Patching an original Apple disc

[Stoney3K]

I'm wondering, would patching an original Apple disc or releasing patches to original Apple discs (so they can only be used by existing Mac owners) also be illegal? I know it might violate Apple's software patents, but us Europeans couldn't care less about that (since those patents don't hold here) and strictly speaking, you would not be violating Apple's copyright laws that way. It would be similar to the console emulator scene -- who are only legally allowed to play games they own on emulators (and thus have the original game media).

 

In any case, as long as Apple won't release OSX on the public market, we're stuck with this problem even if the technical opportunities for Jobs to knock Gates off the market are basically available. Would they have released Tiger as a separate software package when the Mac/Intel transition was complete, and leave driver development up to third parties (which is possible, since the Darwin kernel is open source), they would certainly have knocked Vista off the map and it would have gone the WinME route.

 

(Between you and me: I'm certainly more comfortable with an Apple-driven market monopoly instead of a Microsoft one.)

[voxxdigital]

If you already have an original Apple disc it comes with a Macintosh too. The spare Apple Tiger discs are sold for PowerPC only. So yes, you technically can patch you own disc (make it sure with your lawyer) but you will certainly won't want to since you already have a shiny Macintosh to run the unpatched disc. And if you already have an original disc that came with a Macintosh and you still want to patch it you don't need to have the trouble, having the disc and downloading the already patched disc image would be the same as patching the disc yourself. The license is what counts so, you could run the patched disc on a PC as long as you don't run your OS X license in your Macintosh (one license, one computer at a time).

 

However if you don't have the original Apple disc that comes with a Macintosh with it (which I believe it's the case) I'm not sure how legal would be to have an original Apple disc for PowerPC and a patched disc for Intel. You will ask your lawyer anyway.

 

Abount the market, I'm not sure what would be an Apple-driven market monopoly instead of a Microsoft one. I trust Apple as much as I trust Microsoft, and Apple products uses to be way more expensive. And they deliberately lie a lot ("Intel is {censored}, Apple will never move to Intel" - while OSX was born on Intel platform and was countinuously developed on Intel since then).

[Stoney3K]

If you already have an original Apple disc it comes with a Macintosh too. The spare Apple Tiger discs are sold for PowerPC only. So yes, you technically can patch you own disc (make it sure with your lawyer) but you will certainly won't want to since you already have a shiny Macintosh to run the unpatched disc. And if you already have an original disc that came with a Macintosh and you still want to patch it you don't need to have the trouble, having the disc and downloading the already patched disc image would be the same as patching the disc yourself. The license is what counts so, you could run the patched disc on a PC as long as you don't run your OS X license in your Macintosh (one license, one computer at a time).

 

However if you don't have the original Apple disc that comes with a Macintosh with it (which I believe it's the case) I'm not sure how legal would be to have an original Apple disc for PowerPC and a patched disc for Intel. You will ask your lawyer anyway.

 

Apple should be able to ship spare discs from their support department for Macintels as well, since more and more Intel-based Macs are hitting the market. I've got a Mac Mini that may be better at running Windows XP while I have a powerhouse notebook that is capable of doing OSX with Final Cut Pro. The bottom line is, that in that way, we could release patches of original Apple discs and not having to rely on piracy sites and torrents, and possibly get more media attention. (And, even more possibly, resulting in Jobs finally boxing Leopard as a spare and hitting the shelves alongside Vista, as more and more systems are proven to work in "Hack OS X"). If people wanted to get their own copies of Apple discs, that's their own responsibility. Secondly, historically software has been proven more successful if there is an easy way to create backups (or pirated copies). If people really appreciate the quality of a software package, they WILL buy it. Period. I wouldn't be willing to spend hundreds of €€€ on an XP/Vista license, but I'd certainly slap down a few hundred euros for a lifetime OSX license!

 

Abount the market, I'm not sure what would be an Apple-driven market monopoly instead of a Microsoft one. I trust Apple as much as I trust Microsoft, and Apple products uses to be way more expensive. And they deliberately lie a lot ("Intel is {censored}, Apple will never move to Intel" - while OSX was born on Intel platform and was countinuously developed on Intel since then).

 

Apple values brand name and loyal consumers more than Microsoft does, where Microsoft often compensates with heavy marketing and development tradeoffs. Not to mention the charisma Jobs has which Gates clearly hasn't (but that's a personal issue), and that OSX is superior in many ways to Vista (which is essentially pimped out XP with a 2003 kernel), only lacking on the gaming front. Microsoft still has the notion that it is the only major player on the OS market (where they have already been knocked out of the server market in favor of Linux), but the desktop market is splitting up more and more. They've already lost Office on the consumer front (where OpenOffice.org is being more and more prominent, I'm an IT professional and all the installs we do are with OO.org), and Vista has little added value in favor of XP.

[voxxdigital]

Well I doubt that Apple would ever release a PC version of OS X because they say they are a hardware company - so if they did so they would be competing with themselves - why would I buy an expensive Mac Pro if I can legally run OS X on a better PC for the half of the price? Unless they change their business policy.

 

As for Apple's respect for its loyal consumers - well I can't say Apple doesn't have any respect. Progress comes first. Apple changes technologies, intefaces, connectors, protocols and standards dropping the previous ones for the sake of progress and don't care about the consumer's installed base and peripherals. I work with pro audio and I can say that. I bought a Pro Tools TDM (PCI cards) system which costed me an arm and a leg - about six times the price of the best Mac at the time. Then Apple moved to PCI-x and dropped completely all the PCI platform - so my cards were instantly toast - I got stuck with an un-upgradeable old Mac. I feel sorry for the people that bought Pro Tools PCI-x because shortly later Apple moved again to PCI-e dropping completely PCI-x. Same happened with serial and SCSI ports - I had an expensive professional 15x15 MIDI serial interface which was no longer supported when the blue G3 came out. USB was better an more compatible, but why instantly drop serial ports with no period of transition? This forced obsolecence, which is an Apple's common practice, forces the consumers to turn obsolete all their hardware investment which in some cases costs more than the Mac itself.

[Stoney3K]

I didn't state that Apple RESPECTS their loyal customers, I only said they VALUE their loyal customers (which is entirely in Apple's point of view, and doesn't neccessarily mean they do more for their customers than Microsoft does)

 

But let's not make it an "Apple business policy" topic here. Point is that they essentially turned Macs into expensive PC's when they went Intel and released Boot Camp, it's only fair to do it the other way round as well (turn inexpensive PC's into Macs). With QuickTime and iTunes they became more than a regular hardware company, as these packages are software-only.

 

The only reason I'm posting it here is that there may be a lot of people who have an original Mac installation disc, and want to "try out" running Mac OS on their PC's as well. Plus, the fact that we may be able to release diffs from the original CD only (thereby legally restricting use to existing Apple customers) on the Web without any fear of prosecution, and maybe even catch Apple's attention in a good way. After all, if you do the raw math, at the moment PC's offer an order of magnitude more value for money.

[voxxdigital]

I didn't state that Apple RESPECTS their loyal customers, I only said they VALUE their loyal customers (which is entirely in Apple's point of view, and doesn't neccessarily mean they do more for their customers than Microsoft does)

 

Yes right, I a gree with you. I was ranting a bit more than I should because I felt "betrayed" by Apple more than one time. Maybe this occurs because while Apple users loves their Macs Apple Computer many times doesn't care about their investment. I don't trust Microsoft either and I'd choose OS X a million times over Windows if I could. But fact is, Microsoft's support never let me down not a single time. And of course, since Microsoft is essentially a software company it's not up to them to decide what it's obsolete and what's not - they want their software running in the maximum number of computers as possible.

 

But let's not make it an "Apple business policy" topic here. Point is that they essentially turned Macs into expensive PC's when they went Intel and released Boot Camp, it's only fair to do it the other way round as well (turn inexpensive PC's into Macs). With QuickTime and iTunes they became more than a regular hardware company, as these packages are software-only.

 

True. And now there is Safari for Windows too. But if they released OS X for PCs I believe their Mac sales would severely drop. Maybe that's the cause of ther refuse to release OS X for standard PCs. Furthermore there would need a major addition od driver for the thousands of motherboards and assorted hardware out there, and Apple could not guarantee that OS X running on a Xing-Ling PC would be as reliable as running on a Mac Pro. Anyway the day that OS X is being sold for PCs I will be the first in line to buy my copy.

 

The only reason I'm posting it here is that there may be a lot of people who have an original Mac installation disc, and want to "try out" running Mac OS on their PC's as well. Plus, the fact that we may be able to release diffs from the original CD only (thereby legally restricting use to existing Apple customers) on the Web without any fear of prosecution, and maybe even catch Apple's attention in a good way. After all, if you do the raw math, at the moment PC's offer an order of magnitude more value for money.

 

I think that's a matter of every country's laws. I believe that such restriction of running on Apple hardware is valid in the USA only, if it is legally valid at all. Buying a spare disc of OS X for Mac Intel doesn't mean buying the license however, if they have spare discs they would be for replacement for a bundled system. I believe you should really ask your lawyer to make sure of the legal aspect, even if the PPC version wouldn't be enough for legal purposes.

 

Funny, you are allowed to hack and modify OS X to run on older, unsupported Macs with an utility called XPostFacto. Apple doesn't even really care if you bought OS X or not. But they become really pissed off if you modify OS X to run on a PC - and showing that eventually the king had no clothes after all, that is, you can run OS X actually faster on a cheap PC than on a Mac.

[Stoney3K]

In any case, the reason I'm posting it here is that we could move out of the undergrounds of piracy -- and put simple patch files publicly available without any threat from Apple. (If someone would make their own pirated discs, that's not our responsibility). My server is in Europe and most of the terms and conditions Apple imples are for US residents only ("We're Americans, so we're the entire digital world") as with most of Apple's services.

 

Especially with all the troubles surrounding Vista (DRM and such), Apple's OSX could be a real market breaker in terms of digital media and high definition content. The ultimate move would be to merge the 2.6.x Linux kernel source into the OSX Darwin tree -- the 2.6 source tree has support for most PC-based platforms. The API's are similar, if not identical, as OSX has to comply with the UNIX spec, so a kernel merge would be less work than developing all the drivers independently.

[voxxdigital]

That would be interesting, altough there's still no option of buying a spare license of OS X for Intel - unless the PPC version is legally enough. Leopard will be available for individual sale, but some say that Apple will close its sources.