Slashdot Mirror
Psystar "Definitely Still Shipping" Mac Clones
Preedit writes "Continuing its defiance of Apple, Psystar is reassuring customers that it is "definitely still shipping" its line of Mac clones. And, in a further nose-thumbing at Steve Jobs, Psystar this week said it's now making Leopard restore disks available to its customers, even as Apple insists that Mac clones sold to date be recalled.
In its story on the latest developments, Infoweek is reporting that tiny Psystar apparently has no intention of backing down in its legal dispute with the much larger Apple."
I think Compaq had Microsoft and some part of Government/Corporate scene who is very afraid of IBM monopoly behind them.
Microsoft was allowed to license MS-DOS to _anyone which wants_ from the beginning. It is part of their agreement with IBM and it is why BillG and Ballmer are called "visionary". There is no such thing on OS X. Apple believes in integrated hardware/software combination from the very beginning.
Having reports like "I pressed power button but my Mac slept 10 secs later, it must be broken" is very common on Apple scene. It is nothing on a PC running Windows or Clone OS X.
What those idiots did is also convincing Apple that clones/licensed machines was always a bad idea. They ship JUNK PC.
Psystar ships its own flavor of hackintosh... they are not clones. I don't get the persistence of the label. Is it just the desire of folks to have an actual clone as a choice to run OS X that keeps the term active in discussions?
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
They're a 2-person company. No bank (especially today!) will give them a loan without them personally co-signing.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If you had read the article you'd see that they hired what it seems to suggest is a high profile law firm which has dealt with Apple before. I don't think they're "hiding", or skipping court.
Oh come on, the clone makers spent at least a few bucks paying someone to read the osx86 project website...
That reputation may apply to their software, but it doesn't apply to their hardware. Even Apple fans acknowledge that the first generation of almost anything is rather likely to expose some pretty significant flaws that, for some reason, never revealed itself during testing prior to release. I recall the overheating MacBookPro line... That should have been pretty darned obvious. But not every Apple fan acknowledges this... I had a vice president in my company acknowledge that he waited more than 4 hours to get the 3G iPhone and he has been rather disappointed in various aspects of its performance since.
Does this qualify as fanboy bullshit? Why? I'm just saying if you don't like it, don't use it. But the facts speak for themselves. People hate Vista, the average Joe can't/won't figure out linux, and people generally enjoy the Apple experience.
Those opinions you express are not facts. They are, as you accurately phrase it, 'fanboy bullshit'.
Psystar IS distributing modified Apple code. If that's not enforceable, the GPL is useless.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
As I understand it, they are not actually pirating OS X, they merely install retail copies of Apple OS on unblessed hardware, albeit breaking the TOS.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Psystar is going to win this as long as Apple sells their OS as a boxed product.
Insisting that Apple's separately sold software has to be run on Apple's hardware is an unenforceable and illegal tying arrangement under US antitrust law. This exact issue has come up before in 734 F.2d 1336 DIGIDYNE CORP. v. DATA GENERAL.. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled: The issue presented for review is whether Data General's refusal to license its NOVA operating system software except to purchasers of its NOVA central processing units (CPUs) is an unlawful tying arrangement under section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1 (1976) and section 3 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. Sec. 14 (1976). We conclude that it is.
That's clear enough.
In antitrust tying cases, it's very unusual for a tying provision in a contract to be found legally enforceable. A more common situation is that some victim of a tying arrangement wants a court to compel the company in a monopoly position to do something, like sell them spare parts. Even then, the tying company usually loses.
While your right that Psystar is violating the EULA and that its not clear if the EULA is enforceable I do not believe that is the core of Apples case (mostly because they don't want to find out that their EULA is unenforceable).
I believe they are suing because Psystar modified and redistributed the software updates from apple which is a violation of copyright law. Apple didn't sue them when they first shipped units with OS X installed they waited until they had distributed a modified software update for just this reason.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Because it's an end-user license agreement, not a distribution license. If copyright law were sensible, this would be completely invalid. If you buy a book, you don't need a license to read it, because this right is automatically granted to you by copyright. You don't need a license to pull out the pages, paste them together in a different order, set fire to the book, or anything else. You would only need a license if you wanted to sell or give away copies of the book.
For software, companies are exploiting the technicality that you need to copy software into RAM (and often onto the hard disk) to be able to use it. Since you need to copy it to use it, they reason, you need an explicit license to do this, rather than the implicit license from copyright law. This makes copyright very one-sided. If I buy a book, I can do whatever I want with it. If I buy software, I can only use it how the seller decides I should use it.
Licenses like the GPL are different because they control distribution. If someone gives you some GPL'd software, you can use it however you like. The GPL explicitly forbids them from imposing any further conditions on you. If you want to distribute (modified or unmodified) copies of it, then the GPL also grants you permission to do this as long as you agree to some terms.
Your comment about Apple spending a ton of money is a red herring. Psystar are buying copies of OS X from Apple. For every Psystar sale, Apple gets the retail price of a copy of OS X (around $129, if I remember correctly). I'd be surprised if they make as much from the sale of a Mac Mini.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
A lot of people like to ignore that point. When NeXT sold OpenStep for generic x86 systems, they charged $800 for the user version and $3,500 for the developer version (IIRC). After Apple bought NeXT, they breifly sold OpenStep, but dropped the developer price to $1500.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
How can they run Apple out of business? Firstly, most Apple sales are iPods, then laptops, and Psystar aren't selling anything in either of these markets. Secondly they are bundling a retail copy of OS X with every Mac clone they sell. Apple is getting $129 for every Psystar sale. This isn't like the authorised clone makers, where they were getting MacOS 7 very cheaply, they're paying the full retail price for every machine shipped.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
BeOS tried selling an x86 OS and failed. NeXT tried selling an x86 OS and failed.
Apple tried licensing MacOS 8 to 3rd parties and saw their hardware sales canabalized without increasing OS sales enough to compensate.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The GPL gives you rights that copyright would not normally allow. EULAs take away rights that the doctrine of first sale would normally permit. That's the difference.
None of which are in the public domain nor BSD, yet Psystar is distributing.
You misspelled "reselling".
would you then be able to sell the modified copy
Sure, it's the right of first sale. Can I re-sell a textbook that I've underlined, annotated, crossed words out, drawn diagrams, erased diagrams, etc..? Sure. It's up to the buyer to verify that he's buying what he thinks he's buying. If he wants a pristine unmodified copy of a book, he needs to verify that before he purchases. If the buyer asks me if it's unmodified, and I lie, then it's fraud. But if I say "yes it's been modified" then it's caveat emptor -- buyer beware...
If Apple starts trying to support every combination of 3rd party hardware out there, OSX will start having reliability problems just like Windows does.
The maybe Apple should go back to non-x86 hardware. I've been reading the stories, I know, the nerve of me RTFA and more, and I'm not sure myself, but this is really looking like a right of first sale type case opposed to copyright. Psystar is purchasing a copy of the OS, it is now theirs to do with as they please (with the standard limitations of unauthorised distribution). They are not making copies of the OS, installing and distributing an unlicensed copy, they are installing a valid, purchased OS and passing their right of first sale onto their customer. It will be an interesting case to watch unfold.
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
This is seriously not a big deal for Apple. If they lose in court, they will simply start selling their OS as an upgrade. And since the only way to get an "upgradable" MacOS computer will be through Apple, Psystar's business model will fail because they will not be able to claim first-sale principle. (Assuming the idea of upgrades does not get tossed, but that probably will not)
Of course, if Apple does lose, the case may change the shape of the computer industry because of implications for the EULA.
Cheers,
m
The first case is pure copyright infringement - you can't just take a copy of someone else's copyright work and distribute (modified or unmodified) copies without falling foul of copyright law.
Yes, but you also can't take a copy of someone else's copyrighted work, make a modified copy, and then sell both the original and modified copy for the price of the original copy-- which is exactly what Psystar is doing in selling OSX pre-installed on their machines.
The thing is, it's not clear to me that the case hinges on the EULA. It clearly would if this were a case of Apple suing end-users who were installing OSX (after buying a copy) on non-Apple hardware. However, this is a case of a company selling (essentially) the OSX installation. So they are making a copy (to the hard drive) and then selling that copy. IANAL, but it seems like that's copying/distribution of copyrighted work without a license to do so. Seems like outright copyright infringement to me.
On the other hand, this "restore disk" may be an end-run around all that. If they stop offering pre-installation and sell you the hardware, a copy of OSX, and a restore disk that installs/patches OSX, then I don't see how Apple could sue them for copyright infringement. Unless, of course, this falls under some DMCA sort of thing where they'll be in trouble for providing a means to circumvent copy controls.
But then, if they go through all the trouble of creating a "restore disk", then I'm not sure what would stop people from pirating that restore disk and using it to install OSX on some other hardware vendor's product. It would be pretty ironic if they tried to use copy protection and copyright law to protect their restore disk.
I'm not sure if this is the competition you're referring to:
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/03/28/os-x-first-os-to-be-hacked-in-pwn-2-own-contest/
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mac-OS-X-Hacked-Vista-SP1-Hacked-Ubuntu-Linux-Survives-Unscathed-82079.shtml
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39375171,00.htm
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9906001-37.html
On day two things turned around when contests were allowed to instruct contest organizers to visit a web page or open an email. Within two minutes Miller had prepared his exploit code and instructed organizers to visit a web site. Game over. Miller had seized control of the MacBook Air and landed himself a nice prize, seemingly using a hole in Safari as contestants were only permitted to take advantage of preinstalled software.
The attackers didn't have direct physical access so much as taking advantage of the weakest element of security, the user.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
So then it's Apple's problem to not sell it to them. Again, once the software is legally purchased, there's no signature or contract saying that it CAN'T be used for this purpose.
It all boils down to the effectiveness of "inherent agreements" or EULA's...which, in my opinion, is (and should be) nil.
Why is it insightful to stereotype Mac users (or even specifically the fanboys) as whiny, shallow, pseudo-intellectual, metrosexual, idiotic, and gay?
You sir need to spend more than 10 minutes in the presence of Apple fanbois.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano