Yes, you could sell OS X to run on any Intel hardware, but that is a really bad idea. Keeping OS X stable and reliable is easier when you have a limited universe of hardware to support. Two things that make Windows such a challenge is the vast array of legacy and current hardware Microsoft needs to support, and the fact that Microsoft has no control over the hardware Windows is installed on.

OS X is the value proposition that drives sales of Mac hardware. That is their entire business model.

If you think that FairPlay could be licensed out successfully, look at the propensity of “Plays4Sure” devices, which should really be called “Might Play Possibly”. Apple is focused entirely on the end user experience, and to maintain their quality standards requires being a control freak about the entire chain of hardware and software. Lets not forget that Microsoft’s own Zune player and store *does not support their own Plays4Sure initiative*.

I’ll side with Steve-o on this one. Instead of dealing with licensing out FairPlay and having to deal with what to do when some software vendor lets the encryption keys out of the bag, just eliminate the problem entirely.

From a cultural and ethical point of view, I am just as opposed to DRM as you are. It hinders the dissemination of ideas and free discourse, and it is a technology designed to do less, not more with the things in the world. DRM as such does not make the world a better place.

Yet DRM might make for better business, and for the “content industry”, this is the thing that counts. Apple is not just an arbitrary industry leader, it is primarily a hardware vendor, unlike for instance Warner. Lets not forget that until now, music and book sales are coupled to physical media. Some (small) successful business models have sprung from copy protected on-line sales, but until now, it is not clear if selling unprotected content on-line will ever go beyond a niche market.

Let us not mix this up: I am not trying to fight for (or against) industrial content marketing – I am just trying to get closer to the economical reasoning behind it.

We face the potential of the end of our culture via incompatible digital formats, both hardware-formats and software-formats. DRM makes for a third kind of formatting on top of the other two.

Every one of these renders it more difficult to read old texts, listen to old recordings, watch old movies, and so forth.

I see nothing in Joscha’s essay to suggest that DRM is in any way “good.”

Let’s keep our eyes on the ball here. It may well be that Steve Jobs is attempting to change the subject away from Norway’s legal insistence that Apple open up FairPlay. But now that the topic is DRM, let’s all remember that DRM is evil and we face an historic opportunity here where the media corporations just might be forced to do something that helps the consumers, students, readers, and the rest of us.

Not only is fairplay an issue, but so is the way that Apple distributes its OS. There is no reason the Apple OS couldn’t be released to run on a generic intel box.