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Mac OS X Intel Kernel Uses DRM
An anonymous reader submits "Several people have discovered that the new Intel kernel Apple has included with the Developer Kit DVD uses TCPA/TPM DRM. More specifically, it includes "a TCPA/Palladium implementation that uses a Infineon 1.1 chip which will prevent certain parts of the OS from working unless authorized."
I had thought that it was widely known that OS X won't run on anything not sold by Apple as a Mac.
i am a soviet space shuttle
nah don't worry about switching. all commercial vendors of os's will use drm. so strap yourself in, enjoy your new found freedom; the freedom to know you can't do anything about it.
there just won't be a public backlash this time. it'll creep in slowly.
how to make amphibians edible through the use of high temperature h2o.
the GNU philopsophy will save us all... if it weren't for the fact that they are a bunch of pinko terrorists.
not that i'm saying we should give up by any means except that i just don't see this going away like the BS "test the waters" cpu serial # scandal a few years ago.
so many companies have invested heavily in digital -end user handcuffs that it's very improbable that they will give up easily. and the media certainly won't be telling the public anything negative, that much you can count on.
i would like to donate to the eff, except i don't want to be put on a list of terrorists. the only way to even have a remote chance of beating this nonsense (criminal and unethical behavior) is to educate the public at a greater rate than the "mainstream media" can "educate" them.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Erm, I don't think this is quite what you think. Apple already doesn't treat customers like scum the way Microsoft does (which I appreciate; I'm honest, but I don't like the assumption that I am not). I think this is just Apple's already-known plans to prevent the OS from not running on anything they haven't sold as a Mac. In other words, you have to buy a computer from Apple to run their OS. Which makes sense -- Apple is a hardware company primarily and makes its money mostly from the computer sales.
i am a soviet space shuttle
(And no, don't say Linux - I don't have enough time to learn it well enough to use it as a desktop machine on a daily basis.)
Isn't that the best way to learn? Using it on a daily basis.
I won't say Linux because, despite the vast improvements the last years, it takes some patience.
But if you'd rather take it as they (MS, Apple) hand it to you by all means. Just don't complain that there aren't alternatives... As the old saying - the cost of freedom isn't free.
Seriously, what did anyone expect?
Apple does not want OS X installed on every generic PC out there. If Mac sales die tomorrow, Apple and OS X go with it. And no, they wouldn't open all the source after the liquidation and you would be stuck with Linux and Windows on the desktop. With both options being crap (for differing reasons).
I would absolutely love for OS X to be sold for any machine with an Intel or AMD chip inside, but it's just not going to happen because Apple is not positioned to do so and survive.
Fortunately, Apple has never even hinted at taking a route other than having OS X run on their machines and their machines only. Any disappointment should be tempered with the knowledge that they have had their cards on the table on this for some time. I don't think there was any question of another outcome.
Apple is not screwing anyone over, they are just continuing what they have done for the past 21 years (even the brief period of Mac clones only involved the OS running on approved hardware).
Perhaps things will change sometime down the road with Apple making further inroads into consumer electronics and successfully diversifying their business. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. The seamless integration between hardware and software is at the very core of the Mac experience.
It's unfortunate that OS X is going to stay on one set of hardware, but it is just the way it has to be for the time being.
the copyright infringers didn't put the DRM in the machines. trying to prevent people from copying on a computer is like preventing fish from getting wet.
you'll more than likely piss off the users/fish far more than you'll prevent copying.
but that's not even relevant to this issue.
how is paying for mac os x and installing it on an x86 computer you already own, copyright infringement? paying for the software obviously means that the vendor has complete control over what you do with it.
it's a sad world we live in... because we're all responsible for our ills, in one way or another.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Nah, if "content providers" weren't such greedy bloodsucking parasites, then there'd be no need for DRM.
Because those companies didn't actually EARN those profits by providing a desired good or service at a price that buyers were willing to pay? Like what would happen in a _real_ capitalistic market instead of a government-mandated one.
On the other hand, Apple treats developers somewhere between equally bad as MS and worse. Think of all the nifty features in OSX, and most of them started life as third party products that Apple decided to reimplement and give away with the next version of OSX. At least Microsoft has the benevolence of buying somebody out for their new features.
The only real reason Apple doesn't have to treat its customers like thieves is that you already paid them through your own asshole for the hardware. I'm not sure what else the Infineon chip is good for aside from preventing operating systems not on the Palladium congress from running.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
If you analyzed the mach_kernel binary file on the Developer Kits, you would see that the kernel is vastly different than the Darwin 8.2 that Apple released as open source. For one thing, it automatically calls the oah750 daemon (better known as Rosetta) every time that it finds a non-universal PPC executable.
Before the kernel uses Rosetta to execute the PPC application (i.e. ATSServer in the case of starting a GUI), it calls the TPM kernel extension and checks the private keys in the TCPA chip. This is the only thing, as far as is apparent, that prevents Mac OS X from flawlessly running on a non-Apple system.
Everyone here has been waiting for OSX-x86 ISOs to hit torrent sites so they can run OSX on their whitebox PCs. As has been seen many times before, not every ADC member holds up their end of the bargain with regard to their NDA. Knowing this full well it was rather obvious Apple would have to take some sort of action to keep their OS from being widely pirated within days of the first dev kits being delivered.
There's a lot of hand waving here about companies removing people's rights and slippery slope arguments along the lines of "if they do X they will eventually do Y for reason Z". This entirely ignores the fact that Tiger-x86 is probably the hottest thing to hit torrent sites in a long time. It was bad enough when developer releases of Tiger for PowerPC were making the rounds and people were making stupid assessments of the system months before release. The development kits and pre-release copies of OSX are meant to be in Mac developer hands, not Joe Dork down the street on his PC.
It is not a particular right to run OSX on anything but a Mac, the OSX EULA that you have to agree to in order to install the system specifically states that. Apple locking OSX onto Macs means they can continue to sell the machines with a straight face. No one would bother to buy a Mac if they could just grab a copy of Tiger and slap it on their PC at home. Apple would have little incentive to continue Mac development if there were no Macs being sold.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You know... as much as it sucks, you have to admit that if people weren't pirating things, there'd be no need for DRM.
That's the same way I feel when a cop wants to search me illegally or otherwise hassles me. Or when my employer wants to make me take a drug test even though I don't even so much as smoke cigerettes or drink alchohol and my job involves me sitting at a desk reading and writing things of little consequence.
Yep. I just think to myself "This sucks, but I don't need to be angry at the police or employers for violating my rights or my privacy. I need to be angry at the weekend pot smokers who make it necessary for people to infringe on my privacy or violate my constitutional rights".
And when the cops shoot a black man for having a candybar in his pocket or shoot an unarmed non violent black man four dozen times at close range, I just think "It sucks, but if black people weren't out there killing every person they come across, these police wouldn't have to senselessly murder any of them".
Seriously man... Get real.
Ugg. How many times does it have to be said?
THESE ARE DEVELOPER MACHINES AND DO NOT REPRESENT HARDWARE THAT APPLE WILL SHIP.
There. Apple has said many times they don't plan on using a BIOS in the shipping products, and have hinted at EFI. But the first developer machines have a BIOS, so everyone ignores Apple and assumes it will have a BIOS. Apple has a huge investment in driving forward with 64bit with all the marketing they have done, and yet everyone expects PowerMacs with the same Pentium chips in the developer machines that aren't 64 bit.
Nowthis DRM thing comes up. Will Apple do similar in shipping hardware? It's hard to say. But right now, noone here can say yes or no for sure (unless your sitting at Apple's HQ working on the new products right now). I myself wouldn't be suprised if they do indeed put some kind of protection on, as the Mac OS has always had some kind of odd hardware requirement that prevents it from easially just running on a clone PowerPC box.
Just settle down and wait until real products ship. Because if you have OS X 10.4.1 for Intel, you either have the hardware to run it on due to your developer program, or you pirated the ISO image off some torrent site and have it illegially.
Yeah, sure, OS X will probably be runnable on a non Apple box some day. But guess what, it's likely to be a hacked up solution that kinda sorta works, and leaves you wasting time that could have been spent earning money to just buy a $500 Mac Mini. For me, my Apple hardware is a big reason I moved to OS X. Running OS X on my Dell just wouldn't be the same.
This is laughable, to say the least. Companies want DRM not because of rampant piracy, but because the technology is advancing so fast, they can't predict where the future lies; and they want to be able to make money regardless of which way the technology turns.
Tell me something: is photocopying of books (by poor students, usually) not piracy? Then why don't copier makers have DRM? Where's the DRM for FM radio? People used to make copies of broadcast songs quite rampantly.
Any fool who thinks DRM is about "stopping piracy" is nothing but a pure fool who's had too much Koolaid.
That theory has been kicked around a little already and it seems to make sense on the surface but it ignores no less than three very important points.
1) Installed base. If Apple intends to promote a movie download service that only runs on Macintels, it's going to flop big time and worse than just flopping, it's going to really piss off people who bought PPC hardware in the past couple of years.
2) Transion time frame. Apple will begin the transition to Intel next year but it won't be selling Intel boxes exclusively until 2007. That means the announcement of a service that requires an Intel box would have to wait until then or risk killing hardware sales. Somebody else will be doing it before that.
3) iTMS model? Assuming they intend to follow the same model with their movie store, where selling movies is really just a way to move a different product (video iPod, set-top box, etc), they'll want to sell movies to Windows users as well as Mac users just as they do with music now. They'll also need to allow users to move their purchased movies to another device which may or may not contain the same DRM.
Anyway, they don't need hardware DRM to open a movie store. They have a perfectly good software based DRM for music so something similar should be enough to make the movie industry happy.
Hey, I don't shop at stores that force me to leave my bag at the door either.
companies that want to treat me like a criminal by default can munch my taint.
It's been a long time.
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
Yep - that would be the ability of the US Congress to control whether or not the copyrighters have a right to copyright. Note that it provides congress with a power, it does not provide the people with a right.
Importantly, it has the clause "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" - once copyright is no longer filling that role, it should not be in place...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
> This silly conspiracy theory is getting tiring. Why would Dell & HP
> prevent paying customers from running Linux or DOS or whatever the fuck
> they wanted to run? Both companies sell Linux and brag about how much
> money it makes them.
Simple. Same reason you can't buy a PC from Dell without an OS except for a couple of Optiplex lines they target at the corporate users who already have site licenses. And even for those they have to toss FreeDOS in the box to make Microsoft happy.
Now imagine a world where Microsoft requires a locked TCPA chip to boot a future version of Windows. Basically they will speak unto Dell thusly: "If you want to sell Windows you will stick this chip on each and every motherboard. And if you don't want to pay the whitebox chopshop price for licenses you will join our co-op marketing program which requires you stick this chip on ALL motherboards you sell. No exceptions. Hey bitch, you already give Intel the same 100% loyalty so now you serve TWO masters. Starting today you no longer sell Dells, you sell Windows Workstations with Intel Inside and if you don't like that I have the same contract manufacturers you job your actual work out to ready to make em for me direct and a bunch of Indians ready to roll on deploying an ecommerce site to sell them through."
Democrat delenda est
but as to the drug testing, unless you did not agree to such a thing when you started your job, well, it's kind of like having to deal with a Non-Compete clause. You agreed to it.
I don't know... in more civilized law systems some rights are upheld EVEN if you signed them away.
That's why they are called "unalienable", you know.
Ciao, Renato
You know... as much as it sucks, you have to admit that if people weren't pirating things, there'd be no need for DRM.
Honestly, how can you blame companies for trying to protect their profits when thousands of people are ripping them off every day?
Instead of just blindly saying "pirates are bad" and then handcuffing everyone, even the law abiding people who make them money, they should examin _why_ people pirate. Obviously there is the "pay vs. free" thing, but there are other factors for why people pirate stuff.
A lot of piracy is at least partly down to the pirated material being "better" than the originals in many ways - take TV shows for example. Why do people download them from torrents instead of watching them on TV? Certainly for me, the reason for doing it is that I have to wait well over 3 months after the original air-date for most stuff to get shown here in the UK. I.e. the illegal distribution method is a lot better than the legal one.
Another example: I buy music CDs. Once I have bought them then they get ripped to MP3 so I can easilly get at the music without sorting through stacks of CDs and the CDs themselves only get used on my personal CD player and in the car. So if I buy a CD that's "copy protected" which won't let me do this, it's useless to me, whereas the MP3s of the same CD I can download work fine. I.e. the illegal copies allow me to do what I need (and should be able to do with something I've legally bought), and thus are "better".
A large proportion of people _want_ the legal version of something, but they're not going to buy it if the illegal version is so much better. The producers should look at this and rather than stamping out the illegal competition through restrictions they should improve their own systems so that they "outcompete" the illegal stuff.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Now, imagine you hired somebody and you told him to do something, but now, instead of just doing it, he insists on getting permission from someone else before he will do what you tell him to do. This leaves someone else in complete power of whether or not you can get this guy to do what you hired him to do in the first place...
Its yet another layer ( possibly dozens of layers ) of additional negotiation that has to be played out before things can happen.
There are many businesses out there who are running on razor-thin profit margins as they try to remain economically competitive. Adding yet more layers of nonproductive negotiation will require cutting finances somewhere else, and often nothing is left but salary and benefits.
On top of that, DRM enables somebody else to control whether or not the infrastructure you already paid for and installed will be permitted to continue to function. Would you want a toilet which insisted on "phoning home" and getting permission to accept a load?
Believe it or not, there are many people out there which have a so-called "business" education that are completely unaware of the business risks of having somebody else at the switch which controls whether or not the business can function.
We are trying our damndest to protect their ass.
Its like trying to make sure your neighbors don't erect highly flammable houses in fireprone areas. Just as firemen know a fire in a neighborhood threatens all the houses, this DRM thing can easily get out of control and threaten all of us.
There are some of us who know there is no reason at all to pay someone else over and over and over again for work that's already been done. But we also realize using DRM to enforce that paradigm is quite doable, and there are a helluva lot of people out there which will jump at the chance to lure us all into this cat trap.
Me and a lot of other people here have been trapped before, and know what this kind of cat trap looks like and what it does.
Once that door slams shut behind you... err, well forget about a lot of stuff you used to take for granted.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Seriously. Donate, grandparent poster.
We'll both get dragged away by the Gestapo. Together. Like old times. It'll be fun!
OK, maybe that was a little bit over the top. But you get the point: if that is your reason for not donating, then the terrorists^Wpoliticians have already won.
Sure, unless you believe the doctrine of first sale applies. I don't "license" my computer; I buy it. Any information on it or with it is mine just like the hardware is, because I never agreed to any kind of license at the time of purchase.
And before you try to tell me "but that's not how it works," I say fuck "how it works." The scum who think up these fake "licenses" can cram them up their ass! They can claim that EULAs exist and are valid all they want, but it doesn't make it true.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, I'm being held responsible for someone else's ills. That's the bit that gets to me. I'm being presumed guilty before I even buy a computer, and therefore restricted in the use of my own property.
I have to deal with speed limits being lowered to deal with idiots who speed, bag searches at supermarkets because of idiots who shoplift, and even more intensive screenings at airports because of morons who want to use innocents for their own personal socio-political stupidity. Now I'm also being restricted in my personal hobby interest and profession?
I think I'll be sticking to Linux, where groups like Debian will remove software because it comes under a license that's too restrictive.
Of all the things you can accomplish by screwing up your face and swearing into a dark room, sleep is not one of them.
Think of all the nifty features in OSX, and most of them started life as third party products that Apple decided to reimplement and give away with the next version of OSX
Yeah, Heaven forbid that innovative software could actually be reimplemented by third parties and offered for free to consumers. I mean, next thing you know they might actually make a whole OS by taking ideas here and there and start offering it for free ! Imagine the havoc on poor little OS developers worldwide !
Good thing that our modern democracies have invented software patents, so we can prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening....
</sarcasm>
Thomas -
You have got to be a troll. I can't honestly believe any grown adult (I presume you are an adult as you appear to work) would hold such a narrow minded view of the world.
I wouldn't normally lay into someone expressing their opinion on a public forum but I believe you, and the thousands like you, who adopt the view given to them by the media are stealing the rights and freedoms of the thinking people.
The mass media has the sole goal of making as much money as possible and will attempt to achieve that by any (legal) means. This means that they are not necessarily out to protect your best interests even if they appear to be. Therefore you have to make a judgement call about how much you can trust their information.
Several years ago I gave up television the only mass media I really partook in, I never read newspapers and only really listened to music radio, and the change in my world view has been amazing.
It took time and I only realize it now but I am no longer paranoid. I actually it find quite scary to listen to many of the sheeple now-a-days. They have been whipped up into a frenzy about terrorists and see evil round every corner. You might argue that I have become insular and lack a world view but I still get a daily dose of news from the Internet and am knowledgeable of world affairs. The difference is my intake is more controlled and it is easier to ignore the hyperbole.
As an example take your comment about weekend pot smokers. Why is there wide spread paranoia about them? I believe that it is almost entirely mass media induced. The media need something to scandalize the masses about so they pick something new, because sheeple all suffer from neophobia, and something that a weak portion of society enjoys, because they have no voice with which to defend themselves.
There is little evidence that pot has any negative effects beyond those caused by the tabacco it is often smoked with and the studies that do show it has an effect only appear to indicate that extremely heavy usage is harmful (IIRC somewhere in the region of 20 joints a day). Over here in Europe we don't have the same paranoia of pot and drug tests are almost unheard of in civilian jobs. Amazingly the world hasn't come to an end and our productivity hasn't dropped through the floor. So I ask you: why are you employers insisting on drug tests? Could it perhaps be a form of control? Something to help make you ascribe to their world view?
I'm not saying that there is a big conspiracy. I don't believe there is. I think it is human nature. People will always want to dominate people whether they realise it or not and grouping together under a common banner is a good way to achieve that end. The problem is that it causes wide spread exclusion and the victimisation of minority groups. Once gangs, clubs, parties, etc begin to form and grow it is easy to view people that don't subscribe to the same world view as evil or wrong which is the mistake I believe you are making.
The pot smokers and "black people" are still people they just don't agree that your world view is right. I suggest that you learn to live with the fact that the universe doesn't have a concept of right and wrong and try and accept the people around you because surprisingly most aren't actually out to get you. I hope that you think about what I have said. We can create a relaxed world where we get along it just takes a little understanding.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
This is about the kernel, not the hardware.
Really, if we take this attitude, we're forced to conclude that NOTHING about the developer platform can be counted upon to be in the commercial product. That's completely absurd. No, not everything will be in the commercial product, but it's not like they deliberately build the developer platform to be completely different from what they eventually release to the public.
Common sense tells us that if there's DRM support in the OS X on Intel kernel, there's at the very least a chance that it'll be in the shipping product.
If we're going to make noise over it, we damn well ought to do it as soon as we have first inkling of it, not when it's already too late. You don't wait until your neck is in a noose to hire a lawyer.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
To play movies full-screen in Windows Media Player out of the box: ALT-ENTER
To play movies full-screen in QuickTime Player out of the box: CMD-F (and pay $30) (and pay $30 for the next version) (and $30 more for the version after that)
Yeah, Apple's a saint among corporations.
For more information, click here.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we have another person who have fallen for the FUD and no longer believes you can own a copy - you either own the copyright, or you license it. The copyright, the right to make copies, has always been protected by copyright law. If you sell me a Harry Potter book (the copy), you do not need to have a license agreement with me.
Licensing has nothing to do with the right to make copies. It is about controlling how and what you do with your copy, and to avoid consumer rights we recieve by a sale. For example, to only allow playback on approved devices to limit features (disable fast forward), collect player royalties, enforce artifical market barriers (zones)
or to tie licenses to specific hardware or activation schemes to prevent resale, or to remove the rights you normally would have under fair use and other laws.
Anything that isn't lent, rented or leased, I consider sold. You sell me CDs, DVDs, iTMS songs and Windows XP. Not the copytight, the copy. That is my personal philosophy at least. The law is bought.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well I for one do not agree with your world view but maybe its BECAUSE I am a full grown adult. When I was a teen, pot smoking seemed like a fun, harmless thing. My employer for the last 19 years (Army) takes a hard line on drug use and I have o problem with that. See, I dont like the idea of the guy next to me with a gun being stoned - or drunk for that matter. As my daughter approaches teen dating years I developed a dim view of most young men and an even dimmer view of any with cars or motorcycles. Age does things like that to you.
But none of that stops you from starting a company and putting a big sing on the door saying "Help wanted - dope smokers welcome!" Well nothing except the extra attention you would get from the police but even that could work out if you lowered your local crime rate. It might work out that your employees are so gratefull for your keeping out of their personal lives tht they never once come to work impared. Or they could come to work impared, get hurt and sue you out of existance for failing to prevent them from hurting themselves.
This is exactly what the open source community has done with DRM and now we all have a choice between one product with DRM and one without. Most people will see the good of DRM free software and not abuse it to blatantly rip off other people hard work. Some will not. Im talking going beyond fair use to selling soneone elses work as your own. We will see which will survive long term. I would rather have the DRMless software but I understand the need to protect IP.
The open market will decide if your "Pot Smokers Friendly" business will survive and thrive and in an ideal world the open market would decide the DRM issue. I say ideal because I think the media companies iron grip on content will give DRM an unfair advantage but they still might lose.
If OS X had to run on a gazillion different combinations, that fact would be a major point it making it less reliable and less stable. BECAUSE THE OS IS SOLD TO RUN ON ONLY A FEW HARDWARE OPTIONS, IT"S EASIER TO WRITE AND TEST AND Q/A THE DAMN THING! That is part of the success of OS X and what makes it run so geat. Of course Apple wants the hardware sales, but controling the hardware is critical too. I would not want an OS X that could run on Compaqs to Dells to A Opens to your custom PC because then I wouldn't get uptimes of 90 days (rebooting only for security updates that touch the Kernel, etc).
LOOK AT SOLARIS. Ask anyone who needs a Solaris box to stay up for critical stuff (not FTP server, talking about critical stuff at the core of a company / government / hospital) and it will be on one on Sun's servers, it will NOT be Solaris for Intel. Big metal + Tested Metal = Solaris uptimes of years if need be. Small metal + Tested Metal = OS X I know and love.
They'd like to get paid for that, and the current environment makes it easy for people to get the full benefit of their work without paying for it.
Ah, but the problem is, that's not his fucking problem. What is his problem is having to wait a few hours to listen to the latest music because his internet connection is temporarily down. Or not being able to listen to it in his car without an "authorized" piece of hardware.
There are a hundred ways DRM could be the cause of future customer aggrivation. And in their mind, all these problems with piracy are not their problem, because they were good little consumers and coughed up their hard-earned dough.
Something I learned early on in business: it can take millions of dollars to get a new customer, but a single stupid mistake to lose them forever.