14 DAY TRIAL // An apple patent that will allow the user to choose a primary and a secondary OS is stirring debate and talk of "OS War". There is still a lot of speculation going around about the new Intel based Mac processors or "Mactels".
According to Architosh, the patent that has caught the attention of the public speaks of a "process whereby users would be able to load one of three operating systems as their primary OS, and then load a secondary operating system as their secondary OS. In the patent application, titled 'System and method for creating tamper-resistant code', they describe the process as thus:
22. The method of claim 20, wherein the first operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux and Microsoft Windows.
23. The method of claim 20, wherein the second operating system is selected from the set consisting of Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
Phil Schiller, Apple Vice president, stated earlier this year that Apple won't intentionally stop users from running Windows on Mactels. However, Apple will not provide any support, let alone a method, for running Windows.
The reverse however does not stand true, and Apple has every interest to prevent OSX from being run on "other" hardware. "We will not allow running Mac OS X on anything other than an Apple Mac," said Schiller.
Exactly how Apple is going to do this is still unclear, but the aforementioned patent speaks of hardware serial numbers, virtual machines and "tamper resistant techniques" such as the use of obfuscating a first object code block that determines a secondary code block.
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