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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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Apple Pirates You!
for Microsoft, didn't it?
- I got my free iPod and a free Nintendo DS....why not
1) port to intel
2) arrrrrrrrrr!
3) profit!
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.
heres the torrent:
http://www.torrentspy.com/download.asp?id=328287
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
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 Dexys 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 Devils 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 Apples 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