Apple wants hardware sales. They're going to make sure that NO hardware outside their design spec will work. I bet they will require an Apple-only-sold CPU with a specific rage # to make the installer work. I'm sure someone might find a way around that, but a software upgrade will break it. Apple's good and known for this. (Remember the Firmware upgrade that left a LOT of Macs without their uncertified RAM working?)

Face it: You bought into a cult. Deal with it already.

Excuse me, I have to go bang on the headlight of the OTHER cultic product I can't seem to live without now .....

every second spent on worrying about OS piracy and its undemonstrable effect on the bottom line is an utter waste of time, Windows is the most pirated OS on earth yet M$ has the 90% marketshare and supports several of the top 50 richest men on earth. Worse yet is the inexorible bad blood invoked with the consumer mindset, didn't your mother tell you that you only get one chance to make a first impression? You may run the table with the iPod in a vacuuous market with NO competition even though it is a restrictive environment but you won't break into a saturated market that way. Marketing 101 lesson, assuming your product is the top of the line and you are already profitable give them a free taste and get a customer for life, make it difficult or make them pay and only get the preconverts, the forced-for-whatever-reason or those that you'll have to spend billions on to convince. Apple's 4% is paltry, forcing the one vendor solution and then thinking you'll gain bigtime and compete head to head to displace Dell and M$, on whizbang widgets, nice graphics and the coattails of the iPod alone are delusions of grandeur and quite possibly the shortsighted result of "being a little greedy". Net result, you will prove the Wall Street "Apple is overvalued" naysayers correct with your anemic 2% gain per year.

...and you will see where it states that you may only install OS X on an Apple-branded computer.

Not that the EULA will stop anyone who wants to hack it to run on a generic PC.

But it is a violation of a legal contract.

I thought burning in h*** was when you had to install windows on a generic PC

"a coworker of mine installed a copy of Tiger on his PC, but it was an extra copy that we had lying around the office. So, back to my point—if I buy a copy of Tiger, and install it on my PC at home, that's not stealing. I'm merely using a product in an unintended way."

Just a little clarification for you since you seem to be a little confused. Yes, a Mac is a personal computer, but "PC" designation is reserved for hardware that has an x86 processor (from AMD or Intel, etc.) and normally run Windows. Your co-worker installed an extra copy of Tiger on his Mac, not his PC. You CANNOT buy a copy of Tiger and install it on your PC at home not because Apple says not to use it that way, but because it's technically NOT possible.

And no-where in your comment did you mention a hacked version of OS X, so I don't think that is what you meant.

Actually now Apple is copying Dell on hardware with the change over to Intel processors. In fact from what I hear is that Apple is going to use Intel reference hardware just like Dell does.

Steve Jobs was JOKING?

Too bad that h*** already froze over when Apple introduced that they would switch to Intel. And even if that didn't do it, what about iTunes for Windows and the multi-button Apple mouse.

"Just a little clarification for you since you seem to be a little confused. Yes, a Mac is a personal computer, but "PC" designation is reserved for hardware that has an x86 processor (from AMD or Intel, etc.) and normally run Windows. Your co-worker installed an extra copy of Tiger on his Mac, not his PC. You CANNOT buy a copy of Tiger and install it on your PC at home not because Apple says not to use it that way, but because it's technically NOT possible.

And no-where in your comment did you mention a hacked version of OS X, so I don't think that is what you meant."

Let me clarify: he took a copy of mac os x tiger and installed it onto a computer that had an intel chip running inside it, and windows xp on another drive. I don't know the mechanics of how he got it running, but he had.

And, in case you missed Steve's keynote address at WWDC, Steve's Mac OS X demos were all run off an Intel box—he even stated that every version of Mac OS X was designed to run on Intel just in case the PPC platform didn't work out.

I'm sure it will be cracked, read Steve's comments- he knows it will be too. The thing is, it will probably be so complicated and difficult to do that most people will not even consider it an option (if they even know about it).

"Let me clarify: he took a copy of mac os x tiger and installed it onto a computer that had an intel chip running inside it, and windows xp on another drive. I don't know the mechanics of how he got it running, but he had."

The only way he could get a copy of Tiger installed on an intel PC is if either... a) he is an Apple developer with one of $900 "MacIntel" rentals (that Jobs mentioned at the WWDC) and a legitimate copy of Tiger for intel. I would suspect that installing it on ANY other machine is illegal, and a violation of the NDA.

or... b) he obtained an illegal copy of Tiger for Intel from the internet somewhere, and installed it illegally on windos PC.

take your pick.

I get the impression that in a few months Apple will become like the Willy Wonka Factory.

No one goes in, no one goes out .... except Steve in his special private jet.

"And, in case you missed Steve's keynote address at WWDC, Steve's Mac OS X demos were all run off an Intel box—he even stated that every version of Mac OS X was designed to run on Intel just in case the PPC platform didn't work out."

The retail version doesn't come with a Mac OS that runs on Intel. Jobs was talking about a not-so-secret project in Apple that has been porting the current Mac OS to x86-based computers for the past few years.... and even before that with OS 9, I believe.

Mac OS X for Intel Processors is not available to the general public. So it's either the illegal copy on the net or stolen from the Mactel rentals.

My guess is he fooled you, replaced the XP interface ... or it's an emulator, or it's the hacked copy on bittorrent.