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Apple Patent Hints at Net-Booting Cloud Strategy

Posted by timothy on from the steve-jobs-helped-chuck-norris-invent-netbooting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has received a patent that hints at the intent of providing network computers that will boot through a 'net-booted environment.' It may seem that Apple is moving slowly into the cloud computing age and that it has many assets that are simply not leveraged in what could be a massive cloud environment that could cause more than just a headache for Google and Microsoft. However, it appears that Apple has been working for some time on an operating system, conceivably a version of a next-generation Mac OS or iOS, that could boot computers and other devices via an Internet connection."

3 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:really? Are they? by ohmantics · · Score: 2, Informative

    And that's exactly what this continuation of a 1999 patent covers: NetBoot of the original iMac. This is a non-story published by yet another blog that doesn't know how to read patents.

  2. Re:really? Are they? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    and after decades of with this capability, what percentage of capable systems actually do this? ... very few.

    I have quite a few systems that boot from SAN.

    And PXE boot is very handy for installing or when you want to boot off of a virtualized floppy.

  3. Re:Definitely possible by Haedrian · · Score: 1, Informative

    "who really owns (pwns) your hardware? "

    Why are you asking that question on an article about Apple? Isn't it obvious?