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And pray tell why not? They don't actually sell any netbooks, what incentive do they have to let people install it on a netbook? Good will? Its all fairy dust, and magic with you guy. Apple is a BUSINESS, not a charity. I just don't get why people don't understand that "

Perfectly correct. As the authors of OSX, Apple have full rights to dictate how people may, or may not, use Apple software.

Absolutely.

Of course, having that right doesn't help Apple one tiny bit towards gaining a customer who wants the capability at low price offered by netbooks.

If you haven't figured it out by now, you'll never figure this truth out: Apple wants no part of selling you a low-margin netbook, because.... it's low-margin stuff. Cheapo netbook buyers are NOT who Apple wants to even bother catering to, no matter what: it's not their business model to compete with everyone else on cheap hardware prices, but rather, a different model where the software is a big part of the total package, as well as the packaging of the hardware, because, let's face it, the chips are (for the Macs) basically all the same underlying hardware as a generic PC.

If Apple comes out with something they'd consider as competing with the netbooks, it likely won't be competing on price, and they'll probably be differentiating it in hardware features as well, to make it harder to compare against, and they'd likely resist calling it a netbook. Of course, this is all speculation, based on observation of their pattern of products over a rather lengthy period of time: I don't claim to know with certainty that they will/won't come out with something along those lines! Who ever thought Apple would sell cellphones 5 years ago???

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the people who install the OS on different computers are freeloading.

Apple will quite happily sell anyone a copy of the Operating system.

Its a nail and a hammer argument - if you sell the hammer, you have (morally atleast, even if not legally - the latter should be decided by the psystar case) lost the right to dictate that it can only be used on nails from the same company.

If the users were however freeloading, that would be a different matter.

Yes, they are under no obligation to sell anything they do not want to sell. There is no reason why they should make OSX support Atom or anything else.

That is not the issue. The issue is, once they have sold it to you, do they have the right to tell you how to use it?

Lets ask a simple question. Do you think MS has the right to sell you a retail copy of Windows, and stipulate that, though it is perfectly technically possible to do it, you are not permitted to install it on a Mac?

You need to be real careful about them apples. Some of them are actually pears...

Apple is a BUSINESS, not a charity.

Which is why it is strange that Apple wastes time and resources on writing specific code to disable Atom. Atom is after all a (low power) x86 CPU, not quite unlike the Core CPU's Apple uses. It is only a matter of time before the Hackintosh scene puts support back in.

These are halfhearted measures to keep OS X exclusive to Apple manufactured hardware. If Apple really wants to end the efforts of the OSX86 group, they should just use the TPM and lock OS X cryptographically to their own motherboards. Make it clear to everybody that OS X is an updatable firmware OS.

This dilly-dallying with semi-DRM is just wasting money.