Should Apple Declare Worldwide Hug a Pirate Day?

It is probably folly to imagine that there is a large red button on Steve Job’s desk plainly labeled “Release The Hounds” but it is an amusing thought. Whether it was a push of a button or a phone call (later followed up with a memo) the legal hounds at Apple have been released with instructions to go straight for the jugular of those people found supporting Mac OS X on generic hardware. One French website reported receiving a strongly worded letter (It starts, one surmises: Dear M****** F*******,) and other sites are beginning to scramble in an effort to escape Apple’s wrath. Some will think the legal maneuvering by Apple is necessary but they are missing the larger picture. Apple should not be going after the pirates or those sites that spread the message of the how and why of OS X on Dell, in fact Apple should embrace the movement and declare August 25th worldwide Hug A Pirate Day.

While Apple may be acting surprised at the hacking the reaction seems disingenuous. You expect to be able to trick a three year into looking down a garden hose when you’re foot is blocking the flow of water. You expect said toddler to be mightily surprised when water suddenly shoots from the once still nozzle about their head and neck when you remove the artificial blockage. You expect all this because toddlers are naïve. Successful multinational corporations are not as naïve so, in the case of Apple, one expects Apple to have anticipated the piracy. So we are faced with a company that positively knew people were likely to get OS X running on generic equipment and then became upset when the predictable came to pass? One might as well be outraged by the sun rising in the east.

Outrage aside Apple is ignoring the positive benefits of people hacking the developer version of OS X. The most obvious benefit is that all the hacking, cracking and modding of the developer version shows Apple exactly where the vulnerabilities lie. Further the more information that shows up on easily accessible sources reveals the common methodologies of the people juicing OS X to run on white box computers. But the benefits don’t stop there. As the project moves forward more and more press and interest is generated and an ever-increasing number of people become aware of Apple on Intel.

Those are tangible benefits, one can quantify the numbers of words written about cracking OS X and one can place a number on the ways hackers have circumvented the protection Apple built into OS X. The intangible benefits may be even greater. The people who are carrying out these are not the people that would normally buy Macs. They are obviously tech savvy folks who want to do it just to see if it can be done. Not that there isn’t some allure to bagging a free operating system but these are the people that yearn for the latest, the temptation to keep sing the developer version will fade quickly. As unlikely as it is that the people going through the cumbersome process of running OS X on plain vanilla PCs would ever buy a Mac it is necessary to remember that these are also the people folks ask for advice when they are considering a computer purchase. Before Apple OS X on Intel came out you can bet what computer the tech elites weren’t going to recommend. And who could blame them? When you get asked for advice on buying a computer the chances that you’ll be supporting that computer in the near future are about 100%. With the familiarity from running a hacked copy of OS X these folks will be much more likely to recommend the Mac to those seeking advice.

Naturally Apple shouldn’t be all hugs and kisses with the hackers once the gold master of OS X is pressed. At that point it is time to take the gloves off and do everything within the engineering and legal department to make OS X as difficult as possible to run OS X on anything Apple doesn’t want to run OS X. The difference, of course, is that one is a developer release designed to allow programmers to create useful applications for the new architecture (and the hackers will be writing drivers and such like crazy) and the commercial release is there to make dough. So until the store shelves are lined with shrink OS X boxes proclaiming that they support Intel based Macs Apple should find the pirates and start passing out the hugs.