Ina Fried has a story on news.com about the just-published Apple patent application. The idea seems to be that code would be limited to specific hardware and in theory could get around various simulators and virtualization technologies. I find this hard to believe, but perhaps that's why it's "resistant" rather than "proof." According to Fried's story, the OS itself would be obfuscated in such a way as to make it difficult to detect what MAC or ROM code was being read to validate the hardware platform. I haven't looked at the patent application yet, so I've no idea what prior art is cited. My guess is that there's a ton and the patent has little or none of it. Geeks who attack this technology as breakable (which it most certainly will be) are missing the point. This is further evidence that whatever Jobs says in public, Apple is kissing ass hard with the Cartel. Apple want to convince the Cartel that digital content will be locked up tight, using a combination of Intel's hardware and Apple's OS use of it.