Apple OS licensing

[RacerX]

For those who are a little confused on Apple OS licensing, hopefully this can clear up the issue.

Your license to use the Mac OS comes from the hardware. Your Apple hardware came with a Mac OS originally*, and any version of the Mac OS you buy is actually a strict upgrade to the license you were granted with the Apple hardware. Your Apple hardware is a license key for Mac OS X (which is why we have never needed a license string for the Mac OS).

... that is to say, boxed versions of Mac OS X are actually upgrades. And your license to used those is the hardware itself.

That having been said, there are no boxed versions of Mac OS X for Intel processors. The only legal versions in existence are tied to existing hardware that came from Apple. Anyone who got Mac OS X for Intel with Apple hardware is only allowed to use Mac OS X on that hardware.

Further, versions of Mac OS X for Intel before version 10.4.4 were distributed under a nondisclosure agreement. So on top of the license agreement to only run it on the Apple hardware it came with, it was also illegal to share it with anyone... or discuss the software at length with anyone before the final release (which has since come and gone).

Basically, there is no way to run Mac OS X on a PC legally. Even if you had a developer kit system. Or an Intel based iMac. Or a MacBook Pro.

And the first boxed versions of Mac OS X for Intel aren't going to show up until 10.5 is released (in case any of you were waiting).

Hope that helps straighten out the legal issues for any of you wondering.




* Mac Clone hardware came with a version of the Mac OS originally and the manufacturer was given both the ROM and logic board specification from Apple. Those items represent your license to use all future Mac OS versions.

Apple has never had any problems with XPostFacto because it is only used for installing Mac OS X on systems that would otherwise qualify for a Mac OS X license... but just are not supported by Apple.

[fryke]

Only to add: Even when the first boxed versions of Mac OS X for Intel will appear at version 10.5, those too will be upgrade versions which do _not_ allow installation on anything but a Mac which came with an older version of OS X. Basically.

I guess you wrote this thread for all of those who want to install OS X on their beige boxes (the "any PC"). I have to admit that I perfectly understand the wish to do so. Heck: Even *I'm* sometimes dreaming of buying one of those little subnotebooks, because Apple doesn't make them.

[eric2006]

This is what will happen if you try to install os x on intel pc's...

To quote apple..

There once was a user that whined

his existing OS was so blind,

he'd do better to pirate

an OS that ran great

but found his hardware declined.

Please don't steal Mac OS!

Really, that's way uncool.

If your tired of windows, install linux. It's that simple.

[fryke]

In many cases, linux is _not_ a good replacement for OS X. The case, of course, being that you actually _want_ to run OS X. ... I guess for me the discussion is really one of three possible cases:


1.) If you want to play around with OS X to see whether it's worth what all those Mac geeks are constantly bragging on about, installing OS X illegally on a PC might seem like a good (because free) option. You could also go to an Apple store (or other store selling Macs) to try them. Of course, if you're playing with a crippled Mac at a store for five minutes, you won't get a really good impression of what a Mac's capable of. I think for _this_ case, Apple should actually create a demo-DVD of Mac OS X which _does_ run on many PCs. It's perfectly doable, but there's of course, a danger that this very disk could lead to easier OS X hacking...

2.) You _want_ to switch to the Mac, you know it, but the hardware's too expensive for you, and you'd also need to buy a lot of software (cross-grades, sometimes...), which further makes the switch more expensive. Well: I guess there's only one choice here... Get the money to do so.

3.) You have no intention of ever buying a Mac or related software and just want to be a free-loader. So you download illegal copies of system & software. Well: You're a criminal.

But the interesting case, in my opinion, is of course number one... Apple could reach many, many people. Put a demo DVD of Mac OS X (live system?) in every iPod's packaging. Wouldn't _that_ be a great way of reaching people. I know: Many PCs out there probably don't have the hardware to run if flawlessly, but you could make it clear what the requirements are. Easy. Good marketing. There could even be demo versions of MS Office for the Mac as well as demo versions of Adobe's and Macromedia's software inside... (once they're universal, I'd say, since else they don't make a really good impression...)

[eric2006]

You can get an iBook for 700 bucks, and minis for sub-400 bucks at the refurb store. If you really want a cheap way to test out OS X, get one of those. PC's are not made for the mac experience.. it's just not the same with a PC. Plus, the refurbs come with OS X and iLife, everything you need to start working (or playing). iWork is only 79 bucks. MS Office is 279. Need I say more?

The OS X experience is tempting.. don't go to jail for it!

[fryke]

If you put yourself in a person's mind who has a LOT less money than you're talking about here, has maybe got a PC from an uncle or something or built it himself two or three years ago, you'll see that 700 "bucks" might be QUITE a lot of money for *trying out OS X*. Your point certainly does not defeat mine...

[eric2006]

Well, if you really want to "try" out OS X, you will only want to pay like 10 bucks. Borrow a friends computer or something. I'm just trying to show that a "real" OS X computer doesn't have to be as expensive as the ones advertised on apple's front page.. you can get an iBook for 700, a LOT less that the 2000-dollar Mac-book pro. If you're serious about getting a new computer, 700 bucks would get you a mid-range laptop with windows.

My dad found that getting a mac paid for itself: he used to have to fix the two HP laptops, 2 custom boxes, and his own work machine constantly. By getting macs, his downtime was significantly reduced.

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by fryke

I guess you wrote this thread for all of those who want to install OS X on their beige boxes (the "any PC"). I have to admit that I perfectly understand the wish to do so. Heck: Even *I'm* sometimes dreaming of buying one of those little subnotebooks, because Apple doesn't make them.

It is mainly to make sure that people aren't going into these endeavors blindly.

And to let people know what is considered crossing the line from Apple's point of view.

Apple should actually create a demo-DVD of Mac OS X which _does_ run on many PCs.

That sounds very much like what Be tried to do with BeOS Personal Edition (I think that was what it was called), which ran off a disk image (something like 400 MB) on Windows PCs. You could boot into it and then restart to get back to Windows... or something like that.


Beyond the fact that it didn't work for Be (and I'm not saying that this was the reason Be failed), I think that people actually need a certain amount of investment in something like a platform change.

For example... why in the world would people who could have afforded a Mac stay with MS-DOS? What I found was that these people had invested time and energy learning DOS and didn't want to feel like they wasted it (I've seen the same stance taken by command-line using Unix users and hand-coding web designers).

Another example... Me... and education. When I was in high school the only thing that kept me in class and getting a passing grade was Track. If my GPA dropped below 2.0, I was dropped from the team. I graduated with a (weighted) GPA of 2.03. Only what I needed to stay in Track.

But a couple years later, when I started college, even though I was on the Track team then, I was paying for school out of pocket. All of a sudden a class wasn't something to skip... it was something I paid for!

Honestly, paying for a Mac is the only real way to get most people motivated enough to get the most out of a Mac. Part of what I do for a living is to help people get the most out of their investment in an Apple computer.

The mystery gets them to put the money down. Putting the money down gets them to put the effort into the transition. That effort shows them not only what a Mac can do, but in a lot of cases, what a computer can do (a lot of people sleep walk through using a PC as they started with them).


I think that if people could prevews Mac OS X on their own systems, that would be enough for them to say they tried it and didn't like it.



On a side note... I own a couple versions of the BeOS. Other than trying out the BeOS Personal Edition on a PC at work back in 1999, I have yet to take the time and effort to actually install the BeOS on any real hardware.

The mystery was gone... and so was the incentive to try to work with it. The only reason I have the media at all is for my OS collection (odds are, if I would have had to pay more than I did I might have been more inclined to see what I paid for).