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Thu, 18 Aug 2005 Apple acts against OS X x86 hackers

Macworld staff

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Apple legal has forced the removal of links to videos showing Mac OS X x86 working on non-Apple certified PCs.

French language Mac website MacBidouille reports itself to have received an: “Amazingly aggressive email asking for the immediate removal of all links to the videos.”

Apple plays King Canute

The website immediately complied, but an editorial on its English language mirror site explains: “We deeply think that it will not change anything.”

The links were originally included to prove that its report explaining that hackers had managed to bypass Apple’s Trusted Computing Platform in order to make the developer version of Mac OS X x86 work on unapproved Intel machines.

Cease and desist

Other parties who have been working to make Apple’s cross-processor system work on their PCs have also been warned to remove links to videos from their websites.

While accepting the illegality of such hacks, and that the distribution of the developer preview through file-sharing networks is also illegal, the site makes the point that it aims to report what French Mac users need to know. It adds that it would have been happy to remove the links at Apple’s request.

Dvorak’s prophecy

Opinion columnist John Dvorak recently speculated that Apple's attempts to keep OS X off standard PC systems is in order to keep competition with Microsoft to a minimum.

He argued that Apple’s true intentions are to pretend to fight such attempts.

He proposed that after a period of such policing, Apple would bow to the pressure and release a boxed version of the OS designed to run on multiple PCs, including those unsupported by Windows Vista.

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