[the odd loonie's rant] Of EULAs and Apple PCs
This EULA is a joke, but which EULA is not? How can a post-sale "contract" be enforceable in the first place?
Yes, I know why Apple are doing this. It's twofold actually. First, the "official" reason: they tweaked the OS to work with their machines and want the end-user to get as good an "experience" as possible. I'm no fan of AppleOS myself, but I use it from time to time and it's reasonnably pleasing, if only a bit bloated (but I reckon that my expectations are pretty high on this front). Then the "unofficial" reason: they want to preserve the cashcow that their hardware business is. Unlike many Mac fans seem to think, Apple hardware is really less than prime-cut, and you can find better hardware for a fraction of the price (_including_ very high-end workstations). In my limited experience in Mac (or, as we normal people call them, "Apple PCs" or "Apple workstations") support, I couldn't help but notice that Apple hardware has a very annoying tendency to crap itself regularly when presented with sustained high workloads. Only anecdotic evidence I must admit, but quite reproducible in "my" hands. Maybe I'm just not very lucky. I have to admit that Apple's post-sale support is better than most, which kinda makes up for it, but repeated downtime is not acceptable in some cases, no matter how diligent the rep is. Think million-dollar microscopes shared on a pay-per-use basis....
Now before I'm called a "windows fanboy" again, I must say that I also have to maintain a shitload* of Windows systems, and that has made me to hate MS beyond what words can express, but at least it will (legitimately) run on "inexpensive", reliable harware, leaving you with only the software cockups to deal with (and with Windows, that's far more than enough, thank you very much for asking). So if I didn't know how to tweak and deploy Linux or BSD distros, I would welcome the possibility to put AppleOS on some real good -and cheap- hardware. But hey, look, I don't need to! Still, being able to (legitimately) slap AppleOS on cheap and reliable machines would be a plus for some. That's why I still stand against Apple on this one (not _with_ the guys at PsyStar and their somewhat dubious morality. See, Hackintosh guys? that's why a "cancer" like the GPL is sometimes needed. But _against_ Apple, and _against_ ridiculous EULAs, that's for sure).
On the other hand, the inflated price for Apple's PCs and workstation is probably what allows them to sell the OS at relatively low prices. I'm sure the hackitosh guys will agree with a significant increase in their beloved OS' retail price if they want to be able to slap it on random machines... or will they?
As a sidenote, I'd like to remind the "Jobs is god and Apple is its prophet" -or the other way round- crowd that there is about as much real innovation in AppleOS as there are vitamins in a standard McDonald meal**. That's true for other OS vendors, too (Who just shouted "Microsoft!"?), but it doesn't make it any more glorious. It's all shiny wrapping around stolen ideas (which, incidentally, makes the often-heard "Vista stole Apple's look-and-feel" stance very, very ridiculous).
Sorry for the boring rant, best regards to all, flame on!
*shitload being a very appropriate term in this context
** In case you wondered, it means "not a lot at all" ***
*** Jobs _did_ come up with reasonably new ideas at some point. But I guess no Jobsian will want to talk about NeXT right now...