Apple warns off OS-pirates with a poem

Apple has gone all poetic in a warning to would-be software pirates.

User sites have been reporting that the Mac maker has embedded a poem in a file likely to be discovered by software pirates attempting to crack the Mac OS in order to run it on non-Apple hardware.

The poem, found by the OSx86 project, reads:

"Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
His existing OS was so blind
He'd do better to pirate
An OS that ran great
But found his hardware declined.
Please don't steal Mac OS
Really, that's way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc."

An Apple spokesperson said in a statement that the poem can be found within the Mac operating system: "We can confirm that this text is built into our products. Hopefully it, and many other legal warnings, will remind people that they should not steal Mac OS X."

An earlier exploration of the OS found another file aimed at deterring the pirates named 'Don't Steal Mac OS X'.