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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."
...is what I say. It's nice to see the little guy stand up against big buisiness muscle. Apple is beginning to look more and more Microsoft-esque by the week.
I don't think any sane company will break Apple's agreements, licenses on USA soil.
Remember the company shipped "Apple G6 Desktop" and got sued big time? It wasn't based at USA and they weren't trying that hard to get sued. Some media guy browsing Alibaba found the machine, that is all.
For some reason we can't know, Pystar looks like they will be very, very happy if Apple sues them further or this thing becomes more complex.
Would you dare to mess with a gigantic company who even tried to sue State of New York for "Apple" logo? If you dare, would you start your business in USA? Some very big promises/guarantees by very big corporate powers must be given to Pystar. Don't get surprised if there is real IT media left and uncovers it.
I for one am tired of Apple's Monopolistic business practices on their Mac range.
Isn't that like saying you're tired of Slashdot's monopolistic business practices on its Slashdot brand? By default, every company has a monopoly on its own products.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Two options: 1) Psystar backs down and stops producing Mac clones. Psystar goes out of business. Creditors lose out. 2) Psystar fights the good fight, gaining plenty of free publicity (Slashdot included) for taking on Goliath. If they lose, same scenario as 1. If they win, they (hopefully) have a larger customer base. Insolvency law usually ensures that the people taking the fall from a company's demise are the unsecured creditors. It is considerably easier to gamble with the money of others.
Apple is stuck retrying a case it won in 1984. Clone makers copying its OS. Apple probably spends 5 times as much on software development as hardware, while the clone makers spend 0.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
If PsyStar were limiting themselves to shipping hardware and bundled unmodified OS X 10.5 retail disks, I really think why would have no legal issues at all. However, by the sound of it, not only are the PsyStar systems running a modified variant of the OS X operating system (including some modifications to get the system running on generic hardware, just like OSX86), but they intend to ship 'Restore disks' that sound suspiciously like modified OS X 10.5 install sets.
That's going to be their downfall in this - the derivative work.
This is a VERY interesting case. Who is Psystar?
Seriously, out of nowhere, a tiny company starts to sell mac clones. It was so sketchy, we on slashdot originally called it a hoax.
Now, they got the guys who beat Apple once before representing them in the fight.
Curiouser and curiouser. It may be an intentionally staged dispute by various oems to create a Mac market for themselves. Vista is not moving boxes, but Mac compatible motherboards may be profitable.
The objective may be Apple's refusal to allow MacOS on non-Mac hardware. If they win, and Apple is not able to enforce this restriction, I can see a whole bunch of clones flooding the market.
It can't be a surprise to Pystar that Apple reacted this way. They must have expected this from the start, and got a legal opionion that they were satisfied with. They must have had their defence strategy planned before Apple even knew they existed.
If Psystar wins, then everybody and their grandmas will be running OSX.
Everybody will win: more folks will run a more secure OS than Windows and Apple will still get all the OS sales.
Most importantly, the fanbois will no longer be special and will find some other shiny, overpriced toy to validate their whiny, shallow, pseudo-intellectual, metrosexual, idiotic existance. They'd probably be much happer(and less whinier) if they spent their hard-earned money at the gay disco instead.
How does Apple have a monopoly? They are hardly the only OS or PC vendor on the market. This is like saying that Dell has a monopoly on Dell computers.
Compaq did a clean-room implementation of the IBM BIOS. Psystar didn't do a clean-room implementation of OS X.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Or Apple's reputation of "just working" will go down the tubes because they no longer have total control over the hardware.
If Apple starts trying to support every combination of 3rd party hardware out there, OSX will start having reliability problems just like Windows does.
Apple has always held a tight grip on their hardware and software standards. If you don't approve, you don't have to buy their stuff. That is what ~95% (though rapidly decreasing) of people choose to do.
But it is precisely that total control that lets Apple deliver such a relatively high quality product. I'll admit that Leopard is not up to Apple standards... but overall, their products are vastly superior to Windows, despite the huge resources and community working on the Windows environment compared to the Mac world.
The control of hardware and software allows Apple to not have to adapt to the whims of a thousand hardware makers, and it lets them produce a computer like the iPhone (which is mostly just a little Mac), which clearly people love as compared to other "smart" phones. Why do people love it? Because the crushing grip Apple keeps on their standards results in a relatively easy experience for the end-user.
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.
It's not so much about monopolies, but perceived monopolies. Most people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that run osX. Many people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that will run media editing programs. Far too many people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that, "just work"(tm).
Even if Psystar somehow manages a court victory that would allow them to purchase and sell copies of OS X installed on generic x86 boxes, all that Apple has to do is stop selling OS X to any retail outlet other than its own. If Psystar can't get legal copies of the software to put on the machines it sells, there isn't any legal way that they can stay in business at that point, other than going to Apple stores and purchasing copies of OS X at full retail price.
We're also heading towards a future of digital distribution. It started with music, has moved to movie rentals, and looks as though it can be expanded to anything in the near future. What's to stop Apple from selling you the newer versions of OS X online? In five years when everyone wants to upgrade to Puma or whatever else they end up calling it, you have the option of downloading the upgrade to your computer instead of having to go out and purchase any physical install media.
Does it really matter if the court rules that Psystar can do whatever they want with a copy of OS X once they already have it if Apple does everything that they possibly can in order to prevent Psystar from ever obtaining a copy of OS X?
Everybody will win: more folks will run a more secure OS than Windows and Apple will still get all the OS sales.
Uhh. OSX is not very secure. IIRC a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up and the OSX machine went down first. Even before the Windows machine. OSX is secure cause nobody attacks it. As soon as more people run it you will see its shortcommings.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
More choice = better. Simple, really.
[Citation needed]
I don't like choice WRT Ethernet cables, or WIFI standards, or inter net protocols. I'm happy with IP having the monopoly of the internet.
Aside from that, Apple has no right to say what other manufacturer can build.
Of course, they can refuse to support OSX outside of Apple computers, that's their business choice.
I'd have to say you are mislead. Apple is doing much the same thing that many of manufacturers do. So Apple makes computers and the operating system, and doesn't allow that operating system to run on other makes of computers. Let's just change a few things around. Ford makes cars and the operating software for the cars computer and doesn't allow that software to be used on other makes of cars. Would it make sense for ford to sell their cars computer code to say Toyota? Not at all. Toyota also makes cars, and it is possible that the software is compatible, but it isn't in fords interests to make it compatible. Maybe ford is being monopolistic, but I don't think so. That's just good business.
Or perhaps Apple will simply continue supporting the hardware it does, while other companies support the hardware that they sell OS X on, and Apple will be forced to lower its over-the-top hardware prices in order to compete with other OS X machines.
It's an entirely different case. In the case you cited, Formula were distributing a hacked copy of the Apple II software without a license. In the Pystar case, Pystar are buying a copy of OS X from Apple for every computer they sell. Apple are getting their $129 for every sale.
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.
The second case is about violation of the EULA. If copyright law regards installing, modifying, and running a computer program as non-infringing use (which it ought to, since a computer program you can't do any of this with is pretty useless) then a EULA is invalid because you don't need any rights from the copyright holder than copyright law grants. More likely, given the broken state of IP law in the US, it will be found that you do need to agree to a license, but whether the terms imposed by Apple are legal remains to be seen.
In the worst case, Apple will win on the basis that their EULA prevents this. In the best case, Apple will lose because EULAs are not required for computer software and this will set a precedent that no EULA is valid (distribution licenses, like any Free Software license, would be unaffected since these grant you rights beyond what copyright law gives). In the middle case, the validity of EULAs in general will be upheld but the restrictions in question (no installing it on non-Apple hardware) will be deemed unreasonable and unenforceable.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's like saying the code that operates my microwave can't operate my refrigerator, what gives? I hope if you ever get in a serious discussion, you don't actually compare an embedded OS in a car to desktop OS.
Apple are getting their $129 for every sale.
But Apple has set that price point with the restriction of "must be run on Apple-branded hardware". Who's to say the price wouldn't be $478 for a non-Apple-hardware license? Think of it as an "upgrade price" for people who already bought something else from the manufacturer.
Apple has chosen not to release a version of the OS without the hardware restriction, and I'm open to debate about whether or not they should, or whether or not the EULA is enforceable. But it's disingenuous to suggest that $129 is fair compensation just because there is some version of the software license available for that price, particularly when the retail price of Windows is more like $250.
Actually, if such software was open sourced, for example, people might be able to come up with new and beneficial uses - not to mention being able to fix problems themselves.
Or do you not remember honda's "Accidental" higher mileage clocking that if people had access to the software, they could fix themselves. http://autos.aol.com/article/general/v2/_a/honda-odometer-problem/20070220091309990002
Also, they use proprietary stuff just to connect to the car that is prohibitive to the consumer (quite intentionally). You don't think those devices actually cost 1000$ or so, do you?
Cars are an example of proprietary gone wrong.
The law should not care about apple's (or anyone else's) buiseness model. It should just care about providing a framework for a competitive market.
In my opinion, any license provision which enforces vertical integration should be unenforcable. I have not read TFA (hey, this is slashdot!), so I'll make a generic example. Let's say apple sells an operating system. It also sells computers with the os preinstalled. Let's say somebody else starts buying the operating system from apple, buying hardware from somewhere else, and selling the hardware with the operating system preinstalled. First sale doctrine should allow this. The assertion that the software is licensed rather than sold shouldn't in my non-lawyer opinion hold in court, since there are no recurring payments.
This is good for competition because it would force apple to have their hardware be competitively priced. Of course, if their hardware has a high cool factor (like the macbook air, or the iphone) and people are willing to pay extra for that, that doesn't mean it has to be cheap.
IBM doesn't sell PCs anymore, so ultimately, it didn't really work out for them.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
From their website: "This utility will allow your Open Computer to boot from the native Leopard installation DVD" - Pystar Restore disk That "utility" sounds like EFI emulation. Can I get an amen?
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
Why is it insightful to stereotype Mac users (or even specifically the fanboys) as whiny, shallow, pseudo-intellectual, metrosexual, idiotic, and gay?
Buying a MacBook Air for performance is like buying one of those Smart Cars for towing capacity. The MacBook Air is about portability and designed for road warriors who want something lightweight that can do most things. The performance is okay as it was intended to be better than most sub-notebooks but not as good as regular notebooks. If you want performance, that's a MacBook Pro. For more general needs, that's a MacBook.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's fair compensation because it's what Apple charges.
If they want more money, they should charge more.
A seller's intent does not enter into it. My local grocery store sells peaches for about 50 cents each, intending that they be eaten. If I buy a peach for 50 cents and instead use that peach in some mysterious way to create an invention which makes me millions of dollars, that in no way entitles the local grocery store to any more than their original 50 cents, nor does it make the situation in any way unfair to them.
Apple sets their price with the assumption that buyers will be using the product on Apple hardware. If that assumption gets broken, that's Apple's problem for making it, not the buyer's fault for breaking it.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
However, MS only makes a release of Windows every 5 years, so they charge a lot for it. Apple on the other hand, has a new version of OSX every 2 years. So, in order to make it more enticing for buyers to buy new versions so frequently, they made it cost less per version.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yep...and the big loser was IBM, who was trying to dominate the PC market with their hardware and an OS that they had neglected to control because they did not understand the importance of software. When people figured out that you did not have to buy a box from IBM to run DOS (or later, Windows), the PC became a mere commodity, prices dropped, and we all benefited (except for IBM, of course).
Apple saw this, and avoided IBM's fate by tying its OS closely to it hardware: Macs were built on Motorola CPUs, and had a proprietary architecture; MacOS would only run on that architecture. Apple had chosen not to go head with Microsoft as a software company, and continued to survive primarily as a hardware company. When someone tried to clone that hardware without permission (and permission wasn't forthcoming expect for a short interval when Apple flirted with licensing), Apple went after them for patent infringement.
However, all that changed when Apple adopted what is essentially the generic Wintel hardware architecture: now the only thing that prevents people from building boxes that run Apple's OS is the EULA under which the OS is sold. That is a much weaker position than Apple was in previously. You don't have to break any patent laws to build a "Mac Clone"—there's nothing proprietary about the hardware platform any more. (You do have to be careful to include only hardware that the OS supports, of course.) As others have pointed out, tying software to a particular brand of hardware may very well be in violation of US anti-trust law.
It also seems to me that the morality of Apple's position has been undermined. There is nothing special or innovative about today's Macs, except maybe the stylish cases. Yet, Apple sells these boxes for a considerable mark-up—and insists that we can only run their OS on boxes that carry their logo. In the PC business, at least, Apple has ceased being an innovator and is merely capitalizing on their historic prestige and slick marketing.
Question: I understand there are some provisions in the Apple OS that keep it from running on a generic PC platform. Can someone tell me exactly what those provisions are, and what has to be done to circumvent them? —No, I'm not planning to build myself a Mac, I'm just curious if getting around Apple's safeguards involves actions that might themselves break laws, for example re-writing any part of the OS could conceivably be a copyright infringement, right?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
OS X supports quite nearly as much hardware as Windows. It's a matter of getting good drivers written.
There's a conflicting statement if I ever saw one. It supports nearly as much hardware as Windows, but the drivers don't exist. That would imply that it doesn't support the hardware.
I ride a motorbike (really, I do!), it doesn't matter what make or model it is. Like most these days it has a black box driving the ponies inside the shiny motor thing, it also manages a myriad of other crap from timing through to the seat warming my arse along cold mountain rides.
Now I can buy myself an after market black box which functions perfectly fine on the bike, but it also happens to plug in to my off the shelf network switch using a bog standard bit of cat 5 with a couple of RJ-45 plugs on either end. It talks DHCP and whatever.
Does it matter that someone purchased the actual black box from the manufacturer, opened it up, did a little tinkering of their own, shoved a web based front end on it, then repackaged and rebranded as something else which I then purchased? This 'new black box' allows me to tweak things the manufacturer never intended. So what.
It might piss off the manufacturer such that it matters to them a great deal, maybe they miss out on the revenue. Such things sure as hell don't matter to me, and that is what actually matters at the end of the day.
I have no idea what my point is, just that I guess I'm a little old school, I figure when you sell something, it's not yours anymore.
If what they are selling works as a full version, that's kind of like saying "you can't use this freezer we're selling you to store meat, just to make ice cubes." Once the hardware leaves Apples hands, why do they have any right to say what can and cannot be done with it? They don't own it. Now if Apple just LEASED all their hardware, that'd be a completely different story.
"Would you dare to ship "Windows Vista" on a no name CDR and sell it on street next to police station?"
This is utterly different to that situation, there is no copyright infrginrmrnt going on here, they are paying for the OS.
If you can't take an OS you have PAID FOR and install it on almost identical non-apple hardware, then the law is an ass.
"Apple wouldn't exist if their hardware/software combination magic didn't work."
Bullshit. Apple have sold their image to the masses. Psystar are pretty irrelevant to the apple market at the moment. They might eat into microsoft's though.
Apple doesn't get special privileges because it "only" holds a smaller percentage of the hundreds of millions of computer sales out there. Their computers are overpriced and they need competition.
I am confused. You state that Apple has a small market share, but doesn't have enough competition. It would seem to me that the other 85% of the market might provide it some competition. For example, there's this OS called windows, perhaps you've heard of it? I've heard it's pretty popular, and some people apparently choose it instead of OS X.
To be fair, lots of hardware vendors have various sorts of problems. I've certainly seen laptops from Dell and Compaq that have weird problem (crashing when you plug in peripherals, random reboots, etc.) that were caused by hardware defects and design flaws (which were admitted by their tech support). The two things that have gained Apple a particular reputation are:
I mean, when you're getting lots of customer complaints, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a bad product. Sometimes it means that your customers have very high expectations. I myself have bought multiple first-gen Apple products (including the Macbook Pro and iPhone) and haven't found the failure rate to be particularly out of line with other companies. Sure, that's just anecdotal evidence, but I worked helpdesk jobs for years, including supporting Dell, HP, and Apple products, so I don't think my anecdotal evidence is completely worthless. And one of the things I learned during that time was that all hardware vendors will sell you an occasional lemon. The good vendors are the ones who will fix or replace that lemon without too much hassle.
I love how on newegg, etc, "Apple" hard drives are a separate section, and they cost a LOT more
Can you post some links? I just checked the "External Harddrives" and "Mac Harddrives" listings, filtering for Western Digital, and all the they didn't have any of the same models in both categories. The notable difference is that most of the non-Mac drives had just USB 2.0, whereas most of the Mac drives had USB 2.0, 1394a, 1394b, and eSATA. So if you can find a drive listed under both the "Mac Harddrives" and "External Harddrives" sections and is more expensive in the Mac listing, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see it.
IIRC a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up and the OSX machine went down first. Even before the Windows machine. OSX is secure cause nobody attacks it. As soon as more people run it you will see its shortcommings.
Not to burst your bubble, but that was when the attackers had physical access... As far as I'm concerned, if someone has physical access to your box, you're already screwed.
The real litigious bastards...
Really? Because I can't help but suspect you would scream bloody murder at a company that was modifying and redistributing GPL software for money and not following the terms of the license. After all, they paid the requested price ($0) and now they should be able to do what they want with it, right? No, because the price was actually $0 + agreement to the terms of the license. Apple is not charging $130 for OSX. They are charging $130 + agreement to the terms of the license.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the GPL license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the Apple license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
Weren't about 30% of Vista crashes in 2007 due to nVidia drivers? Looks like almost 50% when you add in Intel and Ati. source
you still have a choice of wifi manufacturers, ethernet cable manufacturers and implementors of internet protocols, I think you are confusing standardization and monopolization, they're two entirely unrelated concepts.
MP3 Search Engine
The GPL is not a license for how you can use the software, but rather a license for how you can further distribute the software. The law says you can't distribute copies without permission. The GPL is that permission. It's a completely different thing, despite the superficial similarities.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
PsyStar might be able to argue that, but it'd be a technicality. It might work for the copies PsyStar has already bought, but Apple would overcome it by issuing all new retail upgrades with "Upgrade Only" all over the box, disks, and manuals.
The "to be installed on Apple-branded computers only" line means it really is just an upgrade license, because those Apple-branded computers already have some earlier versions of the OS licensed. The PsyStar boxes don't.
Now, there's also the illegal tying route that PsyStar might argue, and a few other things probably as well.
I kind of hope Apple loses this one, but I wouldn't at all put money on that outcome.
And who'd guess that american trademark law requires trademark holders to act defensively of their trademarks or risk losing them?
what a funny little world we live in, although it's been nice to see the number of people who think this is about selling hardware that is compatible with running a boxed copy of OSX (which, for interest sake isn't what pystar is doing anyway - the added bonus is that the pystart units barely function for what they are said to do and have some interesting hacks to a burn copy of the install disc to get osx running on the machines at all.)
....Their computers are overpriced and they need competition....
They have plenty of competition in the hardware as such, but are the only ones that write their own operating system. Anybody that wishes can also write their own operating system. There are no laws to stop that are there? Why should Apple not do everything they possibly can to NOT supply their operating system to other hardware makers? They are not like Microsoft, selling their software on the open market to all comers are they? If they did sell their software to all comers, then they would also have to support everybody or at least the hardware manufacturers would have to support OSX with decent drivers for their hardware.
What right does anyone have too complained about not being able to buy a certain product from its manufacturer? Can Apple be compelled to sell their OS to some other manufacturer who wants a copy to use in their own product?
All theory is gray