[X4U] OS X On Generic PC Hardware

[Stroller]

On 17 Nov 2007, at 14:33, T.L. Miller wrote:
> On 11/17/07, at 8:00 AM, David Ledger dledger at ivdcs.demon.co.uk said:
>
>> At present we don't even have a real licence system. With Windows you
>> get a hologram backed document with a serial number. With OSX you
>> don't necessarily get anything. I bought a Mac mini just after
>> Leopard came out, plus a family pack of Leopard. (Five I can use at
>> home and on my PowerBook, plus one on my daughter's mini should she
>> want it at her house). The upgrade for the mini contains nothing to
>> say I have a Leopard license. All I have is an invoice. Havn't
>> examined the family pack yet. Just bought it because I know I will
>> need it and I was in the shop. I'm not aware of having a serial
>> number for any Mac OS.
>
> Couldn't Apple, as it updates the OS every few months, include code  
> that
> would thwart whatever hacks were out their -- requiring the hackers to
> have to go back to the drawing board?

Oh, easily so.

It just depends whether it's worth the hassle for them to do so.

It's obviously enough of a chore as it is to install a Hackintosh -  
the research required to work out how to do it in the first place  
must be quite something. But hackers will (likely) eventually get  
around any restrictions the Apple were to make - the open nature of  
the BSD codebase facilitates this - and they probably represent such  
a small amount of lost revenue that it's not worth Apple's while to  
pay a programmer to make it harder.

Stroller.