Maybe this will activate on Hackintoshes only. If people don't pay for the true cost of MacOS X (which is more than $129 per copy), make up for it with advertising.

...forgotten everything you know about Apple?

Here's two things you seem to be forgetting:

1. Apple patents TONNES of stuff that NEVER sees the light of day, literally hundreds if not thousands of ideas. "Stacks" as a concept went something like twelve YEARS before being radically overhauled and finally released, which everyone hated till the completely overhauled it AGAIN. Apple is just getting a patent claim in on this concept.

2. If there's only ONE thing you should know about Apple under Steve Jobs, its this: THEY HATE CLUTTER. And they hate ads (apart from Apple ads). MobileMe is still the ONLY ad-free email of its size and scope, and iWork.com and all the rest of Apple (including iTunes) could make truckloads of money from accepting paid ads. But they don't.

Bottom line: this is a non-sequitur story that will never have any effect on serious Mac users. If anything, I would guess this would be a backup plan in case Apple decides to offer a version of OS X for PCs -- because anything even slightly above "stolen" sorry "free" is more than they can handle. There's also that smart fellow who suggested this might apply more to kiosk and commerce Macs than home users.

In any event, relax.

..doesn't mean everyone should. Apple makes enough money on their quality hardware/software. They should be happy with that and not make Microsoft's mistake of trying to be all things to all people.

After Jobs killed the Newton because he said they needed to concentrate on the Mac, I would think that this idea would have died on the drawing board.

To be clear, I really, Really, REALLY hate this idea.

You can say it's just a patent application, Apple will never really do it, etc. etc.

But are you old enough to remember Sherlock, when Apple embedded banner ads into it? Fortunately, somebody developed a small app that blocked the ads, and Sherlock wasn't a major part of the OS.

If Apple does this, they're nuts. This would create a lot of bad will. People who now pay for all their OS updates will begin cheating, as Apple will look like every other rip-off company out there.

Now if they did NOT use it in the Mac OS, but got Microsoft to license it and use it in Windows, they may have something.

if you've thought of it, and it hasn't been patented already, DO IT. even if you don't intend to use the idea yourself, you can license it when some other guy does.

1. Apple patents TONNES of stuff that NEVER sees the light of day, literally hundreds if not thousands of ideas.

And maybe they're patenting this to make sure no one else can do it (like MS) without paying apple.

"Stacks" as a concept went something like twelve YEARS before being radically overhauled and finally released, which everyone hated till the completely overhauled it AGAIN. Apple is just getting a patent claim in on this concept.

Small note. People still hate 'stacks'. Stacks as an original concept was a great idea. What they did to it is basically change folders in the dock into "animated whiz-bang look-at-me ins't-this-cool-looking" demo fluff that has very little practicality. I'm still waiting for the day where I can click on a folder in the dock and just have it open the freakin' folder. You know, just like when you click an application, it opens the application. And you click a file, it opens the file.

I would guess this would be a backup plan in case Apple decides to offer a version of OS X for PCs -- because anything even slightly above "stolen" sorry "free" is more than they can handle.

And why do you say that? Because there are a lot of PC users who think shelling out $400 for a computer is a good deal?

It seems that people are getting worked up over nothing. There's any number of possibilities (most of which have already been commented on)...

1) Kiosk macs in the Apple Stores. This patent makes perfect sense for this.

2) A completely free OS (perhaps for a tablet device) with the option to pay. Why get worked up over this? Either you use the OS for free (something we don't have the option of now) or you pay to use it the way you like (just like now).

3) This could be a defensive patent filing. Companies do this all the time... file patents for things they have no intention of using, but don't want other people to abuse either.

Agreed - look at the flow-chart, particularly 'buys more time' and it's clearly something to do with pay-as-you-go computing use.

I will leave the Mac universe.

Nonnegotiable.

And how long will it be before they decide that their profits are better with the ads and drop the paid-for option to force the issue? I will not be part of this even if it's a possibility. An ad supported operating system is the worst idea in computing history. Go ahead Apple. Patent it so you can pursue royalties when it's implemented in Linux or if you decide to open up the OS to generic PC hardware or use this for free use of machines in a public arena but don't even think of going there on my Apple branded personal or business machine.

Yuck.

This seals it, Steve Jobs has officially gone crazy. Although, perhaps crazy like a fox. What better way to lock out Microsoft then to tie up the patents for what is likely to the only business model eventually left to them?

Of course this only points out how corrupt our patent system has become in allowing for patent squatting. The whole system should be tossed, a point Apple should be well aware of given that Nokia only this week exploited the same system to sue Apple.