8 ms·

There's been balmy little bits of stuff like this all the way through OSX and iOS for ages, though maybe not quite as flippant. Every Mac has the kernel extens

• raverbashing 13y ago
  I wonder if this has (or had had) some legal significance. I remember some issues with the Apple II rom being copied and that they had to add a "Copyright Apple" or something similar to the binary data.
  • Someone 13y ago
    They added stuff to the Mac ROMs in reaction to the copying of Apple II ROMs. See http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Stolen_From_Apple.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Stolen_From_Apple...
  • pcwalton 13y ago
    The idea is that this poem is copyrighted as a creative work, and therefore Apple can control its distribution. The actual key contains a copyright message after the poem.
  • gizmo686 13y ago
    If I recall correctly, they added a watermark to the ROM. The concern was that as adversary could modify the code to make it difficult to prove that it was actually a copy. The watermark was a hidden section of the code which could be executed to demonstrate that the code did in fact originate from Apple. If anyone can confirm/deny this, please do.
• josteink 13y ago
  Every Maccard on the planet seems to think pirating OS X is an oh so terrible thing to do (to the point that parent post is bringing up poems about it like its a cute, non-weird thing). At the same time pirating everything else on the planet seemingly is OK. I've never understood the rationale behind this. Keep in mind I'm a software developer myself and run strictly non-pirated software, and open-source as much as possible. You could never make me replace a Linux desktop with a limited OS X experience, and I see no reason what so ever to put in the effort to pirate it. But why is it worse to pirate a OS with bad hardware-support out of the box than pirating... say Microsoft Office? I'm just curious what's up with that.
  • DominikR 13y ago
    As an Android developer I had many discussions with Apple users/devs but I never heard anyone say something like that.
  • rahoulb 13y ago
    In my experience Mac users tend to be quite scrupulous about paying for their software.
    • inthewind 13y ago
      Apart from their Adobe suites... (In my experience). Note that I don't have any pirated software on my machine. Running Debian here.
  • nicholassmith 13y ago
    With OS X there's no license key you need to enter, they have a poem instead asking you not to steal it. That's a nice thing, rather than assuming you're going to steal it they have a poem to jokingly ask you otherwise.
    • icebraining 13y ago
      Sure, no license key, except for the key used to decrypt protected binaries only on authorized hardware. There is a license "key", it's the whole computer.
• DominikR 13y ago
  I can definitely understand that, having pulled and Android app from the store because of piracy recently. (in app purchase is really hard to circumvent by pirates, but apps where you pay upfront are pirated like crazy)
  • optymizer 13y ago
    How does pulling the app from the store benefit you?
    • DominikR 13y ago
      By re-releasing it again as a free app with in-app purchase (which is very hard to pirate) You can't change a paid app to free on the Google Play store. All you can do is to pull it, and submit it again.
      • nonchalance 13y ago
        Did you find that your revenues increased when you switched to IAP?
        • DominikR 13y ago
          I already had an IAP version in the store all the time and additionally the paid one (I honestly do not know why I thought that this was a good idea) - all I actually did was to pull to paid one. It seems to have increased the sales for less than 10% in my case, but since I did this only a few days ago, I cannot say with confidence that it had anything to do with the switch. But it did reduce confusion about the product itself and therefore support emails. (just the fact that there were 2 ways to get the full featured app was confusing to many - but this pro only exists because my own stupidity) Long term I hope (it may never happen) that less people upload and therefore download pirated apks, because those versions are often very outdated, and some downloads out there are even broken because of that, causing additional support requests and bad reviews. (I rely heavily on Facebooks APIs, which change quite frequently) If someone asked me if it was a good idea to pull an app that has been out there for a year or longer (with 100.000+ downloads) and resubmit it again I would definitely say no, because that also means that you basically start from zero again - from 1000+ downloads per day down to 10. I don't know how the rankings in the Google Play store are created, but it seems to me that being around for a long time favors your ranking and downloads heavily.
• 0x0 13y ago
  That .kext is also responsible for verifying some sort of signature in a hardware chip only present on genuine macs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architecture#Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X.kext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectur...
  • spartango 13y ago
    This used to be the case, but no longer is; Apple stopped using the TPM in Intel macs shortly after they launched[1] and have not brought it back since. DSMOS.kext has another function, however; it is involved in Apple's binary protection scheme[2] for certain OSX binaries. Essentially, OSX ships with certain important binaries (such as loginwindow, SystemUIServer, Finder, and Dock) that have certain vm pages encrypted. Decrypting these pages for use requires DSMOS.kext. [1]: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/ http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/ [2]: http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter7/binaryprotection/ http://www.osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter7/binaryprotection/
    • 0x0 13y ago
      Yes, and before it will perform the decryption, it needs the correct "SmcDeviceKey", so I think my point still stands :)
      • spartango 13y ago
        Yea, they eschew the DRM-only TPM part to store the keys in the SMC, which does a whole host of things and doesn't protect the keys. I suppose you were sufficiently vague ;) There's just an outstanding myth that Macs still use TPM...
• anonymous 13y ago
  Didn't Jobs say "Great Artists Steal."? Users who are artists must heed these wise words. All Hail the Cult Leader. As for this "poem", I've seen better from kids in elementary school. This speaks to the creative aptitude of Apple's kernel engineers. Certainly not the strongpoint of their workforce. What sort of royalties or up-front payments did CMU get for letting Apple use their kernel?
  • PeterisP 13y ago
    It's actually very nifty - if you use a "secret"(obscure) key or checksum to check authenticity of hardware, then it still could be legally duplicated as nothing before DMCA was passed would prohibit that. If you use a scrappy poem as that key/token... then it's clearly copyrightable, and its duplication by some other manufacturer can be restricted with ages-old laws.
    • anonymous 13y ago
      Do you have a citation for the cases where Apple has successfully argued used this in court against some other party who was pirating OSX? It's only "nifty" until it's put to the test and fails in court. It's "effective" as a way to protect software only in the minds of some Apple engineers; but a judge might not see it that way. There's no precedent to assure anyone that it would work. If there were, I suspect we'd see it in widespread use. Or maybe Apple has tried to patent it? Perhaps the DMCA exists because "nifty" gimmicks like this one cannot be relied on? Nice try.
• briannickel 13y ago
  Reminds me of VAX chips during the Cold War. They had "When you care enough to steal the best etched on the chip in Cyrillic. http://popularlogistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cvax1.jpg http://popularlogistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cvax1...