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dan1eln1el5en

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 3, 2012
380
23
Copenhagen, Denmark
just a thought as I was scrolling through the forums.
it used to be a thing, people would refer to their installation of OS X as coming from "other sources" or similar.
now that it's free, is it still pirated ?

is there any sites that might do analysis of this or is it pure speculations (from browsing torrent sites etc.)

if anyone here is running a pirated version, please write why (just talk about it as "a friend of mine is")
 

vista980622

macrumors 6502
Aug 2, 2012
369
178
just a thought as I was scrolling through the forums.
it used to be a thing, people would refer to their installation of OS X as coming from "other sources" or similar.
now that it's free, is it still pirated ?

is there any sites that might do analysis of this or is it pure speculations (from browsing torrent sites etc.)

if anyone here is running a pirated version, please write why (just talk about it as "a friend of mine is")

I persibally don't. But the CDN Mac App Store has been using is incredibly unreliable in my country, China. It has been improved overtime, but slowly.

In some cases, downloading Yosemite's installer takes more than 5 days with 20Mbps bandwidth. And it often fails mid-way, causing users start over again. There may also be no Apple Store nearby.

Comparing to local sources, which takes less than an hour, you can probably see why.
 
Last edited:

dan1eln1el5en

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 3, 2012
380
23
Copenhagen, Denmark
In some cases, downloading Yosemite's installer takes more than 5 days with 20Mbps bandwidth. And it often fails mid-way, causing users start over again. There may also be no Apple Store nearby.

Comparing to local sources, which takes less than an hour, you can probably see why.

Thats is a reason I can understand, but then is it pirating downloading the installer from a faster source ? I suppose you/they still "buy" the real one from Apple only to realize that it is slow, then go torrent.
 

vista980622

macrumors 6502
Aug 2, 2012
369
178
Thats is a reason I can understand, but then is it pirating downloading the installer from a faster source ? I suppose you/they still "buy" the real one from Apple only to realize that it is slow, then go torrent.

Basically, I think you are right. And I really don't know if it is pirate or not since they probably do have purchase records in Mac App Store... (My biggest worry is they get a modified version of OS X with malicious code...)

They try downloading from the Mac App Store first, but switches to Baidu Cloud (similar to MEGA, DropBox or Copy.com) or Thunder Offline Download (A company named Thunder caches popular downloads and allow people to directly download with high-speed from their servers) or other local mirrors after realizing the former is way too slow.
 

simonsi

Contributor
Jan 3, 2014
4,851
735
Auckland
Can it be considered pirating when the product is free to begin with?

The cost aspect is irrelevant but if the torrent version becomes a vehicle for other malicious code then that is of concern. As the only issue is download time that wouldn't make me use a non-official source because of the risk involved. (imagine the basic permissions structure being undone, leaving such installs open to windows-esque viruses that CAN propagate without user permission).

There is almost no limit to the damage you could suffer as a result of such an installation.
 
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