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Apple Businesses

Apple Sends Hidden Message to Hackers? 631

Posted by Zonk from the cute-very-cute dept.
RetrogradeMotion writes "The OSx86 Project is reporting on a hidden message to hackers in Apple's new MacBook Pro. The new Intel-based OS X contains a file named 'Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext' and is accompanied by the message, 'The purpose of this Apple software is to protect Apple copyrighted materials from unauthorized copying and use.' The file is not present in either the PowerPC version of OS X or the Intel version shipped to developers last year. While Apple has sent messages to hackers before, is this a tounge-in-cheek introduction to the anticipated (and hated) Trusted Platform Module? Is locking down OS X a strategic necessity or a missed opportunity?" Obviously a big maybe here, but a good story just the same.
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Apple Sends Hidden Message to Hackers? More

Apple Sends Hidden Message to Hackers?

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  • Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x86? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:50PM (#14478209)
    I recall a company in the past that wouldn't sell you their software unless you purchased their hardrware. They were taken to court and forced to unbundle the OS from the Hardware since the OS was capable for running on other hardware. I can't recall the company name off hand but I feel someone will to do the same to Apple.

    • Re:Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x (Score:5, Informative)

      by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:56PM (#14478240) Journal
      It was IBM, but they were also under Anti-Trust scrutiny that placed a lot of restrictions on their business. Another example: They were forced to license things like ISA and VGA to PC clone manufacturers for a very low price.

      • Re:Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Malor ( 3658 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:30PM (#14478417) Journal
        I don't think that's true. I believe ISA was simply reverse engineered, I don't think it was ever licensed by anybody. That was the whole point to the PS/2 and the Micro Channel architecture... it was something IBM actually owned and COULD license. They had this vision of a piece of every PC out there, but MCA was complex, expensive to implement, and then expensive to license on top of that. So, for the most part, the industry just went around them, with EISA (never broadly taken up), VESA Local Bus for graphics, and then eventually PCI. Micro Channel died a quiet death.

        I don't think anyone has ever attempted to license VGA, either. NVidia and ATI license out their modern 3D chips to third parties, but basic VGA functionality is, to my best knowledge, a completely free specification, and always has been.

        • No, ISA was under a government-mandated Reasonable And Non-Discrimatory hardware license program which dated from the minicomputer wars of the 1970s. Every PC clone vendor paid IBM several dollars per PC up until the late 1990s when the patents finally expired.

          IBM supposedly developed MicroChannel several years earlier and sat on it until they could get the Reagan DOJ to let them out of their consent decrees. That's why MCA was not under RND licensing (ie, not only was it more expensive, IBM could have used
          • "No, ISA was under a government-mandated Reasonable And Non-Discrimatory hardware license program which dated from the minicomputer wars of the 1970s."

            I'll just disagree in a friendly way with you.

            When MCA came out it was covered with dozens of patents and it had to be licensed. However, a condition of licensing was that you had to agree to pay back royalties on ISA on every PC you ever shipped. I recall that for the most part, IBM was simply looking for other companies to acknowledge that ISA was owned b

    • Re:Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x (Score:4, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:09PM (#14478307) Homepage Journal
      Except in that case there was some unfair monopoly issues involved.

      In apples case, the market share is far to small to be even considered for that.. So they can bundle as much as they want.
    • I recall a company in the past that wouldn't sell you their software unless you purchased their hardrware. They were taken to court and forced to unbundle the OS from the Hardware since the OS was capable for running on other hardware. I can't recall the company name off hand but I feel someone will to do the same to Apple.

      People who don't understand monopoly law should have their fingers hacked off so they don't post such stupid comments.

      Look, I know some people like to bash Apple because they tie the OS t

      • Re:Idiotic comment about unbundling software (Score:5, Funny)

        by ethanrider ( 129483 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:19PM (#14478353)
        People who don't understand monopoly law should have their fingers hacked off so they don't post such stupid comments.

        Clearly they should be shot on site, in case they learn to type with their elbows.
      • The grandfather post said nothing about monopolies, just binding software to specific hardware. Two different things. It seems to me that the point was that if you buy a piece of software, you buy a right to run it on whatever you want. Hence, emulators are not illegal, but roms are.

        Perhaps you should read a post before posting a hysterical comeback with eugenic overtones. I'll go play in the shallow end, you and ESR can do what you please in the patio section.

    • I recall a company in the past that wouldn't sell you their software unless you purchased their hardrware. They were taken to court and forced to unbundle the OS from the Hardware since the OS was capable for running on other hardware.

      If this were the case, it wouldn't be any different than things were before the transition to x86. There were, and still, other machines available that run on the PowerPC (or the mostly-compatible POWER) architecture other than Macs, so this issue already existed.

      In f

      • Re:Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tm2b ( 42473 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:21PM (#14478634) Journal
        I had an Amiga (also a 68k processor), and there was some company back then that sold a board that allowed you to take ROMs out of a dead Mac and put them on their board, and then you could boot Mac OS up as a task under AmigaDOS.
        LOL. Yep, that was the EMPLANT [wikipedia.org], and worked really well. The main problem with the product was that the company's president (Jim Drew) would consistently absurdly overpromise on the newsgroup (to the point where people were maintaining a huge file called "Jim Drew's lies"). The product itself was pretty solid, except that it turned out that despite Jim Drew's claims that the board had a custom magic emulation engine, really wasn't much more than a glorified dongle with serial ports and a socket to read the Mac ROMs.

        At some point later, Christian Bauer released Shapeshifter to compete with EMPLANT, and then after Jim Drew claimed that Shapeshifter was stealing EMPLANT ip (which kind of put the lie to his earlier claims that the card held the emulation engine) released the GPLed Basilisk II [cebix.net], which is still usable on modern hardware - emulating the MCM680x0 Mac under Windows, x86 Linux and Unixes, and PPC Mac OS X.

        In any case, if I recall correctly the ROM wasn't even used directly... you could obtain a ROM image on the net if you didn't have one to rip with the card.

    • Re:Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ThaFooz ( 900535 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:22PM (#14478636)
      Can't Apple be forced to release OS X for all x86?

      It would be nice to be able to run OSX on the desktop without buying new hardware, I've been quite happy with it on the laptop. But I fear that supporting the near-infinite number of configurations would introduce stability problems and slow Apple's rate of development... which is a big reason that its attractive in the first place.

      Honestly, the only reason I'd want to run OSX on generic x86 is simply because I don't like ANY of Apple's desktop setups. The Mac Mini is underpowered with a G4 and 64 meg video card, I don't like the concept of married Computers/Displays a la iMac, and the PowerMac is kind of overkill for my purposes. I mean, am I really the only one that wants (one) reasonable CPU & a nice (upgradable) video card of occasional gaming in a seperate tower so that I can upgrade thie display seperatley and use the machine as a server when its outlived its usefullness as a desktop?

  • Twisted Thought (Score:2, Interesting)

    by freerangegeek ( 451133 ) *
    What if that's the file that the TPM system uses to "sign" the OS? Essentially you have to have "/System/Library/Extensions/Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext" present on your system to boot OS X with exactly those contents. If you have it, it means you've got the warning in place and can't claim ignorance if sued for improper use of the OS.
    • If this were the case, it would have shades of their OS X 10.1 update CD debacle [staticusers.net]. Basically you could take the free 10.1 update CD [that you could walk into many CompUSAs and pick up off the counter] and convert it to a full 10.1 install CD. The update CDs had a file on them that basically flagged them as an update. If you imaged the disc, removed this file, then reburned it, it would act as a full 10.1 install CD.
    • Apple management wants to protect its hardware profits, so Apple lawyers are threatening to sue anyone who attempts to hack the Mac OS onto some common PC hardware.

      Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?

      Hence, Apple manag

      • Re:Logical Thought: Apple & Hardware Profits (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Apple could morph into a pure software house specializing in multimedia OSes

        And instantly be crushed by Microsoft.

      • Re:Logical Thought: Apple & Hardware Profits (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        A huge portion of what makes the Mac OS X so valuable is the user experience that goes with it. A decent portion of the user experience lies in the hardware integration, and in the quality of the hardware on which it runs. If I had OS X running on my previous laptop (Toshiba Satellite 3000-something, I think), for instance... It was a great laptop, but the hardware is just not the same caliber as that which Apple sells. More importantly, OS X is not DESIGNED for the Toshiba Satellite line, nor is the Satell

      • Hackers are irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:44PM (#14478723) Homepage
        Apple management will fail in its attempts to thwart the hackers.

        The hackers and a handful of tech savy users that want OS X on generic hardware are irrelevant. All Apple needs to do is prevent someone with the skills of an average user from being able to get Mac OS X working reliably on generic hardware. The generic PCs running Mac OS X will be novelties, more conversation pieces than serious work environments. There will not be a robust set of drivers, merely what ships on geniune Apple hardware. Apple can break the hack used to get it to work every system software update. It will be a somewhat unreliable machine, unavailable for days at a time while hackers reverse engineer and workaround the latest software update. Will they do so, sure, but it will be irrelevant to mainstream users.

      • Re:Logical Thought: Apple & Hardware Profits (Score:4, Insightful)

        by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @10:26PM (#14478915) Homepage
        Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?

        But the real story is the one that nobody seems to notice, for the last 15 years Microsoft has made all the profits that the computer resellers should have been making. Their large bulk is entirely made up of the razor-thin margins everybody else accepts for them. Bill Gates brags about brining the PC "ecosystem" to the world, cheap commodity computers that you can throw together and whip out of almost anything. What he doesn't mention is that he planned the whole thing back when Microsoft first sold DOS to IBM... we'll profit from everybody else's hard work. Everytime you see a hardware manufacturer go out of business, it's just a few hundred million MS got instead of them. The world was suckered in by them, if we had kept the old model of different companies making different operating systems the world could have been much nicer these days and the internet would definitely be more standardized. Imagine if MS hadn't killed BE... instead of Intel and MS ruling the desktop market for so long and forcing single threaded high-Megahurtz toaster oven computers on the world, we could have had BeOS 7 systems with Quad PPC chips with 4 cores on each by now. Imagine if Amiga could have stayed profitable... this whole stupid soap-opera episode of D'oh! Finally making the Pentium M could have been avoided. There's be a lot more nice OS' out there and some great hardware choices but... commodity won, and so did Bill. I really hope Apple can get people to think about quality once again.

  • Do hackers read .kext files? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:51PM (#14478213)
    I thought they only read .knfo files.

  • Please Stop The Idiotic Questions (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why do submitters always have to end their submission with the usual "Is this XXXX or is it YYYY?" It's so inane and pointless. Just submit the story without trying to inject your opinion with an idiotic question at the end.

    I can see one day in a slashdot story: "Is this a sign from God or the mark of the beast?" Please stop. You make the baby Jesus cry.

  • Brian, there's a message in my Alphabet. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:51PM (#14478215)
    It says ooooooooo.

    Peter, those are Cheerios.

    • Re:Brian, there's a message in my Alphabet. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wass ( 72082 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:58PM (#14478256)
      My friend, back in 1997, claimed that sometime a few years earlier he and his friends were trying to hack some game on his Mac, so they were browsing the various files with a hex editor. Apparently one of the files, somewhere in the middle, had alot of text saying "blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah" for many 'pages', and at some point in the middle said "why are you reading this?"

      Hell, maybe this example is even common knowledge amonst the slashdot crowd.

  • Recursively funny (Score:5, Funny)

    by houstonbofh ( 602064 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @07:57PM (#14478250)
    Anyone else amused that they quoted the text saying not to "distribute or reproduce" any portion of the text? Hehe... Too late!

  • Dont steal Mac OS, steal Windows! (Score:5, Funny)

    by CivilianHero ( 942419 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:00PM (#14478273)
    'Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext' Ok... stealing Windows!
  • Most computer users are stupid. They'd try to run OS X on a typical PC, it'd suck and then they'd do the typical stupid computer user thing which is to say "this software fucking sucks." Never mind that the software was targetted at a specific hardware platform, that's too much mental heavy lifting for the average, at least American, computer user. Apple has to prevent piracy of its OS if for no other reason than to protect the brand from the idiots out there who aren't smart enough to realize that OSX is D

  • Of course they want to keep it offa non-Macs! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Diordna ( 815458 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:06PM (#14478292) Homepage
    Think about it. One of the reasons Windows can be so annoying is that there are a bazillion different configurations. Apple can keep OS X running smoothly because they know exactly what's inside their machines. Once it gets put on a Dell, some idiot's going to complain about how buggy OS X is because it doesn't run on his own personal cobbled-together POS.

  • why bother (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:08PM (#14478299) Homepage Journal
    One problem with using a full commidity system is one them has to go to great and often silly lengths to make it look non comodity, else everyone else just copyies it. If Apple wants to limit Mac OS use to Apple equipment, then Apple should just say it won't support anyone who is not using Apple equpipment. Honestly, the foray into non-Apple hardware proved that cost cutting merely causes problems. I don't know anyone who bought one of those non-Apple machines that did not have big problems.

    Now, with regard to the text in question
    software is to protect Apple copyrighted materials from unauthorized copying and use.
    this could merely indicate that Apple is going get more aggressive about insuring that the OS in use is indeed paid for. That is, if a single user copy is bought, then it is only used on the single computer. I have no problems with this, as a five user edition can be acquired for less than Windows XP. Now, if this copy protection becomes too much of hassle and wastes my time, such as typing in long serial numbers, I will likely be looking for an OS with less hassle.

    But the facts remains that the move to intel will expose Apple to a greater risk of unlicensed use of thier product, and they are likely to react accordingly, no matter how silly. I hope they don't make me pay for an extra chip to manage thier shrinkage issue. I hope that it is a simple matter of registering the machine and the serial of the software at Apple, as they appear to do now, and then just leave us alone. Honestly, if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer. And given how ambivilant many of us are about the move to intel, I would hope that Apple would think long and hard about transforming that ambivilance to outright annoyance.

    • So if you try to pirate your copy of OSXi and it fails you will become an 'irate customer'?

      That makes a lot of sense. The are prolly better off without you.

      • Re:why bother (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mrchaotica ( 681592 )
        Bullshit.

        Which is better for Apple, a customer that has a normal x86 PC, buys an iMac, and copies the OS to the PC so that he can run OS X on both, or someone who just doesn't ever buy an iMac at all?

        • Re:why bother (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GaryPatterson ( 852699 )
          That's a pretty contrived argument.

          If the customer has bought an Apple computer and then copies the OS from one Mac to another, then I agree with your point.

          If, as I feel is vastly more likely, the customer copies OS X without ever purchasing either a single copy or anything from Apple, then the customer has no right to complain to Apple, and is not in fact a customer at all.

          It'd be nice to think that all pirates are just pirating between copies they own. A bit naive though.

      • Re:why bother (Score:3, Interesting)

        by IntlHarvester ( 11985 )
        It does make sense. Right now the vast majority of OS X users are Mac owners, so they "protect their investment" by heading onto the internet and saying great things about the software. Some pirate, on the other hand, has nothing invested in it, and will play with it for 10 minutes before starting talking crap about it. (Because unlike what Mac users tell you, nothing's perfect.)

        It's the Doom 3 Effect -- Millions of people bittorrented the game 3 days before it hit retail shelves, and then felt like they h

        • Re:why bother (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Senjutsu ( 614542 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:30PM (#14478414)
          It's the Doom 3 Effect -- Millions of people bittorrented the game 3 days before it hit retail shelves, and then felt like they had to justify the reason they didn't want to pay for it. So the overwhelming reaction was negative. Meanwhile, Half-Life 2 was DRM delivered to paying customers, who of course had a overwhelmingly positive reaction.

          Yes, that's a much more rational and likely explanation for the opinions on those two games than the fact that Half-Life 2 was good game and that Doom III was a pretty tech demo with shit game-play.

          • Re:why bother (Score:4, Interesting)

            by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:36PM (#14478443) Journal
            Well, I thought they were both good games. I just thought it was funny that the hive mind decided Doom 3 was super boring, while driving an airboat around doing nothing for 15 minutes was the height of game design.

            • Re:why bother (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Crizp ( 216129 )
              Driving a boat for 15 mins in HL2 was more eye-pleasing than walking through dark, dark hallways for 5 minutes in Doom 3.

              I liked both too - Doom 3 was seriously scary a few times if played on a large screen at night with surround sound at full blast. It reminded me of playing Doom 1 all those years ago. However, the darkness got a bit boring after a while. Without the flashlight mod it became almost unplayable after a while.

              HL2, on the other hand, had a much better storyline - no matter how linear the gamep
    • Honestly, the foray into non-Apple hardware proved that cost cutting merely causes problems. I don't know anyone who bought one of those non-Apple machines that did not have big problems.

      I have the exact opposite experience; I don't remember anyone with big problems with any of the clones. I'm still a proud owner of a Power Computing Power Tower Pro 225... never had a hardware problem with the computer itself in about 10 years of ownership (and about 5 years of daily use). It was a dream compared to its

      • Re:revenge of the clones (Score:4, Insightful)

        by aristotle-dude ( 626586 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:32PM (#14478422)
        That's nice. Apple was bleeding money before the clones were cancelled. It is not in Apple's best interest to do the clone thing. They loose the hardware margins and gain a huge amount of support costs. Apple had to support all of those Clone users for "free".

        MSFT is in a different position. They have the OEMs by the balls but do not actually make any hardware themselves.

    • One problem with using a full commidity system

      That the new Mac's use Intel processors does not make them commodity system. And in the same way non Apple PPC machines like the Pegasos machines from Genesi don't run MacOS X, commodity PCs will not either.

      if I wish to install one of my licensing of Mac OS on an extra PC, and I cannot, then I am likley to an become an irate customer.

      Then you are going to become irate, using a Intel processor does not mean it magically will run on a standard IBM archit

    • Re:why bother (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PhunkySchtuff ( 208108 ) <kai&automatica,com,au> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @10:03PM (#14478821) Homepage
      You just don't get it, do you?
      Apple aren't selling you an OS that will potentially run on a PC.
      They are selling you a turn-key solution. They are selling you something that works out-of-the-box.
      They are selling you the end-user experience.

      A Mac is not a Mac because of the chips inside it, a Mac is the whole shebang - the _quality_ of the hardware, the integration of the software, the whole user experience.

      There is no way known it will be as simple as entering a serial number to run it on your whitebox PC. This just ain't gonna happen. Apple aren't at all interested in supporting your BogoComm WinModem and your SuperWin ATA to PS/2 bridge adapter. They support OS X on a known hardware base platform and it makes everyone's life easier. Apple are happy as they have a known target to develop for. Users are happy because they know it will Just Work (tm) and Techs/Developers are happy because it's easier to support a known configuration.

      If you're likely to become irate that you can't install OS X on your PC then you're not the target market for Apple's product anyway.

  • Legality of Apple tying software to hardware. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GnuPooh ( 696143 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:09PM (#14478312) Homepage
    OK I've asked a couple lawyers and they all seem to agree. If Apple sells their OS separately on their website (which they do)*. They can't legal say that you can only use their software their hardware. The other side of course is you need to break the DMCA to use it on any other hardware. I'd really like to see someone challege Apple in court. I don't think they can legally say you can buy their OS, but can only use it on their hardware.

    * Currently, they only sell the PPC version, but let's assume they'll offer the next release to Intel Mac users.
    • They don't want to stop individual users from running OS X on generic PCs as much as they want to stop people from telling OTHERS how to run OS X on generic PCs. If you spread the knowledge, thats what they wnat to stop.
    • Currently, they only sell the PPC version, but let's assume they'll offer the next release to Intel Mac users.
      You could challenge them now, if you bought a non-Apple PPC (e.g. Pegasos or Amiga).

    • Re:Legality of Apple tying software to hardware. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by E8086 ( 698978 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:38PM (#14478447)
      If that's the case, it sounds a lot like the garage door opener and Lexmark ink cartrige arguements, both rejected. You can only use our remote with our door opener, you can only use our ink cartriges with our printers. Both tried to "encrypt" the devices to claim protection under the DMCA(anti-napster act) to stop the generic device makers and both failed. Now it seems Apple could be trying to prevent the use if its software on generic PC hardware. To challenge this in court, assuming you've legally purchased the software and have all the receipts and paperwork all should have to do is use "to use on generic hardware" in the right places and make it look like Apple is trying some anti-competition practices.

  • A better message would have been: (Score:5, Funny)

    by kadathseeker ( 937789 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:09PM (#14478313) Homepage
    Keep up the good work! Thanks guys, without you jumping on every Winblows exploit, we would never have gotten where we are today. Linux and OS X for a brighter future! - The Apple Team

  • Legal Clones? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:13PM (#14478327) Homepage Journal
    Can some Apple officiados tell me whether or not it was legal to make PPC-based Mac clones without needing some special license from Apple? I vaguely remember something about a court case or 10 where clone makers were told they could sell machines with OS-X preinstalled so long as they used no Apple logos on their promotions and made it clear to their customers that they were indeed buying a clone. Wouldn't the same rulings apply if Dell wanted to ship Intel-based Mac clones with OS-X preinstalled? Not that I imagine they would.

  • No finesse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:15PM (#14478335)
    Cute message but of course it's not hidden in any way; it lacks the finesse and charm of the "Stolen © Apple" easter egg (described at the second link in the article summary, for those who didn't RTFA). Too bad nobody ever copied the ROM on the early Macs and get busted; it would have been a pretty hilarious moment in Apple legal history for someone to bring that message up on the screen during a trial. This would serve the same purpose if it wasn't so obvious; then again, perhaps there is a hidden version of the same message just waiting to be popped open at the right time....

  • At this point... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greyrose111 ( 945171 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:25PM (#14478384)
    it's an absolute necessity to lock down OS X from PC use. Apple has, after a series of costly mistakes (i.e. believing that a major corporation like IBM would actually spend money to actively develop a chip that has less that 4% market share) backed themselves into a corner when it comes to software and hardware development. Not to say they aren't good at either of those, but they now serve a very focused and very concentrated user base, consisting mainly of schools and, of course, artists of every kind. The cost is that to continue making the products they do, they must charge a relative premium.
            And if their (excellent) software were suddenly available for the $350 dollar PC you bought from dell (don't tell me no one in their right mind would dare put the holy OS X on a dell... there are enough people not in their right mind to make that common practice) their computer market would be cut in half because frankly; every school, business and especially those poor ass artists, would love to run a safer and more creative friendly platform on a cheaper computer.
            Now, maybe they could make more money if they just dropped computer development completely, but I think someone over at Apple believes that they can start to take some more serious market share back... and with the Intel Macs, it looks as though they can.

    • Re:At this point... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by windowpain ( 211052 )
      Microsoft never sold a PC in its life and its market capitalization is four times that of Apple. When is Apple going to wake up and realize they could grow a lot bigger if they got over their obsession with selling high-margin computers and licensed an even higher margin OS to PC makers. It didn't work the first time they tried it because they did it half-assed.

      Without stooping to Microsoft's business practices it could still be "first among (un)equals" in hardware for the Mac platform just as Microsoft has

      • Re:At this point... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @10:06PM (#14478837) Homepage
        Microsoft's success has pretty much always been based on winning price wars. They won the OS battle by having the cheapest OS combined with cheap hardware. They won the office suite battle by selling for around 30% of what the compitition was selling for. They made huge progress on the server front by being much cheaper than Oracle, Sun....

        How is Apple supposed to win on that front? Apple has never shown the ability to outperform companies like Dell with respect to logistics. Apple has never shown an ability to offer the best value for the money in a mature market (according the the mainstream). What Apple has shown is an ability to out innovate.

  • publicly perform? (Score:5, Funny)

    by JourneyExpertApe ( 906162 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:36PM (#14478442)
    You may not copy, modify, reverse engineer, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, transfer or redistribute this file, in whole or in part.

    "For this next song, we're going to play 'Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext'." WTF?

  • It worked for MP3's (Score:5, Funny)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:43PM (#14478475) Homepage Journal
    Every iPod has a sticker that says "Don't Steal Music". And we all know iPod users are the least likely to steal. This is obviously because Apple users in general always pay attention to little lables like this. And by touching anything Apple, even their code, by proxy makes you an Apple user, it's like a disease, it's catchy.

    I believe anyone hoping to see OS X running on non-Apple hardware is gonna be SOL now.

  • Too bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:48PM (#14478501)
    I've never given Microsoft any money if I could help it, but I'd be happy to pay for an OS X that would run on the computers I have. But that's just it, I HAVE hardware. I don't want to buy any more. I like having hardware that will run whatever OS I care to boot to.

    I suppose the question is whether Apple's X86 hardware will boot Windows (not just run it in a window or emulate it) - then the apple hardware might be the generic platform to run Win/Linux/OS X.

    • Re:Too bad (Score:3, Informative)

      by MochaMan ( 30021 )
      And one more [windowsitpro.com] article that seems to indicate it will be possible with Vista, but that XP would require some tricks to get working. I would suspect that if Linux does not yet support it, it will very quickly.

  • Diagnostic output on an Intel iMac (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:49PM (#14478502)
    Here's the output of system_profiler, ioreg, and kextstat on an Intel-based iMac:

    http://appleintelfaq.com/#17.6 [appleintelfaq.com]

    Of note in ioreg:

    | +-o TPM

    And kextstat:

    83 0 0x20a15000 0x3000 0x2000 com.apple.Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X (4.0.0)

  • Funnier file name (Score:5, Funny)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @08:53PM (#14478511) Journal
    'Dont Steal Mac OS X.kthnx'

  • I love GNU (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cyno ( 85911 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @09:32PM (#14478677) Journal
    Windows is alright and OSX is pretty, but I love GNU.

    I've noticed, Microsoft sure spends a lot of time and money patching their OS and making sure hackers like me can't easily activate it when we move our harddrives between PCs. And Apple has been trying hard to keep me from copying any of those songs my friends purchase from iTunes. And now OSX will only run on Apple x86 hardware, even though it may have drivers for another PC and be able to run just find on it. Some people might even be willing to pay the $130 retail price to be able to use it. But that's not for me.

    If I want it I know I can get it. You see, I have friends that know all about Windows XP activation and how to get around it. And they know all about OSX and how to crack it too. I can even steal music from iTunes. But why don't I?

    Because I love GNU. I love the effort a bunch of people are putting into this system. And you know something? None of that effort, none of that time or money is going towards DRM or any lockin/lockout, activation, CD-KEY authorization or other form of authoritarian copy prevention technology that might one day cost me time and money when I try to use the software in a way other than its original intended purpose. Plus we get access to the source code. And on top of all of that, we get the right to modify and resell it.

    I'd love to see Microsoft or Apple compete with that. But I know they won't. They can't. Capitalism won't let them. Not until its too late.

  • Text in the code... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Sunday January 15, 2006 @11:40PM (#14479270) Journal
    "seineeW erA setariP X SOcaM"

  • Just like the iPod (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daniel_mcl ( 77919 ) on Monday January 16, 2006 @08:12AM (#14480850)
    If you open up the original iPod firmware in a hex editor with the proper number of columns, the first thing you see is an ASCII-Art stop sign and a scary legal message. This is nothing new.

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