No, they'll just ship machines carrying both the Microsoft and their own key. Apple are no fans of linux - just look at all the hoops you have to jump through to get it running on the new retina macbook pro. They've never officially supported it, and there's no reason they would.
In the PC area, Apple are dependant upon OSX to be their identity and differentiator. Without OSX, they are just another maker of high-end PCs - and it'd be very hard to sell Apple PCs if they were interchangeable with the one-third
Absolutely. Both Apple and Microsoft have long recognized that free operating systems are the biggest threat to their business models. Operating systems do not offer enough ways to stay ahead of competition by innovation, once the basic needs are fulfilled new features become mere gimmicks that might be nice to have but are not essential (see history of OS X).
Both Apple and Microsoft have a well-recorded history of anti-competitive business behavior and have in the past tried by all means to keep the applic
This might all sound exaggerated to you now, but the fact is that these companies plan far more ahead than some people might think.
When certain geeks saw the long-term implications for Microsoft's "Palladium" technology ten years ago, they were often laughed at for being overly paranoid and assured that such a thing could never and would never happen. There's no way to lock down a computer like that since we'll always be able to remove the TPM or bypass the BIOS, and not even Microsoft would be stupid enough to produce an operating system that would only boot on "authorised" hardware! Right?
The concept is alive and well and if people think that MS won't tighten the thumbscrews if margins get squeezed then I've got a rose-tinted bridge to sell them.
/From my parent's home in Wyoming, I stab at thee!
I'm not sure what you are talking about. At the time when Palladium was in the Longhorn pipeline the whole goal was that features wouldn't effectively boot without being part of the locked down operating system. So the OS would boot but the DRM subsystem wouldn't work on actual content. Effectively this was policy.
The idea is basically the same: Chain of trust. The firmware only loads signed bootloaders, the bootloader only loads signed OSs, the OS only loads signed drivers. The difference is just in the response to unsigned code: Secure Boot simply refused to load it, while the Palladium/NGSCB would load the code but set a 'don't trust this' flag which a trusted store could use to verify system integrity. So while you could install an unauthorised OS or drivers on a NGSCB computer, your DVD/blu-ray drive would disab
Exactly. The Palladium model was better in that it had isolation. You could run untrusted and the trusted part didn't have to care. This is very much like what Blackberry Balance [youtube.com] allows for.
At the time when Palladium was in the Longhorn pipeline the whole goal was that features wouldn't effectively boot without being part of the locked down operating system.
And what came out of the Longhorn pipeline in this case was BitLocker in Windows Vista Ultimate. As I understand it, it's a form of drive encryption that relies on the TPM.
haven't (Score:1)
What we need is boards that are user-rekeyable. That way we can insure that our boards will never run Windows again.
Re: (Score:0)
Something tells me that Apple won't ship machines locked to Microsoft. This could be a serious uprise for them in the GNU/Linux market.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they'll just ship machines carrying both the Microsoft and their own key. Apple are no fans of linux - just look at all the hoops you have to jump through to get it running on the new retina macbook pro. They've never officially supported it, and there's no reason they would.
In the PC area, Apple are dependant upon OSX to be their identity and differentiator. Without OSX, they are just another maker of high-end PCs - and it'd be very hard to sell Apple PCs if they were interchangeable with the one-third
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely. Both Apple and Microsoft have long recognized that free operating systems are the biggest threat to their business models. Operating systems do not offer enough ways to stay ahead of competition by innovation, once the basic needs are fulfilled new features become mere gimmicks that might be nice to have but are not essential (see history of OS X).
Both Apple and Microsoft have a well-recorded history of anti-competitive business behavior and have in the past tried by all means to keep the applic
Re:haven't (Score:2)
This might all sound exaggerated to you now, but the fact is that these companies plan far more ahead than some people might think.
When certain geeks saw the long-term implications for Microsoft's "Palladium" technology ten years ago, they were often laughed at for being overly paranoid and assured that such a thing could never and would never happen. There's no way to lock down a computer like that since we'll always be able to remove the TPM or bypass the BIOS, and not even Microsoft would be stupid enough to produce an operating system that would only boot on "authorised" hardware! Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base [wikipedia.org]
The concept is alive and well and if people think that MS won't tighten the thumbscrews if margins get squeezed then I've got a rose-tinted bridge to sell them.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you are talking about. At the time when Palladium was in the Longhorn pipeline the whole goal was that features wouldn't effectively boot without being part of the locked down operating system. So the OS would boot but the DRM subsystem wouldn't work on actual content. Effectively this was policy.
Re: (Score:2)
The idea is basically the same: Chain of trust. The firmware only loads signed bootloaders, the bootloader only loads signed OSs, the OS only loads signed drivers. The difference is just in the response to unsigned code: Secure Boot simply refused to load it, while the Palladium/NGSCB would load the code but set a 'don't trust this' flag which a trusted store could use to verify system integrity. So while you could install an unauthorised OS or drivers on a NGSCB computer, your DVD/blu-ray drive would disab
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. The Palladium model was better in that it had isolation. You could run untrusted and the trusted part didn't have to care. This is very much like what Blackberry Balance [youtube.com] allows for.
BitLocker (Score:2)
At the time when Palladium was in the Longhorn pipeline the whole goal was that features wouldn't effectively boot without being part of the locked down operating system.
And what came out of the Longhorn pipeline in this case was BitLocker in Windows Vista Ultimate. As I understand it, it's a form of drive encryption that relies on the TPM.
Re: (Score:2)
Right but the goal was much more than just this.