Is 'Trusted Computing' A Reason To Dump Apple?


Cory Doctorow says he'll drop the Mac if Apple does implement Trusted Computing in Mactel. But how else can Apple survive selling computers built around standard Intel parts? He is right about being wary of application vendors who misuse this feature.

Cory Doctorow's comment on Apple's apparent use of Trusted Computing in the forthcoming Intel-based Macs seems (to me, anyway) to miss an important point.

Without this feature, how is Apple going to ensure that Mac OS X can't run on non-Apple hardware? Let's face it - it's the hardware sales that keeps the company going, not the income from retail copies of the OS.

Yes, this may mean we have to keep an eye on software vendors to ensure that they are not permitted (either through market pressure or legislation) to tie our data to their software. It's one thing for a music company to say "we'll only release this content in a form that can be played only on the Windows version of Windows Media Player", but that's very different to a software vendor telling me (perhaps in the small print around a 'security update' for its application) that my document will no longer open in any other program even if it is stored as XML, Unicode text, PNG or some other widely used format.

If Doctorow does exercise his free market right to move to a different platform, where is he going to go? Windows is moving in the Trusted Computing direction (just because it didn't make it into Vista, that doesn't mean it isn't coming).

So that leaves Linux. Trouble is, you can't get Microsoft Office for Linux. If Microsoft uses Trusted Computing as a way of making sure .doc (etc) files only open in MS apps, you've got a problem, as most people aren't going to stop using Word and Excel just for that reason. If your clients send you Office files, you've got be be able to read them. What are you going to do? Tell them you can't handle Office files? They'll think you're either crazy or incompetent.

If the Australian Taxation Office can get away with only allowing people to file online tax returns from Windows-based PCs, do you think public-sector agencies are going to stop issuing tender documents in Word format? One of my clients requires me to submit certain kinds of work by filling in an Excel template - do you think they'll switch to OpenOffice if MS Office goes Trusted? I certainly don't.

Yes, we do want our data to be truly open. But I don't think Apple is the bad guy.

Posted: Tue - August 2, 2005 at 06:34 PM        

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