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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.
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?
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
An EULA is a licence contract between 2 parties. It is clearly spelled out, presented both before and after the sale, able to be declined without penalty within given terms (do not open to refuse licence). Further more, it HAS been held in court that a licencing body may, at it's own discretion, require the return of said licence or contract for use at will.
You are NOT buying the software. The software is provided BY the licence, not the other way around. You may keep the physical media, but the software is considered a seperate entity, and the use of it can be revolked. this is no different from the DMV, or a credit card company. You PAID a fee to get it, but you do NOT own it, (it says so on the back of your drives license and credit card both) you are only LICENSED to USE it, under their strict rules that you are legally bound to as soon as you accept said license, and can be ordered to return it, without refund, for any violation of its permissible applications.
The grant of an EULA is backed by the US Code of Commerce, a document backed by the direct power of the US constitution, and the commerce department of the united states. they DO have the power to enforce it, and the rules for the creation of a license and what can and can't be included in one are deeply rooted in this piece of legislation.
undoing the EULA would castrate the power of multiple government agencies, and wreak havock on the software and services sections of business. The ramifications of undoing licence use and trade restrictions by simply stating that software becomes an individual piece of property on purchase will cost the US BILLIONS in trade.
Keep in mind, (if it works the way I see it) if you get your way, then we're no longer legally liable to FIX what's broken with what you bought (only to fix what didn't work as advertised on the day it was advertised), we'd only be liable to return it to original working order. If someone hacked your software, we'd not be responsible or liable for it anymore! It would be like requiring car companies to replace your engine because it won;t run E85, even though it wasn't originally speced out to.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
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.
presented both before and after the sale, able to be declined without penalty within given terms (do not open to refuse licence).
I don't know what fucking planet you live on, but on this one software boxes don't have the 50 page EULA's printed on them.
The big issue with EULAs is you have to open the box to see it, yet you can't open the box and see it until you buy it, at which point no store will refund an opened software box if you disagree with an EULA.
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.