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."

Comments

Worked for ...

[SirSlud]

Worked for MS :) /flame on

Apple is a Hardware Company

[jonoid]

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.

10.4 Could Be a Bad Try-Before-You-Buy Experience

[Shuh]

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 was one of those BeOS downloaders

[SethJohnson]

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