Scumbria and all,
Brett Glass, a ZDNet "pundit" who wrote the article "Pentium III: Big Brother Inside?" mentions that the iMac also has a built-in serial number. Can anyone verify this?
I guess the difference is that Apple isn't promoting this serial number as a feature for Internet security, but the privacy concerns are still there. Unless, of course, Apple decided to remove the serial number from future Macs after watching the big Pentium III controversy. If not, perhaps the privacy advocates should also be adding Apple to their boycott list. Oh yeah, I forgot, Apple isn't the leader in personal computing.
zdnet.com
About the Mac.... Ironically, the iMac has a built-in serial number too, though older Macs do not. So you can't escape a built-in serial number by buying a new Mac.
Some people who've e-mailed me privately have suggested that this and the Intel serial number were both requested by Microsoft, which desired to begin locking software to CPUs. Of course, there's no public evidence either for or against this claim, but it's an interesting conspiracy theory. ;-) |
