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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.
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 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
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.
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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...