While we're on the topic of imminent product releases, we all know that Tiger's out this Friday-- and given that it represents a far larger leap over its predecessor than the new Power Macs will apparently be over theirs (why, you can even video iChat with multiple people simultaneously, provided you have a few hundred Xserves Infinibanded together for the necessary horsepower!), there's a lot more anticipation buzzing around out there for Apple's Next Big Cat™ than for its Next Big Cheese Grater™. So, how can we put this delicately? See, we've got the utmost faith in the moral scruples of AtAT's entire viewing audience; while we know you're not above tilting a Pepsi bottle or two, we're sure none of you would ever, say, rob an Apple retail store at gunpoint while wearing a Steve Ballmer mask and make off with a G5 or two after shooting up the Genius Bar. But it's a lot easier to "acquire" unlicensed software; all you need is a fast 'net connection and a copy of BitTorrent. (Firearms larger than a 9-mil are rarely necessary.)

What we're getting at, of course, is that copies of Tiger are floating around out there on the peer-to-peer networks, and since it's so ridiculously easy to download one, we fear that some of you may be willing to toast your karma a few shades darker than its usual golden-brown in order to get Tiger a few days earlier, and free, to boot. Whether or not you'll actually head down that road is, of course, entirely your own decision to make, but we'd be remiss not to mention the potential practical consequences that such an act might incur. In a word: lawyers. Not to alarm you unnecessarily or anything, but if you BitTorrent yourself a copy of Tiger, there's no reason to believe that Apple isn't connecting to the swarm and logging IP addresses of every peer from which it receives packets. BitTorrent's unique architecture generally means that for as long as you're downloading something, other people are also downloading it from you. If one of those people is an Apple lawyer digging for lawsuit bait, you might theoretically find yourself wriggling on the hook one day.

You probably know that Apple hasn't really gone in for suing end-users yet-- but that doesn't mean that its lawyers won't get bored someday. Don't forget, the company recently filed suit against three developers who seeded prerelease versions of Tiger to the BitTorrent crowd, one of whom has already settled by apologizing and forking over an undisclosed wad of cash. That's really only a step away from going after the downloaders themselves, since, like we said, in BitTorrent, downloaders are also uploaders. And according to Mac User Talk, Apple's lawyers did recently contact the folks running The Pirate Bay informing them that their site was listing Tiger torrents and telling them to knock it off. Considering that The Pirate Bay more or less told Apple to dress like a mackerel and wave coyly at a bunch of starving bears, we can't imagine that Apple's legal team holds much love for anyone involved with the BitTorrent community.

Sure, net-savvy downloaders can certainly find other ways of grabbing Tiger without basically handing Apple their IP addresses on a platter; all we're saying is that the blithe "BitTorrent = Free Stuff" users might do well to get at least a little paranoid before they fire up their clients and make God cry. And just to make this as transparently self-serving as possible, let's just squeeze in one last in-scene pimping: if you want Tiger, you're not in any particular hurry to get it, you don't qualify for the education price, money's an issue but you still want to keep your soul, and you enjoy getting rebate checks in the mail long after you forget that you ever applied for them in the first place, don't forget that preordering from Amazon.com through our links gets you $35 back on the single-client version and $50 back on the 5-client Family Pack (while also stuffing our own coffers with filthy lucre). Best of all, Apple-- and by extension, the hardworking Apple employees who created Tiger from their own blood, sweat, and tears (no, not literally... we hope)-- will be paid for its efforts, which is, of course, only fair. And we'll be paid for, well, pretty much doing nothing, which isn't. But it's still really, really cool.