Comments on: DRM in OS X might drive me away

By: Paul The UnixCentric

Paul The UnixCentric — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 22:40:58 +0000

I dunno, Matt. I think you were right in the first place. I just read that article, and I don’t see how it makes DRM any more appealing or less of a pain…

By: Todd

Todd — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 22:22:19 +0000

Glad you came around to your senses Matt.

For now, anyway...

It would be a sad day for Apple to lose folks like you and I think they know that.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 20:45:28 +0000

After reading John Gruber's view on the controversy, I think I may have jumped on the attack-Apple bandwagon without thinking things through.

By: Todd

Todd — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 01:41:17 +0000

Just read the following post about not getting too worked up about the Trusted Platform Module.

http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2005/08/20050804131152.shtml

Don’t know if it allays any fears or not…

I’d be disappointed if it ended up in production Macs too. Kind of flies in the face of the days when a pirate flag flew at One Infinite Loop.

By: Paul The UnixCentric

Paul The UnixCentric — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 07:28:30 +0000

Matt: Yes, I know what controlling interest is... :-) MS used to have it in Apple; admittedly, I don't follow the markets, so I guess if this has changed, I wasn't aware of it. Doesn't change my view, tho. With all the other options out there, as well as the lack of need for this upheaval, I still have no reason to believe MS isn't playing this one.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:39:30 +0000

Rich Wareham, developer of Virtual Desktop, thinks this DRM thing is overblown. (via a comment at O'Reilly Radar)

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 02:28:35 +0000

Paul, I can’t find anything that says that Microsoft has a controlling interest in Apple. Controlling interest is when an entity owns more than half of the voting stock in a company. The few useful sources I’ve managed to find say that Microsoft only owns a small fraction of Apple’s non-voting stock. If that’s the case, the only real power Microsoft has, other than its slightly-fading monopoly, is that Apple’s stock price would drop a little if it MS decided to sell its Apple stock.

By: Paul The UnixCentric

Paul The UnixCentric — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 21:54:56 +0000

Matt: As Apple has no need to switch to Intel based on their annually rising profits and the now-infamous 90nm barrier causing all CPU advancement to stagnate, as well as noting that MS has controlling interest in the company, what other possible reason could there be to make such a decision? It's not like they don't have other options; all of which are far superior to Intel's sub-par products. The eventual theft / absorbing of OSX's better technologies into Windows will eventually happen, and OSX will fade under the MS juggernaut. Apple too, I suspect; unless they just become a subsidiary or end up as MS' hardware designers.

Sure, it won't happen immediately, but it will happen -- if MS has any control over it. They're a monopoly-oriented dictatorship living in fear of any competition because they know they're the worst technology has to offer, remember? ;-)

Mr. Heide: If it's all the same to you, I'll keep a snowsuit handy; Hell may yet see winter, in this case. :-)

By: heide

heide — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 19:04:15 +0000

They've said they won't do anything specifically to stop Windows from running on Mac hardware, but it'll be a cold day in hell before you see them actually ship from Apple with it preinstalled. They'll probably have resellers on a tight leash to prevent them from doing so, too.

(Though anyone buying Mac hardware just to run Windows would be nuts anyway, just due to the price premium. It'll mostly be people who want to dual boot since they need to cover both worlds.)

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 13:02:33 +0000

I’ve kept a copy of Yellow Dog Linux on my Mac for a while now (but hardly used it) so I know a little about a competing OS if Apple ever made a move like this. Apple have always had tendencies toward closed systems but I was hoping it would never come to this.

I’ll miss the many advantages of using Mac OS X but this is a no compromise situation for me. Maybe if a lot of former Mac users switch to Linux there’ll be more usability feedback for Linux developers to utilise? The open source software community seem to me to be constantly improving their GUI design processes. I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before they have the systems in place that push GUI design to the forefront of priorities.

Three Linux distributions come to mind in regard to your question.

Linspire http://www.linspire.com/

Ubuntu http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/

Xandros http://www.xandros.com/