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http://www.branchez-vous.com/actu/05-08/09-273901.html

[Franerik]

Apple and piracy? A match made in heaven?

Sun, Jun 19 2005, 21:18:24
By John Berger
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Ethics aside, piracy is among other things a type of free advertisement. Could piracy be exactly what Apple needs to make its upcoming Intel-based operating system a bigger hit than they expect?


Chris Seibold at Apple Matters recently published an article about how piracy is the path that Apple needs to follow. That certainly is an interesting idea, and one needs only to look at history to realize that piracy might actually be what could give Apple the bounce that it needs.

Think for a bit about Microsoft's dominance, and how it got there. Do you actually think that the sale of Microsoft's products are the reason why Microsoft is a monopoly? If you answered yes to yourself, you need to think again. More importantly, you need to educate yourself on the history of the personal computer.

The story of Microsoft's dominance begins with Windows 3.1. Here was an operating system that ran on any PC. The whole operating system came on seven floppy diskettes and there was absolutely no copy protection. Finally, the 286 and 386 PCs of the world could have a graphical operating system to get them away from the command line. (The command line was nothing to fear anyway, but what to marketing types care about truth in advertising?) If you knew someone who had the Windows 3.1 floppy diskettes, all that you needed to do was run down to the local computer or office supply store, buy a box of diskettes, use the diskcopy command, and you had Windows 3.1 for yourself. Within a few years, every PC owner moved away from the command line to the pretty icons, the charming bell sounds on startup, and of course Solitaire. This rampant piracy allowed millions upon millions of people to become familiar with an environment that they would have otherwise not purchased.

Assume then that PCs were offered with a choice of operating systems. What operating system do you think that the majority of people would have selected? Some operating system that was unknown to the general populous, like OS/2, GEOS, or CP/M? Or would they select something that they already knew well because they had been using a pirated version for months or years? You know the answer. And since the operating system came with the PC, Microsoft got a fee for that PC sale. So, whereas MS didn't profit from the initial piracy, they still made a sale later on and further addicted the user to Windows. Now that the user paid for Windows, they might as well continue to use it.

Move ahead several years later. U.S. printing franchise Kinko's offered a 30-day, full-usage CD for MS Office (I forget the specific version) for something like $5. Shortly thereafter a crack was released that broke the 30-day protection. The change was a simple modification to a DLL file and a huge number of these discs were sold as a result. If there was a lot of concern for the protection of the demo software, Microsoft would (or should) have made it more difficult than a DLL file for protection. I also heard nothing afterwards about prosecuting the one who released the crack. Oh, sure, Microsoft feigned disgust for the release of that crack, but only the most naïve actually believed that Microsoft was truly going to pursue this individual.

So, for a few dollars per disc and a downloaded crack, Microsoft snared hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people into Microsoft Office. I'd just about guarantee that the vast majority of those people are still using a version of MS Office. Whether those versions are pirated or not is another matter, but I'll bet that many of them are now valid, purchased licenses.

Once again, piracy made Microsoft more money and created more customer dependency in the long run.

I say piracy semi-seriously because I still firmly believe that the crack for the Kinko's version of MS Office several years ago was planned. Think about it. If a monopoly officially reduces the price of a product so low that there is no way that competitors could compete with it, that monopoly would have the government on their case for anti-trust violations in a New York minute. However, if a product is released as a demo and just so happens to be cracked, that monopoly now has an alibi.

Well, we most certainly designed the promotion so that people would like the product and go out and purchase the real thing. We did not expect it to be cracked. It is not our fault at all that millions of people paid $5 and downloaded a crack rather than purchase our competitors' $300 software packages. We are the real victims here due to piracy!

Microsoft got millions of people hooked on MS Office because of that scheme yet got off the hook themselves by disguising the whole affair as someone else's illegal activity due to releasing the crack to disable the 30-day limitation. That's just my opinion, of course, but it is consistent with the type of tactics that Microsoft has used over the years to increase their market share.

Let us now go across the Pond. A few years ago in Spain, a number of PC World magazines came with what was supposed to be a 30-day demo of Windows 2000 Professional. It turned out that the disc that was provided was actually the full thing, not a demo version. So, by buying PC World people also acquired a multi-hundred-dollar operating system. PC World said it was an error, of course, but who provided the master image or the discs for PC World to distribute? I doubt that PC World made those discs themselves. They likely got them from the Spanish or European Microsoft headquarters. So, it was a mistake? I find that to be very unlikely.

Microsoft once allowed and encouraged companies to let their employees take the MS Office distribution media and install Office on their PC's at home. The arguments were that the employee only used one copy at a time and the corporation benefited from employees working at home. Of course, the truth is probably more that the home installations of Office were used more for personal reasons. Just before Office 97 came out, Microsoft stopped this practice. So, now the company's employees used Office 95 at home and were told that they could not bring Office 97 home. How many of those employees do you think then went out to buy legitimate upgrades to Office 97 for home use? I would guess that a significant number did.

I really would like to know how much of Microsoft's current dominance is due to past piracy. I'm convinced that Microsoft would not be anywhere close to where it is now if there was no such thing as software piracy.

But let's focus on the man in the mirror. How many of us have pirated a number of games that we otherwise would not have bought, but the games were so impressive that we purchased what was downloaded and/or purchased any of its sequels or expansion packs? I would think many of us.

Piracy can under certain circumstances make a product more popular, and Microsoft's dominance is certainly what should be offered as proof of that. I would be willing to bet that Apple would be a big winner by following the same path. Let the curious get the operating system for free or through piracy, then reel them in when they realize that it's actually a good operating system.

Think about it. Apple has announced that they're moving to the Intel platform in less than two years, so they are effectively releasing their operating system for Intel. (Looks like they're locking out AMD unfortunately. ) Apple has actually been creating their operating systems internally for Intel for the past five years in what might seem to be preparation for their recent announcement. Now that the Apple OS is based on UNIX, that makes porting to the Intel platform that much easier.

So, Apple releases their OS for Intel but locks out AMD. Millions of people pirate it and install it on their own systems. Someone cracks the anti-AMD protection and releases a version that will run on AMD as well as Intel. Millions of people now become familiar with OS X for x86 and like what they see. Apple convinces major PC vendors to offer OS X for x86 as an option for new systems. Demand makes the PC vendors realize that there is a market for it and make the choice available for customers. Millions of people purchase their next system with OS X because they can always install their pirated Windows XP if they don't like it. (It's still a PC, after all.) That means licensing fees for Apple, higher demand for Apple software, higher demand for Apple support, and higher demand for Apple products.

(As of this writing, Dell has said that they are interested in selling Apple PCs; however, Dell has been completely deceitful when it comes to such non-Windows/non-Intel statements in the past. Every year they talk about how they might start to sell systems with AMD processors. Coincidentally, Dell's talk of using AMD always seems to come up just before they enter contract talks with Intel, and talk about using AMD seems to disappear immediately afterwards.)

I know a number of people that I work with (myself included) who would love to work with OS X but are not willing to purchase an additional piece of hardware that we might not be interested in afterwards. But we'd be glad to try it out on one of our Athlon XP/64 systems.

Is all of this hypothetical? Perhaps. But look at history. That's exactly what happened to Microsoft.

Even some game companies have benefitted immensely from piracy. Look at the original Wolfenstien 3D. The version that was made available for download was for chapter 1. The full game was available by getting the .WAD files from someone who had them. The game was without question the most popular game of the time and became the father of the modern 3D shooter.

More than that, it was the best advertisement that id Software could have possibly wanted. When Doom was released under the same marketing tactic, millions of people paid for the full game just because of their experience with their pirated Wolf 3D. And when Doom II came out, millions of people purchased it because of their experience with the purchased or pirated Doom. Following that pattern, how many of you went out and purchased Doom III solely on your past experience with Doom and Doom II (the immense hype not withstanding)?

Now, I'm certainly not trying to downplay piracy, although I still and will always vehemently stand against the dollar figures that are associated with piracy. They're always estimates. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever behind the dollar values that are associated with piracy. But piracy certainly is an issue. Too many good companies have had to close shop because of piracy.

But in this case I think that Apple needs to take a close look at how piracy or a piracy-like distribution model might actually make them far more popular than they currently are once they migrate to the Intel platform. A crack (followed by a press release stating outrage) that lets OS X run on AMD perhaps?


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