This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 8:22 and is filed under Rumors, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Gizmodo picked up on a Mac OS Rumor that has a tipster telling the rumor site that Leopard, Mac OS Xs next update, will be packed with some download help for iTunes. Instead of recreating the wheel, Apple’s just going to use a true-and-tested P2P software called BitTorrent. Gasp! What is the RIAA or MPAA going to think about that? Screw ‘em, Steve’s in charge!
If this rumor indeed is true, then the brilliance of Jobs keeps on shinning. BitTorrent has proven a wonderful and a must for movie downloads on the Internet but most of those downloads are illegal. The author of BitTorrent is watched like a hawk by the movie and record industry ready to catch him in a blunder much like the pharisees tried to catch Jesus in when they would ask him tricky questions. Bram Cohen has been a good boy and hasn’t been charged with anything yet and it only shows that his technology can be used for the greater good of digital man. Steve Jobs must agree with that thought, too.
Again, this is all rumor and Mac OS Rumors doesn’t have a good track record with rumors turning into fact, but then again, who does? Truth is, Apple is already paying through the nose for bandwidth for its iTunes Music Store and when full out movies come online, then the meter is really going to be ticking. Apple has an upcoming problem and it desires to make a bit more than its token profits off the most successful download music store on the Internet. BitTorrent is the perfect answer for that need and by enticing users with discounts on future purchases for aiding in others downloads, this scheme would up Apple’s bottom line at the end of the day. It’s like the Guinness guys say, “Brilliant!”
But what about user abuse you ask? Man that’s so not a problem since all one has to do is look how well Apple locked up FairPlay on iTMS downloads. Jhymn still hasn’t been able to fix what Apple broke for them six months ago. The engineers near the Los Gatos hills know very well what kind of trouble they’d be in if someone cracked the BitTorrent component in Leopard to get free swag. We can bet our Apple I (if we had one) that it’s going to be no walk in the park to crack this baby.
All in all, it sounds like Leopard is going to be the cats meow with this BitTorrent and Windows virtualization when it’s released. That along with the other 118 updates. 
