Could Apple Be Moving OS X to the Cloud?
Apple has recently been granted a patent for administering and maintaining a network-booted operating system, possibly laying further groundwork for a cloud-based version of Mac OS X.
Apple was awarded the patent, titled "Method and apparatus for administering the operating system of a net-booted environment," on Tuesday. However, Macs have been capable of booting from a network since the inclusion of the NetBoot feature in the original version of Mac OS X Server.
The patent application describes an environment where "a network computer (NC) system including an NC server and multiple NC clients is managed by an NC client causing the remainder of the NC clients that are subsequently booted to receive operating system software that is configured differently than that currently in effect by replacing one or more system volumes on the NC server containing the operating system software with one or more different system volumes."
