"Yes, regardless of who's right or wrong, I hope Apple makes it out of this stronger than ever and the users benefit. And if someone really did leak it, I hope to God they don't get caught."
I agree on both counts. Apple sometimes needs to realize that it's their users that made and continue to make them successful.
"Isn't there now a jail term for such things?"
Not being a U.S. citizen, I wouldn't know.
"You seem very confident BTW. Do you have inside knowledge? Could we argue some more until I squeeze it out of you? ; )"
Considering most NDAs have a clause that says you're not even allowed to admit that the NDA exists in the first place, it's hopeless to ask me this, but I can tell you this: I'm a 21-year old student from the North West of Germany, far far away from the headquarters of Apple in Cupertino, and unlikely to have inside knowledge.
"I was feeling so good about Apple. [..] now everything seems all so ominous."
I wouldn't be so worried about it if I were you. Apple has a tendency to drive themselves into crises through fatal management decisions, but they also have some of the most talented people in their world that so far have always managed to not only pull Apple out of trouble, but make its logo shine brighter than ever.
Market share-focused people can say what they want; Apple has never ever been in greater shape. Geeks that used to shun Apple's OS now switch to it in masses -- most recently jwz -- , the hardware is solid and hardly as expensive as people make it out to be, Apple produces some great software such as iWork and FinalCut Pro, and needless to say, Steve Jobs could never have dreamed of the iPod ("No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." -- remember, Slashdot?) success. And while Microsoft's stock literally had its peak in early 2000 and has been going down ever since, Apple is debt-free, has had higher revenues and profits than ever in the past few quarters and has a stock value that makes you wonder if we're back at the dot-com bubble, only this is a stable, reputable company here.
I entirely see your point of view, I just hope that you're wrong, because fingerprinting for me reeks too much of copy protection, DRM, software activation and other stupid means of alleged piracy prevention.
I'm not saying it's impossible, and I know that you were referring to some wrapper script on a web server, be it through CGI, PHP or whatever. However, I still find it hard to believe that a HTTP, FTP, or whatever server would be fast enough to go through an encoded and compressed (albeit not encrypted*) 2.6 GiB file and add fingerprints to it.
*) Another point, in fact. Why don't they just add encryption to it, based on the login/password of the ADC user?
You said: "Downloads could go through a program which inserts the fingerprint."
That suggests taking the disk image and wrapping a fingerprint *around* it, no?
If you're talking taking the disk image, mounting it, editing it, then serving it to the user: *way* too complex to accomplish. These files are being distributed over plain old FTP servers, without any delay, so I maintain that there's no such preprocessing being done.
"An already patched install DVD, doing the rounds on bittorrent I imagine would piss them off."
Er, yes, it would. But we weren't talking about that, were we?
This is pre-release software. You can spread it around all you like, it won't make thosuands of people suddenyl install it. The amount of people interested in the latest and greatest unofficial, illegal and unfinished software is small.
"Remember Apple doing the smack down on OSS GUI themes which looked like Apple GUI's? Aqua and the technical drawing theme?"
I would be pretty pissed as well if someone were to not only steal my design, but also insult its qualities.
I've explained already why that isn't the case, one: the file format, DMG, doesn't support such fingerprinting. It lets you easily convert to ISO as well as other imaging formats, and it lets you burn a DVD. You can open the images Apple creates in non-Apple-related software, on non-Apple-related operating systems, so if there was a fingerprint, it would be uneffective, since it can't reside inside the actual *data* of the image.
Second, Apple also distributes media via snail mail, rather than images through downloading, and as I've explained, it unfeasible to fingerprint those.
"But Mac OS X is proven technology. Many people know someone that uses Macs."
Yes, but does that give them incentive to switch? Not for many. Why do you think this would be different if they didn't have to change their hardware, just their software? It still means, for the average customer, a $1,000 investment in new software. New operating system, new office suite, new this and new that. The Mac mini is somewhere between three and four times the price of the OS alone, which I dare say is a pretty cheap way of joining the Mac platform, but so far it hasn't *made* millions of people switch.
"Well, the May 24 Apple said rumors about switching to Intel were just that: Rumors. See http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23447"
Then Inquirer, otherwise a respected site, is incorrect, since Apple *never ever*, per policy, confirms or denies rumors. They don't comment on them, and make everyone wait for an announcement on their own. Apple didn't deny the c|net news.com story* wrt/ Intel; they *declined to comment*. Big difference.
*) As to the WSJ story a few weeks before that, during D: All Things Digital, I'm not sure if Apple reacted at all, but I've never so far seen Apple deny rumors.
The interview at http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0369.html refers and links to the torrent site. A recommended read.
"and since Apple does have the technology to efficiently serve fingerprinted documents already (from iTMS, which has a LOT more customers), you can see how that's not hard to believe."
When iTMS was introduced, Steve Jobs stated that 1) they have DRM on there as per RIAA requirement 2) he personally is entirely aware that no copy protection is fully effective.
It doesn't take rocket science to conclude that, when it comes to products Jobs fully has under control -- such as OS X -- he won't apply ideas that he personally doesn't believe in.
"Apple's only shipping these computers to select developers, so they could easily afford to cut a custom CD for each box."
Select developers, in this case, is a five-digit number, however.
"Would they? Well, if it were me I'd do it. But I'm sure as hell no Steve Jobs, so maybe I'm just being overly cautious."
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but past experience with Apple, which dates back over 14 years, tells me that they aren't interested in such measures.
"Be, inc. had an unfinished OS and little else. No wonder they went bankrupt."
Oh, I agree.
"[Apple has] mindshare."
Yes, and tons of it. They also have great reputation and brand recognition, in most regards.
But look at IBM. Does IBM have mindshare? Hell yes. Does IBM have good reputation? Arguable, but certainly not all too negative these days. What happened to OS/2? It never took off, and since it let Windows apps run inside, developers just coded for Windows and let OS/2 users eat the emulated software.
BeOS and OS/2 are just two examples of why I believe commercial operating systems that don't go by the name of Windows currently cannot work in the x86 mass-user field, thanks to Microsoft.
Letting Mac OS X run on any x86 machine would be a great idea for customers, a great threat to Microsoft, and a great risk for Apple. Will they take it? Not according to Phil Schiller.
They tracked down the Tiger 8A294 seed through the torrent site that hosted it. Not through any form of fingerprint. Since the seed is delivered as DMG* from the web site, there is no means of fingerprinting it unless you were to put a thousand different DMGs on the Akamai servers -- which I'd argue they don't.;-)
*) They are disk images, ready for mounting, burning, converting, etc. Developers alternatively can retrieve burned media from Apple, but fingerprinted media aren't feasible either, as someone else already mentioned, as this would mean custom-burning ever single disc, rather than pressing them.
"People with an extreme interest, x86 hardware, no patience to wait a year and little desire to purchase Mac hardware when they already have a decent PC."
You incorrectly assume that Mac OS X will run on any Intel box. While it is conceivable that hacks will appear soon to *make* it run on any x86 machine -- including those with Via and AMD CPUs -- such patches will always be used by a tiny minority, just like XPostFacto -- which lets you run OS X on Old World Macs, including clones -- never bothered Apple, simply because hardly anyone used it.
Mac OS X on an x86-based Mac is just as Apple-specific as Mac OS X on a PowerPC-based Mac is, and Mac OS Classic on 68k- and PowerPC-based Macs was. Apple can add their own ROM, their own custom chipset, etc. to make sure that, as far as the huge masses of people out there go, it won't run on their non-Apple hardware. There is therefore no notable added threat.
"The Intel build of Mac OS X only runs on the chipset supplied in the development machines, so it won't run on *any* x86 machine."
The development machine uses an Intel chipset, an Intel CPU, a Phoenix BIOS, an Intel GPU. This, btw, is largely different from the actual 2006+ Intel-based Macintoshes, which I'm almost positive will use an Apple chipset, an Intel CPU, an ATI or nVidia GPU, an Apple motherboard, and some custom form of BIOS, EFI (most likely) or Open Firmware. But either way: Mac OS X obviously runs on a machine that's pretty much a typical vanilla x86 machine.
"Furthermore, outside of Adobe and a few other companies none of the other developers would have receieved their Intel Dev Kits yet."
Jobs said two weeks. That was Monday, so it's been almost a week. Furthermore, of the thosuands of WWDC attendees, all were allowed to use development machines on site. There's no reason to believe that it was hard for them to just do a straight copy of the entire hard drive and burn it on DVD, then look into it further at home and try and make an installable OS out of it.
"Lastly, all builds would have had digital fingerprints inserted on the CD and in vital binaries to trace any leaks (If not then Apple are stupid)."
Because we all know that Apple uses serial numbers, copy protection and fingerprinting all over their place in Mac OS X. Not. While the server versions have a serial number, the client versions have *no* protection against piracy whatsoever. They never did, and there's no reason to believe they will now.
"This would mean any company stupid enough to let their employees leak it would be in dire trouble."
Why do you assume large companies, when small shareware houses like Panic are at WWDC as well?
Unless I'm missing something important here, you've listed advantages to using KDE as a desktop. KDE, however, works fine on OS X. What makes Linux a better kernel than XNU (or GNU/Linux a better base OS than Darwin), in this case?
310 x 200 x 185 l/w/h (<a href="http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/S B83G5M.asp">this</a> shuttle PC) vs. 165.1 x 165.1 x 50.8 l/w/h (<a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html">Mac mini</a>)
"Options for Bluetooth® and Airport® Extreme exist, however the latter will not work on Linux."
"the Mac mini supports three options: wired Ethernet, wireless Airport Extreme, and Bluetooth. Wired Ethernet gets automatically configured, either via DHCP or static IP, via the system-config-network tool. Airport Extreme, however, sports the Broadcom chipset, where open source drivers are non-existent at present (and there's no reason the believe that they will ever exist)."
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes, regardless of who's right or wrong, I hope Apple makes it out of this stronger than ever and the users benefit. And if someone really did leak it, I hope to God they don't get caught."
;-)
I agree on both counts. Apple sometimes needs to realize that it's their users that made and continue to make them successful.
"Isn't there now a jail term for such things?"
Not being a U.S. citizen, I wouldn't know.
"You seem very confident BTW. Do you have inside knowledge? Could we argue some more until I squeeze it out of you? ; )"
Considering most NDAs have a clause that says you're not even allowed to admit that the NDA exists in the first place, it's hopeless to ask me this, but I can tell you this: I'm a 21-year old student from the North West of Germany, far far away from the headquarters of Apple in Cupertino, and unlikely to have inside knowledge.
"I was feeling so good about Apple. [..] now everything seems all so ominous."
I wouldn't be so worried about it if I were you. Apple has a tendency to drive themselves into crises through fatal management decisions, but they also have some of the most talented people in their world that so far have always managed to not only pull Apple out of trouble, but make its logo shine brighter than ever.
Market share-focused people can say what they want; Apple has never ever been in greater shape. Geeks that used to shun Apple's OS now switch to it in masses -- most recently jwz -- , the hardware is solid and hardly as expensive as people make it out to be, Apple produces some great software such as iWork and FinalCut Pro, and needless to say, Steve Jobs could never have dreamed of the iPod ("No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." -- remember, Slashdot?) success. And while Microsoft's stock literally had its peak in early 2000 and has been going down ever since, Apple is debt-free, has had higher revenues and profits than ever in the past few quarters and has a stock value that makes you wonder if we're back at the dot-com bubble, only this is a stable, reputable company here.
Hope you'll convert your girlfriend
I entirely see your point of view, I just hope that you're wrong, because fingerprinting for me reeks too much of copy protection, DRM, software activation and other stupid means of alleged piracy prevention.
:-)
We'll see what the future brings.
I'm not saying it's impossible, and I know that you were referring to some wrapper script on a web server, be it through CGI, PHP or whatever. However, I still find it hard to believe that a HTTP, FTP, or whatever server would be fast enough to go through an encoded and compressed (albeit not encrypted*) 2.6 GiB file and add fingerprints to it.
*) Another point, in fact. Why don't they just add encryption to it, based on the login/password of the ADC user?
You said:
"Downloads could go through a program which inserts the fingerprint."
That suggests taking the disk image and wrapping a fingerprint *around* it, no?
If you're talking taking the disk image, mounting it, editing it, then serving it to the user: *way* too complex to accomplish. These files are being distributed over plain old FTP servers, without any delay, so I maintain that there's no such preprocessing being done.
"An already patched install DVD, doing the rounds on bittorrent I imagine would piss them off."
Er, yes, it would. But we weren't talking about that, were we?
This is pre-release software. You can spread it around all you like, it won't make thosuands of people suddenyl install it. The amount of people interested in the latest and greatest unofficial, illegal and unfinished software is small.
"Remember Apple doing the smack down on OSS GUI themes which looked like Apple GUI's? Aqua and the technical drawing theme?"
I would be pretty pissed as well if someone were to not only steal my design, but also insult its qualities.
I've explained already why that isn't the case, one: the file format, DMG, doesn't support such fingerprinting. It lets you easily convert to ISO as well as other imaging formats, and it lets you burn a DVD. You can open the images Apple creates in non-Apple-related software, on non-Apple-related operating systems, so if there was a fingerprint, it would be uneffective, since it can't reside inside the actual *data* of the image.
Second, Apple also distributes media via snail mail, rather than images through downloading, and as I've explained, it unfeasible to fingerprint those.
"But Mac OS X is proven technology. Many people know someone that uses Macs."
Yes, but does that give them incentive to switch? Not for many. Why do you think this would be different if they didn't have to change their hardware, just their software? It still means, for the average customer, a $1,000 investment in new software. New operating system, new office suite, new this and new that. The Mac mini is somewhere between three and four times the price of the OS alone, which I dare say is a pretty cheap way of joining the Mac platform, but so far it hasn't *made* millions of people switch.
"Well, the May 24 Apple said rumors about switching to Intel were just that: Rumors. See http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23447"
Then Inquirer, otherwise a respected site, is incorrect, since Apple *never ever*, per policy, confirms or denies rumors. They don't comment on them, and make everyone wait for an announcement on their own. Apple didn't deny the c|net news.com story* wrt/ Intel; they *declined to comment*. Big difference.
*) As to the WSJ story a few weeks before that, during D: All Things Digital, I'm not sure if Apple reacted at all, but I've never so far seen Apple deny rumors.
I am stating my opinion, based on past experiences with Apple as well as common sense.
The interview at http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/00 0369.html refers and links to the torrent site. A recommended read.
"and since Apple does have the technology to efficiently serve fingerprinted documents already (from iTMS, which has a LOT more customers), you can see how that's not hard to believe."
When iTMS was introduced, Steve Jobs stated that
1) they have DRM on there as per RIAA requirement
2) he personally is entirely aware that no copy protection is fully effective.
It doesn't take rocket science to conclude that, when it comes to products Jobs fully has under control -- such as OS X -- he won't apply ideas that he personally doesn't believe in.
"Apple's only shipping these computers to select developers, so they could easily afford to cut a custom CD for each box."
Select developers, in this case, is a five-digit number, however.
"Would they? Well, if it were me I'd do it. But I'm sure as hell no Steve Jobs, so maybe I'm just being overly cautious."
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but past experience with Apple, which dates back over 14 years, tells me that they aren't interested in such measures.
"Be, inc. had an unfinished OS and little else. No wonder they went bankrupt."
Oh, I agree.
"[Apple has] mindshare."
Yes, and tons of it. They also have great reputation and brand recognition, in most regards.
But look at IBM. Does IBM have mindshare? Hell yes. Does IBM have good reputation? Arguable, but certainly not all too negative these days. What happened to OS/2? It never took off, and since it let Windows apps run inside, developers just coded for Windows and let OS/2 users eat the emulated software.
BeOS and OS/2 are just two examples of why I believe commercial operating systems that don't go by the name of Windows currently cannot work in the x86 mass-user field, thanks to Microsoft.
Letting Mac OS X run on any x86 machine would be a great idea for customers, a great threat to Microsoft, and a great risk for Apple. Will they take it? Not according to Phil Schiller.
They tracked down the Tiger 8A294 seed through the torrent site that hosted it. Not through any form of fingerprint. Since the seed is delivered as DMG* from the web site, there is no means of fingerprinting it unless you were to put a thousand different DMGs on the Akamai servers -- which I'd argue they don't. ;-)
*) They are disk images, ready for mounting, burning, converting, etc. Developers alternatively can retrieve burned media from Apple, but fingerprinted media aren't feasible either, as someone else already mentioned, as this would mean custom-burning ever single disc, rather than pressing them.
Fully agreed.
"People with an extreme interest, x86 hardware, no patience to wait a year and little desire to purchase Mac hardware when they already have a decent PC."
You incorrectly assume that Mac OS X will run on any Intel box. While it is conceivable that hacks will appear soon to *make* it run on any x86 machine -- including those with Via and AMD CPUs -- such patches will always be used by a tiny minority, just like XPostFacto -- which lets you run OS X on Old World Macs, including clones -- never bothered Apple, simply because hardly anyone used it.
Mac OS X on an x86-based Mac is just as Apple-specific as Mac OS X on a PowerPC-based Mac is, and Mac OS Classic on 68k- and PowerPC-based Macs was. Apple can add their own ROM, their own custom chipset, etc. to make sure that, as far as the huge masses of people out there go, it won't run on their non-Apple hardware. There is therefore no notable added threat.
Interesting -- so how come is pretty much virus-free? :-p
They weren't. Five years earlier, before Jobs returned, they weren't doing well, but when iPod came (2001), they didn't have too many problems.
How does a switch of architecture make it suddenly more likely for viruses to come up?
"I'm actually wondering why they wouldn't do this."
Because a similar business model led to the bankruptcy of Be Inc.?
"(more or less the only reason Apple is still afloat)"
Er, no. Apple was doing fine, just not "great", before the iPod.
"Without song swapping on the net, that was around long before Apple"
Song swapping on the net was around long before Apple was founded in 76? Interesting. What net is this you're speaking of? ARPAnet?
No. The Darwin driver model has almost nothing to do with FreeBSD.
"The Intel build of Mac OS X only runs on the chipset supplied in the development machines, so it won't run on *any* x86 machine."
The development machine uses an Intel chipset, an Intel CPU, a Phoenix BIOS, an Intel GPU. This, btw, is largely different from the actual 2006+ Intel-based Macintoshes, which I'm almost positive will use an Apple chipset, an Intel CPU, an ATI or nVidia GPU, an Apple motherboard, and some custom form of BIOS, EFI (most likely) or Open Firmware. But either way: Mac OS X obviously runs on a machine that's pretty much a typical vanilla x86 machine.
"Furthermore, outside of Adobe and a few other companies none of the other developers would have receieved their Intel Dev Kits yet."
Jobs said two weeks. That was Monday, so it's been almost a week. Furthermore, of the thosuands of WWDC attendees, all were allowed to use development machines on site. There's no reason to believe that it was hard for them to just do a straight copy of the entire hard drive and burn it on DVD, then look into it further at home and try and make an installable OS out of it.
"Lastly, all builds would have had digital fingerprints inserted on the CD and in vital binaries to trace any leaks (If not then Apple are stupid)."
Because we all know that Apple uses serial numbers, copy protection and fingerprinting all over their place in Mac OS X. Not. While the server versions have a serial number, the client versions have *no* protection against piracy whatsoever. They never did, and there's no reason to believe they will now.
"This would mean any company stupid enough to let their employees leak it would be in dire trouble."
Why do you assume large companies, when small shareware houses like Panic are at WWDC as well?
I was pointed to this article straight from the Slashdot:Apple RSS feed.
Unless I'm missing something important here, you've listed advantages to using KDE as a desktop. KDE, however, works fine on OS X. What makes Linux a better kernel than XNU (or GNU/Linux a better base OS than Darwin), in this case?
Dimensions-wise?
S B83G5M.asp">this</a> shuttle PC) vs. 165.1 x 165.1 x 50.8 l/w/h (<a href="http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html">Mac mini</a>)
310 x 200 x 185 l/w/h (<a href="http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/
The form factor itself is a major selling point. The thing is *tiny*.
Second, it is very low on power usage, similarly to G4 laptops (as it shares much of the architecture).
Thirdly -- obviously this goes away when you (only) put Linux on it -- it's the cheapest available machine that runs OS X.
Generally, you'll have a hard time finding a competitive machine at this price with similar dimensions.
"Options for Bluetooth® and Airport® Extreme exist, however the latter will not work on Linux."
"the Mac mini supports three options: wired Ethernet, wireless Airport Extreme, and Bluetooth. Wired Ethernet gets automatically configured, either via DHCP or static IP, via the system-config-network tool. Airport Extreme, however, sports the Broadcom chipset, where open source drivers are non-existent at present (and there's no reason the believe that they will ever exist)."
How does the article leave this detail out?