Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 7th Sep 2008 20:23 UTC
Probably one of the most hated parts of Windows are its anti-piracy measures - product activation and Windows Genuine Advantage. While most people acknowledge Microsoft's right to implement these measures, many have also been bitten by the measures' shortcomings, such as server outages or false positives. Microsoft blogger Ed Bott has been monitoring WGA since its inception, and in 2006 and 2007 he didn't give a passing grade to WGA ("a big fat F"). This year, the situation has improved somewhat, earning Microsoft a passing grade - barely.
Permalink for comment 329595
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-09-21
Apple's situation is a bit different from Microsoft's.
OS X unless patched will not run on non Apple computers, and even if you do get it going, chances are there is a lot of hardware in your PC that just wont work with it, or certain features that just don't function. The only crowd they would seriously have to worry about is the up graders, and with how much they make on their hardware, I doubt that is an issue.
If it becomes an issue they will do the same, nearly every company that produces a quality (?), closed source, for profit program will eventually try various ways to make sure people aren't "damaging their profits" by illegally obtaining their product.
I mean, you wouldn't want those board of directors to only be able to take their yacht out 3 times a year because piracy didn't give them that million dollar bonus they needed to survive would you?