Apple sanctions Windows XP on new Macs

[Chris]

That's not to say that people won't do it. The fact of the matter is, few people bother to read all the legalese from cover to cover contained within such a document.

[Pete]

If I am not mistaken however it would be a bit of a fiddle to run OSX on a normal box owing to the fact Apple are using the fancy new Intel version of BIOS.

I'm sure one of our technically minded friends could explain it in more detail though.

[Dr Lobster*]

If I am not mistaken however it would be a bit of a fiddle to run OSX on a normal box owing to the fact Apple are using the fancy new Intel version of BIOS.

I'm sure one of our technically minded friends could explain it in more detail though.

it's called extensible firmware interface - the basic premise is that device drivers will eventually be part of the efi, and not the operating system and because of this, the bootstrap process is different. also, better diagnostic tools, such as recovery utilities will be part of the pc's firmware. it's a network administrators dream. but in the windows world it's a long way off.

however, technically this isn't too much of a problem. all that is needed is a bootloader (and since osx is unix based, there are loads of these around anyway which can be modified) which is either an wrapper or emulation layer of the efi interface.

the problem will be trying to understand to what level osx tries to detect that it is running on apple hardware and trying to get working drivers to get it to run on the jumble of pc hardware out there. i think it will be done though.

[Pete]

the problem will be trying to understand to what level osx tries to detect that it is running on apple hardware and trying to get working drivers to get it to run on the jumble of pc hardware out there. i think it will be done though.

You'd expect though they'd first try to get it running on VMware, which uses a standard set of "hardware" doesn't it?

[DJGM]

As I'm sure you're aware, a software license agreement,
or end user license agreement IS a legally binding contract.

not so. just because a license agreement says that you "can't" do something with their software doesn't
actually make doing it illegal. sure, you might break the agreement, but that doesn't make it illegal

If EULA documents are not a legally binding contracts, then what's the point of their existence?

for example, i could put a clause in one of my own software license agreements which stated
that it could not be installed on a pc which isn't in a black case. would installing it on a pc with
a beige case be breaking the law? no. it's the same thing.

You could put that clause in if you wanted, but it's a very silly clause that would almost certainly be challenged.
If such a clause lead to any legal action, either from you against one of your customers, or vice versa, I'd be
willing to bet the whole case would "laughed out of court", as they say.

indeed, several courts in the united states (software license agreements haven't really been
tested here in the uk) have found that certain terms within license agreements to be invalid.
not only that, but some territories have completely different laws with regards to shrink
wrapped license agreements. i recall reading that in at least one country
they are not enforceable at all because the user doesn't have a chance
to see the agreement before make the purchase.

Actually, (at least in the case of Apple) you do have the chance to read the license agreement before you go
to your nearest Apple Store or Apple Authorised Re-seller, and purchase a copy of Mac OS X (no, not osx).
Apple publish all their current and recent Software License Agreements on the Apple website. They can
be read at anytime by anyone with internet access - http://apple.com/legal/sla/ <== clicky there.

it is probably technically possible to actually install or extract the files from the osx cd without
actually clicking "i agree" therefore not actually agreeing to the license agreement
(and therefore not actually breaking it)

Well, you don't know for sure until you try it.

and anyway, could i not slap an apple sticker on my pc? it doesn't say i *can't*...

This License allows you to install and use one copy of
the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

doesn't say apple manufactured, it says apple labeled. i can just stick an
apple label on it and i've not even broken the unenforcable license agreement.

as long as i have enough licenses for the number of computers i've got it installed
on, i fail to see how that is breaking the exact terms of their license agreement.

You might have a point with that. So, go ahead, buy a copy of Mac OS X for MacIntels, buy an Apple logo
sticker from eBay (or download a copy of the Apple logo and make one yourself) stick the Apple on your
regular, non-Apple branded PC, and have a go at installing Mac OS X on it. Then contact Apple, tell
them what you've done, and challenge them to take legal action against you

But don't reverse engineer the software, as that would be breaking the Software License Agreement,
whether it's legally enforcable or not. But, like I said earlier ... if software licenses agreements are
not enforceable by law, then what really is the point of the existence of such documents?

Meanwhile ... all this talk of whether software license agreements are legal or not is surely off-topic from
the subject of this thread. Could that part of the discussion be split into it's own seperate thread?

[Dr Lobster*]

If EULA documents are not a legally binding contracts, then what's the point of their existence?

i've read this: http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/macosx104.html

it does not say it's legally binding. that's because it isn't. it cannot be enforced as such. things like reverse engineering and duplication of the media are covered under laws which are on statute.

You could put that clause in if you wanted, but it's a very silly clause that would almost certainly be challenged.
If such a clause lead to any legal action, either from you against one of your customers, or vice versa, I'd be
willing to bet the whole case would "laughed out of court", as they say.

it wouldn't get to court, because it's not legally enforcable. no law has been broken. even if you took it to a civil court, you'd have to prove that such usage deprived me of earnings and then sue for damages.

You might have a point with that. So, go ahead, buy a copy of Mac OS X for MacIntels, buy an Apple logo
sticker from eBay (or download a copy of the Apple logo and make one yourself) stick the Apple on your
regular, non-Apple branded PC, and have a go at installing Mac OS X on it. Then contact Apple, tell
them what you've done, and challenge them to take legal action against you

but they can't take legal action against me because i haven't broken any laws.

But don't reverse engineer the software, as that would be breaking the Software License Agreement,
whether it's legally enforcable or not. But, like I said earlier ... if software licenses agreements are
not enforceable by law, then what really is the point of the existence of such documents?

reverse engineering is covered by the eu copyright directive. it's got nothing to do with the license.

the main reasons for the eula historically was a way for software publishers to basically say, this software is provided 'as-is', if it doesn't work the way you want it to, tough. a disclaimer, if you will.

if everything you wrote in a eula suddenly became 'legally enforcable', you'd end up with companies creating laws left, right and centre.

now you could argue that by installing osx on non-apple hardware you are depriving apple of revenue, but there comes a problem with this. microsoft have themselves been accused of creating a monopoloy for similar activities. i very much doubt apple would really be able to do much about it, given the precident which as already been set.

[antony]

and anyway, could i not slap an apple sticker on my pc? it doesn't say i *can't*...

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

doesn't say apple manufactured, it says apple labeled. i can just stick an apple label on it and i've not even broken the unenforcable license agreement.

So, you are now playing wording game? A sticker means "labelled"? If say you stick a Panasonic sticker on your Sony television, do you call your television a Panasonic labelled box?

Apple once licensed third party to manufacture PowerPC computers, and Mac OS was able to be installed on those non-Apple manufactured computers.

edited, added back the missing sentence.

[cdd]

If you offered software for someone to install, and buried deep in the licence agreement something stating that this person will pay you £250,000 for each day the software is installed, could you enforce it? Such a scam has been lingering in the back of my dishonest mind for years but I have a feeling that it would be unenforcable.

[DJGM]

The discussion on whether Software License Agreements are legally binding or not ought to be in it's own thread.

Regarding the question of whether Mac OS X could become available to install and run on generic, bog standard
ordinary PC's, the following is taken from the Macworld article ... "Windows on Mac: What you need to know".

Now that Windows XP can run on a Mac, how long before we see Dell and HP PCs booting up into Mac OS X?

Our rough estimate would be “never.” Apple has said repeatedly that Mac OS X will only run on Apple
hardware, and we don’t expect that to change. Apple makes a lot of money from Mac hardware, and
with the Boot Camp announcement, Apple’s hardware is now unique in that it runs both Mac OS X
and Windows. One of the reasons Apple’s products are so good is because the company controls
both the hardware and the software; allowing Mac OS X to run on a generic PC
wouldn’t only gut Apple’s hardware business, but it would potentially reduce
the quality of the Mac OS X user experience.

Read the full article here.

In essence, if Mac OS X could be run on a regular PC, then Macintosh computers would become redundant
overnight, and the only hardware products Apple would be able make any money on, would be the iPod.

As I've said, while Steve Jobs is Apple's head honcho, it isn't going to happen.

[cwathen]

In essence, if Mac OS X could be run on a regular PC, then Macintosh computers would become redundant
overnight, and the only hardware products Apple would be able make any money on, would be the iPod.

Would this be such a bad move for Apple though? Look at what happened to Microsoft - they were a small company known almost exclusively as providers of a fairly good dialect of BASIC. Then IBM comissions them to provide them with an operating system for their new PC. Microsoft exploits the fact that they didn't have an exclusive agreement with IBM and starts licencing the operating system to other OEMs and, eventually, offers it for retail. 10 years later Microsoft has two operating systems (MS/PC DOS and OS/2), a third in development (Windows NT), an operating environment which killed off all the competition (Windows), and a raft of Software to it's name - it didn't need IBM any more and today is bigger than they are. Although it does make a highly limited range of hardware (designed only to support it's software), it's got to where it is today as a software vendor. Meanwhile IBM has largely retreated back to it's old ground - mainframes. As a microcomputer manufacturer they are virtually dead and have been for many years. If they didn't have other areas to fall back on they'd doubtless have turned the way of Hayes - a legacy of industry standards (indeed, some software still stipulates the need for an 'IBM PC or compatible') but a bankrupt company. Meanwhile Microsoft - the company which is happy to let others make the hardware and itself just concentrates on the software - appears to be unstoppable.

If Apple were to go the whole hog and release a retail version of MacOS for PC's, it might well kill off the Macintosh computer overnight, but the huge potential revenue from people wanting to buy MacOS for their PC might make them more profit. It might allow Apple to build and start developing their own range of applications software to bring in yet more revenue. It might reduce Microsoft's monopoly. It could well be a good move. Indeed, Apple need look no further than their own software to see trends supporting this move - the two most succesful ventures (in terms of numbers of users at least) in Apple history are QuickTime and iTunes. And both of them owe their success to eventually being made available in standard x86 builds for standard PCs. If they were restricted to macs they'd be nowhere. Think of the possibilities of Apple releasing an operating system for standard PCs.

[DJGM]

And that's the main difference between the two ... Microsoft is a software company, while Apple is a hardware company.
If Mac OS X became generally available for all computers, Apple would become primarily a software company that sells
servers and portable media players as it's only hardware products. This would provide competition against Windows,
but only in the short term, especially considering the huge financial resources at Microsoft's disposal.

The only way I could see Apple releasing a general retail version of Mac OS X, is if manufacturers of generic PC hardware
like Dell (Spit!) and HP, decide that Apple has an unfair advantage now they make computers that can be set to dual
boot with both Mac OS X and Windows XP, and issue a class action lawsuit against the boffins at 1 Infinite Loop.

If any such action were to take place (which I'm sure Jobs' Mob would fight tooth and nail all the way) and is successful,
only then would we ever be likely to see Mac OS X being made available generally for non-Apple branded computers.