How does Apple protect their software?

They don’t for OS X and iLife. But they ask for a serial number for iWork and all the Pro apps. And OS X Server. But none of the apps actually phone home to check the Serial number.

Since 95%+ of the people running OS X bought Macs they don’t seem to care much. They are mostly are hardware company.

edit :: I forgot that they stopped checking iWork 09’. IWork 08’ did ask for a serial.

Thanks.

They respect their customers enough to not cripple the software they purchase with DRM and ridiculous hoops to jump through to get it to work. They know that if they did the crackers would just strip out the DRM and the pirates would be left with a superior experience to the paying customers.

Too bad they don’t apply that philosophy to thei iPhone!

The iPhone sorta has some DRM. It just that what @StellarAirman said. The crackers have a superior experience to those without jailbroken devices. Things like custom themes and handy apps and setting that normal iPhone users would never get. And cracking it is easy as plugging it in and running a portable application.

@johnpowell “Since 95%+ of the people running OS X bought Macs they don’t seem to care much. They are mostly are hardware company.”
True; the price of OS X is included in the price of a Mac so it’s already been paid for.
What I don’t get is how Apple thought they could put that clause in the EULA about only running OS X on Apple hardware without running afoul of the BSD license. Then again, they had similar issues with Xerox a while back too, so maybe admitting that they are not the source of all good things isn’t really Apple’s strong suit.

@StellarAirman Apple has been ahead of their time in some ways ever since I can rememer, and that is one area where I would like to see the PC world catchup to where Apple is.