And a lot more people who look at the whole "gotta buy the OS AND the hardware" thing will just say "Screw it! I'm sticking with windows".

If I could get a version of Apple's OS running on a generic whitebox PC I'd be willing to try it. Forking out a couple hundred bucks isn't such a big thing. But If I need to spend a couple thousand to buy a PC that is capable of running it (simply because of some sort of hardware recognition/locking mechanism) it just ain't gonna happen. I know that lots of other people think the same.

Maybe Apple should realise that selling an OS that runs on generic PCs is a good way to make money. They can still sell their premium packages (ie: a custom PC/Mac with OSX) and offer solid support for it, then sell a cheaper, generic package (ie: just the OS that runs on any PC) that offers bugger all support (kinda like MS).

Then instead of "If you have a choice between buying an Apple Machine at $2000, but you can build an even more powerful machine for that price or lower and stick a cracked copy of OS X on it, where will you spend your money?" It'd be "Spend less to build a similar machine AND buy the legit OS."

As for the original issue in the thread... I don't see anything wrong with Apple making changes. It's a beta under development so we should expect changes.