Is it possible to upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard for 29$ without owning a macintosh?

If you don't own a Mac to begin with, than you are obviously using a hacked version of Leopard, which in turn would mean that you already aren't obeying Apple's license agreement, so even if you "purchased" a copy of OS X, you can not legally use that license on your PC.

At that point if you are paying for it, you are throwing your money away on a product that you can't use.

~Adrian

If Mac sold you the OS disk then my understanding is that they cannot enforce their EULA because it is after the fact (it is questionable at best). I don't think that they can really stop you from putting it on a non-mac computer.

If they had you sign it before they took your $ then they would certainly have a leg to stand on. Why do you think this has not been prosecuted.

Many EULA's will not hold up in court for this same reason. In some countrys the EULA has no legal standing.

They sold the software to you, it is yours to put on your computer. The only thing they can for sure enforce is if you Pirate it or distribute it on more computers than you are supposed to. This is something that is fairly clear before you buy.

This high and mighty viewpoint that you have to only have Macs OS on a Mac is a little silly.

It's not a high-and-mighty attitude, but more a direct interpretation of a contract that you are agreeing to when installing OS X, like any piece of software.

While I do agree that it is an unrealistic term to put in an EULA, it is perfectly legal for Apple to do so, just as Microsoft can say that an Upgrade license is only valid if you actually own a previous version of Windows.

The claim that "because they sold it to you, it's yours" is frankly downright idiotic. For example... Say your local Chevy dealer sells you a car and you don't have a license to drive. Can you say f*** it and just go for it, because someone sold you the car?

Definitely the case right here. It wasn't long ago that no one bothered prosecuting file sharers. Apple is also going after Pystar for doing "exactly" what you're saying is within your rights, so it's best not to think of breaking laws that you don't agree with as being within your rights.

~Adrian

No. Go to knowed torrent sites and download it. Or buy it on a full price. No more choices.

__________________
"the truth is out there"

hack1 = Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Build 10C531
hack2 = Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard 10.6.1 Build 10C504
iBook G3 DualUSB = Mac OS X Jaguar 10.2.8 Build 6R73
MacBook 403LL/A = Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 Build 10C531
iPhone 3G = iPhone OS 3.1.2 Build 7D11 Baseband 05.11.07 Bootloader 05.09 [G2M3S2] ClaroBR 5.0

I think this was a functionality question, not a legality question. If not, then i guess i'm going to hijack it, and make it one. I havn't been able to find any answers to my question, which is: i'm using a working vanilla kernel hackintosh running 10.5.6 on an intel dg35ec board. My question is, do you need to download a special version / other tricks to get 10.6 on this machine, or can a person just buy the disk, and install/upgrade. Though i know it still is frowned upon, I bought a disk, and slipstreamed the crack in, i'm using this system at work, and would just as soon buy the upgrade for both more arguability if i were to actually be proscecuted, and also for the simplicity of ust putting a disk in and having it work.

Thanks!
-Parkerbender

Why is A.Fogge even posting here with that attitude? Let's just say, for educational and informational purposes only..., I doubt it will be possible, but I'd be interested to know the mechanisms for upgrading to 10.6. For example, for 10, 10.1,10.2 and I think 10.3, any OS X installation disk could be installed upon any Mac hard drive. A lot of times it wouldn't function on older macs because of memory limits, etc. Sometimes a hack was necessary to actually run the OS(the old XPostFacto app) but there was nothing in the software. I think it was 10.4 when installation disks started using identifiers, so that the OS would halt and not continue installation on incorrect macs. This was a pain, but still superior to WinXP and its silly zillion digit security code that was sent over an internet connection. Now, I am wondering is Apple going to create more DRM-like software restrictions, and be more like M$? Will the upgrade procedure remain simple? Maybe a 10.5 disc needs to be physically present for the $29 10.6 upgrade? I'm curious.

cuvtixo, while I understand that anyone who is capable of forming a coherent sentence is an obvious threat to you, not everyone who does not see the world in exactly the same way as you are out to insult you or your manhood.

Bottom line is what was stated earlier was fact based on what was being asked.

Parkerbender, thank you for the well thought out question. You described exactly what you want to do very well, so let's get you an answer. If you have one of the EFI-based hacks that allow for you to use a vanilla kernel, you should in theory be able to use 10.6 upon it's release. I have personally tested this back prior to WWDC and had no issues using BOOT-132. I have not tried this recently, however given the nature of the current exploits, it is unlikely that Apple would be able to prevent us from running vanilla on our Hacks without also causing issues for legitimate Mac users. Customized Distros definitely have some benefits, generally in terms of hardware support, however if you plan everything carefully when you are building, you can stay official and be reasonably upgrade-safe.

While it is anyone's guess whether current systems will be able to work unmodified come GM, it is only a matter of time until everything works under 10.6 exactly as it does right now with 10.5.

Honestly, I don't know what to think about using a hack at work as I have seen several people rattle some swords come lay-off season and put in a call or two to the BSA. While the odds are strongly against you getting prosecuted based on history, I would expect that someone who is profiting from the use of what the law considers illegal use of software would be a little higher on someone's radar than if you were just using it at home.

Just be careful and cover your ass.

And moving on to cuvtixo's educational question...
Current installation checks on media are being performed via "InstallationCheck", generally a perl script inside of the *.pkg file. These installation checks are by their very definition hackable as they are simple "if condition met => exit" variety checks. In fact, you can generally simply "rm -f InstallationCheck && touch InstallationCheck && open ../*.pkg" to do a safe install bypassing the existing checks.

You can also use the standard media, launch Terminal immediately and run "/System/Library/Installation/OSInstall.mpkg" and be in a good place without any real hacks to speak of based on the current 10.5 Hardware Specific discs.

As for DRM, that would be difficult for Apple to implement unless they were to go product key based. Their current DRM Schemes are based on MAC Address authentication. While they could do something like that if there were a digital download of OS X, the idea of mass producing Read-Only installation media makes such attempts by companies useless. They could absolutely implement DRM Schemes that would allow for them to only perform installations from legitimate media, or prevent copying of the discs.

I personally expect that physical OS distribution will be disappearing in the coming year or two. I see the iPods, iPhones and AppleTVs as being a staging area to test more complicated OS Deployments in the near future. It wouldn't take much for Apple to implement an EFI Bootloader to connect up to an Apple Server, download your authorized OS and then install if they wanted to. Many of the movies provided today on iTunes are already on-par with the size of an OS, after all. The AppleTV is doing this right now! Add to that, Apple has been shipping the Macbook Air without an optical drive for over a year now. Seems more like an evolution of Apple's current business practices to do away with physical media given that broadband internet has become the standard around the world.

~Adrian

There is one more point to be put across on the "is it legal?" question.

IF you install leopard from a retail DVD (and hence are NOT using hacked software)

AND You OWN the DVD

AND you place an apple sticker on your PC

There is a very very strong argument that what you are doing is not only LEGAL (which I'm convinced it is) but also not in violation of EULA. The only thing said in the EULA is that you agree not to install Leopard on a non-Apple labeled machine. If you label your PC with a legit Apple label (which interestingly come with the retail version of Leopard) then I say you are in the clear from both a legal and EULA agreement.