Well, there are ways around all of this. Not matter what you create their will be piracy. Apple could sell their OS to PC users to make tons of money. Lets say you download windows xp coporate edition, the one you never have to activate. well none of the service packs runs on those. So if you have a pirated version you can't install any service packs or vital updates. which means no usb2 support since it comes in SP1. Ever notice how the OS disk that comes with your mac only works on that exactly model of mac's. I had an imac in my shop about 2 months ago that had no software with it at all. I had to reinstall os 10.2, so i was using a retail box version. The imac would not boot off the cds at all, but would mount them in the OS. After tons of troubleshooting and phone calls with apple; apple told me that retail box versions of the OS will not work on that model imac, only the OS CD's it came with will. There was nothing I could have done to fix this, I had to track down the exact restore CD. its not like apple cannot develope any kind of copyright protection for their software/hardware.

Even if there was tons of piracy just think of the revenue increase of Mac OS being sold w/ PCs and PC users buying it to run on their intel or amd based system. You cannot escape piracy at all, but you can gain profit when you increase your customer base on the market.

See I think if Apple made their OS for PCs, then they'd pretty much go under. They are and always have been primarily a hardware company. That's where nearly 75% of their revenue comes from.. if they license their OS for a PC, who's going to buy their expensive hardware? Not many. Most people will go to their local computer store and buy all the crappy pieces/parts needed to build their own machine. Suddenly Apple's only making 10-30% of their revenue? *flush*

That's not correct. Service packs work flawlessly on Corporate Edition XP Pro.

Err...no, there are no issues with installing service packs on legal copies of XP Pro Corporate Edition. You can also pirate the Corporate Edition and download service packs, too. MS invalidated a few KEYS - maybe that's what you mean.

The Mac bit is correct. Apple does that to try to limit piracy.

That's misleading. The Retail OS X will boot that Mac, if you use a Retail OS X version that was released AFTER that iMac was created. For example, Retail OS X 10.2 will boot the first and second gen iMac, but not the newest 17" 1Ghz iMac, because the 17" 1Ghz iMac was released after OS X 10.2 was released.

Yes - and they're doing it exactly as we're discussing - the "BIOS" and machine ID on those newer Macs is just a little bit different, so OS X won't install on them without it being a known machineID. :)

Of course. But the idea here is to strictly limit what Apple does and does not support - and one suggestion to do that was to limit the machines Apple would support by a BIOS-change method.

Right ... which is why we're having this discussion of how Apple could *lock* their OS so it would only work on Asus and Gigabye motherboards with an Apple ROM on it. That would stop people from being able to use MacOS with a generic PC and would force people to buy the PC from Apple if they want to run MacOS.

Nope the retail box version did NOT boot that 17in flat panel imac. it would mount in the OS but not boot off the retail box version. This is because the new 17" come with a DVD instead of 2 CDs. It did not work, and apple told me it wouldn't. Apple may have fixed that now, but the very first imacs that came with the dvd of OS X will not boot retail box versions of os 10.2.

Also, no you cannot update a hacked version of xp corp. you have to download and install a hacked update of SP1. So you have to run a hacked update on a hacked OS, so you may run into tons of problems.

As far as apple hardware, if apple made their prices reasonable, people would buy them. One great example is the pioneer 105 drive that apple puts in all their G4 desktops cost $950.00, and its a pioneer 105 drive. Also they don't make their hardware they just design it. Open up a CRT iMac and what do you find printed on the circuit boards....LG. Apple could do the same with intel based hardware. Anything that wanted to support the Mac OS would have to pay apple a royality for using their technology. go out and purchase 2 P4 procs, and its way cheaper than a dual G4 processor board. So, if apple does rely on hardware sales and goes into the market of PC's and the whole build your own thing, they would lose ton of money; unless they were to make their parts have cheaper sale prices. Apple hardware is not the absolute greatest hardware on the planet, so people would cut corners buy cheaper hardware and run the mac os on it. So, apple will probably never ever release the OS to be put on a PC. I don't blame them, however I would love to see how it would run on my Plll at home compared to my ibook (p3 800mhz vs an ibook 700mhz both have 512mb of ram).

Again apple is rumored to be buying a record label, a major one. 2 years ago they bought out emagic (for those of you who don't know what that is - its digital recording software, professional level stuff http://www.emagic.de ) so it looks like they are wanting to get into the music business. So if they make tons of money off that who knows what they will do with their computer systems. Also that online music store they have sold what was it, 600,000 songs opening weekend? not bad eh?

Err...yeah, that's what I said. The reason for that is because the 17" iMac was released after 10.2.

I think you're a bit confused. The only problem people have had with SP1 is with a particular string of keys that was widely distributed in the beginning of the XP release; Microsoft cracked down and dropped support of those keys. The SP1 update knows about those keys and refused to install on those keys. Services packs in general, though, install perfectly on a purchased copy of XP Corporate - or a copy with the right keys.

I wish Apple would release a G4/1.42x2 Cube for $1000 too; I doubt it's going to happen though.

Well, yes, that's what we've been talking about - ways for Apple to sell fairly generic motherboards and force people to buy from them if they want to run OS X. So far we've talked about forcing a BIOS check in the operating system; that would stop people from buying any old x86 PC and running OS X on it.


It's made a few million. In the grand scheme of things it's very little, but it's sustainable over the long haul and doesn't depend on Apple constantly selling new hardware (and eventually it can be sold to PC users too); these are major advantages compared to trying to sell to the ever-shrinking Mac market.

what about a pci card? that would be better than an apple bios coz u could just take it home and wack it in your machine, and pcmcia for laptops, a dongle for your OS, man isn't life getting interesting

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Well some company did that for apple you could actually buy a pci card that made your mac into a pc. It had a MB, proc, ram on it. It was a way of running around virtual PC. As I remember the card was 700 retail which you can build a PC for that much, so it was kinda lame.

yeah, i was thinking just sort of a dongle like with most high end apps, even usb would do

But Apple wants to sell you the entire machine so they can guarantee compatibility and rake in all the profits - hence they'd want to sell you an Intel *box*, not a PCI card.

That would lower profit for Apple, and it wouldn't allow them to provide all the features of the box (graphics, HDD, sound, etc.) so they couldn't "guarantee" compatibility.

Long ago I had a Centris 610 with the Apple DOS compatibility card inside of it. I think I paid around $250 or so for it, and it was a 486/25 or so with sound and video. It was a hack, but it worked pretty well, and allowed one to play PC games of the era.

I can't remember what model of one we had, but in our denver branch we had one in our G3. When I was working in denver I used it to run virtual PC. One of the techs I worked with got a good deal on it. It was an AMD 500Mhz/128mbRAM/voodo video(i think, it may have been ATI)/and some sound card. It was originally retailing at $ 600 - 700, my co-worker got it for like $400 somehow. I hardly worked with it, cuz i hated (and still do) virtual PC.

I just think it would be funny if you could install OS X on a PC, and XP on a mac and see how they run.