Snow leopard over itunes only
I was thinking that there is a massive issue right now with OSX being used on Hackintoshes and the problem with pending court cases with some of these large rip-off cloners. What struck me was that there is surely a very easy way to combat this which doesn't prevent people buying OSX as an upgrade nor damage the installed base with draconian serials or activations.
Why not only sell Snow Leopard via itunes. Remove any physical retail boxed copy from sale, launch on itunes instead.Using some form of hardware detection itunes would simply remove the purchase option for windows users. Hard code the purchasers information into a setup page which you fill in before downloading starts, therefore if it gets torrented you can go back to the source. Also it means when you burn your backup copy there's no way to change the user information. I'm sure there are another couple of neat tricks to prevent it being used on another machine that someone with some programing experience could add in.
This would surely reduce the issues around OSX theft which is pretty much getting on all genuine Mac users nerves and stop this total rip off culture from growing.
Since Apple owns the distribution channel it seems like a major win and Apple could use this as a positive environmental message saying that discs are old hat and that it's paving the way to distribute all of it's software this greener way.
I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts on this idea.
Why not only sell Snow Leopard via itunes. Remove any physical retail boxed copy from sale, launch on itunes instead.Using some form of hardware detection itunes would simply remove the purchase option for windows users. Hard code the purchasers information into a setup page which you fill in before downloading starts, therefore if it gets torrented you can go back to the source. Also it means when you burn your backup copy there's no way to change the user information. I'm sure there are another couple of neat tricks to prevent it being used on another machine that someone with some programing experience could add in.
This would surely reduce the issues around OSX theft which is pretty much getting on all genuine Mac users nerves and stop this total rip off culture from growing.
Since Apple owns the distribution channel it seems like a major win and Apple could use this as a positive environmental message saying that discs are old hat and that it's paving the way to distribute all of it's software this greener way.
I'd love to hear other peoples thoughts on this idea.
Comments
as someone who was forced to carry around the logic pro XS key for years until it was made redundant, i can speak from experience
While we're at it we could rename the company Microsoft!
went into best buy today, noticed about 50 different microsoft office/vista products on the shelf...
went to Zune software, no vista upgrade
dont be mental.
As to the commentator saying it's not a big issue. I saw a report only 2 days ago which suggested 20% of netbooks now run on unofficial copies of OS X so i'd say that is a sizable issue. MSI have even stated that they believe 60% of MSI Winds in the wild are running OS X
It effectively becomes a built-in hardware dongle. New applications intended only for new Mac hardware could even require this CPU.
OS X would run rather slow on non-Mac hardware - i.e. with many Core functions running in 'software emulation'. While Macs with that special chip would be amazingly fast.
I can definitely see this happening in an even grander scale for Mac netbooks.
Imagine Apple were to compile OS X for yet another platform: ARM Cortex A8/A9 custom Apple CPUs with special graphics cores etc. I'm not talking iPhone OS, but the real, complete Mac OS X which would then be available for: PPC, Intel and ARM Cortex(Apple flavor) in a triple binary.
Of course Mac software would have to be re-compiled to include the third ARM variant. But finding such triple binary versions could be simplified via a new 'Mac AppStore' showcasing ARM versions of existing Mac software.
The key thing would be that this ARM chip is not a generic ARM flavor and has many specialties that do not exist in any other ARM derived chip. And Mac OS X would be specifically compiled to use these.
Or in other words, any copy of Mac OS X would not run on any other ARM CPUs.
It would not only avoid Hackintoshes on the ARM netbook front but also allow Apple to offer a really cheap netbook based on ARM architecture - with battery life measured in days not hours.
Apple can only win.
Dual CPU Macs - new flavor
That ARM chip could be included in every new Mac as well and effectively become that hardware dongle / MultiMedia co-processor for any Mac.
It could even be a second CPU akin to what Apple is doing with GPUs in its MacBooks: have a low power and highpower/highperformance CPU. Use either or both: use either the ARM for super long MBP battery lifetime, or the Intel CPU or both.
Mac netbooks would only have the ARM chip installed.
Now the installation of printer drivers ex post facto as has been written about is a great idea to save space.
And I think the sale of apps like iWork and FileMaker through iTunes would be a better distribution model than the current way they are sold. However, Apple's going to have to start to think long and hard about the fact that they are stretching a music player app into something that's doing a lot more than music now....it would be getting out of place. It's as if MTV started showing reality TV shows instead of music videos....oh wait a minute...
I was thinking that there is a massive issue right now with OSX being used on Hackintoshes and ...
I'm gonna have to stop you right there.
"massive issue"?
I'd bet that apple has lost less than 0.0001% of sales to hackintoshes.
There are MUCH bigger fish to fry.
Jimzip
Or maybe Apple can change the code a bit for the hacks to be harder to happen or run a background script that will update the computer and lock up all non apple computers.
Pure genius!!! You should totally send in your resume to Apple. Or better yet, just copy and paste your post in an email to them.
The best way forward for Apple would be to add some kind of custom Co-CPU/GPU. How about a P.A. Semi developed MultiMedia chip that speeds up a lot of Core functions?
It effectively becomes a built-in hardware dongle. New applications intended only for new Mac hardware could even require this CPU.
OS X would run rather slow on non-Mac hardware - i.e. with many Core functions running in 'software emulation'. While Macs with that special chip would be amazingly fast.
I can definitely see this happening in an even grander scale for Mac netbooks.
Imagine Apple were to compile OS X for yet another platform: ARM Cortex A8/A9 custom Apple CPUs with special graphics cores etc. I'm not talking iPhone OS, but the real, complete Mac OS X which would then be available for: PPC, Intel and ARM Cortex(Apple flavor) in a triple binary.
Of course Mac software would have to be re-compiled to include the third ARM variant. But finding such triple binary versions could be simplified via a new 'Mac AppStore' showcasing ARM versions of existing Mac software.
The key thing would be that this ARM chip is not a generic ARM flavor and has many specialties that do not exist in any other ARM derived chip. And Mac OS X would be specifically compiled to use these.
Or in other words, any copy of Mac OS X would not run on any other ARM CPUs.
It would not only avoid Hackintoshes on the ARM netbook front but also allow Apple to offer a really cheap netbook based on ARM architecture - with battery life measured in days not hours.
Apple can only win.
Dual CPU Macs - new flavor
That ARM chip could be included in every new Mac as well and effectively become that hardware dongle / MultiMedia co-processor for any Mac.
It could even be a second CPU akin to what Apple is doing with GPUs in its MacBooks: have a low power and highpower/highperformance CPU. Use either or both: use either the ARM for super long MBP battery lifetime, or the Intel CPU or both.
Mac netbooks would only have the ARM chip installed.
The only thing I'm blatantly disagreeing with is the support for PPC, we know this is no longer happening.