On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 14:54:12 -0500, gfretwell wrote:

On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:59:12 GMT, Mys Terry
wrote:

Now that Macs are using intel processors, the biggest problem will be
hackers stealing the OS to load on platforms other than those sold by
Apple.


I bet apple puts a hook in the BIOS (missing in other Intel boxes) that
keeps their software proprietary. All they need is to emulate a few
"apple only" instructions in copyrighted firmware. The hardware is only
what the microcode says it is. I suppose there could be a reverse
engineered BIOS hack but I doubt it would be widespread enough to impact
apple's bottom line.

I'm not sure. Much of the Mac OS X underpinnings are open sourced (BSD),
and already run on Intel boxes. Drivers for the various peripherals may
be more problematic.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1824229,00.asp