Akkam’s Razor

There’s an argument that Apple’s move to Intel-sourced processors will be a good thing for the user, as well as the marketplace.  Hardcore geeks who use both are salivating at the promise of a dual or tri-boot system running their favorite Linux distro, Mac OS, and Windows.  It’s been reported today that WinXP will NOT work on these PCs and that Vista (XP’s replacement - see them side-by-side here) will, but I smell a rat.

All throughout Vista’s development, we’ve been hearing about copy controls in the software and hardware, basically delivering a crippled product that is less capable than the PC your sitting at right know.  The most egregious of these is the downsampled video quality delivered to either an unsigned (ie. DRM-secured, with Digital Rights Management being the software in media that prevents you from using it unless you legally own it) monitor or with unlicensed media (DVD, Games, etc.).  This is not progress.

If you think back to the mid-1990s, Intel got their peepee smacked over a hardware identifier that would have made each and every PC’s processor unique, and therefore trackable.  In the comments this thread on Engadget, only one commenter in seventy-five saw it, and ran off to do research.

I found this little quote posted by a commenter interesting:

Also, "EFI was developed by Intel and allows a number of advanced features, including the ability to connect to the Internet from a command shell before the OS is loaded"

Maybe to call home to the mothership?  Again, I smell a rat.