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Mac OS X Intel Kernel Uses DRM
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Aug 01, 2005 12:07 AM
from the folks-are-surprised-about-this-why-exactly? dept.
from the folks-are-surprised-about-this-why-exactly? dept.
An anonymous reader submits "Several people have discovered that the new Intel kernel Apple has included with the Developer Kit DVD uses TCPA/TPM DRM. More specifically, it includes "a TCPA/Palladium implementation that uses a Infineon 1.1 chip which will prevent certain parts of the OS from working unless authorized."
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Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! Spectacular use of technology Steve! You're my hero!
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Funny)
At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Informative)
Don't they teach you new whippersnappers anything these days? Or do I have to explain the origin of the "No wireless. Less capacity than a Nomad. Lame." and the "and then it was like, beep beep beep..." joke to you, as well?
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Insightful)
there just won't be a public backlash this time. it'll creep in slowly.
how to make amphibians edible through the use of high temperature h2o.
the GNU philopsophy will save us all... if it weren't for the fact that they are a bunch of pinko terrorists.
not that i'm saying we should give up by any means except that i just don't see this going away like the BS "test the waters" cpu serial # scandal a few years ago.
so many companies have invested heavily in digital -end user handcuffs that it's very improbable that they will give up easily. and the media certainly won't be telling the public anything negative, that much you can count on.
i would like to donate to the eff, except i don't want to be put on a list of terrorists. the only way to even have a remote chance of beating this nonsense (criminal and unethical behavior) is to educate the public at a greater rate than the "mainstream media" can "educate" them.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy is no techie (christ, he asked me to help him hook his monitor up last week), but he listened in and asked us to explain exactly what Trusted Computing was. We sketched out the very basics - media files dialling home before play, your rights/viewing-licence agreement changing after purchase at the whims of the content producer, other theoretically possible restrictions that DRM allows for, files refusing to play on non-trusted platforms and your PC dynamically downsampling future DVDs if it detects your monitor isn't Trusted.
At the end of the five-minute conversation (again, attempting to inform rather than frighten) the guy was more pissed off than I've ever seen him - practically kicking furniture and swearing he'd never buy a bit of TCA-compliant electronics. Ever.
As I said, while this guy isn't stupid, he's not even remotely technical. And when he appreciated the actual, real-life restrictions Trusted Computing would place on him he was angry.
There is hope for these people, if they can be educated before the fight is over.
Parent
Objectivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's assume (perhaps falsely) that the RIAA/MPAA aren't literally Satan's spawn. They have a good reason for wanting DRM: they spend a lot of money to make music/movies. They'd like to get paid for that, and the current environment makes it easy for people to get the full benefit of their work without paying for it.
You know all this, so I'm not going to explain any further, but the question is, did you explain this to your friend? It's easy to get people angry when you explain only one side of the story. And if you want to use him as an example you have to be extra-careful to present their side as persuasively as possible, because you're obviously coming to this with a bias.
Look, I agree that the DRM they want to use is too restrictive. But the absolutely-no-DRM environment is also not completely fair to them. So the attitude of simply getting angry at them for proposing an alternative is just wrong. The proper attitude is closer to, "Gee, neither situation is tenable, let's figure out what's genuinely fair."
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
you'll more than likely piss off the users/fish far more than you'll prevent copying.
but that's not even relevant to this issue.
how is paying for mac os x and installing it on an x86 computer you already own, copyright infringement? paying for the software obviously means that the vendor has complete control over what you do with it.
it's a sad world we live in... because we're all responsible for our ills, in one way or another.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm being held responsible for someone else's ills. That's the bit that gets to me. I'm being presumed guilty before I even buy a computer, and therefore restricted in the use of my own property.
I have to deal with speed limits being lowered to deal with idiots who speed, bag searches at supermarkets because of idiots who shoplift, and even more intensive screenings at airports because of morons who want to use innocents for their own personal socio-political stupidity. Now I'm also being restricted in my personal hobby interest and profession?
I think I'll be sticking to Linux, where groups like Debian will remove software because it comes under a license that's too restrictive.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
And before you try to tell me "but that's not how it works," I say fuck "how it works." The scum who think up these fake "licenses" can cram them up their ass! They can claim that EULAs exist and are valid all they want, but it doesn't make it true.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Licensing has nothing to do with the right to make copies. It is about controlling how and what you do with your copy, and to avoid consumer rights we recieve by a sale. For example, to only allow playback on approved devices to limit features (disable fast forward), collect player royalties, enforce artifical market barriers (zones)
or to tie licenses to specific hardware or activation schemes to prevent resale, or to remove the rights you normally would have under fair use and other laws.
Anything that isn't lent, rented or leased, I consider sold. You sell me CDs, DVDs, iTMS songs and Windows XP. Not the copytight, the copy. That is my personal philosophy at least. The law is bought.
Kjella
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, if "content providers" weren't such greedy bloodsucking parasites, then there'd be no need for DRM.
Because those companies didn't actually EARN those profits by providing a desired good or service at a price that buyers were willing to pay? Like what would happen in a _real_ capitalistic market instead of a government-mandated one.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the same way I feel when a cop wants to search me illegally or otherwise hassles me. Or when my employer wants to make me take a drug test even though I don't even so much as smoke cigerettes or drink alchohol and my job involves me sitting at a desk reading and writing things of little consequence.
Yep. I just think to myself "This sucks, but I don't need to be angry at the police or employers for violating my rights or my privacy. I need to be angry at the weekend pot smokers who make it necessary for people to infringe on my privacy or violate my constitutional rights".
And when the cops shoot a black man for having a candybar in his pocket or shoot an unarmed non violent black man four dozen times at close range, I just think "It sucks, but if black people weren't out there killing every person they come across, these police wouldn't have to senselessly murder any of them".
Seriously man... Get real.
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know... in more civilized law systems some rights are upheld EVEN if you signed them away.
That's why they are called "unalienable", you know.
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is laughable, to say the least. Companies want DRM not because of rampant piracy, but because the technology is advancing so fast, they can't predict where the future lies; and they want to be able to make money regardless of which way the technology turns.
Tell me something: is photocopying of books (by poor students, usually) not piracy? Then why don't copier makers have DRM? Where's the DRM for FM radio? People used to make copies of broadcast songs quite rampantly.
Any fool who thinks DRM is about "stopping piracy" is nothing but a pure fool who's had too much Koolaid.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
companies that want to treat me like a criminal by default can munch my taint.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, how can you blame companies for trying to protect their profits when thousands of people are ripping them off every day?
Instead of just blindly saying "pirates are bad" and then handcuffing everyone, even the law abiding people who make them money, they should examin _why_ people pirate. Obviously there is the "pay vs. free" thing, but there are other factors for why people pirate stuff.
A lot of piracy is at least partly down to the pirated material being "better" than the originals in many ways - take TV shows for example. Why do people download them from torrents instead of watching them on TV? Certainly for me, the reason for doing it is that I have to wait well over 3 months after the original air-date for most stuff to get shown here in the UK. I.e. the illegal distribution method is a lot better than the legal one.
Another example: I buy music CDs. Once I have bought them then they get ripped to MP3 so I can easilly get at the music without sorting through stacks of CDs and the CDs themselves only get used on my personal CD player and in the car. So if I buy a CD that's "copy protected" which won't let me do this, it's useless to me, whereas the MP3s of the same CD I can download work fine. I.e. the illegal copies allow me to do what I need (and should be able to do with something I've legally bought), and thus are "better".
A large proportion of people _want_ the legal version of something, but they're not going to buy it if the illegal version is so much better. The producers should look at this and rather than stamping out the illegal competition through restrictions they should improve their own systems so that they "outcompete" the illegal stuff.
Parent
Re:copyrights (Score:5, Insightful)
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
Yep - that would be the ability of the US Congress to control whether or not the copyrighters have a right to copyright. Note that it provides congress with a power, it does not provide the people with a right.
Importantly, it has the clause "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" - once copyright is no longer filling that role, it should not be in place...
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll both get dragged away by the Gestapo. Together. Like old times. It'll be fun!
OK, maybe that was a little bit over the top. But you get the point: if that is your reason for not donating, then the terrorists^Wpoliticians have already won.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Funny)
That bit in your contract about the "per anum" fee may have been a typo.
I'm an Apple user, and I've always paid through the nose...
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, Heaven forbid that innovative software could actually be reimplemented by third parties and offered for free to consumers. I mean, next thing you know they might actually make a whole OS by taking ideas here and there and start offering it for free ! Imagine the havoc on poor little OS developers worldwide !
Good thing that our modern democracies have invented software patents, so we can prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening....
</sarcasm>
Thomas -
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Informative)
Are you kidding? Legitimate users are the only ones it interferes with. Pirates just use Corporate Edition and don't deal with all that bullshit.
Hell, I know lots of people who own XP because it came with their computer, and they still wipe it and throw a copy of corporate on there because the product activation/windows update bullshit screws up their system from time to time.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that the best way to learn? Using it on a daily basis.
I won't say Linux because, despite the vast improvements the last years, it takes some patience.
But if you'd rather take it as they (MS, Apple) hand it to you by all means. Just don't complain that there aren't alternatives... As the old saying - the cost of freedom isn't free.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:5, Insightful)
THESE ARE DEVELOPER MACHINES AND DO NOT REPRESENT HARDWARE THAT APPLE WILL SHIP.
There. Apple has said many times they don't plan on using a BIOS in the shipping products, and have hinted at EFI. But the first developer machines have a BIOS, so everyone ignores Apple and assumes it will have a BIOS. Apple has a huge investment in driving forward with 64bit with all the marketing they have done, and yet everyone expects PowerMacs with the same Pentium chips in the developer machines that aren't 64 bit.
Nowthis DRM thing comes up. Will Apple do similar in shipping hardware? It's hard to say. But right now, noone here can say yes or no for sure (unless your sitting at Apple's HQ working on the new products right now). I myself wouldn't be suprised if they do indeed put some kind of protection on, as the Mac OS has always had some kind of odd hardware requirement that prevents it from easially just running on a clone PowerPC box.
Just settle down and wait until real products ship. Because if you have OS X 10.4.1 for Intel, you either have the hardware to run it on due to your developer program, or you pirated the ISO image off some torrent site and have it illegially.
Yeah, sure, OS X will probably be runnable on a non Apple box some day. But guess what, it's likely to be a hacked up solution that kinda sorta works, and leaves you wasting time that could have been spent earning money to just buy a $500 Mac Mini. For me, my Apple hardware is a big reason I moved to OS X. Running OS X on my Dell just wouldn't be the same.
Parent
Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Interesting)
Ugg. How many times does it have to be said?
THESE ARE DEVELOPER MACHINES AND DO NOT REPRESENT HARDWARE THAT APPLE WILL SHIP.
There's a word for people like you: a useful idiot.
Sure, Apple has coded up this DRM implementation for fun and has no intention of using it. Apple and Jobs has sold you out... get over it. They jumped to Intel to get this Trusted Computing stuff and now they are using it.
You can put your hands over your ears and sing lalalalalala, but it won't change anything. The message that has to go out from here is simple and the same one that should go out to any software/hardware company that involves itself with this anti-customer bullshit: Don't buy Apple. If their sales drop because of this action, then perhaps they'll listen... but if idiots like you continue to defend their actions with ever more ludicrous excuses that won't happen.
Parent
Hands in the ears? (Score:4, Interesting)
You try to pretend TCPA and DRM can be killed at birth and you are wrong. You try tto pretend DRM cannot be made to work and you are wrong. The same technology that protects HOLLYWOODS data can protect YOUR dat and MY data. DRM will allow computing to move into a new paradigm where conversations can be reasonably assured of being completely ephemeral OR where "data" can be moved from point A to point B with the relative security and geographic displacement of a physical object. But people lie and copy and cheat and forge and so to do this requires a *trusted platform* - a system you and I can both agree has been verified for honesty by a disinterested third party to our exchange.
If you don't want to buy DRM media then don't buy it. But insisting someone is trying to "take your rights away" because they are asserting *their* rights is, at best, disengenuous.
The open source community at large needs to take off the tinfoil hats and start doing some real development on these platforms. Like it or not DRM is coming and if you sit out the party no one is going to listen to you complain that everyone else already got all the cake and ice cream.
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Re:Damn Microsoft! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about the kernel, not the hardware.
Really, if we take this attitude, we're forced to conclude that NOTHING about the developer platform can be counted upon to be in the commercial product. That's completely absurd. No, not everything will be in the commercial product, but it's not like they deliberately build the developer platform to be completely different from what they eventually release to the public.
Common sense tells us that if there's DRM support in the OS X on Intel kernel, there's at the very least a chance that it'll be in the shipping product.
If we're going to make noise over it, we damn well ought to do it as soon as we have first inkling of it, not when it's already too late. You don't wait until your neck is in a noose to hire a lawyer.
Parent
Isn't this expected? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't this expected? (Score:5, Insightful)
All the rest of you that are in a tizzy, slow down and think about it for just a second. How did you think they were going to prevent OS X from running on non-Apple Macs? Magic? Voodoo? Asking nicely?
Besides, it gives the 3r33t h4xx0rs something to fiddle with and crack. They'd be bored otherwise.
Parent
Re:Isn't this expected? (Score:4, Insightful)
What is not so widely known is that it is ILLEGAL [chillingeffects.org] (in the USA) to:
a) BUY a PC
b) BUY a copy of OSX
c) Make "b" run on "a".
You heard me - against the law to do it in the privacy of your own home, like sodomy in Texas.
And don't think for a second that Apple is above invoking this stupid law [google.com] (not the sodomy one)
Parent
Gentlemen, start your debuggers (Score:5, Funny)
Zealotry (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no, my two sources of zealotry are colliding. Eeek! It can't be evil if Apple does it, right... but DRM is always evil, right?
And this is surprise because... (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get your panties in a bunch. (Score:5, Interesting)
These boxes aren't even for sale yet. I'm sure that it'll be cracked before that even happens.
Before you freak out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple does not want OS X installed on every generic PC out there. If Mac sales die tomorrow, Apple and OS X go with it. And no, they wouldn't open all the source after the liquidation and you would be stuck with Linux and Windows on the desktop. With both options being crap (for differing reasons).
I would absolutely love for OS X to be sold for any machine with an Intel or AMD chip inside, but it's just not going to happen because Apple is not positioned to do so and survive.
Fortunately, Apple has never even hinted at taking a route other than having OS X run on their machines and their machines only. Any disappointment should be tempered with the knowledge that they have had their cards on the table on this for some time. I don't think there was any question of another outcome.
Apple is not screwing anyone over, they are just continuing what they have done for the past 21 years (even the brief period of Mac clones only involved the OS running on approved hardware).
Perhaps things will change sometime down the road with Apple making further inroads into consumer electronics and successfully diversifying their business. I wouldn't hold my breath, though. The seamless integration between hardware and software is at the very core of the Mac experience.
It's unfortunate that OS X is going to stay on one set of hardware, but it is just the way it has to be for the time being.
Re:Before you freak out... (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast bulk of it. 80-90% if I recall correctly.
How does selling lots of copies of OS X equal Apple losing money?
You're assuming they'd sell lots of copies. That's a big assumption. Certainly their current level of OS license sales couldn't sustain the company, so even if we assume that everyone who uses OS X now were to buy a copy of "Generic Intel OS X", they'd need to expand their sales share significantly.
What the "Why don't they just sell it for generic boxes like Microsoft does and make $$$" crowd forgets is that Microsoft doesn't actually make a lot of money off of people walking in to Circuit City and buying a box copy of Windows. The vast majority of people view installing an OS as being more complicated than building a rocket ship from scratch using only a stick of gum and some 2x4's; the hobbyist market who is comfortable with this sort of thing isn't big enough to sustain a company of any significant size.
No, the real money is in OEM licensing to large volume hardware manufacturers. If Apple sold OS X for generic Intels, everyone would be able to undercut them on hardware prices, so forget about that business. And the walk-in market isn't nearly big enough to sustain them. So unless they could secure a number of OEM deals with the Dells and HPs of the world, they'd be bankrupt within the year. And Microsoft has historically done everything in their power to prevent even insignificant companies like Be from getting their OS shipping pre-installed from the OEM. You'd better believe they'd pull out all the stops to keep Apple out of that market.
Parent
Not in the kernel (Score:5, Informative)
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you analyzed the mach_kernel binary file on the Developer Kits, you would see that the kernel is vastly different than the Darwin 8.2 that Apple released as open source. For one thing, it automatically calls the oah750 daemon (better known as Rosetta) every time that it finds a non-universal PPC executable.
Before the kernel uses Rosetta to execute the PPC application (i.e. ATSServer in the case of starting a GUI), it calls the TPM kernel extension and checks the private keys in the TCPA chip. This is the only thing, as far as is apparent, that prevents Mac OS X from flawlessly running on a non-Apple system.
Parent
Re:Actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
No big deal then. I'd expect them to port all the code to x86 by the time they release those things anyway, and other software vendors will surely follow soon.
Parent
Oh do stop panicing (Score:5, Interesting)
I am beginning to think companies put these copy protection things in the hardware for a variety of reasons:
1) They get free advertising with the protests.
2) They get free advertising when it is cracked.
3) They get free advertising when they chase the crackers.
4) They get free advertising when they chase the cracks' distributors.
And maybe it gives the content providers a warm fuzzy feeling.
Awww. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of hand waving here about companies removing people's rights and slippery slope arguments along the lines of "if they do X they will eventually do Y for reason Z". This entirely ignores the fact that Tiger-x86 is probably the hottest thing to hit torrent sites in a long time. It was bad enough when developer releases of Tiger for PowerPC were making the rounds and people were making stupid assessments of the system months before release. The development kits and pre-release copies of OSX are meant to be in Mac developer hands, not Joe Dork down the street on his PC.
It is not a particular right to run OSX on anything but a Mac, the OSX EULA that you have to agree to in order to install the system specifically states that. Apple locking OSX onto Macs means they can continue to sell the machines with a straight face. No one would bother to buy a Mac if they could just grab a copy of Tiger and slap it on their PC at home. Apple would have little incentive to continue Mac development if there were no Macs being sold.
How is the TPM used? (Score:5, Informative)
What does a TPM do? Essentially it is just a crypto chip. It can hold keys, and sign and encrypt data with them. It's completely passive. It never takes control of your system or does anything invasive. It doesn't even monitor the bus or snoop on data flows. It merely hashes, signs and encrypts data, on request from the CPU.
How is it used for DRM? It can't be done today. They way it would be used, sometimes in the future, is to ship the chip with a unique key pre-installed in it, and with a certificate from the manufacturer on that key. Then the BIOS and OS get enhanced to do a "trusted boot" in which every software component gets its hash reported to the TPM. This allows the TPM to send out a crypto-signed "attestation" about the software configuration on the computer. It is signed by the built-in key, and that key is known to be a legitimate TPM key by virtue of the certificate that was created at manufacture time.
This lets a remote server verify that you're running a genuine version of Media Player or iTunes and not some hacked thing that will strip the DRM and put it out on the net. Your system can report its software configuration and that attestation can't be forged, because you don't control a TPM key that has a cert on it from a TPM manufacturer.
It's a complicated system, and no part of it exists today. Manufacturers don't ship TPMs with pre-installed keys, and they don't issue certificates. Nobody wants to touch that stuff with a ten foot poll. I know, I've tried to get a computer with a certified TPM for research purposes, but they're just not available.
How would Apple use a TPM to keep the OS from running on non-Apple PCs? This is the $64 question, but I haven't seen much information about it. If they just look for the presence of a TPM, that won't help much - see above for all the computers out there that have TPMs.
My guess is that it is more likely that the mechanism Apple will use or is using to keep from running on non-Apple hardware is not the TPM. They will probably use a custom chip. The TPM is extremely standard, the Trusted Computing Group has hundreds of pages documenting it. It would be crazy to twist that standard.
Rather, I'm guessing that Apple uses the TPM for crypto purposes, possibly with an eye towards eventual DRM if and when the necessary massive infrastructure ever gets built. Due to its unique position as designer of both the computer and the software, Apple might even be in a unique position with regard to rolling out some form of TPM based DRM, just as they were among the first to create a commercially successful DRM system in iTunes. My speculation is that Apple is not using the TPM to stop hackers porting its software, they're using the TPM because it's useful. It just happens that the hackers don't have many systems with TPMs.
If so, then, it is merely accidental that the use of the TPM is a road block for experimenters determined to run the Apple software on non Apple PCs. It's possible that if they looked at the list [tonymcfadden.net] they would find some computers lying around that had TPMs in them, and if they tried on those computers, the TPM software would work fine. Maybe the OS would then run in its current form. It sounds like it's worth a try, anyway.
Imagine Bush's "Free Speech Zones" on the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
I still think the problems raised by DRM are greater and more severe than those it purports to fix. Obviously, fair use and doctrine of first sale are the first to disappear. But also, common carriage is at risk, and if DRM gets into routers and switches then it will be possible to make the Internet into the same mess the telecommunications network is in.
The nature of DRM and the clumsy attempts we have seen so far also indicate that there is great potential for human rights abuse, too. There is of course the ability to monitor who is interacting with whom, the DRM software has to track this to work. There is also the ability to block or censor communications. After all, restricting access or dissemination is what DRM is all about. And that directly affects both the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble -- after all what can be published or organized without the Internet or the Web these days, without them you're shut off.
It's the reduction of choice that helps OS X rock. (Score:5, Insightful)
LOOK AT SOLARIS. Ask anyone who needs a Solaris box to stay up for critical stuff (not FTP server, talking about critical stuff at the core of a company / government / hospital) and it will be on one on Sun's servers, it will NOT be Solaris for Intel. Big metal + Tested Metal = Solaris uptimes of years if need be. Small metal + Tested Metal = OS X I know and love.
Re:Hands up all the surprised people (Score:4, Interesting)
everyone know how those uncrackable chips fared... well every time they tried to do something like this. it failed miserably.
i know what you'll say. "microsoft managed it with the xbox". which is bogus, microsoft's problem is the complete opposite as this one. microsoft is trying to prevent unsigned code from running on "their" hardware.
apple is trying to prevent their code from running on "unsigned" hardware. that implies the private key is in the paladium chip so it can "sign" a token sent by the OS. that's the worst case senario, and it will just take a few months to reverse engineer and distribute apple's private key along with pearpc (yes, you can read the key from that suposedly secure chip).
another possible implementation is that the chip just sends an "apple" id. maybe s string of text or something like that. that's even easier to circumvent.
don't be fooled by their marketing, pearpc will work just fine, albeit maybe illegally in the US (and canada soon). thanks to the DMCA
Parent
Re:Hands up all the surprised people (Score:4, Insightful)
> prevent paying customers from running Linux or DOS or whatever the fuck
> they wanted to run? Both companies sell Linux and brag about how much
> money it makes them.
Simple. Same reason you can't buy a PC from Dell without an OS except for a couple of Optiplex lines they target at the corporate users who already have site licenses. And even for those they have to toss FreeDOS in the box to make Microsoft happy.
Now imagine a world where Microsoft requires a locked TCPA chip to boot a future version of Windows. Basically they will speak unto Dell thusly: "If you want to sell Windows you will stick this chip on each and every motherboard. And if you don't want to pay the whitebox chopshop price for licenses you will join our co-op marketing program which requires you stick this chip on ALL motherboards you sell. No exceptions. Hey bitch, you already give Intel the same 100% loyalty so now you serve TWO masters. Starting today you no longer sell Dells, you sell Windows Workstations with Intel Inside and if you don't like that I have the same contract manufacturers you job your actual work out to ready to make em for me direct and a bunch of Indians ready to roll on deploying an ecommerce site to sell them through."
Parent
IBM <3 DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Installed base. If Apple intends to promote a movie download service that only runs on Macintels, it's going to flop big time and worse than just flopping, it's going to really piss off people who bought PPC hardware in the past couple of years.
2) Transion time frame. Apple will begin the transition to Intel next year but it won't be selling Intel boxes exclusively until 2007. That means the announcement of a service that requires an Intel box would have to wait until then or risk killing hardware sales. Somebody else will be doing it before that.
3) iTMS model? Assuming they intend to follow the same model with their movie store, where selling movies is really just a way to move a different product (video iPod, set-top box, etc), they'll want to sell movies to Windows users as well as Mac users just as they do with music now. They'll also need to allow users to move their purchased movies to another device which may or may not contain the same DRM.
Anyway, they don't need hardware DRM to open a movie store. They have a perfectly good software based DRM for music so something similar should be enough to make the movie industry happy.
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