The majority of Apple users are happy enough with the Apple product line and have little desire to change it. However there is also a large number of Apple users who wish, quite simply, that Apple products were much more configurable – and care not at all for Apple’s policy or its proprietary behavior. Such Apple fans are served by a kind of network of web sites which exist primarily to help you circumvent Apple.

The irony is that this network serves to increase Apple’s sales rather than to diminish them. The original Apple halo effect was the phenomenon of  iPod buyers being lured in to buying other Apple products, particularly iMacs, because they were so impressed with iTunes and the iPod. The Dark  Apple Halo Effect is similar. It refers to people buying Apple products for use under circumstances that they were never intended for and for which they are probably not legally sanctioned.

The cause of this halo-effect-of-a-different-kind is the iPhone. It is estimated that somewhere in the region of 30% of Apple iPhones have been unlocked and are being used on mobile networks that they are not sanctioned to run on. That’s not a good thing for those networks who’ve done exclusive deals with Apple for use of the iPhone. Nevertheless, it also means that 30% of Apple iPhone sales would never have happened were it not for this shadowy market and those who enable it. Apple thus finds itself in a similar situation to the one which Microsoft found itself in 15 years ago.

Microsoft applications were being stolen and used illegitimately on millions of PCs. Microsoft took some steps to discourage the level of theft, but actually it didn’t bust a gut to do this because the company knew that as the black markets were reined in, those stolen products would eventually turn into legitimate copies in one way or another and it was therefore important to be the market leader in the stolen software market.

Doubtless Apple takes a similar view (unofficially) as regards the iPhone. However it may be less enthusiastic about the pirating of OS X. Follow this link Installing OSX on an EE PC 901 and you’ll arrive at a site that guides you through putting OS X on a netbook. Clearly there’s lost Apple revenue involved in such an act and there’s also very little upside. Yes there may be more OS X instances out there and ultimately that will resulting in Apple selling a little more of something, whether it’s software or routers or whatever. But the upside is limited. Not much of a halo really, light or dark.

Unfortunately it’s hard to see what Apple can do to prevent it.