the chips contain a unique identifier, which can be used to determine the manufacturer of a PC as well as facilities for data encryption.
Maybe this hardware/software question is wrong.
I think Apple is a brand company.
After all these years generating sympathy and antipathy, occasionally denting ol' Bill's armor, re-orienting markets with "why didn't I think of that?" design, they no longer are a hardware or a software company. The brand includes hardware for sure, and nicely designed at that (Lexus hardware - one step better - not two - than Dell). But it also includes the slickest mass-OS out there, the iPod, a music store with oh-so-slightly subversive policies, etc.
And it includes all the marketing. I have seen Picasso, Edison, and Einstein "think different" in frames. What other brand has that? Yeah, there are some, but those are all brand-based more than product-based.
So, what's their knitting? What *has* to be protected at all costs? Not the hardware, although that comes close. Not the current hotties, iPod and OS X. But Apple itself. The *combination* of all those things.
I'm not sure where this thought leads, but it certainly undermines many of the assertions being floated around!
So how do those sig's work? [naive sympathy karma ploy - darn - you caught me!]
heh, it certainly WAS part of their strategy
http://www.lowendmac.com/musings/boxes.shtml
Whatever they decide to do, it looks like the next few years will be interesting ones for Mac and Windows users.
He's more likely to be talking of GCC, cross-compiling, and the Qt and WxWindows toolkits.
.Net (in the form of Mono )is making significant progress on non-Windows platforms as well.
Follow me
Every development build for OS X ends up getting published on p2p networks within days. If Apple was cool with this, they wouldn't have a NDA covering access to development builds, and they wouldn't have sued the guy who obtained developer access via a real developer so that he could give Tiger away.
p g
But the Intel version isn't a DVD - it's only available as part of a $999 "package" that includes a PC mobo in a G5 case, that Apple is demanding back at the end of the year.
It's pretty hard to track a DVD sent to thousands of developers, but if Apple is charging developers $1000 each for access to the Intel hardware, it would be rather trivial to give each copy that goes out a watermark, so that if it gets released, it would be very easy to see who leaked it.
And since developers are in a special agreement to participate in the Intel dev package, Apple could very easily add substantial financial penalties to the contract if their copy got leaked.
Movies have similar watermarks to identify where pirated films are getting copied, but it would be so much easier for Apple to hide a chunk of code in each DVD to identify the very developer involved.
---
After Intel based Macs are available, the majority of users will find that modern Macs are not commodity PCs just because they share the Intel processor, and give up trying to install OS X after their PC fails to boot it from BIOS.
Even if Apple made Mac OS X very difficult to install on PC hardware, it seems like it would be fairly trivial to create a virtual machine for PCs that could run it. Such a product could not be commercial, because Apple said they wouldn't allow it.
Somewhat ironically, Apple enterprise tried to sell OpenStep for Intel and OpenStep for Windows for some time in 1997 after first purchasing NeXT, and couldn't find much interest. Of course, at the price they were asking, they are now basically throwing in a Intel Mac for free!
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/images/openstepcd.j
---
The few l33t haxxors who get Mac OS X running on a PC will have little effect on Apple's existing market, either in 'loss from piracy' or in 'viral spreading of OS X to create new demand.'
The Mac Mini, iBooks and PowerBooks are all quite popular among those who have bought them, including Linux users who buy them for their hardware features rather than the integration with OS X. All are running proprietary hardware unable to realistically run Windows today. If new versions also allow users access to the only reason wintel PCs need to exist (PC games), buying actual Apple hardware will be even more compelling.
Why buy a Dell system when you can get an Apple Mac that runs OS X for about the same price, and still run your old Windows software in a VM?
You know the iPod is also a portable harddrive for files and backup materials right? One of my bro's 20GB iPod is 1/4 music and 3/4 OTHER files as an external harddrive. My other bro uses his 1st gen 5Giger for about 75% music. Also you're assuming everyone has their iPod completely filled with music at all times, not likely except for hardcore enthusiasts.
Do you think Apple could've made the switch without Microsoft's backing? Jobs needed Microsoft up on stage with him announcing that a native Office for Macintel was on the way. Jobs needed the supportive public statements from Ballmer & Co. saying this transition - the biggest upheaval in the personal computer industry in years - was actually no big deal and everything would be fine.
Microsoft doesn't do anything without a price. And that price was Apple must make damn sure that Mac OS X won't run on vanilla PCs.
The best scenario for Jobs would be an Intel Mac OS X that is difficult and perhaps inconvenient to use on vanilla hardware, but not completely impossible. This would preserve most Apple hardware sales, with the piracy spillover - limited mostly to geeks and cheapos who wouldn't buy anyhow - serving to boost the network and marketing effects.
But Microsoft cannot and will not allow that. So expect the real Intel Macs (as opposed to the developer kits they're essentially lending and requiring to be returned) to use something along the lines of a TPM module. All DRM can and will be hacked, but it's possible - with technologies like TPM - to make it so inconvenient and with so many downsides (patches won't work, every software update breaks the whole damn box) that it becomes merely a curiosity and even the geeks and cheapos won't bother.
Exactly, lets not forget OpenGL, MinGW, and Cygwin, fink, wine, there's lots going on in in crossplatform compiling, and emulation these days.
Most major open source projects support at minimum Linux, BSD, Windows and MacOS X.
Commercial projects are starting to catch on. Blizzard, for one, packages both Windows and Mac versions in the same box for all thier products.
With Intel based MacOS systems I think things will actually get easier because there'd be less work to do in optimizing for different processor architectures.
"Over at Apple Matters Chris Seibold writes an interesting piece hypothesizing that Apple's strategy may bank on people pirating OS X for their Intel boxes.
I seriously doubt it. It's not as if there is any resistance to them putting their OS on those boxes to begin with, let alone the need to "pirate" the software over. Apple hasn't even made a effort to push it over. If they were willing and there is no signifigant resistance to stop them, why wouldn't they do it themselves in the first place? Everything they wanted to accomplish they could do through "offical" distribution channels and do it more effectively to boot. ESPECIALLY when they'd be in control of the distribution and profit. Somebody mentioned it worked for Windows 3.1, but that's apples and oranges. That's a product built for the platform it was on with a company actively intending to make money off of it through sales. Sure it may have become popular through piracy, etc etc after the fact, but the circumstances and motivations are ENTIRELY different.
Sorry, but I'm thinking this is nonsense. Besides, what would happen to Apple hardware market share if you could all of a sudden get arguably the best OS on hardware with the cheapest doller/power ratio that nobody has direct control over? too many neagtives in this equation to even think Apple is doing this purposely, IMO.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I don't know how this gets modded as insightful. You're making an argument comparing an OS to games. If people 'played' OSs for 2 weeks and threw them out you might have a point but otherwise it's completely irrelevant.
your Dell, Dude?
:-)
Ten years ago, even five years ago, a PC was the biggest discretionary expense for a purchaser. And it wasn't bought willingly except by the earliest adopters. (I paid $11k and then $16k for Macs and BIG screens, but I'm just crazy. I had other machines as well and earned my living on the client's Windows boxes.
I loved the Macs because I earned enough to try 'em out. But most people don't have that kind of income to screw around and try things.
Now that the internet (and that has made an ENORMOUS difference) and the Dells of the world have brought the price down, most people are beginning to have the choice but they don't have the information. Its all just too complicated.
While the games and the gamers are heading off into console land and business is heading off into mergers and consolidations, out-sourcing and off-shoring, (Microsoft doesn't have to worry as long as people use ActiveX,) and they're all pursuing the thrill of the chase, I think that Apple's going to make inroads in the home business (that darn internet thing again) while protection their business, (that darn internet thing again.)
But Apple is a "The Gap" type brand. Its a "BMW" type brand. Its made to give a great "new car smell."
The internet works both ways guys. It works BOTH ways. Its NOT a broadcast medium.
While you may think that its only good for you to access information, its also a way for the information (provider) to access you.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
3. Replace all the crappy PC hardware (e.g. chained interrupt controllers, A20 gate, etc.) and replace it with something more sensible. OS X would then only run on a machine with sensible hardware.
ROFL!
While they're not in the consumer market, Apple hardware with Intel chips already ARE for sale, you just have to go through the proper channels. You make it sound as if being proactive and having progressive thought are bad things. Besides, waiting for Apple to sell computers to consumers isn't going to tell us if piracy is their strategy. NOT waiting might though.
more than just slashdot, you would find that Apple had NO intention of allowing OS X to run on just any intel hardware. Which is a shame as that would have skyrocketed them to no end.
/. only perpetuates the fact that you can't believe half of what you read here simply because of the fact the majority of it comes from blogs.
However, allowing this story to be posted on
If Apple would re-release the Yellow Box for Windows so that developers could write one codebase (using the Cocoa frameworks) and compile to PPC/Mac, Intel/Mac, and Intel/Win, it would go a long way toward creating the ideal cross-platform development system.
I'm hoping and expecting the Yellow Box to be released as an integral part of QuickTime for Windows, so that Cocoa apps compiled for Windows would simply require QuickTime for Windows.
I don't expect them to get direct profit from a 'non sale'.
Due to increased market share, more people will buy more product.
It worked for Microsoft, and arguably for the *aa's..
Indirect Profit, perhaps.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Jobs: "Been there, done that, got the 'buy us now before we go out of business' t-shirt."
The "other" business model was NEXTSTEP. They did what all the talking heads told them to do: give up proprietary hardware and go to the "vast" x86 market and sell the operating system, as OPENSTEP.
It was disasterous because they couldn't keep up with the vast array of weird PC hardware, the PC manufacturers had no desire to help them write drivers (and they barely do for the much larger Linux market) and there just wasn't remotely enough revenue to support continued OPENSTEP.
This, despite the fact that OPENSTEP was enormously better than the contemporary Windows---a larger gap certainly than MacOSX is from Windows XP.
I'd love to be able to use MacOSX on cheap hardware. But I also know it's not going to happen.
Jobs is also a genius because Apple took over a desperate and struggling company and he ended up taking over Apple.
Why is Apple still here and not dead dead dead?
Because of hardware: iMac
Why is Apple now thriving?
Because of hardware: iPod, Powerbooks.
NeXT was doing OK when they still had hardware.
How many times do Steve's nuts have to be zapped until he screams "KEEP THE HARDWARE STUPID!"
Besides, if they go as a real software operating system company they end up in the primary targeting computers of the Borg.
Apple can do pretty well decently competing against HP/Compaq, Sony, Samsung (pods), Creative, etc, and by staying somewhat out of Dell's target market of cheap generic Windows PCs. They know how to do that.
Apple has no experience and no ability to compete successfully against Microsoft, and nobody has ever survived where contracts to OEM PC makers are critical.
If you want to buy cheap software from Jobs, buy a Pixar DVD.
Given that, I really don't see a switch to OSX helping them as much as I initially thought it would. Oh sure they might see a temporary decline in spyware and virusses, but they'll continue their unsafe practices of downloading and running all the crap they can find on the Internet and eventually the spyware and virus authors will catch up on the new platform and then we'll be right back where we are now with Windows.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I forgot to mention that part. I figured no one would actually read my comment so it didn't matter anyway.
I don't remember if the shuffle had that on it though. I think it had a little sticker somewhere on the package or something like that.
NO
t id=93&tid=3
http://it.slashdot.org/it/05/06/14/1442212.shtml?
I think, given time, and access to a hard drive image, I would be really surprised if sometime down the line, maybe 3 or 4 months from now we don't see a custom recreated reverse-engineered DVD image of a completely cracked and unofficial OS/X installation.
It'll be messy, but I bet we'll see it. It's too big a challenge not to undertake, especially since the potential prestige for whatever group that releases it is astronomical.
BytesTemplar.com
This is largely one of the reasons that AutoCAD developed the huge market pentetration that it did during the mid to late 80's. You can also argue that this is something that would increase, and not decrease, legitimate music sales, for many of the same reasons.
Tim
It's ironic that we keep hearing that Linux on the desktop won't take off until the average-joe can install it. And, now, someone is proposing that the same average-joe who can't install linux because it is too hard, is going to figure out how to hack and install OsX?
I don't think so, Tim.
The same rationalization is floated at all the warez and P2P sites, and it just doesn't hold water. The network effect may be real (up-front loss in sales yields free advertising and subsequent monetary transaction), but it is neither as large or as desirable as they make it out to be.
Personally, I see the network effect as a cost of piracy to the market as a whole, rather than a benefit or otherwise to the company whose software is being pirated. Where it is a benefit, it generally hurts the industry by reducing competition. Why buy a copy of Star Office for half the price of Microsoft Office when you can get Microsoft Office for "free"? The network effect is a powerful tool for turning a majority position into a monopoly one by plucking the low hanging fruit that might have otherwise allowed a competitor to grow.
There are definitely cases where the network effect is real, and piracy of Mac OS X may be that rarest of cases where it might actually benefit the market by reducing the value of a monopoly created by the network effect, but that benefit is far less than the cost of its role in creating the monopoly in the first place, and any pirate who claims it's a "justification" for his piracy is playing someone for a fool... himself, most likely.
Keep in mind EVERY PC USER can underclock their pc 800 mhz and their memory 200 mhz and still have comparable performance, so basically we'll do what we have to do to get stability.
*Rasberry*
I am not sure why people have such a hard time understanding Apple's direction. It does not need to choose to be a hardware company like Dell or a software company like Microsoft in order to gain market share. Would Jobs like to take over the world? Possibly. But he's going to do it his way. Really. Go read his commencement speech again. He's not in a hurry to make a lot of money. The ultimate prize for him is to make the coolest products.
There is an example right in front of you -- iPod and iTune. Neither is quite the same without the other. Why? Software + hardware = complete product. That's been the goal since the first Mac rolled off the assembly line. Sure people can hack OSX to run on vanilla PCs. But that's like hacking iTune to work with Creative Zen. Sure it's cool if someone can do it, but would Jobs hold up different brands of MP3 players in the next MacWorld and proudly declares that all MP3 players now ship with iTune? Right.
Physically sharing CD's with 4 friends is probably still p2p... :)
Gravity Sucks
You know you're not getting a sparkle power supply when you buy an apple - it doesn't matter if they make their own silicon wafers out of trees or whatever.
Apple is a 'brand', like coca-cola; and they don't pimp it out to milk short term gains. That's all they need.
1. [Generic business idea]
2. Piracy
3. Profit!
Two stories up on the main /. page:
4 2212&tid=93&tid=3
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/14/14
I think not.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Back in that day, if you wanted to buy boxed software, you had to read the minimum system requirement very very carefully because there were so many different platforms and configurations. You couldn't just buy a piece of software at some shithole like Wal-Mart and be sure that it was going to work on your PC.
Maybe the future is going to be web-based applications, and it really won't matter what your computer runs, so long as it has a decent web browser?
There's information and then there's FUD. I didn't say the blogs and articles would be pushing information.
Be this as it may, what sort of FUD could they spread that does anything but fly in the face of the obvious? They won't be selling OSX-86 (or whatever they call it) as stand alone software, so even a simple comment of "I tried OSX-86 and it didn't work for shit, so I erased it" already exposes the fact that it's a warezed copy not on Apple hardware. Such FUD would require people to be technically sophisticated enough to understand the difference between "Apple on x86" and "Apple on PPC", while at the same time dumb unough to believe a random blogger's spewing. I just don't see it ever being a major issue.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
This is the same reason "student versions" are so cheap or free. It is why companies negotiate so hard to get there hardware in schools. Once people are in the habit of using the tools, they are more receptive to paying a reasonable price for the "grownup version".
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Download the demo, consume the free sample, read the free 1st chapter... whatever it is, if you will use the whole product, buy it (whether or not you like the product doesn't matter. If you're using the whole product, you should buy it).
Being financially challenged is not an excuse -- that's a stimulus to get a job, get a better job, or to tweak your lifestyle so as to be able to afford the things you're willing to steal or pirate.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Sounded great at first, but what none of the students who were sucked into buying the academic version realized (because they hadn't read the EULA in which Macromedia states that the academic version cannot be used for comemrcial purposes) was that their finished products would display non-removeable splash screens that declared "Created with the academic/non-commercial version of Director". The students then found that upgrading to the commercial version would cost $799 CDN. Considering that they'd already spent $649 CDN for the academic version, they ended up spending almost the same amount as if they'd just shelled out for the commercial version ($1499 CDN) in the first place.
Though I didn't get Director I did get Studio and it was nothing like that. There wasn't any spash screens, watermarks, ads or what have you. I ordered it through the college bookstore for $250 when the retail commercial version was about US$700. The EULA did say it wasn't to be used commercially but there wasn't anything to stop the user from using it that way.
I did find a company that sales camera equipment for students with hugh discounts but in order to place an order you had to be a fulltime professional photography student and had to have a professor sign a release statement testifing to this. When I first saw the catalogue I thought it was great, but then because though I was taking photography class I was neither a fulltime student nor a professional photography student, when I read the requirements I was really bummed out. I was so looking forward to ordering a medium format camera they were selling at around $600 or $700 when the retail price is closer to $1500.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Too bad it's so hard to get any work done on a mac. Maybe if they'd update their interface to something that's actually good they'd have more converts.
Have you used Macs much? Though I've used mostly Windows the last several years, I was much more productive when I used a Mac than I am on a PC. I do prefer Windows Explorer to the Mac Finder as well as two button mice versus Macs one button, but at least a two button mouse can be used with a Mac and Apple does sale third party two button mice.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Now, of course, MACs are quite good, but back in the day their hardware was always screwing up for seemingly random reasons. It made a lot of people curse Apple to the ends of the Earth.
You had problems with Macs at your school? The only tyme I've had a problem with a Mac was in the mid '90s when the floppy drive died in one I had and I started using Macs back in the mid '80s about 10 years earlier.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Maybe the future is going to be web-based applications, and it really won't matter what your computer runs, so long as it has a decent web browser?
Maybe... but I personally think that web-based applications aren't even going to being to be widely accepted until broadband is 1. Much more widespread and 2. Much more reliable.
I don't know how long these things will take to become reality, but you're probably right.
I don't respond to AC's.
Now why would anyone want to use a "pirated" version of TextPad? I've used it for years and have legally downloaded updates from TextPad.com. with no problem. Maybe every several saves I'll get a nag popup, and eventually I may pay for it, but other than the nag it's perfectly legal to download, install, and use without paying for it. Though I've got MS Word I still use TextPad more. Another good text editor is Crimson Editor. I've got XMLSpy as well in the Home edition which was free, it did require registration but then they email you a key to unlock it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
interrupts on the x86 are still an issue. build a server with no shared IRQ's and you will see what I mean. Those shared/cascaded interrupts are much slower than ones that are not shared. To share an IRQ takes CPU resources as well.
Your Average Joe
That's a guess. The fact is that during the clone wars, the MacOS slice of new PC sales remained about the same. What changed was Apple's smaller piece of it. Whether this was a function of bad management or not, Jobs came in when the company was hemorrhaging money. Jobs may be/have been a control freak, but he came in as a turn-around man, and the mandate of any turn-around manager is to get his company back in black, fast. As such, he would have been an idiot not to shit-can the clone competition as quickly as possible.
Maybe the software division will be able to make it on it's own in the future, but that future is several tens of points of market share away... and if Apple ever gained those tens of points, why would it want to give away perfectly good profits on h/w sales? Successful companies ditch lower margin (but profitable) product lines only if they've got something with a better return lined up... unless you're envisioning a trainload of R&D.
If Microsoft had ever had a major piece of profitable hardware business, I seriously doubt they would have dropped it. Never having sold anything h/w other than rebranded mice, keyboards, and (briefly) IBM PC/XT accelerator boards, it's a resource allocation decision Gates and Balmer have never had to make.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Hopefully I'll be getting a Mac Powerbook within a few months or so and when I do I plan on getting VirtualPC to run Win2000 with. If so then Win2000 will be the last MS OS I will willingly get because of Activation. Because of Activation I don't want to touch XP with a ten foot pole. Well Actually I already have used XP when one of my classes, but the first day of class I had to reboot because XP gave me the Blue Screen of Death.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is largely one of the reasons that AutoCAD developed the huge market pentetration that it did during the mid to late 80's. You can also argue that this is something that would increase, and not decrease, legitimate music sales, for many of the same reasons.
It's only been recently that I heard anything like this and am wondering how much it hurt other CAD programs. From what I recall in the early '90s it was Catia that people wanted to use for CAD/CADD but I haven't heard it mentioned at all in the last several years.
FalconShould there be a Law?
MACs were frequently dying from heat problems. They did not come with a fan and often were being opereated in conditions where the passive cooling simply was inadequate. It wasn't just computer labs that had problems. Starving students who were economizing on electricity by leaving the air-conditioning off had problems too occasionally.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
" It's no secret that the reason for Apple's comeback was the iPod, who's popularity was primarily due to rampant music piracy. Come on, does anyone really think a college kid purchased 10,000 songs for their iPod at $0.99 each?"
Yes, and college kids can afford iPods because they don't buy cds anymore. So money that used to go to record labels now goes to Apple.
Vote for Pedro
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
In Quake, all you had to do with the demo was pull down the console and type "registered 1". The demo was missing the big map pack, but once you threw that into the data directory, you were set.
...while Apple's Macintosh is not. It's only anticompetitive / illegal to leverage an existing monopoly.
Pirated copies won't hurt the sales, at least for a while, because only the geeks will download them and try them on their systems.
No Joe Sixpack is going to dare wiping out their Windows to see what OSX on Intel is like.
When enough number of geeks try it for a while and give it okay-to-go approval, then the mom and pops will start buying Macs because now their sons and daughters can provide technical support for their new computers.
The key here is that in the commodity PC business, there are no margins, like you say, and IBM is just too topheavy to compete effectively in such a market.
IBM is still in the professional workstation and server market, where there is a high margin and that can still fly.
Apple is a high-margin style seller, whose products are priced at a premium and aim to be a status symbol of sorts, with some emphasis on a tightly controlled platform enabling a solid desktop user experience. Their strategy is very much related to mercedes and the like with somewhat improved quality, a lot of status, and high margins to compensate for the low marketshare that approach gives.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I searched the internet repeatedly for references on the legal proceedings that resulted in Apple Computer being found a convicted monopolist guilty of anticompetitive business practices. The search results kept referring to Microsoft Corporation. Now THAT is funny.
Captain Obvious