Michael J. Mahon wrote:
No doubt Apple has convince themselves that their hardware sales
will not be at risk in this move. And no doubt that will be
achieved by doing something very arbitrary and proprietary...
think of it as "hardware copy protection". ;-)
Maybe Intel has finally found a taker for its "unique processor
ID" feature, and each copy of OSX will be licensed to a specific
processor.
Time will tell if they can get away with this artificial
incompatibility, or if people will figure out how to make
Apple have to compete on a level hardware playing field...
I'd doubt that they'd even consider that. Right now the OS doesn't
even require a CD key when installing.
I'm wondering though if they'll use that processor ID feature as part
of a way to sell downloadable movies for a video iPod. Use the ID to
make it so the movie is only usable on that one machine and you can
send the movies to a video ipod but you can't pull them off one.
At present I believe the movie industry is leary of online movies
because they know every downloaded movie they sold would likely find
it's way online the same day.
Wayne