These days, it seems like all we hear is how likely it is that P2P software will own your PC with crippling malware, land you in jail, or bury you in debt. Now, rumors are swirling that Apple is prepared to turn the tide and reward Mac OSX users for utilizing P2P in their day-to-day lives. According to MacOSXRumors.com, "reliable sources" state that the 10.5 version of OSX Leopard will "employ a system-level, encrypted BitTorrent client and a sharing-reward system." Ostensibly, this will enable the upstream bandwidth of users to be pooled. The newfound oasis of bandwidth would turbocharge delivery of Software Update packages, iTunes content, and anything else that Apple might need to disseminate to its users. Since the code was very recently developed, it would probably appear in OSX just before beta later this year at the earliest. Apple developers have suggested rewarding users for their cooperation. Donate your upstream bandwidth to the pool, and get credits for free music from the iTunes Store or minutes on Apple's expected "iPhone" platform. Apple's BitTorrent setup allegedly uses a different port than typical BT traffic so that network administrators can easily differentiate and ensure delivery. To me, this is what makes Apple great. Apple has shown repeatedly that they are willing to give the nod to the best technology, even if it isn't their technology. As another example, Mac OSX users will soon witness Adium-X, an open source cross-platform IM client, replace Apple's proprietary iChat in future OSX releases. I'd like to see more companies in technology and all fields of endeavor embrace approaches that "just work." If this is for real, they've got at least one writer convinced. This kind of setup would keep users nice and happy with quicker downloads and give Apple a high-powered pool of auxilary bandwidth for any purpose that may arise in the future. The article states that securing the data throughout transport and making it useful to rewards participants is the "easy part", alluding to more serious concerns with Apple's legal department. Lets hope they can square things away and roll this out with the next release! |
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"The newfound oasis of bandwidth would turbocharge delivery of Software Update packages, iTunes content, and anything else that Apple might need to disseminate to its users."
Maybe I read that wrong though who knows.
Cool move by Apple.