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Mac OS X Cracked For PCs Again
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica and The Register are reporting the Apple Kernel 10.4.8 has been cracked using Apple's publicly available source trees. This is the first time Apple was hit by hackers again since Maxxuss silently left the scene.The funny thing about this is the hacker who cracked OSx has released his sources according to APSL. He told Ars Technica in an interview that he did this because he believes in freedom of information, but will this now harm Apple's opensourceness?" From the article: "Unfortunately, free and legal are not necessarily the same thing, and the EULA for OS X requires Mac hardware. However, there is an interesting comment on the blog, one that asserts the requirement of Mac hardware is a "post-sale" restriction. Such a restriction may not be applicable in certain countries, such as those of the European Union. Expect to see what Apple Legal thinks about that shortly."
They'd let people install it on anything they want... just make it "illegal" to do so. It's not like Windows' market share was achieved only with legal licensed copies.
So here's what I'm wondering.
Apple's EULA says Mac OS X can only be used on an "Apple-labeled computer." But what does that really mean, legally? I've heard some people suggest that if you stick your own label that says "Apple" on a PC, then it should count as being "Apple-labeled," but I'm assuming the real meaning is "a computer that has been labeled by Apple."
So, what if you buy an old Blue & White G3 tower, remove the motherboard, and install a P4 or Core 2 motherboard (along with CPU and RAM)? Can this machine still be considered "Apple-labeled"? Surely you can upgrade the hard drive or RAM without voiding the EULA; which other components are OK to replace before the result can no longer be legally considered "Apple-labeled"?
Of course I'm talking about using a legally purchased retail copy of Mac OS X.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
To follow the links down a few levels you find this. Which is the source code tree from one of the previous versions of Mac OS X. Is it just me, or is there a hell of a lot of GPLe'd software there? That said, how do they get around by not making osx oss? Just curious.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I am pretty sure it says right on the outside of the box that it requires a Macintosh computer. I think that makes it a pre-sale condition.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
This isn't illegal, unethical, or surprising. It's interesting and encouraging, that OpenDarwin's frustration and shutdown hasn't stalled the continued support of Darwin on non-Apple hardware, but people have been turning Apple's open source releases into bootable operating systems for years.
What's the big deal? That if you take things a few steps further you can use this to run the GUI on top of Darwin on Intel instead of just Power PC? Well, yes, that's a big deal, but that's not possible with what this guy's released. It's not XPostFacto.
Playing cards or video games, Nintendo still sells game hardware. The reason that people always explain that Apple is a hardware company is because it's a fundamental strategy difference from a software company like Microsoft. Apple makes its money on its hardware, and the software is used to increase the value of the hardware to the consumer. A company like Microsoft relies solely on software which is cheaper than hardware (Vista notwithstanding...just kidding), so they have to support as much hardware as they possibly can to make up the difference. Microsoft's hardware ventures--the XBox and the XBox 360--have never generated profit, and neither will the Zune on launch.
So it wouldn't just be a magical change in focus for Apple to become a software company. It would require an entirely new business model with entirely new software products that support entirely new platforms. It would kill the company, and nobody would want it to happen anyway because Macs are fantastic pieces of hardware that run a very stable operating system.
"Sufferin' succotash."
i own a Mac LC back home. Does that fulfill my "apple hardware requirement"? I am technically a Mac owner.
As long as Apple is happy remaining a niche player they should continue to restrict their OS to their hardware. I think it time for Stevie boy and his pet, OS to come out and play with the big bad bully across the street. It's time to see if OS can live in the wild. People bitch about the bully, Windows but at least it plays in the real world with almost every type of hardware you can throw at it. Poor little OS X remains tied up in Stevies small yard. Never getting a chance to see if it has what it takes to challenge the bully across the street. Stevie let little OS out. I think it would be a fight worth watching and I for one think OS X might just win.
I wrote a simple script that simply switches between wireless and wired networks automatically without disconnecting any of my existing connections on IRC and so on.
I plug in the Ethernet cable, a script automatically starts and disables wi-fi card, duplicates NIC settings from the wi-fi card (IP address and so on) then brings up Ethernet. My applications just continue running, still connected to servers and such. If I pull out the ethernet cable, Wi-fi starts up, connects to the relevant network (if it's there) and my applications still aren't disconnected from anything.
This is really useful for me when I need to move around, but every now and then, I need to connect to a wired network so I can do network intensive tasks quickly, such as speedy backups, huge file copies, low latency network gaming, conference calling (works fine over wi-fi, but artifacts sometimes occur).
Mac OS X does this automatically, without needing that little script you wrote. Just give both interfaces the same IP information, and it will seamlessly switch to whichever is higher in the list of connections.
Once again, all kinds of power, and a GUI that makes it trivial to use.
The other thing is, whenever I need to use a scanner, tablet, Bluetooth dongle, wi-fi card -- anything. I can just plug it in, and it works, no need to download drivers, configure the thing. It just works almost instantly. Now, MacOSX? I find a lot of hardware doesn't "just work" on that, if it works at all. I have a Bluetooth dongle that crashes the OS, but works fine on Windows and Linux.
Not exactly persuasive, since it's personal experience. My experience has been that pretty much anything that's USB or Firewire just works, including such dongles, serial adapters, modems, printers, etc. Most PCI/AGP/PCI-Express works as well, although that is more spotty. A lot of that is thanks to class drivers, and a lot is thanks to open source (CUPS and Gimp-Print, for instance).
At the same time, I can sit here and spin tales of how my MegaRAID adapter in my server wasn't recognized by several Linux install CD's, then was broken in the kernel for a few versions, and when I finally switched to an IBM ServeRAID 3L, it wasn't supported by Windows XP!
In 20 years of using the Mac and 10 years of Windows and Linux experience, I'd say you're most likely to get something to work with full functionality on Windows. You may have problems and conflicts, but full feature support is a priority. You're most likely to get most functionality on Mac OS X. Some things are only partially supported (printer or scanner features, for instance), and there are occasional devices that don't work (video cards needing Mac-specific firmware - why is that?). As for Linux, all I can say is it's very hit or miss, distro to distro, version to version. Things break much more often on Linux. It might just need some new package or config tweak, but running a system update (synaptic, yum, emerge, etc) is sometimes like russian roulette. I backup my Linux system fully before applying updates - I don't need to with OS X or Windows.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Indeed, in fact it is amazingly seemless. I started a transfer on a 802.11B network, and the file chugged along at B speeds. I then flicked on a 802.11G AP and after a few seconds it switched over and started transferring at the 802.11G speeds. I then plugged in my ethernet cable and the Activity Monitor jumped up in the massive speed boost. But then I pulled out my ethernet cable, this caused the transfer to pause for a bit and then it picked up the pace again. This is amazing to watch, doesn't matter what you use (even SMB to Windows boxes), it just seems to work. Very impressed by how simple it is to set up.
I always wondered where this setting was...