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Apple Suit Demands That Psystar Recall OpenMacs
Da'Man writes "The Psystar saga takes another series of turns. Not only is the website down but an examination of the suit filed by Apple shows that the Cupertino Goliath wants Psystar to recall all Open Computer and OpenServ systems sold by the company since April. It seems that Steve Jobs is out to totally sink Psystar and put an end to Mac clones."
The more you tighten your grip, Jobs, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
um, you THINK?
Be honest - who didn't see this coming?
Notice that Apple filed approx a day after the WoW copyright decision. If there was some doubt on Psystar beating Apple on the validity of of the EULA...it is pretty safe to say that Psystar is about to get slapped down.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
...Steve Jobs called a "suit."
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Apple have no choice - if only IBM had retained such control over the IBM PC. And where are IBM now?
This was probably inevitable, but it's a shame to see Psystar brought down. Without any competition in the computers-that-run-OS-X market, Apple just keeps getting more obnoxious.
(If this kind of thing bothers you and you want to take a swipe back at Apple, I recommend passing up that shiny new iPhone 3G and looking at the equally shiny LG Dare instead. The screen is smaller but it's actually easier to type on.)
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Take that Stevie!
http://nwbagpipes.com/
Ok, how about the thousands of us who demand a headless, non-pro, non-laptop computer, with actual desktop/decent parts in it?
Mac mini: piss-poor GPU and low-capacity/slow LAPTOP 2.5" drive in a DESKTOP computer?
iMac: fuckin' all-in-one computer with stupid glossy screens and low quality LCDs with not even average GPU choices.
Mac Pro: are you fucking insane? I don't need that much power (and even the GPU options for that one are ridiculous).
Make the Mac mini taller/bigger, put a 3.5" drive and a half-decent GPU in it (the ability to run Starcraft II and Diablo III at medium settings) and it WILL sell. A lot. You have no fuckin' idea how much people loathe all-in-one computers.
If Psystar were rich enough, they could win their case against Apple and we could see Mac clones on the market like we saw IBM PC clones in the 80's. But still, what would be the point in having Mac clones ? We'd start to see an OS (Mac OS) that crashes all the time because the hardware is "not supported officially". So we would be forced to install an alternative OS on the machine, like Linux or BSD. Ok it could work great but it works as great on PCs.
Really I'm not trying to troll/start a flamewar, I'm just wondering.
Has the price changed that much? Last I looked, Apple was actually competitive (within $100, sometimes cheaper) with commodity hardware. The only difference is, you can't get a Mac without the bells and whistles.
In other words, you get exactly what you pay for, which includes $1k of hardware you don't actually need.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...the clone war.
What are the odds of people actually returning their much-less-costly Mac clone?
Bearded Dragon
That's not accurate. OSX does not use the TPM chip for hardware authentication. The reason OSX does not run without modification is that it requires EFI firmware instead of BIOS. Pystar uses an open source EFI emulator to boot.
Looks like I was right in my comments from yesterday--but I never figured they would fall apart so quickly! Build a product that might infringe but would definitely piss someone off, make & deliver a bunch of orders, pay bonuses, declare bankruptcy (how long until Psystar does this???), and disappear... Take the money & run. The funny thing is that if they fulfilled their orders, they might be in the clear from criminal prosecution and their customers are the ones that got exactly what they paid for (sans warranty once they file for bankruptcy)... Excluding the execs, who might be sitting on a beach somewhere, everybody loses--including Apple.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
If you look around next time your out shopping, you'll see (part of) how IBM is doing so well. They got back into the BM (no, not bowel movement) part of IBM. A very significant portion of all point of sale terminals (amongst other things) are made by IBM. Whether or not Apple could pull the same move is hard to say.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Cribbed shamelessly from an Ars Technica discussion on the same issue:
"TPM DRM" In Mac OS X: A Myth That Won't Die
Amit Singh
http://www.osxbook.com/book/bo...chapter7/tpmdrmmyth/
Beating a Dead Horse
"In October 2006, I wrote about the TPM and its "use" in Mac OS X. Since Apple provided no software or firmware drivers for the TPM ...
"Apple's TPM Keys"
"The media has been discussing "Apple's use of TPM" for a long time now. There have been numerous reports of system attackers bypassing "Apple's TPM protection" and finding "Apple's TPM keys." Nevertheless, it is important to note that Apple does not use the TPM."
In short, while there was a TPM chip in some of the early shipping Intel systems, there were no drivers for it, and Apple did not use it. Current shipping Macintel systems don't even have the TPM chip, so there's no possible way for them to use one.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Who here would expect Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft to NOT do anything if a competitor suddenly started to sell compatible systems or even just emulators for their own systems?
Remember that Apple sells systems, not computers. This may be an alien concept to kids today, but at the beginning, all companies were selling computer+OS systems and they were all proprietary (Apple II, Mac, Atari ST, Amiga, CoCo2+OS9, C64+GeOS, etc).
Also, don't be two-faced about this: you don't like it when companies don't follow GPL and other similar licenses, but when it's Apple or Microsoft, why wouldn't they be allowed to do the same?
I hope there's one good thing to come out of this mess: Apple selling a headless, iMac-specs computer (i.e. ATI/nVidia GPU with a 3.5" desktop hard drive). Heck, why don't they just make a case for the actual iMac motherboard to lower R&D costs?
If this were a story about Microsoft trying to stop vendors from building machines that can run their OS, there would be a million typical comments about them being an evil monopoly, etc. Since it's Apple, I'm sure it's somehow ok, in a shiny, trendy, hip way.
I suspect Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, just less successful.
If I bought something, it's now mine (the hardware anyway). I doubt Pystar can actually repossess any of the boxes. The entire demand by Apple is pretty silly. Apple's copyright claims can't possibly cover the possession of physical hardware. Very bizarre. I think Apple only has a claim against Psystar itself over copyright infringement (the distribution of hacked Apple patches). Personal use of OS X in breach of Apple's license would have to be an issue that Apple would have to deal with on a per user basis, which I doubt they are willing to do.
Psystar could probably win this on antitrust grounds. Apple's EULA is probably an "illegal tying arrangement" and unenforceable. But Psystar may not be able to afford the litigation. Historically, IBM lost on this antitrust issue in the 1970s, which is why there were and are IBM mainframe clones and, indeed, IBM PC clones. In fact, IBM was forced to sell their mainframe OS and applications to users with mainframe clones from Amdahl and NCR.
The difference between this era of Mac clones and the last one was that the earlier generations (pre x86) of Apple machines had parts of the OS in ROM, which gave Apple more legal leverage. The current Apple machines are essentially Intel-based PC clones, with little or no essential Apple intellectual property inside.
Psystar does not seem to be redistributing Apple updates. They distribute an installer which, on the client machine, downloads an update from Apple and patches it.
Also, Psystar's web site is not down. It's just slow.
It's true that you can get laptops for under $1k, but it's quite a bit harder to find a 13.3" one like the MacBook for much less
Funny you should mention that. I've been saying for a while that when my current laptop finally dies, I plan to get a Macbook. Not for the looks, the spec or the OS, but simply because I wanted a 13.3 inch form factor. I carry my laptop around a lot, so a 17'' monster is out of the question, but I also use it as my primary machine, so an ultra portable is no use either. 13.3'' is, for me, the sweet spot between portability and usability. But no one seemed to make them except apple, so it looked like the macbook was the best option.
Lately though, I've noticed more and more 13.3'' laptops showing up in stores. A quick search on dabs turns up these results. As you can see, they have twelve 13.3'' laptops that are cheaper than a macbook. The Toshiba U400 for example, compares very favourably with the cheapest macbook in terms of specs. The macbook had a faster processor, but the toshiba has a DVD writer and is lighter, so it's pretty much a toss up. On price though, the Toshiba trounces the apple. £498 against £699. A £200 pound difference. Looks like I won't be buying a mac after all.
I won't get into the the relative merits and value of vista compared to OSX. I'd be formatting it and installing Linux anyway.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
Though the iPod and iPhone are popular, there is no way Apple could survive on those products alone. Mac is their core business. If they lose their supremacy to cloners, they're sunk.
On what do you base this assumption? This article is old, but it shows an opposing point of view:
Leading the charge for Apple was its line of iPods, with the company shipping 21 million of the market-leading devices during the quarter, a 50% jump from a year ago. Sales of the device accounted for $3.43 billion of the company's revenue, or nearly half the total.
Apple's total number of iPod sales now stands at about 90 million units since the device first went on sale in October 2001.
"After five years, the iPod is still going strong," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research. "It's still a very popular product." Wu holds a buy rating on Apple's stock. The results show that demand for Apple's products remains strong despite stepped-up competition from rivals such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT: Microsoft Corporation News, chart, profile, more Last: 27.26+1.10+4.20% 4:12pm 07/16/2008 Delayed quote data Add to portfolio Analyst Create alert Insider Discuss Financials Sponsored by: MSFT 27.26, +1.10, +4.2%) , which is pushing hard to boost its share of the digital entertainment market with a new handheld media player and other consumer products.
"The iPod sales were shocking," said Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray. "And the earnings power of this company is reaching record levels."
Macintosh computer sales also surged, rising 40% to $2.4 billion, while Mac shipments rose 28% to 1.61 million units, more than double the growth of the overall PC market. The Mac results were a slightly below many analysts forecasts, as several had expected Apple to sell between 1.75 million and 1.8 million Macs during the quarter.
However, Munster, of Piper Jaffray, said the holiday-quarter Mac sales needed to be taken into context, and were actually solid because they remained almost in line with Apple's September quarter results, which is when Apple sees strong back-to-school PC sales.
"People give iPods for Christmas, not computers," Munster said.
All Macs are expandable, although some require a bit of work.
The Mac mini and Macbook have crippled GPUs, these can not be replaced or upgraded. The Macbook Pro does not have any user accessible internal expansion other than the memory (no, it does not have a swappable hard drive, let alone a swappable optical drive bay).
iMac + Radeon HD 2600 PRO = 1337.
iMac is not a compact Mac, nor a conventional desktop. The only conventional desktop Apple has is the Mac mini, and it's crippled.
By Mac mini Pro, you're pretty much imagining a Cube
Except without being more than twice as expensive as a comparable wintel box. The cube was drastically overpriced, costing more than a G4 tower, and apparently was supposed to succeed purely on its looks because it was far less computer than the G4.
Also, the MacBook Air will probably take advantage of Atom and up it's specs to better compete with the ThinkPad
The kind of Thinkpad I'm talking about costs less than the Macbook (non pro, non air), but has a real GPU, a better keyboard than any Apple laptop, two (actual, usable) buttons on the trackpad, a trackpoint mouse, an optical ultrabay (so you can swap out the optical drive, or replace it with a hard drive caddy or an extra battery), a docking port[1], and a physically more rigid case. Oh, and it doesn't have that stupid 'magsafe' connector that keeps pulling out of my Macbook Pro when I'm using it as an actual laptop.
You ask for a conventional, average-specced desktop, then you ask for, essentially, a tiny Mac Pro.
Um, that would be "no, that's not what I'm asking for". A Mac Pro is an 8 core ultra-high-end workstation. I'm talking about a 2 core desktop, comparable to the kind of box you can get (except for Mac OS X, of course) for $300-$400 from anyone but Apple[2]. I'm not sure where you get 'a tiny Mac pro' from that.
[1] Of course a docking station is not available for any Mac laptop, and no the "bookendz" monstrosity doesn't count.
[2] With Apple's 40% markup that would still be cheaper than the Mac mini.
I don't think Apple could whether a storm...
"Weather". I know, I could of left it alone, but I'm sure that its bothering alot of people.
I know, I could "have" left it alone, but I'm sure that "it's" bothering "a lot" of people. You should have left it alone.