Jobs Says Pirates Will "Burn in Hell"

[Swad]

Oh... and... the Intel Macs are still on track.

 

In preparation for the Apple Expo, Steve Jobs sat down with the press for a good discussion about Apple's hardware and, specifically, the Macintels. He stated that they will still be ready by the June of next year and that he was unsure what the effects would be of releasing the operating system for beige-box PC's. From the Macworld UK Article:

 

"Schiller observed: “Why do people buy a Mac?”, answering: “It’s not because of the processor. Its because of the operating system, OS X. Intel Macs will feel the same. The transition can be one that is very easy for customers. It wont be a dynamic shift for our customers.”

 

Multiple reports confirm that hardcore advanced PC users have been downloading illegally-distributed copies of Apple’s developer version of OS X for Intel processors. They have been hacking the system to make it install on all manner of PC processors, including those from Intel and AMD.

 

Jobs said: “We don’t know how having OS X available for PCs would affect Macs”, and promised, “we will have technology in OS X for Intel so that it cannot be installed in other PCs”. He also promised that the final version should not be judged on the basis of the developer versions.

 

But Apple’s leader isn’t pulling punches when it comes to his battle with the pirates. “Theft is bad”, he said, warning: “You don’t want to burn in Hell.”"

[Omega01]

“Theft is bad”, he said, warning: “You don’t want to burn in Hell.”"

 

Hehe - yes, this is Steve as we all know and love him!

I wonder, if he remembers the times, when he claimed to be a pirat himself back in the early, golden days at Apple Corp.?

 

It's all just a little bit of history repeating...

[matix]

"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers"

 

oh, please steve.

[bofors]

I wonder, if he remembers the times, when he claimed to be a pirat himself back in the early, golden days at Apple Corp.?

 

I am sure he does and that he also remembers that before Apple that he and Woz made and sold "blue boxes" to "steal" from the phone company.

 

However, his attitude towards pirating in general is admirable. He attends to compete with it by offering better service at a competitive price, as opposed to taking the legal route.

 

"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems chips will slip through your fingers"

 

I suspect that El Stevo himself may have personally been involved in the decision to leave this site alone. He surely can not be serious about actually preventing OS X from running on generic PCs at this point. That is impossible, at best he can try to deter it.

[Swad]

Well, I'd hope that he'd let our site stay alive, since 1) although people talk about hacking here, it's not our site's purpose and 2) we're helping out the mac community by providing resources (especially for software developers) about the transition.

 

We're just an information repository for all things OS X on x86. At this point, since some of that information includes how people have pirated the OS, we'll talk about it, but never encourage it.

[Guest terry]

“Theft is bad”, he said, warning: “You don’t want to burn in Hell.”

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?home&NewsID=12672

 

I find Job's statement quite interesting because he chose to argue from a moral and not a legal point of view. It rather looks to me like he's lightheartedly poking fun at the pirates. Apple really doesn't seem to bother much about them. As this has been said in other places of the forum already, this indifference to pirates leaves room for some speculation: Are they feeling safe because they think the final protection scheme will be very hard or tiresome to circumvent, or are they monitoring the piracy scene in order to pursue some basic market research on the appeal of Mac OS X to the average PC user?

[johnniecarcinogen]

Here is steve and the original Mac team in '84

 

He also said

“We choose to give away some software for free, we choose not to give away other software”

 

Also Sept. 19 was national "Talk Like A Pirate Day".

[Swad]

As this has been said in other places of the forum already, this indifference to pirates leaves room for some speculation: Are they feeling safe because they think the final protection scheme will be very hard or tiresome to circumvent, or are they monitoring the piracy scene in order to pursue some basic market research on the appeal of Mac OS X to the average PC user?

 

I think it's both, to be honest.

[bonehead]

I wonder, if he remembers the times, when he claimed to be a pirat himself back in the early, golden days at Apple Corp.?

 

Just recently he's been quoted in regards to the recording industry wanting the raise the price of music downloads:

"If they want to raise the prices, it means that they are getting greedy"

"If the price goes up, they [consumers] will go back to piracy and everybody loses"

 

Jobs is fully aware of needing to compete with piracy on the level of added value more than added legality.

 

This "value" is a Mac that works perfectly with OSX out of the box. On the flip side, you can bet that Apple is going to make installation on non Apple hardware difficult as possible to increase the perceived value of the Mac.

[eclipxe]

I interpreted his comment literally, as in after a certain period of time the Dev kit version of OSX will self destruct and cause your processor to ignite, setting your computer and you on fire, in HELL.

 

:-)

 

-Chris

[mikesum32]

fron arstechnica

 

 

Jobs calls music industry greedy

 

9/20/2005 9:50:50 AM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

 

The runaway success of online music ventures such as the iTunes Music Stores have left many wondering how the music industry would react. As I reported back in April of 2004, music executives have seen the success of the stores, and are rubbing their hands together with glee. Job's original vision of 99 cents a song and $9.99 for an album didn't last long, with the price of albums spreading out to $11.99 and $14.99 in some instances. Then, late last month Infinite Loop covered the impending storm: music industry types have started pointing their fingers at Jobs, alleging that he's only in it for himself, and that his expectations are essentially irrational. Jobs has fired back:

 

"If they want to raise the prices, it means that they are getting greedy," said Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs. "If the price goes up, they (consumers) will go back to piracy and everybody loses." He added, "Theft is bad," and the Buddhist joked that "You dont want to burn in Hell."

 

It may not seem like it, but it has been more than two years since the launch of the iTunes Music Store, and that alone has the music industry brimming with hopes for price-adjustments. They also don't buy Jobs' argument that a price increase will result in more piracy, but probably not for the reasons we might assume.

 

I've long been of the conviction that piracy is not nearly as large of a problem as the RIAA makes it out to be. The "losses" tossed about are undeniably trumped up in the service of political aims (P2P war, the DMCA, etc.), and the industry isn't losing money to casual piracy, but organized crime—crime, notably, that generates black market profits off of consumers buying knock-offs. The executives sitting at the big table intimately know their own bottom lines, they know how much they exaggerate their loses, and they know how utterly sweet it is to charge $10 for music sans physical production costs, only to turn around and expect $2 for a phone ringtone to boot. I wish the music industry's problems were my problems. That's how good they have it, and almost everyone else knows it, too. This is, after all, the same industry found guilty of price fixing.

 

Jobs is right. They are greedy. But they don't fear casual piracy. Most people don't mind paying for music, and those that pirate it typically aren't buying much music, anyway. If the music industry is getting bullish on pricing, it's all the proof you need to see that they don't fear casual piracy. They've seen the online machine work, they've seen people drop $200 or more for portable music players, and now they want—nay, expect—more.

[Guest terry]

I interpreted his comment literally, as in after a certain period of time the Dev kit version of OSX will self destruct and cause your processor to ignite, setting your computer and you on fire, in HELL.

Just stumbled across this recent photo of Mr. Jobs...

 

© AFP

 

...and when comparing it to Gustaf Gruendgen's famous enactment of the devil in Goethe's classical Faust play...

 

 

...I must admit that Jobs looks a bit like a modern Mephisto trying to lure us into temptation. Perhaps he knows much more about the inner workings of hell than we would think.

[Mr. Bond]

Personally, I believe that this site has done more of a service to jobs than anything. Simply because of the existence of this site, it has given Mac OSX on intel a lot more press than it would have gotten. It confirms the fact that people are genuinely interested on getting OSX to run on their intels. Because of this, the community grew, and with it, both the developments and press received. Some of this press has been negative (such as the quick bypassing of the security measures) but there has also been much good to counteract it (the osx86 machines running faster than their mac counterparts, etc.). This has simply given Jobs and Co. more attention, notifying more people that soon, they can have a choice to run both their windows and mac OS's on one happy machine. At this point, I don't think piracy is a large issue for Jobs. Of the millions of people that use PC's in the world, there are currently only about 0.0001% of people that actually have an almost fully functional copy of Osx on their PC's. These copies are severly crippled, as Jobs surely knows, and works in his favour. So many people currently have issues with their graphics/sound/networking etc. which make it harder for them to use this as a primary OS. Plus the fact that these copies do not yet have the largest assortment of software or support, making it all but impartical for the average end user. Sure, there's Rosetta, but how fast can you really run photoshop when your an average user with only 256mb of ram? The bottom line is that it's impractical at the moment. Especially with the 10.4.2 developer update on it's way, which will simply break mostly everything that's been put in place up till this point. Jobs attacks the legality of running Mac on intel in a more moral way, at this point, because he knows that the OS isn't really of much use to the average computer user. The precentage of people running this hacked version is small, and is not a real danger to Apple's integrity. If anything, it's just spreading the word, and demonstrating to Apple that Mac on Intel is an idea that will actually succeed.

[DJP]

Just stumbled across this recent photo of Mr. Jobs...

 

© AFP

 

...and when comparing it to Gustaf Gruendgen's famous enactment of the devil in Goethe's classical Faust play...

 

 

...I must admit that Jobs looks a bit like a modern Mephisto trying to lure us into temptation. Perhaps he knows much more about the inner workings of hell than we would think.

[opieum]

Think for a second. I am sure I will get flames from the Mac fanboi crowd, but hopefully there will be some with a sense of reason here to discuss this constructivly.

 

We all know that Steve Jobs is not an idiot. If you think he is then apply for the CEO position at apple. Or start your own.

 

He isnt pulling any punches...

"Theft is bad"....

"You dont want to burn in hell"

 

Ok to my point. Historically generals have used a similar strategy to manipulate their enemies into doing what they want....in this case reverse engineering or hacking MacOSx to work on something Apple did not "intend" it to work on. The comment in the article is a blatant challenge and provocation. This usually leads to more attempts to break the system and it's security and in this case more specifically The TPM feature. I think that this will become widespread judging alone from the talent we have seen in this forum. There will be more people who will make these attempts and it will eventualy be successful to get a fully featured MacOS on beige boxes.

 

The attempt is to provoke the reverse engineers hackers and such to do things so that Apple has to throw their hands up and say oh well I guess we are missing a financial oportunity here. We will have to release Os X to the masses now. This will eventually lead to raising the bar on case designs overall.

 

For those who will say well there is no precedent for this....think Microsoft. Remember what they said about XP...Well now we have Product activation so that noone can pirate copies of it....That lasted maybe a week before articles came out saying it was broken. This in effect has been one of the main reasons MS has stayed at the top. People who use it then recommend it to others. Stealth marketing is the term I have heard used on this.

 

Anyone with any sense of real security in their systems will not go out and provoke people to hack them....No they will keep the security aspects quiet to some extent and just tout other features. It's like provoking terrorists to attack you (ok bad example but you get the idea).

 

My overall point (and opinion so dont flame for my opinion I am entitled to it just like you are yours) is that Apple does want to put Mac OS on every computer...That to me seems like their overall goal eventually. They are at this point moving all the pieces into place to make it happen. Once the circumastances are favorable to them they will make it happen. I figure no more than 5 years before Mac Os X or XI becomes a reality on everyones PC. I think they have more up their sleeves to make it happen. Again just my opinion and my viewpoint on how it could happen. Unless you KNOW the future dont tell me I am wrong but add a viewpoint that is yours and your perspective. This one is my view on it. I base my views on precendents and proven methods of attack so to speak.

[cybermiguel]

I think that Steve Jobs is trying to gain marketshare with this "campaign". I mean...c'mon you guys...would you recommend OS X when it's fully functional? I'll do it. The thing is that marketshare is not always better finances. You could have lots of OS X pirated copies and a handful of legally obteined ones (besides the ones that comes with the Macs) but the increased marketshare will give the Mac OS a unique advantage: more software and more support, maybe not from Apple, but from us.

 

From this point of view, there will be a time when you can have OS X on your beige box PC but, if you buy a Mac, you will buying the certainty that you will ALWAYS have tech support and that the system, no matter what, will work flawlesly. I think many people, Including me, would buy a Mac for critical tasks, such as scientific computation.

 

 

Regards.

[jeffk]

This is my first post to these forums. Flame me if you want.

 

First, I want to say that I thank everyone for their hard work. I now have a working hackintosh thanks to all the hard work from people such as maxxuss, bender, and br0adband. I built the $199.00 model using the ASRock motherboard, and frankly, the machine rocks, and is VERY stable - maybe even more than my windows boxes.

 

With that said, I want to reply to Job's statement. I am a software developer, and mostly program on Windows. Besides that, I love Macs. I have two, yes two minis. These are not the cheap models - these are the full up loaded models with 1GB of ram, DVD recorder, Bluetooth, and airport (and yes, the hackintosh with the 2.2GHZ celeron is MUCH faster than the 1.42GHZ mini).

 

I have three ipods.

 

I have an airport express.

 

I have always wanted to develop software for the mac, but honestly, I felt the market was too small for the effort involved. When apple put out the press release saying they were moving to Intel, a light went on in my head - "It's time to start writing software for the mac." I looked on apple's website and found that it cost me $500 to join their dev program (not bad), then an extra $1000 for the dev kit. Thats not bad either until you read the fine print and see that it's $1000 for the RENTAL of the box - its not a purchase.

 

Thats when I got pissed. For small companies such as my own (1 man companies), its just not feasable to spend 1000 on the RENTAL of a devkit. This rental thing is just plain dumb. This is really a deterrent to keeping small companies and shareware authors from porting to the new OSX86.

 

Yes, when intel based macs are on the market, I will probably buy one of them as well to add to my mac "collection". But why waste 1000.00 for the rental of a devkit.

 

Yes, I pirated OSX86. Apple has plenty of my money from my prior purchases, and will for sure get money from my future purchases, so I DONT FEEL GUILTY in the least. Apple will continue getting money from me.

 

As far as Job's saying pirates will burn in hell, I say screw him. I am getting real tired of Apple and their legal department. Just the other day, I saw the iPodLounge.com had to change the name of their website because it had the name iPod in it. Thats just BS - especially when they were such a strong advocate for the ipod.

 

Apple needs to realize that you don't win market share through threats and legal attacks, but instead by doing it through free market competition. Create a better product for a cheaper price, and people will buy it. Leave comminities like the OSX86 project and others alone, as these will, in the long run, create an army of apple advocates.

 

Nuff said.

 

Jeff

[Stefan Wouters]

 

Steve has us working for him. We are hacking MacOS, and Apple learns from us how to make their next version more secure. Surely, serious action would've been taken by Apple already if they'd really care about this 'piracy'.

 

How many people wouldn't, after trying out MacOS x86, buy an Macintel when they're released? Free marketing... Apple is laughing at all the people who suddenly are interested in their system. I suspect a future of many future Mac users that will burn in hell for their past of hacking MacOS x86.

[Guest terry]

For those who will say well there is no precedent for this....think Microsoft. Remember what they said about XP...Well now we have Product activation so that noone can pirate copies of it....That lasted maybe a week before articles came out saying it was broken.

But who in the world is running Windows XP with a cracked product activation? I thought everyone was simply installing the "Corporate" version that doesn't need any activation at all...

 

 

My overall point (and opinion so dont flame for my opinion I am entitled to it just like you are yours) is that Apple does want to put Mac OS on every computer...That to me seems like their overall goal eventually. They are at this point moving all the pieces into place to make it happen. Once the circumastances are favorable to them they will make it happen.

Well, at least it seems that they're seriously considering to make it happen. I think the statement of Jobs, “We don’t know how having OS X available for PCs would affect Macs”, is crucial here. In the following years they will have to get clear about the question whether a lauch of their operating system for generic boxes will make sense from an economical point of view. Considering his other statement, "At its core Apple has great engineering and confidence that it has the ability to take complex technology and make it easy for the end user", they will have to explore whether their innovative designs alone (simply think of the Mac Mini whose design concept had been copied very quickly by Intel(*)) can drive their hardware sales if OS X is made available freely to the masses of PC users, and whether people will eventually follow the "everything out of one hand" approach, getting interested also in Apple hardware after having grown appreciative of the OS.

 

(*) http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67664,00.html

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/06/01/aopen/index.php

[bonehead]

My overall point (and opinion so dont flame for my opinion I am entitled to it just like you are yours) is that Apple does want to put Mac OS on every computer...

 

Yes, Apple wants MacOS on every computer... but beyond that, they want every computer to be a Mac.

 

While I think it'd be nice for Apple to license their OS, I highly doubt they'll do it any time soon. Apple is, first and foremost, still a hardware company.

 

What's the main barrier to buying a Mac for most people? Price? Not really. Compatibility? Absolutely.

 

Just being able to dual boot to windows alone will be enough for most users, but remember, the Intel chip that ships with the Intel mac will most likely have virtualization extensions. With this, you'll be able to run a virtual Windows install at full speed inside OSX. Expect at least this much at launch. Projects like Darwine will only add to this momentum.

 

This compatibility will make OSX _very_ desirable to the average buyer. Now, given this opportunity to move product, why would Apple want to make slim margins on just selling the OS, when they could also sell the hardware along with it? Exactly how many would put off purchase of a Mac because they can’t buy just the OS for their current PC? How many will eventually buy a Mac anyway on their next upgrade cycle? How many of those that wont buy a Mac ever would have just pirated the OS in the first place?

 

Now, if hardware sales don’t take off like they hope, they can always fall back on an OS license… but, if the hardware sales don’t take off, it means the OS is probably a dead duck anyway.

[tonyl]

Yes, Apple wants MacOS on every computer... but beyond that, they want every computer to be a Mac.

 

While I think it'd be nice for Apple to license their OS, I highly doubt they'll do it any time soon. Apple is, first and foremost, still a hardware company.

 

What's the main barrier to buying a Mac for most people? Price? Not really. Compatibility? Absolutely.

 

Just being able to dual boot to windows alone will be enough for most users, but remember, the Intel chip that ships with the Intel mac will most likely have virtualization extensions. With this, you'll be able to run a virtual Windows install at full speed inside OSX. Expect at least this much at launch. Projects like Darwine will only add to this momentum.

 

This compatibility will make OSX _very_ desirable to the average buyer. Now, given this opportunity to move product, why would Apple want to make slim margins on just selling the OS, when they could also sell the hardware along with it? Exactly how many would put off purchase of a Mac because they can’t buy just the OS for their current PC? How many will eventually buy a Mac anyway on their next upgrade cycle? How many of those that wont buy a Mac ever would have just pirated the OS in the first place?

 

Now, if hardware sales don’t take off like they hope, they can always fall back on an OS license… but, if the hardware sales don’t take off, it means the OS is probably a dead duck anyway.

 

 

After several friends of mine tried pirated OSx86, they want to buy Macs with Intel chip, since they can run Mac and Windows natively on it! Hi Mr. Jobs, can you say piracy is always bad for Apple?

[zhLilDoggi]

Mmm, just like "I will fking kill Google."

[willgonz]

True...Mac Intels might be able to run OS X and Windows. But it will {censored} off Dell and all the other guys. They might even tell Microsoft, if you don't prevent Windows from running on Mac's then we won't sell OEM versions of your OS any more.

 

Job's is complaining about people stealing OSX86. If he put it on store shelves, they would have bought it.

 

Heck, we are ready to switch 100,000's of our Dell systems to run OS X86 as soon as Apple sells it. However, we might just buy Windows Vista instead. Oh well, more money for Microsoft.

 

Ok, I was harsh. Here, this is better. If Apple sells their Motherboards and their OS instead of whole machines then I would see switching my systems. Because I wound not have to repurchase the following items:

 

Hard drive

Memory

DVD drive/burner

video card

keyboard

mouse

case

cpu fan

[crypto55]

Multiple reports confirm that hardcore advanced PC users have been downloading illegally-distributed copies of Apple’s developer version of OS X for Intel processors. They have been hacking the system to make it install on all manner of PC processors, including those from Intel and AMD.

 

We're "hardcore advanced PC users" now? Score! Hey, I'd be the first in line at the Apple store to buy a legit copy of OSX86 when/if it comes out. It's simple economics: if the demand is there but the supply is not, or if there is some kind of cap or restriction on supply/reliability, a black market will arise to take advantage of the situation. Furthermore, Jobs is not exactly losing revenue on us, is he? It would be a different issue if OSx86 was for sale. But since it's not, all it's doing is cementing Apple's fan base.

 

Microsoft has reigned supreme, depending on your viewpoint, of OSs for years. Now that Apple is finally putting up some serious resistance, it was almost inevitable that such a product would leak. Non-revenue-disenhancing piracy does not reduce the overal value or worth of a company (in this situation)! Piracy should be a rite of passage for Apple, not a dispised activity.

[bonehead]

Job's is complaining about people stealing OSX86. If he put it on store shelves, they would have bought it.

 

But, from Apples point of view, every copy of OSX86 sold without a Mac could be a potential lost hardware sale.

 

In this case, making OSX terribly inconvenient to pirate should be enough of a deterrent for the average user.

 

But it will {censored} off Dell and all the other guys. They might even tell Microsoft, if you don't prevent Windows from running on Mac's then we won't sell OEM versions of your OS any more.

 

Microsft being in a Monopoly position probably couldn't get away with restricting the distribution of its OS in that kind of way. However, by the time anything like that could arise, projects such as Darwine would likely be in full swing.

 

Heck, we are ready to switch 100,000's of our Dell systems to run OS X86 as soon as Apple sells it. However, we might just buy Windows Vista instead. Oh well, more money for Microsoft.

 

Eventually those Dells will be obsolete. To sell even 10,000,000 copies of just OSX86 today would mean the potential loss of far greater profit in future hardware sales.

 

Apple isn't in this for a quick buck. They want to get back to the domination they enjoyed in the 80's, and that's slightly longer road.

 

What we may see is Apple licensing hardware to OEMs like Dell for resale, much like they've done with the iPod.

 

 

Don't get me wrong. I'd like OSX for my PC just like everyone else, but I still highly doubt it will happen in the near future.