Apple’s Atomic War

post from TheAppleBlog on 11 November 2009 11:19:00 AM. © TheAppleBlog

intel_atom

With the release of 10.6.2, Apple killed unsupported support for the Atom processor — the processor used in low-cost netbooks. Certain models of netbooks could run OS X quite easily, and people used them to make the Little Netbook Apple Refuses to Make. While it’s a stretch to say Apple has killed the hackintosh market, it’s certainly proving it isn’t going to sit around and ignore it.

The reaction has been interesting and varies from casual indifference, to the defense of Apple’s action, to thinking Apple cancelled Christmas. While I’ve been a vocal supporter of Apple’s right to continue to club Palm over the Pre syncing fiasco, I imagine it’ll sound hypocritical when I say I’m disappointed in Apple over this move.

Up until now, Apple’s stance with the hackintosh community has largely been don’t ask, don’t tell. The people who bought a netbook and, hopefully, bought a copy of OS X to install it, were aware of the risks of doing so. Getting it to run might involve waving a dead chicken at the screen, or it could be completely painless. However, the person undertaking this task knew of the risks. So, there was little harm done.

I’d like to take a look at some of the armchair theories I’ve seen, and offer my own armchair analysis of them.

Apple wasn’t happy with the (alleged) piracy

The piracy angle has two fronts: your interpretation of the EULA, and how many copies of OS X running on hackintoshes were purchased.

In terms of the EULA, while I know Apple strongly disagrees with this, my personal take is as long as I’ve bought a legal license of OS X (and if it’s an upgrade license like Snow Leopard, I have the requisite Leopard copy), if I want to install it on a piece of non-Apple gear as long as I don’t waste Apple’s or mine time with supporting it, I’m in the clear. Now, this is not legal advice in any way, and all the usual disclaimers. It may be a tenuous stretch, but in this case I don’t consider a person creating such a hackintosh a “pirate.”

The second front, though, has no defense. If you’re creating a hackintosh and download a torrent or borrow a buddy’s disc, and don’t own a corresponding license, you’re a pirate. Where things get gray is if you’re downloading a hacked OS X distro, but have a legal license, are you a pirate? I have no data on how many hackintoshes were running pirated OS X installs, and I don’t have any corresponding data on how many Snow Leopard installs are legal. That said, since Apple offers no copy protection, I’m going to say that piracy wasn’t a motivator.

Apple didn’t like seeing netbooks with Apple stickers on them

In the somewhat wonky world of Apple’s Land of Preventing User Confusion, I can actually see this one being a reason for doing this. Now, I go to a fairly technical university and the overall number of netbooks I’ve seen is small, and zero of them have been running OS X (unscientific poll taken while trying to find tables at the canteen and library). I’ve never actually seen a hackbook, much less one with an Apple sticker slapped on it. But there are enough pictures on Flickr of people doing this, so I can see Apple getting irate and going, “OK, enough already.” Who knows, maybe people were walking into Apple stores looking for “that cute little Apple laptop I saw the nice guy at the airport using.”

Apple doesn’t have products running the Atom chipset

I’ll buy this one. While having support for the chipset doesn’t hurt anything, it’s unnecessary code. Maybe Apple was thinking of using the chipset and decided against it. Maybe knowing support for that chipset was keeping Jobs up at night. If Apple does end up using the chipset, it’s easy enough to re-enable the code in the future. Which is about as close as I’ll get to mentioning the oft-rumored, never-promised Tablaslabawhatevah. Some have opined that by doing this code cleanup Apple didn’t know it was breaking Atom support. I don’t agree. While it’s possible there’s nothing evil about its intent, I think it was intentional.

The Pystar lawsuit forced its hands

Now we’re getting somewhere. Up until recently, creating a hackintosh was very much a do-it-yourself affair. You had to get the hardware and do the grunt work to get the OS on it. Granted, while it’s gotten a lot easier over the years and many sites have complete walkthroughs, it’s still an undertaking. Pystar, though, upped the ante. It recently released the Rebel EFI tool which, allegedly, will allow you to install OS X on darn near anything. It’s not a stretch to assume it’s going to sell a netbook running OS X. Given the lawsuit, I believe Apple did this to both be able to demonstrate to a court it has taken measures to prevent OS X from running on un-supported hardware, as well as eliminate a future product line from Psystar.

Like I said, I’m a little disappointed in Apple. But I can understand why it would cut the code for an unused chip. I’ve given some thought to getting a netbook and hackintoshing it, but after I got my new MacBook Pro a month or so ago, that desire faded away. I’m much happier using Apple-built hardware. I have a Dell Ultraportable laptop for work, and the small trackpad on that drives me nuts…I don’t want to think of one smaller.

What about you? What do you think of Apple’s decision?

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Apple Surpasses Nokia as Most Profitable Cell
Phone Maker

post from TheAppleBlog on 11 November 2009 10:59:00 AM. © TheAppleBlog

iPhone3GS-2 Despite controlling a much smaller share of the market, Apple is now much more profitable than Nokia, overtaking the handset maker as the most profitable company in the business of selling cell phones. Apple also overtook Samsung during the last financial quarter, so it actually jumped from third to first place overall among global cell phone companies.

Research firm Strategy Analytics (via Reuters) points out that while Apple is now the most profitable company in the cell phone industry, both Nokia and Samsung both still beat the Cupertino company in terms of sheer size. That’s especially good news for Apple, which makes much more on a per unit basis than any other mobile phone maker. It makes approximately $320 pure profit on each iPhone sold, according to Strategy Analytics.

Estimated profits for Apple during the third financial quarter of this year are around $1.6 billion, compared to $1.1 billion for Nokia during the same period. It’s a commanding lead, and one that will likely only grow as Apple continues to end exclusivity deals around the world, opening up iPhone sales to more and more potential subscribers.

Of course, there isn’t a direct relationship between Apple’s gain and the slides Nokia and Samsung are experiencing. Other factors are at work, including the growing popularity of Google’s Android platform, which is being adopted by more and more cell phone makers and network providers. The arrival of the Palm Pre probably also had a negative impact on the handset sales of the two industry leaders.

Nokia is of course in the midst of a legal battle with Apple over what it sees as blatant copyright violation. Charles recently wrote about the conflict over intellectual property between the two firms. Nokia alleges that the iPhone infringes on not one, not two, but 10 patents it holds regarding wireless tech and standards. The timing of the suit, which comes shortly following a significant drop in market share for Symbian OS, seems quite suspect.

The future for Apple looks bright indeed, so long as it can continue taking in the same incredibly high profit margins on the iPhone. Part of its continued ability to do so is probably due to the fact that the 3GS iPhone revision actually seemed to require very little change on the production side, which would go a long way to keeping manufacturing costs down. A significant update will require more time to become profitable, but Apple’s continued success with the device means that the turnaround time required for that to happen will be remarkably short.

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phone-maker/

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Universal intros dedicated Blu-ray app for
iPhones, iPods

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 11 November 2009 10:50:00 AM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Film studio Universal has released a free iPhone application, pocket BLU. The software communicates...

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Zune HD's first 3D games go live

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 11 November 2009 10:10:00 AM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Microsoft today quietly added its promised 3D games to the Zune Marketplace. The new mix brings gam...

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Memo warns of new malicious iPhone hack

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 11 November 2009 09:55:00 AM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

A new, more serious danger to jailbroken iPhones has emerged, says security firm Intego. The threat...

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Nintendo chief doesn't see iPhone, DS as rivals

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 11 November 2009 09:20:00 AM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in a talk today denied that handhelds like the DSi LL compete with t...

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Samsung confirms dropping Symbian in 2010

post from Macnn | The Macintosh News Network on 11 November 2009 08:20:00 AM. © Macnn | The Macintosh News Network

Samsung senior VP Don Joo Lee today confirmed rumored plans that it will dismiss Symbian from its sm...

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iKee Virus : Ashley made the virus to raise the
issue of security

Last week a new worm was been infecting those jailbroken iPhones that still carry the same default ‘alpine’ password. We published a guide to change your default password of SSH, if you missed then check Secure Your Jailbroken iPhone and[...]

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Galarina releases free versions of GeoLogTag and
PhotoToMac iPhone apps

Galarina today releases free versions of GeoLogTag and PhotoToMac for iPhone and iPod Touch. GeoLogTag offers an all-in-one geotagging solution for photos taken with any digital camera. GeoLogTag Free keeps logged locations for 2 hours instead of 90 days. PhotoToMac transfers photos taken with an iPhone and saved photos over WiFi to a Mac shared folder. PhotoToMac Free transfers the photos with a lower resolution than the full version.

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AMEX Digital puts out Mac mini Blu-ray upgrade

AMEX Digital today put out an internal Blu-ray drive upgrade kit for owners of current generation Ma...

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