Apple demands Mac sites remove OS X on x86 videos

Apple's legal department this week sent "aggressive" emails to several web sites that support and advocate its products solely because they linked to videos showing a hacked version of the company's Mac OS X operating system running on off-the-shelf PC hardware.

French language Mac news site MacBidouille was one of the first web sites to receive an "amazingly aggressive email asking for the immediate removal of all links to the videos," the site reported on Wednesday.

In an editorial, the site's publishers said that they immediately complied with Apple's requests, but added: "we deeply think that it will not change anything."

The site, along with others, had used the videos to support news reports that hackers had successfully circumvented Apple's Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which was designed to prevent versions of Mac OS X for Intel from running on non-Apple certified systems.

By issuing e-mail-based cease and desist orders, Apple is effectively validating the the claims made by the news sites, as well as the work of the hackers in conquering the TMP scheme.

At Apple's World Wide Developers Conference in June, the company announced a switch to the Intel processors and began providing developers with a version of Mac OS X capable of running on proprietary Apple developer test systems that are based on the Intel architecture.

Copies of the operating system soon leaked to Internet file sharing sites and BitTorrent trackers. Following the unauthorized widespread distribution, it took only about a month and a half for hackers to successfully crack Apple's TPM scheme and allow the version of Mac OS X to boot on virtually any Intel-based PC.