Comments on: A Patent Nightmares are Made Of: OS X With Ads

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:44:12 +0000

But the idea is that you wouldn’t pay for the OS if it was ad-supported, right? (Or you’d pay significantly less).

I still dislike the idea, but its not that different from the idea that you get to see a website (or a TV show) for free as long as you’re willing to put up with ads.

By: quandmeme

quandmeme — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:11:53 +0000

Right. it’s not Halloween at all! By patenting the idea now, Apple is saving us all from the specter of anyone trying this stunt in the future.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:13:55 +0000

I love when the trolls come out to play. You “hate Apple” because they filed a patent for something? Seriously?

They filed a patent many years ago when they first released the multi-colored iMacs for a technology that would change the color of the shell plastic (via LEDs) depending on what you were doing on screen. Did you see that patent get used? No.

For all we know, they’ve come up with a clever way for software vendors to have demo apps on the Mac that auto-serve ads until they get paid for. Who knows. There could be a ton of things this could be used for.

As someone already stated though, it’s probably just to prevent Google or MS from using the idea.

By: PoBoy

PoBoy — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:08:29 +0000

Apple won’t even allow stickers on their kit, much less ads in their main OS. This is for Apple TV and the like, not OS X (or OS XI, or whatever). Remember, everyone’s still trying to figure out the digital content distribution, and tv networks might find this model appealing.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:47:21 +0000

The very next article here is about Nokia suing Apple over phone patents. You need to understand that in the horrible patent system the US has, companies are nearly required to do this. It’s like the cold war.. we need to stockpile missiles so you won’t use your missiles. Sure, maybe Apple has plans to deploy this on a media device or in the Apple Stores, but even if they don’t, they need to file every idea anyone has just in case. The only real solution is to severely restrict the scope of what can be patented, or do away with them altogether. This of course is ludicrously improbable given the influence patent holders are able to wield over government.

By: Lucas Rafagnin

Lucas Rafagnin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:34:58 +0000

I think it’s something for Apple store computers, as everyone is using them for free, they could get some profit from partners or even display apple own advertisements…
Really don’t think any of this computers would be useful on a daily basis but for store’s displays or any place with free internet access it kind of makes sense

By: AdamC

AdamC — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:57:08 +0000

This reminded me of the bloggers defending the rights of fart apps developers to have their days in the app store.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:22:05 +0000

I think this ad-infested version of OSX will be for PC users that complain about Apple limiting OSX to Apple hardware. Haha! That would be funny. They give you a taste of what could be and if you like it enough and want the full experience, buy a Mac.

By: Felipe

Felipe — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:56:02 +0000

Let us hope Steve Jobs is patenting this so no one else can have this horrendous idea with out paying a lot of money to Apple.

Let us hope, otherwise I’ll become a CPM* fan again.

* a 70′s operating systems for those not old enough.

By: spoonbender...

spoonbender... — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:12:48 +0000

Hi,
If, they actually do this, it`s only a matter of time until the ‘rest of us’ figure out a way to hack the system and disable all the crap permanently. It`s not like jailbreaking an iphone is hard to do.
S.