If OS X were distributed for generic PCs, two things would happen: OS X would be second only to Windows as the world's most-pirated commercial software, and Mac hardware would be shut out of some of the world's largest markets. Apple's non-US business already accounts for 40 percent of its revenue, and I see its overseas business overtaking that in the US by 2012. Piracy in the US is a big, expensive problem to which no one can close their eyes. But elsewhere, software vendors don't just lose sales to piracy. Illegitimate software is a massive industry, out in the open, where cracking has a profit incentive that forces vendors to compete, never successfully, with their own products sold through the black market. |