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Intermernet

So, basically, this achieved bugger all.

"As far as I know, no one ever did copy the ROM in a commercial project, so it wasn't really necessary"

Not to belittle the work, but this is exactly the sort of response I expected of Jobs.

As you say "It was tricky enough to be a fun project" so kudos to all but, really, this smacks of paranoia.

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I have smoke detectors in my house. I've never had a fire, so they've done bugger all, but the fact that they're there means if there was a fire, I would be notified.

Useless doesn't mean the same thing as never used.

Um, if I sold you a security service, with an unknown, hard to trigger, exception clause, would you consider it security?

But the point is that the triggering mechanism is only unknown and hard to trigger to folks outside of Apple.

So useless to everyone else... It's basically an ad-hoc DRM solution that gains no advantage to the end-user, while triggering un-known actions in an otherwise trusted piece of software.

I'm not sure it was meant to be useful to an end-user. An end-user doesn't care if the computer he's using was stolen, counterfeited, etc. The company making the equipment and software does, and this is useful to them.

Yes, that's why it's clever. The end user isn't aware it is there and it isn't harming them, but it's stopping other companies such as Franklin profiting from directly ripping off your work without your permission.

Its not DRM. Its a way to prove in a court of law that software was copied. It is more of a digital watermark.

Anyone can grab my cell phone from my desk. But if I log into the website, I can lock and remotely wipe it, as well as tell the police where to look for it. I can even take pictures of the person who stole it, completely unbeknownst to the thief.

Some might say the best security systems are the ones the thieves don't know are there.

The only reason those thieves don't know they're there is because they aren't very knowledgable (if they weren't thieves I'd give them the benefit of the doubt, but you called it...)

Some might say that thieves should know what security systems may be there... I know if I was a thief I'd avoid stealing smart phones all together!

The best thieves already know what security systems are in place, the real battle is making sure they are actually secure.

Thieves don't tend to be very intelligent people, thats why they are thieves, and the thieves who are very intelligent don't usually steal phones.

In fact, people /were/ copying Mac ROMs so they could run them on the Atari ST, using David Small's "Magic Sac" cartridge and emulation software.

Not really all that paranoid. Not a large investment for a possible huge payoff later. Also, this was the kind of thing that Capps loved to do; probably took him an hour or two one evening.

The Magic Sac wasn't supposed to run with EEPROMs -- in theory you had to obtain a real Mac ROM from somewhere -- but all you really had to do was clip a pin on a 27256 and the 'Sac wouldn't know the difference.

Same with A-Max on the Amiga.

This comment ^ shouldn't be in gray.

It's a cute story, but if a cloner was dumb, he'd copy the the ROM as is and wouldn't care if the icon was hidden or not. A smarter cloner would tweak the code and the resulting ROM image would've likely had different offsets, so typing "<hex-address> G" in front of a judge simply wouldn't work. It doesn't really smacks of paranoia, but it does look like something Steve Jobs would've insisted on.

Thanks for the semantic qualification, I agree completely.

Not paranoid in the usual definition, but quite pertinent to the Jobs ideal.

I guess the Apple engineers would have prepared the demo and analysed the copied ROM, before going to the court. Then, they would have found the routine (somewhere else, as you point it out) and easy to activate.

Absolutely.

I could see a really compelling demo where they bring out the machine still in the shrinkwrapped box, open it in front of the court, turn it on, and hit the register.

Presumably Apple would be able to disassemble the clone ahead of time and find where the address had moved to.

unless the cloner did major modifications the code to display the icon would still be there and recognizable. It wouldn't take any half competent engineer very long to find the new address to run knowing the exact block of code they were looking for.

Isn't that the entire problem? They neither know its there, or what it is.

He meant a knowledgeable Apple engineer, who would presumably have some time to determine where the routine had moved while the lawsuit against the copier was wending it's way through court.

So, once the modified clone(s) start to get a foothold in the market, release a new version of the OS which checks for the existence of the copyrighted marker:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProDOS#Unlicensed_Apple_I...

I guess Apple hoped that the dumb clones would come first, which would help set a precedent.

In other news, the locks on my door are useless because nobody has ever broken in, and password protection on my online accounts achieved bugger all because nobody has ever hacked into them. Right.

How is it paranoia when the previous apple II's ROMs were copied and used in a competing machine. Apple then went to court and won but it was not a clear cut victory so they decided to 'digitally watermark' the ROM so if it ever happened again they could easily prove in a court of law a competitor copied the rom. It doesn't sound like paranoia so much as a reasonable action to prevent something that had already happened to a previous product.

> exactly the sort of response I expected of Jobs.

> this smacks of paranoia

Counterpoint: Isn't company-wide email randomization similarly paranoid or self-defeating? If so, at least he's in good company (Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have used this tactic).

"UPDATE: In a version of the memo I first posted, there was a repeated paragraph, with slight differences. This might have been a software error–several versions I got of this entire memo had different punctuation in various places." --http://allthingsd.com/20090402/the-entire-facebook-goodbye-g...

As well as a real "APPLE ][", we had a clone which displayed "GALAGA" on boot, bought from Singapore I think. It was otherwise identical to the real one, including the rest of the EPROM image. So there really were clones "Stolen from Apple".

To get it to run ProDOS we had to reburn the EPROM on that sucker :-): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_ProDOS#Unlicensed_Apple_I...

There's a similar mechanism in OSX to this day: http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=1320

After the paranoia, you still have the stories, and that's what this is about.

http://www.romitaman.com/Images/Category_2/subcat_1532/SpyMa...

You will eventually die. Why bother eating?

Being able to pull up a graphic on an cloned machine isn't something anyone would think of as security. Maybe I misread but I took it as a "hey, if you can do this it would be funny" kind of project.

Might've been effective as a deterrent.

Love the downvote without explanation...

That's what I get for deriding the wisdom of almighty Big-Jobs!

What, in particular, did you dis-agree with?

Easy to test, go repeat your comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5532040

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5532358

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5532380

and let’s see if you get the same reaction for deriding the wisdom of the almighty Kōzuki-San.

Thanks! That appellation is even better than "Big-Jobs"

You have to give it a few minutes for people to get their replies out before you get antsy about downvotes. The same time you posted this, multiple replies were pouring in.

Thanks freehunter, I tend to react quickly to these things... Not sure why, as it's just another forum, but HN tends to mean more to me than the other online discussions.

I will certainly take time to refresh, and reflect on other's input from now on, at least for 5 or 10 minutes.

I get "antsy" easily :-) Sorry.

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