It's not strictly legal, or legal at all actually. But it works, according to my mate Dodgy Dave. Approximately 24hrs after pirates and hackers got their grubby mits on Apple's latest OS, they had it cracked, patched and working on standard Intel hardware. Until now, the only way to get Mac software working on any old generic PC was via a virtual machine. But running inside your existing OS install is not going to yield decent performance, so until the recent breakthrough, MacOS on a PC was more experimental than of any practical value.
The benefit is obvious. You can run Mac software without having to pay over the odds for Mac hardware. Ever since Apple switched from IBM Power PC chips to a standard Intel architecture, it has bugged me how a Mac's hardware is identical to a PC's, but you pay a huge premium to have the Apple logo on it. I dont care what any Mac zealot says, or how great the software is, Apple's hardware division is no different from Dell's or HP's.
Apple can't just release updates to 'brick' people's OS installs and have the problem go away. There will be workarounds, and a lot of people out there running Mac software that haven't bought a Mac. But while some may suggest that the best way to deal with this problem is sending anyone who has just put the Leopard install CD into their PC off to Guantanamo Bay, this is a taster of how Apple could really overtake Microsoft as the most popular operating system vendor in the world.
Just unlock the MacOS software, so we can legally install it on any PC. Now Microsoft would have something to worry about. If a truly user friendly (ie not Linux or BeOS) alternative to Windows was bundled with PCs, Windows market dominance could wither away. Most people point to Apple losing money over their hardware sales as a reason not to do this, but in the long term, a level playing field is the best way to compete. How many people would buy the software and install it, to either dual boot or replace Windows? Legions, I'll bet. The short term loss of profit would be offset by the spike in software demand, and a greater installed user base would mean more developers and applications written specifically for the Mac.
And people would still continue to buy Apple hardware.
It makes sense to me. Microsoft would need to raise their game a lot. And Apple would have truly reached the point of maturity from niche to mass market.
