Apple is the same company who has repeatedly sent threatening legal letters to teenage bloggers and such. They also clearly violated their deal with Apple records, and then went on the legal offensive like they were victims.
Apple certainly isn't afraid to use their lawyers. My guess is that they wanted Pystar to make some profits to the lawsuit would make financial sense.
And where's the comment playing down the seriousness of the first proof-of-concept? The one that uses an unpatched ARDAgent vulnerability?
Some Mac users just can't face that they're not as invincible as Apple marketing wants them to think, and reject any evidence to the contrary.
(I'm about to be told how this local root vulnerability isn't a real vulnerability, because it's local.) That comment is in the thread of the previous "How to Save Mac OS X From Malware" article, as well as in the comment thread of the article originally reporting the ARD vulnerability posted last week.
Yes, Arty McStrawman does believe that his Mac is invincible. Not many beside him do, though.
Also, if you already know what will people respond to you, why do you ask your, fairly inflammatory, I might add, question, even if you intended it to be a rhetorical one?
It's not even possible to implement large parts of ODF without referencing the OpenOffice source code because the spec is just full of holes. Care to give an example?
By contrast their are already competing products, such as Apple's office apps, which do implement OOXML. Ummm... nope, Apple's "office apps" do not support OOXML. Apple's very simple TextEdit application supports (a subset of the actual specification of) OOXML, but it also supports (likely again a subset of) ODF. The fact that Apple are trying to be proactive and keep their platform competitive by implementing OOXML does *not* mean that the "standard" is any good or is well documented. If it did mean that the same should apply for.doc, a subset of which Apple also supports in TextEdit and in their "office apps".
What about a 5-person company? What about a 1-person company? What about them? If you are a 1-person company you pay $99, get a vendor key, and write and deploy your app(s) to your hart's content (alternatively you can start selling those apps on the AppStore with the same key). If you are a 5-person (or 50,000-person for that matter) company you pay $299 and you are again set. How fucking hard is to comprehend this?
I'm glad to see Exchange support on the iPhone, but let's not pretend here. The things they licensed from Microsoft were already supported by Windows Mobile anyway, and have been supported for some time now. Yeah, now only if interacting with a Windows Mobile phone was not infuriating as hell, it would be pretty pointless for Apple to release an iPhone in the first place. Right?
I think the point is that iPhone has (or will have, starting in June) a first class Exchange support, not some halfcocked hack.
Seeing how at the time I'm posting this all 3+ points comments are complaints how the SDK sucks and Apple's foray into the enterprise mobile device market will definitely go bust, I would like to be the first to pronounce iPhone a complete winner. It is rare thing to see so much nitpicking on Slashdot - I've seen it 2-3 times since the iPod bitchfest. Bravo, fellow slashdoters.
The idea that a phone can have 'too many' features is asinine and frankly, stupid to use as a justification for iPhone's shortcomings.
Frankly, what is asinine here is that you believe that what you need or desire is what everyone needs. Let's face it, you are a slashdotter with a fairly small ID number; that means you are a tech geek and a nerd (and so am I, but we are talking about you now). For you the lack of 3G, GPS or a Java VM is probably a deal breaker. And fair enough, the iPhone could have had all those and WiMax support, and digital broadcast TV tuner, and satellite radio, and FM/AM tuner, and a multi-card reader, and frickin' lasers. But for the largest majority of people these things don't matter. All they want is a a phone they can figure out how to use. And the iPhone, for the functionality it has (i.e. phone calls, audio/video playback, web browsing, etc.), is beyond any dispute one of the best (if not *the* best) and most user friendly phones out there.
Perhaps you haven't tried using the beefier Opera Mobile on a smartphone, but it kicks the crap out of Safari on the iphone for run of the mill web browsing.
No, it doesn't. Or maybe it does, I don't know, it depends on what do you mean by that. Opera may have a faster rendering or even a better rendering (both of which I highly doubt, but I'm not an expert in the field), or it may have in some regard a better interface (I can't figure out where can Opera outdo MobileSafari, but... yeah I've already put the disclaimer). But it doesn't really matter, because Opera Mobile is bound to be limited by interface of the device it runs on. And to my knowledge, there is no other phone that has the gesture interface of the iPhone; as a matter of fact, not all smartphones have touchscreen support. So ultimately, claiming that "...Opera Mobile... kicks the crap out of Safari..." is more of an emotional and subjective statement than anything else.
True, true, true, but at the end of the day there is reality. And in reality the recording industry are like wizards - they are too powerful for their own good and very easy to anger. Look at the situation Apple are in with non-DRM'd songs on iTunes. Except for EMI, the rest of the big 4 would nearly rather put their stuff on the Pirate Bay, than allow Apple to sell it and the only reason is that they don't quite like Apple having ~75% of the online distribution market (something Apple had achieved through products and services better than everyone else's; i.e. they rightfully have that big market share). Imagine if Apple refused to cave in at RIAA's demand to disallow syncing back from an iPod - then Apple might as well close the iTunes store.
This does not excuse Apple, but at least they are not doing it just to spite you or to create lock- in.
Thanks for the daily slap-Microsoft-because-you-can though. Shouldn't this be "the daily slap-Apple-because-you-can"? I mean, that sentence hardly says anything bad about Microsoft at all (well, unless you consider being pissed off because "them unwashed open source hippies are chewing off of your market share" somehow inherently bad).
I've always wondered why Apple have been slow to enter that market, but to do so now without opening up their DRM is surely asking for trouble. Real have been trying to get access to the iPod market for years. Apple have tried to stop them at every opportunity. If they now try and copy that distribution method, while refusing to allow anyone else the opportunity leaves them more open than ever to charges of anti competitive behaviour, especially in the EU.
Why would Apple get in trouble if they decide to offer a FairPlay protected subscription service without licensing the DRM to others? With subscription services you do not buy anything, you just rent it. If you have, say, an iPod and use "iTunes Subscribe" and then at some point decide to ditch the iPod and get a Zune, you just cancel your subscription wit Apple and get one from Zune marketplace (or whatever).
The whole issue with closed DRM (or DRM in general) and anti-competitiveness was that you seemingly bought music, but in fact you could not play it back on players outside a certain brand.
...No, this isn't intented to be flamebait - I'm a new Mac Mini owner myself and it's getting way more use than my PC. But I can't understand how Apple can charge for what is a pretty damn small upgrade...
How is this not a flamebait? First, you bring up a question that has been answered about a jazillion times already - Steve Jobs is in lovez with the number 10 (or in Apple lingo "X") and from now on for Mac OS the major version number is the one after the first decimal point. And second, even if you actually believed that the numbering scheme proved that this is a minor update you didn't even bother to check what is the new and improved stuff in Leopard, yet you felt the need to post a comment titled "Why do people pay for this stuff?". This is definitely a textbook example of a flamebait.
Well, it's an argument in that there are some people who, due to a lack of understanding or a passionate need to believe their religious texts are literal truth (or both), are vehemently clinging to the idea that life didn't evolve.
From a scientific perspective, there is no real argument... the evidence is inescapable.
Yes, of course there is no real argument. Mine was an, obviously bad, attempt for a joke. (oops)
If you look at it, man is able to create artificial muscles that are a hundred times stronger than his own. This alone is pretty strong evidence that there was not much intelligent engineering in the "creation" of the human body. Otherwise we would have been much less vulnerable to, well, practically everything.
I hope we start abandoning our evolved bodies soon.
In case you haven't noticed, we are still arguing whether ours are evolved bodies or intelligently designed bodies. >_> The quick and dirty fix? We can stuff our brains in a jar, bolt it on some kind of robot made up of synthetic muscles and we'll have arguably intelligently, but definitely designed bodies. Case closed.
Although I agree that here on Slashdot everything Apple does is considered a divine intervention and almost certain proof of intelligent design, while anything Microsoft does must necessarily come straight from the cold black heart of Satan (who is the devil), your comment is a bit off base.
For starters, and this has been rehashed so many time that it makes me feel stupid just having to repeat it, Apple does not have monopoly over any market whatsoever. So your analogy starts with wrong assumption.
Nevertheless, yes Apple uses DRM and yes it is a proprietary one. For the DRM part you can complain to RIAA, MPAA, your representative in the US Senate, or directly to the lord almighty, I could care less, for those are the instances responsible for that. If Apple were the only company using DRM for some sinister reason (vendor lock-down maybe) you would have some point, but in the real world, well, life just sucks. For the proprietary part, since Apple "controls the vertical" (I think the horizontal is still controlled by The Outer Limits) - i.e. the store, the jukebox/library management software, and the portable player - it makes absolutely no sense for them to license the DRM scheme from any other company, let alone from Microsoft. It is much cheaper and safer to buy some tiny two-bit company developing good enough DRM scheme and make said scheme your own(which Apple actually did). And if you haven't figured it out already, note that if Apple licenses Fairplay to somebody else their whole vertical integration business model goes bust. One day, when the iTMS makes more money than the iPod, they'll surely start licensing Fairplay. This, however, does not preclude anybody from entering the market. It's just that the competition has piss-poor... well... everything.
If Napster wants to take off, they should invest in expanding their store with better music selection or greater geographical coverage, cheaper prices, better "fair use"-ability, etc. They should also consider creating better jukebox/library management software than iTunes, for iTunes is by far not perfect, although it is the best one out there, and maybe also consider making, either on their own or as a joint venture, a better portable player than iPod (and just don't start with the iPod-sux-because-it-doen't-have-radio-or-OGG-suppo rt-like-evrybody-else argument, because the market has shown that this shit does not really matter).
That is why free software is invented - because people did not accept that vendors have automatic "rights" to impose absolutely any arbitrary EULA restriction on how a copy of said software, purchased legally, might be used.
I believe it's just the opposite - people accepted that software vendors have exclusive rights over their products and figured out that they no only may, but actually do impose unreasonable restrictions over the software. The only solution was (or rather is) to rewrite said software from scratch and license it in a way that protects the user. This is the basis of the GNU project and the GPL, and the whole free/open source software movement. The freedoms given you by free software are not granted, though. They were fought for - a lot of people have put time and effort to build all the programs and tools that you can download for free today.
However, as i said, the existence of free software does not invalidate license agreements or other contracts a software vendor may require you to agree with and/or sign in order to install and use their products. I can't quite grasp how come so many people fail to realize that every company has some plan, some idea how to make most money out of a certain product, some business model if you will, and allocation of resources - time, intellectual property, human resources, money, etc. - is based on the assumption of that plan.
Imagine buying a car, for example, with a EULA along with it that said I couldn't visit, for example Cornwall, without paying an extra license fee to the vehicle manufacturer! Outrageous, obviously - but that's the style of restriction that becomes possible with hardware and software DRM capabilities.
Weird - yes, outrageous - I don't know. First, the analogy is not very good, because you own your car, but you do not own your software - you license it from the developer. Unless such contract violates the law, there is no force that will stop the car dealer to require you to agree with it before you purchase the vehicle. Then it is your call - if you don't mind not being able to go to Cornwall, you buy the car, if you want to be able to visit your grandma' in Cornwall you just don't buy this particular brand. If sufficient number of people decide it's not worth buying this car eventually the car dealer or manufacturer will start losing money and either change their policy or go bankrupt. However if you chose to buy the car you have to play by the rules and never visit Cornwall or risk being sued by the company and probably being denied the right to continue using the car.
If you accept that vendors can impose conditions like this, then you can easily see a series of ever more onerous conditions that an Apple or Microsoft can impose on proprietary software, and which can now be enforced through Treacherous Computing and Digital Restrictions Managament. For example, you might get a license to use software a bit cheaper if it was restricted to only be used at the weekend, say, or only to connect to approved URL's, or only for a few months till your course ended, say with training materials.
I agree that Trusted Computing Platform in combination with Digital Rights Management could give way to much control to copyright owners. On the other hand, you should realize that those are bad, but also quick and easy solution to the inability of (mainly recording and movie) industries to adapt quickly enough to the information age and, as result of that, the mass pirating of content. And it is foolish to expect to change that by hacking an OS in order to use it in violation of the license agreement.
Honestly, how many of the non-geeks you know understand what DRM really is, what are the impications of it, and what rights under fair use they are deprived of? How many people know what alternatives are there? How many people are doing something to make these alternatives viable? (Well, Fraunhofer Institute are working on it I guess, but I personally wouldn't count just on them.)
So, to sum up the sentiments in regard to this news, predominantly people claim that since DMCA is evil and Apple are using it to shut down the forums, where hardworking, freedom loving hackers were trying to liberate Mac OS X for the benefit of all humanity, this makes them evil too.
However, I did not see anybody considering the possibility, that the all pervasive, all restricting DMCA is simply the easiest, cheapest, most hassle free way for Apple to protect their rights, as opposed to an attempt to harass people or deny them the right of freedom (of speech or of whatever else). I also could not find many people, who understand that Apple protecting their rights is no different than you, an ordinary person, protecting your rights. And before you say it, no, you do not have the right to run Mac OS X on whatever hardware you want, as long as you legally purchased it. Nobody, except Apple, has any right over most of Mac OS X. You get only the rights that Apple decides to give you, no more, no less. That is the whole idea behind proprietary vs. free/open source software. The first is developer centric, while the second is user centric. And as for the open source parts of Mac OS X, Darwin or WebKit/WebCore for example, you can download them for free, with all their source code, and you can modify and install them on whatever hardware you fancy.
Many people call the guys behind OSx86 project hackers or hobbyists and defend their deeds. I ask, though, if these guys are such good coders/hackers and are motivated solely by their altruism, why don't they employ their skills in a more constructive and beneficial for everybody way. Don't you think that, although being not at all that glamorous, but also no that suspiciously resembling publicity exercise, these guys could partake in the development of, off the top of my head, openstep, KDE 4, GTK+ port of WebKit/WebCore, etc.? These, and a lot more similar projects, can produce a free (and legally so) equivalent of Mac OS X (or Windows, or whatever desktop OS (or part of) you can think of).
Ultimately, my rant ca be distilled in the following two sentences: You can't justify breaking laws or contractual agreements with your desire to have a cool, flashy OS, nor you can demand or expect a company to change their business model and practices for the same reason. However, you can donate your time and skills or support in some other way a F/OSS project that aspires to give you just that - cool, flashy, but also free OS.
"But truth be told I like building my own PCs and having the extra options that goes along with that."
Yeah that is the reason that I do not have as much Apple hardware as non-Apple hardware, Apple stuff is very restricted.
Although it is true that Apple hardware is somewhat restricted, you failed to mention the reason for this "restrictiveness". In some cases, for example the Mac mini or the G3/G4/G5 iMac, the "restriction" is imposed by the form-factor of the computer. In this case you can override most of the "restrictions" via external USB or Firewire hardware. In other cases, like the CPU of a Powermac or iMac, you simply can't buy a G5 processor off the shelf, so there is no reason to make this component easily or at all serviceable.
Note, however, that the processors in the new Intel iMacs are upgradeable, which comes to show that Apple are not aiming at a vendor lockdown. I agree, that more flexible hardware designs form Apple are possible (MXM modules anyone?), but Macs are not that restrictive(e.g. you can upgrade HDD, optical drives, RAM, add external devices through USB or Firewire and internal ones through PCI/PCI-X/PCIe(unfortunately not every vendor supports Open Firmware/EFI, but this is not really Apple's fault)).
And ultimately, the company will go *poof* for the same reason. All it's going to take is one truly good Windows release, like all it took was one truly good server OS (Linux) to come out, and Mac will tank like Sun did. Fortunately for Apple, that hasn't happened yet.
The problem with this theory is that, besides being really good, solid server OS, Linux is free in many ways, including "as in beer". And Windows is not, and will never be. A threat to Mac OS X, and coincidentally to Windows, may potentially be a really good Linux desktop distribution, but I'm not quite convinced one is coming any time soon.
How come Apple has no problem with you buying a Mac and running Linux on it, but seems to have a problem with people buying Mac OSX and running it on other hardware?
Once you buy a Mac and the profit from it goes to Apple, they couldn't care less what you do with it - you can very well use it as a paper weight for what it's worth. As it has been said more than a gazillion times already Apple make more money from hardware sales than from software. Therefore, they care more how you use their software than how you use their hardware.
And why do so many companies think they don't have to listen to what their customers want. The parent thread was a consumer voicing his opinion about a product he would like to buy. When, why, where and how was that wrong? He wasn't dictating anything. Don't get so precious. It might actually do Jobs & Co. some good to listen to people like him. If it weren't for ipod/itunes, Apple would still be going backwards. For all the fanfares about Jobs' genius, he's managed to actually increase sales of Apple's core product (personal computers) not a bloody lot.
Well, it's one thing to listen to your (potential) customers, which Apple obviously does, since they have read the OSx86 project forums, and entirely another thing to do what's best for your business. Have you ever considered that maybe, oh just maybe, exec's at Apple sat down one sunny day and examined eventual distribution of OS X for generic x86 systems, and surprisingly found that it is no good for the company?
I wonder why a bunch of slashdotters, who don't want to play by the rules and just buy a Mac, because they are oh-so-three-timees-more-expensive-than-my-1337-mod ed-clocked-boxen and are basically just for the gay designer crowd, think they know what's good for Apple better than, say, the people running the company?
Apple may very well be considering releasing Safari for windows, or any other OS/platform for that matter. One of the main goals of the webkit/webcore team right now is to move all of the code responsible for rendering a page to webcore (the C++ part of the browser framework). This goal is best described on the page of the subproject:
Ultimately we would like WebKit to be nothing more than the embedding APIs for a given platform and infrastructure/glue code that is needed to tie into a specific platform. All of the remaining logic should move to WebCore.
And if you check the changelog of one of the recent nightly builds you'll see that a lot of work in that direction has been done. Once this goal is achieved ports like the GTK+ port will be much easier to make and will come out early alfa stage.
In short, it is not clear whether Apple are interested in going headlong against IE or Firefox for Windows, but even if they don't intend to make such ports themselves, they are definitely making it easier for developers who are interested in doing so to port the webkit/webcore framework to whichever OS they fancy.
OK, I don't want to start a holly war here - it is pure coincidence that the example is form Apple.
Here there are two clips called Knowledge Navigator (just below the middle of the page). I think those illustrate very well what the parent means.
And I agree this is the way to go, not 3D. Did anyone follow the link to Tactile3D. The screenshot gallery made me seasick. It's all too cumbersome and confusing. I can't picture my mother using this.
Glad to see our south-western brothers get it right. Nothing better than teaching children to use C++ with KDevelop + QT Designer, and in Ubuntu that setup is always just a few mouse clicks away.
Do you really believe they'll be teaching kids in high-school "to use C++ with KDevelop + QT Designer". If Macedonia's north-eastern "brothers" (and I bet the rest of Macedonia's neighbors) are any indication, the only challenge before the "sysadmins" in those schools will be to keep up with the constant updates of gnomine and sol.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open source and better computer literacy (and why not even IT, software development, informatics, etc.) education, for it is one of the few things that can potentially drag the country (maybe even the region) out of the economic sticky situation (in one of the posts above was mentioned a 30-something percent unemployment rating), but the only thing this step will achieve is it will save the Macedonian government a couple of gazillion, bibijillion, quantifimfimfimillion dollars for Microsoft software. Thats about all. Cut the wet dreams of hordes of open source developers.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is the same company who has repeatedly sent threatening legal letters to teenage bloggers and such. They also clearly violated their deal with Apple records, and then went on the legal offensive like they were victims.
Apple certainly isn't afraid to use their lawyers. My guess is that they wanted Pystar to make some profits to the lawsuit would make financial sense.
[citation needed]
I think the point is that iPhone has (or will have, starting in June) a first class Exchange support, not some halfcocked hack.
Seeing how at the time I'm posting this all 3+ points comments are complaints how the SDK sucks and Apple's foray into the enterprise mobile device market will definitely go bust, I would like to be the first to pronounce iPhone a complete winner. It is rare thing to see so much nitpicking on Slashdot - I've seen it 2-3 times since the iPod bitchfest. Bravo, fellow slashdoters.
True, true, true, but at the end of the day there is reality. And in reality the recording industry are like wizards - they are too powerful for their own good and very easy to anger. Look at the situation Apple are in with non-DRM'd songs on iTunes. Except for EMI, the rest of the big 4 would nearly rather put their stuff on the Pirate Bay, than allow Apple to sell it and the only reason is that they don't quite like Apple having ~75% of the online distribution market (something Apple had achieved through products and services better than everyone else's; i.e. they rightfully have that big market share). Imagine if Apple refused to cave in at RIAA's demand to disallow syncing back from an iPod - then Apple might as well close the iTunes store. This does not excuse Apple, but at least they are not doing it just to spite you or to create lock- in.
BTW, Google apps already work with Safari 3 (well, there probably are bugs and glitches, but they generally work).
The whole issue with closed DRM (or DRM in general) and anti-competitiveness was that you seemingly bought music, but in fact you could not play it back on players outside a certain brand.
If you look at it, man is able to create artificial muscles that are a hundred times stronger than his own. This alone is pretty strong evidence that there was not much intelligent engineering in the "creation" of the human body. Otherwise we would have been much less vulnerable to, well, practically everything.
Insightful my ass.
... well... everything.
o rt-like-evrybody-else argument, because the market has shown that this shit does not really matter).
Although I agree that here on Slashdot everything Apple does is considered a divine intervention and almost certain proof of intelligent design, while anything Microsoft does must necessarily come straight from the cold black heart of Satan (who is the devil), your comment is a bit off base.
For starters, and this has been rehashed so many time that it makes me feel stupid just having to repeat it, Apple does not have monopoly over any market whatsoever. So your analogy starts with wrong assumption.
Nevertheless, yes Apple uses DRM and yes it is a proprietary one. For the DRM part you can complain to RIAA, MPAA, your representative in the US Senate, or directly to the lord almighty, I could care less, for those are the instances responsible for that. If Apple were the only company using DRM for some sinister reason (vendor lock-down maybe) you would have some point, but in the real world, well, life just sucks. For the proprietary part, since Apple "controls the vertical" (I think the horizontal is still controlled by The Outer Limits) - i.e. the store, the jukebox/library management software, and the portable player - it makes absolutely no sense for them to license the DRM scheme from any other company, let alone from Microsoft. It is much cheaper and safer to buy some tiny two-bit company developing good enough DRM scheme and make said scheme your own(which Apple actually did). And if you haven't figured it out already, note that if Apple licenses Fairplay to somebody else their whole vertical integration business model goes bust. One day, when the iTMS makes more money than the iPod, they'll surely start licensing Fairplay. This, however, does not preclude anybody from entering the market. It's just that the competition has piss-poor
If Napster wants to take off, they should invest in expanding their store with better music selection or greater geographical coverage, cheaper prices, better "fair use"-ability, etc. They should also consider creating better jukebox/library management software than iTunes, for iTunes is by far not perfect, although it is the best one out there, and maybe also consider making, either on their own or as a joint venture, a better portable player than iPod (and just don't start with the iPod-sux-because-it-doen't-have-radio-or-OGG-supp
However, as i said, the existence of free software does not invalidate license agreements or other contracts a software vendor may require you to agree with and/or sign in order to install and use their products. I can't quite grasp how come so many people fail to realize that every company has some plan, some idea how to make most money out of a certain product, some business model if you will, and allocation of resources - time, intellectual property, human resources, money, etc. - is based on the assumption of that plan.Weird - yes, outrageous - I don't know. First, the analogy is not very good, because you own your car, but you do not own your software - you license it from the developer. Unless such contract violates the law, there is no force that will stop the car dealer to require you to agree with it before you purchase the vehicle. Then it is your call - if you don't mind not being able to go to Cornwall, you buy the car, if you want to be able to visit your grandma' in Cornwall you just don't buy this particular brand. If sufficient number of people decide it's not worth buying this car eventually the car dealer or manufacturer will start losing money and either change their policy or go bankrupt. However if you chose to buy the car you have to play by the rules and never visit Cornwall or risk being sued by the company and probably being denied the right to continue using the car.I agree that Trusted Computing Platform in combination with Digital Rights Management could give way to much control to copyright owners. On the other hand, you should realize that those are bad, but also quick and easy solution to the inability of (mainly recording and movie) industries to adapt quickly enough to the information age and, as result of that, the mass pirating of content. And it is foolish to expect to change that by hacking an OS in order to use it in violation of the license agreement.
Honestly, how many of the non-geeks you know understand what DRM really is, what are the impications of it, and what rights under fair use they are deprived of? How many people know what alternatives are there? How many people are doing something to make these alternatives viable? (Well, Fraunhofer Institute are working on it I guess, but I personally wouldn't count just on them.)
So, to sum up the sentiments in regard to this news, predominantly people claim that since DMCA is evil and Apple are using it to shut down the forums, where hardworking, freedom loving hackers were trying to liberate Mac OS X for the benefit of all humanity, this makes them evil too.
However, I did not see anybody considering the possibility, that the all pervasive, all restricting DMCA is simply the easiest, cheapest, most hassle free way for Apple to protect their rights, as opposed to an attempt to harass people or deny them the right of freedom (of speech or of whatever else). I also could not find many people, who understand that Apple protecting their rights is no different than you, an ordinary person, protecting your rights. And before you say it, no, you do not have the right to run Mac OS X on whatever hardware you want, as long as you legally purchased it. Nobody, except Apple, has any right over most of Mac OS X. You get only the rights that Apple decides to give you, no more, no less. That is the whole idea behind proprietary vs. free/open source software. The first is developer centric, while the second is user centric. And as for the open source parts of Mac OS X, Darwin or WebKit/WebCore for example, you can download them for free, with all their source code, and you can modify and install them on whatever hardware you fancy.
Many people call the guys behind OSx86 project hackers or hobbyists and defend their deeds. I ask, though, if these guys are such good coders/hackers and are motivated solely by their altruism, why don't they employ their skills in a more constructive and beneficial for everybody way. Don't you think that, although being not at all that glamorous, but also no that suspiciously resembling publicity exercise, these guys could partake in the development of, off the top of my head, openstep, KDE 4, GTK+ port of WebKit/WebCore, etc.? These, and a lot more similar projects, can produce a free (and legally so) equivalent of Mac OS X (or Windows, or whatever desktop OS (or part of) you can think of).
Ultimately, my rant ca be distilled in the following two sentences: You can't justify breaking laws or contractual agreements with your desire to have a cool, flashy OS, nor you can demand or expect a company to change their business model and practices for the same reason. However, you can donate your time and skills or support in some other way a F/OSS project that aspires to give you just that - cool, flashy, but also free OS.
Note, however, that the processors in the new Intel iMacs are upgradeable, which comes to show that Apple are not aiming at a vendor lockdown. I agree, that more flexible hardware designs form Apple are possible (MXM modules anyone?), but Macs are not that restrictive(e.g. you can upgrade HDD, optical drives, RAM, add external devices through USB or Firewire and internal ones through PCI/PCI-X/PCIe(unfortunately not every vendor supports Open Firmware/EFI, but this is not really Apple's fault)).
I wonder why a bunch of slashdotters, who don't want to play by the rules and just buy a Mac, because they are oh-so-three-timees-more-expensive-than-my-1337-mo
And if you check the changelog of one of the recent nightly builds you'll see that a lot of work in that direction has been done. Once this goal is achieved ports like the GTK+ port will be much easier to make and will come out early alfa stage.
In short, it is not clear whether Apple are interested in going headlong against IE or Firefox for Windows, but even if they don't intend to make such ports themselves, they are definitely making it easier for developers who are interested in doing so to port the webkit/webcore framework to whichever OS they fancy.
OK, I don't want to start a holly war here - it is pure coincidence that the example is form Apple.
Here there are two clips called Knowledge Navigator (just below the middle of the page). I think those illustrate very well what the parent means.
And I agree this is the way to go, not 3D. Did anyone follow the link to Tactile3D. The screenshot gallery made me seasick. It's all too cumbersome and confusing. I can't picture my mother using this.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for open source and better computer literacy (and why not even IT, software development, informatics, etc.) education, for it is one of the few things that can potentially drag the country (maybe even the region) out of the economic sticky situation (in one of the posts above was mentioned a 30-something percent unemployment rating), but the only thing this step will achieve is it will save the Macedonian government a couple of gazillion, bibijillion, quantifimfimfimillion dollars for Microsoft software. Thats about all. Cut the wet dreams of hordes of open source developers.