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Mac OS X on x86 Videos Get Apple's Attention
RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting that Apple has served a legal notice to MacBidouille, a French news site that posted videos and instructions on running Mac OS X on x86 hardware . You can find an English translation of the MacBidouille notice on the OSx86Project's forums. This is the first known legal action by Apple regarding the hacked version of OS X and calls into doubt the future of other news sites, similar to the OSx86 Project." Slashdot previously covered the story of hacking Mac OS X onto non-Apple hardware and followed up again a few days later.
Apple is not minor league engineering department attached to a powerhouse marketing deparment.
It's also attached to a powerhouse legal department.
Think Different !!!
Ubiquitous piracy made Microsoft Windows big and Linux a contender. It's hard enough to get people to try another operating system when it's free.
Not that I'm supporting piracy, because I'm not, but at this point you'd have to be a nut to grab something like this (not necessarily stable, anybody could have altered it) and install it on your system, with the risk of losing whatever else you've got on there. The kind of nut that could be an excellent customer down the road if Apple capitalized on this fanaticism and offered legit demos of the technology in lieu of the illegal downloads already out there.
I suppose it wouldn't jive with their strategy of keeping their innovations under wraps until release, but as long as the toothpaste is out of the tube you get better results with the carrot than the stick.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Yeah, even though they make so much money of their hardware, I'm sure they'll realize how cool it is and embrace their os, most copies of which are stolen developer previews, running on hardware that they make nothing off of.
Suing someone to stop them from doing something sometimes means they actually don't want anyone to do it. Apple has a very obvious reason to keep OS X off of generic PCs, and I'm sure they're happy to flex a little muscle when someone obviously broke their NDA and provided OS X x86 to someone else, gave a public demo of it, or provided info on it.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
When has Apple been frivolous with their IP? They have already sued people for distributing Tiger over BitTorrent, and that was for an OS that would only run on hardware that they had sold.
So let me get this straight...According to your line of thinking, If I park my car in a shitty neighborhood and it gets stolen, even though I knew there was a chance and put an alarm in my car, I shouldn't have any legal recourse and the thief is not legally liable??
It's obvious YANAL...
Conversely, selling 20 million $200 operating systems every 2 years is better than selling 1 million $1000 computers, considering the margins leave about $250 profit.
M$ learned this lesson a long time ago, only chumps sell hardware. The profit margin on a cdr and small pamphlet is much higher.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
It's additionally fishy that they took their first action against a French site when so many American sites were doing the same thing. It's like they waited for the info to get out, wanted everyone talking about it, then made some sort of action against a foe far from the center of the limelight and in another country, which only steps up the difficulty in achieving success.
It's pretty clear that Apple, usually quick draw McGraw with the legal complaints, sat on this one because they saw the benefit of these copies getting out and getting people talking and excited about OS X.
And after PC owners install it, they will conclude that OS X is stripped-down, unoptimized and poorly supported. That's exactly the opposite of the image Apple would like for OSX.
my blog
Except a lot of people will be turned off by such a crippled OS. Look how well Windows XP Starter Edition (or whatever it was called) did. Apple wouldn't risk tarnishing their image in such a way.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I'm thinking that the majority of slashdot readers have never actually worked for a proprietary software company.
Contrary to popular believe on slashdot, software is not a money printing machine. On the surface it may look like software has a near 90% margin with economies of scale but the readers here seem to forget about hidden costs such as support and "free" upgrades and patches.
Compared to hardware, software has a great deal of after market costs associated with it.
I would argue that software can end up having a lower margin than hardware after all of the after market costs are factored in.
I've worked in technical support dealing with software issues in the past and I'm also a developer of in-house software for a major multi-national organization. I can tell you that software is neither cheap to develop or maintain.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Guess what? They don't care. And they don't want to sell you a lisence. They want to sell you a Macintosh computer. They are not intersted in supporting third-party PCs and never have been. Ever.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Get real jobs and get the fuck out of your parents basement already.
If you feel that "you" are entitled to be paid for the work that you do, you should feel obligated to pay for the work of others in kind if you make use of the products and services they provide.
If you cannot work for free then you should not expect software, music or movies for free either or for companies to provide support for hardware they did not sell or licence.
If you do not like the licence terms of a product, don't use it. You cannot use that as an excuse to pirate software.
Remember, even open source software can have terms that you must agree to in order to use it.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
There are several problems with this.
Linux doesn't beat Windows in every respect (and neither does MacOS X), but it's quite a bit cheaper than either. Why has it been so hard to convince people to even try Linux, and why doesn't MacOS X suffer the same problems?
Most people would probably more readily dive for Linux than want to go out and buy all new hardware
Nonsense. If this was the case, everybody would be running Linux now. The fact is that people are far more willing to continue using their old computer (which is why Windows 98 is still not quite dead), or buy a new computer. Linux is a distant third choice (and so is a Mac), in terms of popularity.
for people with small budgets -- getting an off-the-shelf x86 system and slapping Apple's "starter" OS on it would be good for basic needs.
Wouldn't people with these really small budgets rather run a free beer OS? Besides, even $300 Dell boxes come with Windows.
Wow, you are so out of it.
Apple is a hardware company first and foremost. But they also have a part of them that makes straight up software like the apps you mentioned. OSX does not fall in the later.
OSX is made to sell the hardware. They make the other apps to make money and maintain viability.
If they were to ditch the hardware and sell OSX as a stand alone, it would carry prices higher then their pro-apps. OSX is priced simply to keep things moving and selling hardware.
And no, the benefit of going intel is not to repackage other peoples mainboards in a pretty case. They did it so they can have a real supplier who delivers product. Apple will still make very custom boards just like they always have. They do that for a reason, to make a good box. They have no interest in making ATX hack jobs like the developer boxes. Besides, creating their own boards is a non-issue to them. It's not hard for them, they have done it for ages, and they still use companies like ASUS as manufactures for them anyways.
Its doubtful you will even see intel sockets in the intel macs. Expect cpus to be on daughter cards and such the same as they are today.
Furthermore, Apple has no legal oversight of all the documentation which has been generated by OSx86 hackers. The installation docs belong to those who prodeced them; Apple does not own them just because the notes concern their product. As we all know, these installation guides have been distributed freely on the net, and MacBidouille posted these notes on their site. Also, the video depicts something that may or may not be a crime. As we all know from watching the news, distributing a video which documents crime is not a crime in itself. Apple did not produce the video, so they do not own it. The usage of their trademarks should be covered under fair use. It is not illegal (nor should it be) to document crime, even by telling exactly how it can be done and showing the crime being comitted.
The point is that this story and my post have nothing to do with EULAs, the GPL, licensing, copright law and basic tenets of private property. It has to do with news, freedom of information, and free speech rights.
I doubt this will be a particularly popular view on the situation, but here's how I see it:
- People with the Intel transition kits are under NDA
- The VAST majority of people installing Tiger on off-the-shelf Intel hardware are doing it using pirated copies
- Installing OS X on said Intel hardware is against the clickwrap license
- Instructing people how to obtain said pirated goods and then specifically do something that's against both NDA and license agreements is quite far over the top.
There's a lot of sites out there that are posting Torrent links and how-to videos that are basically forcing Apple's hand in this matter.
What the hell do you expect Apple to do? Not defend their IP when sites get that far out of line? The way the legal system works, Apple *has* to respond, even if they don't want to.
Anyone who doesn't think that the Intel compiles of OS X over the last 5 years hasn't been running on off-the-shelf boxes in Cupertino is seriously naïve. Of course Apple knew it was possible to do this.
Because if Joe Blow goes round to his cousin John Doe's house to watch a game, and is looking to buy a new computer, is Joe going to be more or less interested in Apple if John tells him OS X has been nothing but trouble on his white-box x86.
Apple's whole philosophy is "it just works" - they want to be able to control the hardware so they can be 100% sure that all their boxes work as they should without having to support every piece of hardware under the sun, especially as this would mean running into the same problems with a lack of support or hardware specs from manufacturers that Linux has over the years.
To your average man-on-the-street, all computers are the same - Apples might come with shinier boxes, but a computer is a computer - and if he sees OS X running poorly on a white-box x86, he's going to assume it's the fault of the OS.
Apple don't want that. It damages their image.
You could argue that they could, quite easily, make more money selling OS X to all and sundry than they can by guarding their 5% of the market and locking the OS to the hardware, but that's just the Apple way, and they're being successful with it. Why should they change a profitable business structure?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
This is such a stupid argument to me. One of the wealthiest companies on earth (Microsoft) didn't get rich selling hardware. You can say there different markets - but that doesn't matter - fact is Apple's biggest competitor is Microsoft and they don't make hardware at all.
Look at the hardware companies who made money on just hardware. Commodore (don't knock them - they used one of the largest computer manufacturer in Europe ti'll the day they went backrupt), SGI, SUN, Compaq, Gateway etc etc - all of these companies are either gone or marginialized by cheap "windows" hardware.
Finally - Apple should just raise the price of their OS until it is profitable.
For $999 you can get two Dell PCs, a keg of beer, and a night with three Welsh hookers. Don't ask me how I know. The point is, you must be used to paying Apple prices, that figure is way off.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
I've always seen Apple as company selling pretty things to women who want to send email.
And you've always been shallow and ignorant in making that assessment. They make some other stuff that you seem to have overlooked.
They're picking on geeks with the desire to hack and make stuff work!
No, they're picking on geeks with a willingness to break NDAs, pirate pre-release operating systems, and not pay for anything.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.