I don't get you. You agree that drug companies like pfizer should be allow to "create walls" (for a period of time) around the drugs they design. This gives them the incentive to invest in R&D for new drugs. This guarantee them a time to recover the cost of developing a new drug, like Lipitor. After all, the drugs they design are made around a combination of generic chemicals. And any drug company can make it. The only thing preventing them from doing so are the "walls" created by the patents pfizer holds.
Business competition is a good thing. It's like a boxing match. Governments act as a referee. Anyone can win. You can punch as hard as you like, but cheating is against the rules. Stealing someone else's new design is cheating, just as walking into the ring with a horseshoe inside your glove is cheating at boxing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidW
But yet you want to take away Apple's ability to compete with a better product by taking away their competitive advanage and make it available to their competitors. A Mac is a better product because of OSX. Everything else about is nothing but standard generic x86 hardware (As you like to keep reminding us). Apple is making a generic product better than their competitors. Now the companies making PCs similar a Mac (hardware wise) must sell them at a lower price because they don't have OSX. Microsoft is forced to make a better OS. The consumer has another choice in the market. It's a free market at work. What's the problem?
The Mac dongle is a competitive advantage because it is a horseshoe-in-the-boxing-glove. Like I said, if Microsoft played a similar dirty trick, the whole world would cry for their blood.
I guess the issue is whether you should outlaw monopolistic tricks *before* you get actual monopolies. Should the police enforce traffic rules, or should they wait until there are actual fatalities?
C.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
Only if Apple has the requisite hardware sales to go along with it. Apple is doing great the way it is.
Apple has a business model that you disagree with. Fine. But it doesn't make it unethical or wrong.
The only thing that would happen is that OSX retail boxes would get relabled as upgrades or pulled and additional copy protection added. Possibly a cost bump to OSX. There is no way in hell Jobs is going to lose control of the Mac product line or allow low cost clones.
The only unethical folks here are Psystar who stole Apple's IP and the Hackintosh community's work.
Apple knows it's not good for them and it's certainly not good for current Mac users or stockholders.
Actually "wider adoption of OS X" would be good for Apple... but not by the methods outlined in the Ars article.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carniphage
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
Sure, but Apple's doesn't have to become more like Microsoft ("License the Mac OS X") and Dell ("Reduce Mac Pricing") to achieve that aim. If Apple continues increasing their Mac sales, in the next 12 months, they will have doubled their Mac OS X user base. That's from around 20 to 40 million in just three years. Add to that maybe another 50 million users of the mobile OS X.
Don Reisinger's article is just another rehash of many similar articles that have gone before.... written by people who similarly seem incapable of original or imaginative thinking. The Ars readers seem to agree!
Note. Reisinger is not an Apple basher. He is just as capable at directing his unintelligent ramblings at any and all tech companies.
Actually "wider adoption of OS X" would be good for Apple... but not by the methods outlined in the Ars article.
Wider adoption is great if it's using the same business model that has made you profitable, but as you stated (and I failed to refer to) Ars is not suggesting that. That was the worst Ars article in a continuing trend of using poorly thought out opinion-based articles.
Plus, it would make the below concept so much harder to achieve:
Business competition is a good thing. It's like a boxing match. Governments act as a referee. Anyone can win. You can punch as hard as you like, but cheating is against the rules. Stealing someone else's new design is cheating, just as walking into the ring with a horseshoe inside your glove is cheating at boxing.
The Mac dongle is a competitive advantage because it is a horseshoe-in-the-boxing-glove. Like I said, if Microsoft played a similar dirty trick, the whole world would cry for their blood.
I guess the issue is whether you should outlaw monopolistic tricks *before* you get actual monopolies. Should the police enforce traffic rules, or should they wait until there are actual fatalities?
Bungie is a software game developer. They wrote many games for the Mac platform. Myst being the most famous and successful. Bungie was developing a game call Halo for the Mac platform around 2000. That is until Microsoft teamed up with them. The Halo series went on to be Xbox exclusives. Halo1 and 2 were eventually released for other platforms (PC, PlayStation and eventually Mac). This was mainly because Bungie still had rights to those games. Halo 3 on the other hand is only on an Xbox. Halo3 is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) selling game of all time. Microsoft bought the exclusive rights to it. They are preventing Bungie from ever releasing Halo3 on any other platform. Even though Bungie can easily do it. They did it with the first two in the series. And BTW, the chip that Apple was using in their Macs at the time Halo was supposely being written for Macs? It was the PPC G3 from IBM. Care to guess who makes the chip used in the Xbox? Did you hear the World cry for Microsoft's blood? Did you hear anyone cry for their blood? There wasn't even a whimper.
Quote:
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
I agree with that too. But unlike you, (and maybe ArsTechica) I think it's better for all of us that Apple sets the pace of the adoption of their OSX. Apple is doing a pretty good job of it now. Without OSX suffering from any growing pains. It should not be up to some government referee.
As a Mac User, I definitely don't want Apple to be forced to turn OS-X into a bogged-down work-with-any-crap-harware OS. I'm pleased that I pay just a little more (not any more at all, really, each time new Mac hardware is released) to get a stable system. To make OS X work with every hacked together PC with whatever components would be disastrous for the OS. There's a reason Windows is so bogged down and bloated. Microsoft has to make it work with everything, and that definitely affects performance.
I think it's better for all of us that Apple sets the pace of the adoption of their OSX.
Good point. It also hi-lights the hypocrisy of some of Psystar's proponents who seem to be saying that Apple is trying to expand their business by 'cheating' ..... and if they were forced to stop and open up the OS..... they would still expand their business.
As a Mac User, I definitely don't want Apple to be forced to turn OS-X into a bogged-down work-with-any-crap-harware OS. I'm pleased that I pay just a little more (not any more at all, really, each time new Mac hardware is released) to get a stable system. To make OS X work with every hacked together PC with whatever components would be disastrous for the OS. There's a reason Windows is so bogged down and bloated. Microsoft has to make it work with everything, and that definitely affects performance.
Besides having to support an exorbitant amount of HW (even though they seem to have enough with their limited drivers as it is) buying a new version of OS X (which tends to come at least once before we buy new machines) would probably cost 3x as much.
Bungie had nothing to do with Myst. Perhaps you're thinking of Marathon or Myth.
Thanks for the correction.
I got tripped up when I did a search of the soundtrack for Riven (which is Myst 2) a while back. (Some one gave me the CD.) And remember reading that the guy that scored it (Riven) was from Bungie. He also did the sound for Myth and Halo3. So I always assumed that Bungie was some how connected to Myst.
Bungie is a software game developer. They wrote many games for the Mac platform. Myst being the most famous and successful. Bungie was developing a game call Halo for the Mac platform around 2000. That is until Microsoft teamed up with them. The Halo series went on to be Xbox exclusives. Halo1 and 2 were eventually released for other platforms (PC, PlayStation and eventually Mac). This was mainly because Bungie still had rights to those games. Halo 3 on the other hand is only on an Xbox. Halo3 is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) selling game of all time. Microsoft bought the exclusive rights to it. They are preventing Bungie from ever releasing Halo3 on any other platform. Even though Bungie can easily do it. They did it with the first two in the series. And BTW, the chip that Apple was using in their Macs at the time Halo was supposely being written for Macs? It was the PPC G3 from IBM. Care to guess who makes the chip used in the Xbox? Did you hear the World cry for Microsoft's blood? Did you hear anyone cry for their blood? There wasn't even a whimper.
There's a lot of factual errors in there.
* Halo has always been a Microsoft published title.
* Microsoft OWN Bungie and fund the development of all the Halo games.
* Halo was never released on the Playstation.
* Halo 2 only recently was released for the PC. Halo 3 will probably appear in a couple of years.
Microsoft uses monopolistic methods all the time. And is criticized for it. But this is not one of them. Your analogy does not really stack up.
Consoles have embedded OS and Software. Porting from one console to another (especially the charlie foxtrot that is the PS3) is nontrivial.
If I could build an XBox of my own, Microsoft would not want to stop me from running Halo on it. Microsoft and Sony *LOSE MONEY* on each console sale. In fact Microsoft recently proposed to licence the XBox hardware design to other manufacturers. Precisely to reduce their costs.
Before Bungie was BOUGHT by Microsoft , Halo was demoed for the Macintosh platform and the plan was that it will be cross platform game similar to Myth and Myth II and considering that Bungie was known at that time as an excellent Macintosh game developer , a lot of Mac users were extremely pissed off when Apple declined to buy Bungie and Microsoft bought them . Here is Steve Jobs introducing Bungie and the game Halo in Macworld 1999 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-Qg7-IvGI .
2nd , the Bungie company had bought themselves out from Microsoft in 2007 and it now an independent company . Microsoft would not permit to Bungie to go unless Halo would stay in Microsoft's hands which Bungie grudgingly accepted .
3rd Halo was supposed to be a cross platform computer game and not on game consoles .
Before Bungie was BOUGHT by Microsoft , Halo was demoed for the Macintosh platform and the plan was that it will be cross platform game similar to Myth and Myth II and considering that Bungie was known at that time as an excellent Macintosh game developer , a lot of Mac users were extremely pissed off when Apple declined to buy Bungie and Microsoft bought them . Here is Steve Jobs introducing Bungie and the game Halo in Macworld 1999 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-Qg7-IvGI .
2nd , the Bungie company had bought themselves out from Microsoft in 2007 and it now an independent company . Microsoft would not permit to Bungie to go unless Halo would stay in Microsoft's hands which Bungie grudgingly accepted .
3rd Halo was supposed to be a cross platform computer game and not on game consoles .
Quite.
Microsoft did not so much want to buy Bungie - they bought Halo and all the rights to it. Halo 1 and 2 have made it to personal computers. I am sure Halo 3 will get there in a couple of years.
...A Mac is different from a PC just on the fact that it runs OSX out of the box (without having to use a hack.). It's OSX that makes a Mac a Mac. Not the x86 hardware that it uses...
There. You said it yourself. The bond between Apple's hardware and its OS is the difference. My generic bucket of bolts PC ("xHack" as I like to call it) also runs OS X 100%. It, too, must be a Mac.
You know, you're right about one thing though... It wasn't a completely native install. In fact, just yesterday I realized that my digital audio (something I never use anyway) wasn't working... not because OS X couldn't support the hardware but because it denied being able to support the hardware when in reality, it could do so natively. Here's what I mean:
An audio driver that comes standard with OS X (AppleAzaliaAudio.kext) has a number of flags within its properties... one of them includes a list of vendors that it is allowed to talk to. The vendor for my motherboard's audio card was not listed. I added it and the card worked perfectly. It required NO FANCY FOOTWORK. I didn't have to write my own driver, I didn't have to hack anything, all I did was open up the kext's info.plist via terminal and added a vendor ID.
If that's not an artificial bond, I don't know what is.
You are so insistent that you have to "hack" OS X in order to get it to work and your implication that "hack" is such a naughty word is just a hyperbole.
All hackers are doing is unlocking OS X to give it greater potential. Apple is stifling OS X by hand-cuffing it to their hardware. The same was true for iPhone hackers who wanted to give it more potential. They started an avalanche of creativity which blossomed and encouraged Apple to finally open the iPhone up to its true potential (once they found a way to make absurdly huge profits from it, that is). The OSx86 scene has been doing the same, except Apple can only profit from selling OS X off-the-shelf if they artificially tie it to their hardware. It has nothing to do with performance (my xHack outperforms quad-core Mac Pros for under $800 and I haven't even started playing with over-clocking yet). It has nothing to do with stability (my xHack hasn't kernel-panicked since I got first got it running, meanwhile the same can't be said about my iMac). The number one reason Apple binds OS X to their hardware is for the money and that's a fact.
If there was a technical reason for not bringing OS X to generic PCs, like there was when it ran on PPC processors, that would be another story, but there is no legal excuse for Apple to restrict store-brought copies of OS to their hardware only.
Who appointed you judge and jury of what is or isn't ethical?
Is it required to prefix each and every statement with "in my opinion". Or can we take that as read?
These opinions are, I guess political.
Competition is a good thing TM.
By a good thing, I mean it is a good thing for consumers and for progress in general.
It's not great for everyone. Clearly for some companies, having to suffer the full undiluted blast of competition will make them wither and die. That's the nature of competition, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is the economic equivalent of Darwin's evolution.
Many many companies make use of monopolistic methods to shelter them from competition. These methods are *IN MY OPNION* unethical. Whether they are illegal depends on the local law of the country concerned.
Microsoft uses such methods, and because Microsoft are a de-facto monopoly, it makes those action more serious. However, I don't buy the idea that we should turn a blind-eye to the same actions by smaller companies.
"Don?s articles obvious inspire strong feelings, and we hear from people who both really like and really dislike his work. We talked with Don a few months ago and told him we?d give it a couple of months and see how the reaction went. While the articles do well in some metrics, they are not so much a fit for us.
So we are parting ways with Don, and we wish him the best in his work"
Comments
I don't get you. You agree that drug companies like pfizer should be allow to "create walls" (for a period of time) around the drugs they design. This gives them the incentive to invest in R&D for new drugs. This guarantee them a time to recover the cost of developing a new drug, like Lipitor. After all, the drugs they design are made around a combination of generic chemicals. And any drug company can make it. The only thing preventing them from doing so are the "walls" created by the patents pfizer holds.
Business competition is a good thing. It's like a boxing match. Governments act as a referee. Anyone can win. You can punch as hard as you like, but cheating is against the rules. Stealing someone else's new design is cheating, just as walking into the ring with a horseshoe inside your glove is cheating at boxing.
But yet you want to take away Apple's ability to compete with a better product by taking away their competitive advanage and make it available to their competitors. A Mac is a better product because of OSX. Everything else about is nothing but standard generic x86 hardware (As you like to keep reminding us). Apple is making a generic product better than their competitors. Now the companies making PCs similar a Mac (hardware wise) must sell them at a lower price because they don't have OSX. Microsoft is forced to make a better OS. The consumer has another choice in the market. It's a free market at work. What's the problem?
The Mac dongle is a competitive advantage because it is a horseshoe-in-the-boxing-glove. Like I said, if Microsoft played a similar dirty trick, the whole world would cry for their blood.
I guess the issue is whether you should outlaw monopolistic tricks *before* you get actual monopolies. Should the police enforce traffic rules, or should they wait until there are actual fatalities?
C.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
Only if Apple has the requisite hardware sales to go along with it. Apple is doing great the way it is.
Apple has a business model that you disagree with. Fine. But it doesn't make it unethical or wrong.
The only thing that would happen is that OSX retail boxes would get relabled as upgrades or pulled and additional copy protection added. Possibly a cost bump to OSX. There is no way in hell Jobs is going to lose control of the Mac product line or allow low cost clones.
The only unethical folks here are Psystar who stole Apple's IP and the Hackintosh community's work.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
Apple knows it's not good for them and it's certainly not good for current Mac users or stockholders.
Apple knows it's not good for them and it's certainly not good for current Mac users or stockholders.
Actually "wider adoption of OS X" would be good for Apple... but not by the methods outlined in the Ars article.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
Sure, but Apple's doesn't have to become more like Microsoft ("License the Mac OS X") and Dell ("Reduce Mac Pricing") to achieve that aim. If Apple continues increasing their Mac sales, in the next 12 months, they will have doubled their Mac OS X user base. That's from around 20 to 40 million in just three years. Add to that maybe another 50 million users of the mobile OS X.
Don Reisinger's article is just another rehash of many similar articles that have gone before.... written by people who similarly seem incapable of original or imaginative thinking. The Ars readers seem to agree!
Note. Reisinger is not an Apple basher. He is just as capable at directing his unintelligent ramblings at any and all tech companies.
Actually "wider adoption of OS X" would be good for Apple... but not by the methods outlined in the Ars article.
Wider adoption is great if it's using the same business model that has made you profitable, but as you stated (and I failed to refer to) Ars is not suggesting that. That was the worst Ars article in a continuing trend of using poorly thought out opinion-based articles.
Plus, it would make the below concept so much harder to achieve:
Business competition is a good thing. It's like a boxing match. Governments act as a referee. Anyone can win. You can punch as hard as you like, but cheating is against the rules. Stealing someone else's new design is cheating, just as walking into the ring with a horseshoe inside your glove is cheating at boxing.
The Mac dongle is a competitive advantage because it is a horseshoe-in-the-boxing-glove. Like I said, if Microsoft played a similar dirty trick, the whole world would cry for their blood.
I guess the issue is whether you should outlaw monopolistic tricks *before* you get actual monopolies. Should the police enforce traffic rules, or should they wait until there are actual fatalities?
Bungie is a software game developer. They wrote many games for the Mac platform. Myst being the most famous and successful. Bungie was developing a game call Halo for the Mac platform around 2000. That is until Microsoft teamed up with them. The Halo series went on to be Xbox exclusives. Halo1 and 2 were eventually released for other platforms (PC, PlayStation and eventually Mac). This was mainly because Bungie still had rights to those games. Halo 3 on the other hand is only on an Xbox. Halo3 is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) selling game of all time. Microsoft bought the exclusive rights to it. They are preventing Bungie from ever releasing Halo3 on any other platform. Even though Bungie can easily do it. They did it with the first two in the series. And BTW, the chip that Apple was using in their Macs at the time Halo was supposely being written for Macs? It was the PPC G3 from IBM. Care to guess who makes the chip used in the Xbox? Did you hear the World cry for Microsoft's blood? Did you hear anyone cry for their blood? There wasn't even a whimper.
I happen to agree with ArsTechnica, that wider adoption of OS X can only be a good thing for Apple.
I agree with that too. But unlike you, (and maybe ArsTechica) I think it's better for all of us that Apple sets the pace of the adoption of their OSX. Apple is doing a pretty good job of it now. Without OSX suffering from any growing pains. It should not be up to some government referee.
I think it's better for all of us that Apple sets the pace of the adoption of their OSX.
Good point. It also hi-lights the hypocrisy of some of Psystar's proponents who seem to be saying that Apple is trying to expand their business by 'cheating' ..... and if they were forced to stop and open up the OS..... they would still expand their business.
As a Mac User, I definitely don't want Apple to be forced to turn OS-X into a bogged-down work-with-any-crap-harware OS. I'm pleased that I pay just a little more (not any more at all, really, each time new Mac hardware is released) to get a stable system. To make OS X work with every hacked together PC with whatever components would be disastrous for the OS. There's a reason Windows is so bogged down and bloated. Microsoft has to make it work with everything, and that definitely affects performance.
Besides having to support an exorbitant amount of HW (even though they seem to have enough with their limited drivers as it is) buying a new version of OS X (which tends to come at least once before we buy new machines) would probably cost 3x as much.
Bungie is a software game developer. They wrote many games for the Mac platform. Myst being the most famous and successful.
Bungie had nothing to do with Myst. Perhaps you're thinking of Marathon or Myth.
Bungie had nothing to do with Myst. Perhaps you're thinking of Marathon or Myth.
Thanks for the correction.
I got tripped up when I did a search of the soundtrack for Riven (which is Myst 2) a while back. (Some one gave me the CD.) And remember reading that the guy that scored it (Riven) was from Bungie. He also did the sound for Myth and Halo3. So I always assumed that Bungie was some how connected to Myst.
Apple has a business model that you disagree with. Fine. But it doesn't make it unethical or wrong.
Apple has a business model that is profitable. Fine. But it doesn't make it ethical.
C.
Bungie is a software game developer. They wrote many games for the Mac platform. Myst being the most famous and successful. Bungie was developing a game call Halo for the Mac platform around 2000. That is until Microsoft teamed up with them. The Halo series went on to be Xbox exclusives. Halo1 and 2 were eventually released for other platforms (PC, PlayStation and eventually Mac). This was mainly because Bungie still had rights to those games. Halo 3 on the other hand is only on an Xbox. Halo3 is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) selling game of all time. Microsoft bought the exclusive rights to it. They are preventing Bungie from ever releasing Halo3 on any other platform. Even though Bungie can easily do it. They did it with the first two in the series. And BTW, the chip that Apple was using in their Macs at the time Halo was supposely being written for Macs? It was the PPC G3 from IBM. Care to guess who makes the chip used in the Xbox? Did you hear the World cry for Microsoft's blood? Did you hear anyone cry for their blood? There wasn't even a whimper.
There's a lot of factual errors in there.
* Halo has always been a Microsoft published title.
* Microsoft OWN Bungie and fund the development of all the Halo games.
* Halo was never released on the Playstation.
* Halo 2 only recently was released for the PC. Halo 3 will probably appear in a couple of years.
Microsoft uses monopolistic methods all the time. And is criticized for it. But this is not one of them. Your analogy does not really stack up.
Consoles have embedded OS and Software. Porting from one console to another (especially the charlie foxtrot that is the PS3) is nontrivial.
If I could build an XBox of my own, Microsoft would not want to stop me from running Halo on it. Microsoft and Sony *LOSE MONEY* on each console sale. In fact Microsoft recently proposed to licence the XBox hardware design to other manufacturers. Precisely to reduce their costs.
C.
Apple has a business model that is profitable. Fine. But it doesn't make it ethical.
C.
Who appointed you judge and jury of what is or isn't ethical? Because I have no issues with Apple's business model and neither do a lot of folks.
You sound like one of those FSF zealots.
Microsoft and Sony *LOSE MONEY* on each console sale.
Probably wont be true for Sony in at most a year. They should be pretty close to break even now.
Probably wouldn't be true for MS if it werent for the RROD and replacement costs.
Before Bungie was BOUGHT by Microsoft , Halo was demoed for the Macintosh platform and the plan was that it will be cross platform game similar to Myth and Myth II and considering that Bungie was known at that time as an excellent Macintosh game developer , a lot of Mac users were extremely pissed off when Apple declined to buy Bungie and Microsoft bought them . Here is Steve Jobs introducing Bungie and the game Halo in Macworld 1999 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-Qg7-IvGI .
2nd , the Bungie company had bought themselves out from Microsoft in 2007 and it now an independent company . Microsoft would not permit to Bungie to go unless Halo would stay in Microsoft's hands which Bungie grudgingly accepted .
3rd Halo was supposed to be a cross platform computer game and not on game consoles .
Carniphage
Before Bungie was BOUGHT by Microsoft , Halo was demoed for the Macintosh platform and the plan was that it will be cross platform game similar to Myth and Myth II and considering that Bungie was known at that time as an excellent Macintosh game developer , a lot of Mac users were extremely pissed off when Apple declined to buy Bungie and Microsoft bought them . Here is Steve Jobs introducing Bungie and the game Halo in Macworld 1999 , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-Qg7-IvGI .
2nd , the Bungie company had bought themselves out from Microsoft in 2007 and it now an independent company . Microsoft would not permit to Bungie to go unless Halo would stay in Microsoft's hands which Bungie grudgingly accepted .
3rd Halo was supposed to be a cross platform computer game and not on game consoles .
Quite.
Microsoft did not so much want to buy Bungie - they bought Halo and all the rights to it. Halo 1 and 2 have made it to personal computers. I am sure Halo 3 will get there in a couple of years.
C.
...A Mac is different from a PC just on the fact that it runs OSX out of the box (without having to use a hack.). It's OSX that makes a Mac a Mac. Not the x86 hardware that it uses...
There. You said it yourself. The bond between Apple's hardware and its OS is the difference. My generic bucket of bolts PC ("xHack" as I like to call it) also runs OS X 100%. It, too, must be a Mac.
You know, you're right about one thing though... It wasn't a completely native install. In fact, just yesterday I realized that my digital audio (something I never use anyway) wasn't working... not because OS X couldn't support the hardware but because it denied being able to support the hardware when in reality, it could do so natively. Here's what I mean:
An audio driver that comes standard with OS X (AppleAzaliaAudio.kext) has a number of flags within its properties... one of them includes a list of vendors that it is allowed to talk to. The vendor for my motherboard's audio card was not listed. I added it and the card worked perfectly. It required NO FANCY FOOTWORK. I didn't have to write my own driver, I didn't have to hack anything, all I did was open up the kext's info.plist via terminal and added a vendor ID.
If that's not an artificial bond, I don't know what is.
You are so insistent that you have to "hack" OS X in order to get it to work and your implication that "hack" is such a naughty word is just a hyperbole.
All hackers are doing is unlocking OS X to give it greater potential. Apple is stifling OS X by hand-cuffing it to their hardware. The same was true for iPhone hackers who wanted to give it more potential. They started an avalanche of creativity which blossomed and encouraged Apple to finally open the iPhone up to its true potential (once they found a way to make absurdly huge profits from it, that is). The OSx86 scene has been doing the same, except Apple can only profit from selling OS X off-the-shelf if they artificially tie it to their hardware. It has nothing to do with performance (my xHack outperforms quad-core Mac Pros for under $800 and I haven't even started playing with over-clocking yet). It has nothing to do with stability (my xHack hasn't kernel-panicked since I got first got it running, meanwhile the same can't be said about my iMac). The number one reason Apple binds OS X to their hardware is for the money and that's a fact.
If there was a technical reason for not bringing OS X to generic PCs, like there was when it ran on PPC processors, that would be another story, but there is no legal excuse for Apple to restrict store-brought copies of OS to their hardware only.
-Clive
Who appointed you judge and jury of what is or isn't ethical?
Is it required to prefix each and every statement with "in my opinion". Or can we take that as read?
These opinions are, I guess political.
Competition is a good thing TM.
By a good thing, I mean it is a good thing for consumers and for progress in general.
It's not great for everyone. Clearly for some companies, having to suffer the full undiluted blast of competition will make them wither and die. That's the nature of competition, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is the economic equivalent of Darwin's evolution.
Many many companies make use of monopolistic methods to shelter them from competition. These methods are *IN MY OPNION* unethical. Whether they are illegal depends on the local law of the country concerned.
Microsoft uses such methods, and because Microsoft are a de-facto monopoly, it makes those action more serious. However, I don't buy the idea that we should turn a blind-eye to the same actions by smaller companies.
C.
I was beginning to regret my personal criticism of Don Reisinger and his Ars article. After all he's just doing his job!
Well, apparently, he's not anymore:
Caesar's forum post
"Don?s articles obvious inspire strong feelings, and we hear from people who both really like and really dislike his work. We talked with Don a few months ago and told him we?d give it a couple of months and see how the reaction went. While the articles do well in some metrics, they are not so much a fit for us.
So we are parting ways with Don, and we wish him the best in his work"