2006-02-26
Make the Apple patches harder to install.
"David Reid":http://www.david-reid.com/cynic/?p=385 wrote a excellent post about how Apple is fighting a impossible battle with the OS/X hackers who release the patches to make OS/X run on a regular PC.
my thoughts is that Apple needs the lawyers, as it comes down to where apple makes money.
It uses the attractiveness of OS/X to sell the hardware (at "my calcs":http://feh.holsman.net/articles/2006/01/27/is-apple-more-expensive about a $700 premium to other known brands like IBM or Dell).
Apple knows people will crack it, and run it on plain x86 boxes, I think it is more concerned that this becomes a regular, established practice where regular joes will be able to:
* Find the patch
* Be able to do it themselves
* Confidence that it will work for a long time
Apple has control over 2 out of 3 of these variables.
It is using it's lawyers to control the location of the patch, making it harder to find.
And by making every OS upgrade a question of 'will it break my setup if I upgrade' it will stop the casual person from using it. (I know I live in fear that will my "Cisco VPN":http://feh.holsman.net/articles/2005/11/02/cisco-vpn-mac will still work with every OS or VPN software upgrade).
If I were Apple I would be getting some of it's kernel hackers to release multiple bad patches and releasing them in several non-affiliated places, and make it a "Lemon's Market":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons where you wouldn't know for sure if this patch is the real deal, or one which pops up a message every 2-3 hours saying "Support your Apple Software by buying it's Hardware", or my favorite adding in delay cycles so that OS/X just runs 2-3 times slower on non-apple hardware. This is why Apple keeps on changing it's software.. it lowers the users confidence in the patch, and makes them nervous.
As for people desiring to run OS/X, they are counting on it. Eventually those people will shell out the money and purchase a iBook/macbook pro. If I were Apple I would make a OS/X trial version which runs for 30-60 days on regular hardware, so that people can get a taste for what life is really like.
My suggestion to the patch makers is to do what you can to lower the threat profile of this yourselves. Make the patch really hard to install, so that only the most determined hacker (or his close friends) can run it.
Apple won't care if the 'alpha-hackers' are running on white-box PC's. They want as many of those people to write the OS/X software for the regular joe's to run. As long as there is a hurdle to jump which makes it impossible for regular Joe's to run OS/X software on white-box PC's Apple will stop playing with the other 2 variables and leave you in peace.