Slashdot Mirror
iBox Episode 2
coolgeek writes "According to this article on Wired, the iBox (original SlashDot post), later renamed to the CoreBox, has run into some trouble. Their strategy is to clone Mac computers using spare parts from repair centers. Evidently, the supplier of the repair parts was reminded by Apple Computer's Legal Department that supplying to a computer manufacturer was a breach of contract. Consequently, the supplier has chosen to stop supplying parts. More information on at the CoreComputing website, and they say the game isn't over yet..."
monopoly: Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.
a monopoly of their own product? freaking duh. what do you expect? for them to throw their company out the window by allowing someone to intrude on their copyrights? okay, sure. they're monopolistic. whatever.
Apple produces spare parts to replace broken parts for machines it has manufactured. There's quite a high overhead of maintaining these relatively small quanties and their distribution is relatively complex, so it's fair to suggest that these parts aren't sold at much of a profit, if any. When Apple sells a computer, it expects to make back enough money to cover both the parts and the development of that machine. When Apple sells a part, chances are the cost charged to the end-user, if any, will reflect the shipping and manufacturing cost of that part, only.
The upshot is that if Apple were to sell its own parts to competitors, it would be subsidizing those competitors because the cost of selling those parts wouldn't cover the costs of developing them and marketing the overall product built from them, costs Apple still incurrs.
Now, as far as Microsoft goes - do we expect Microsoft to subsidize Linux? I mean, on a moral level. Slashdotters fume that Microsoft signs restrictive contracts that force people who buy PCs to, ultimately, pay for Microsoft's marketing and development costs regardless of whether we want to use Microsoft's design, but do we actually want some extreme opposite? Have you ever heard anyone complain that Microsoft should? If Microsoft objected to a port of Internet Explorer to WINE, do you believe Slashdotters would be up in arms about it?
The answer of course is no. Apple may be shooting themselves in the foot by not creating a mechanism that allows third parties to contribute to their costs in exchange for the ability to produce machines independently, but it's hardly immoral for them to do so. And it's certainly not immoral for them to tell their resellers that goods that are intended for the exclusive use of Mac buyers - people who've paid money to Apple and expect service at a reasonable cost - be only supplied to Mac buyers, on pain of Apple dropping them.
Microsoft's business tactics are well documented. Apple's are not in the same ballpark. And neither company should have any obligation to subsidize a competitor, except possibly as compensation for those cases where illegal actions by that company has damaged that competitor. I don't see any case where Apple has to compensate anyone.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.