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."
Where are Psystar getting the money from for all this? Because defending a case of this nature is going to be damn expensive and if they're such a small startup the last thing they want to be doing is spending all their money on legal bills.
Anybody remember when IBM (which was mightier than Apple can ever hope to be) failed at utterly crushing tiny Compaq?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I have to say that I admire their gall. They're paying a rather dangerous game*. Unless they have some really kick ass lawyers who can convince a judge of the unenforcability of Apple's licensing terms, I don't see anything happening except Psystar getting smacked down HARD. As in, take all their assets + punitive damages hard.
Of course, this could be a situation like General Computer Corporation. (The Namco & Atari partner who created Ms. Pac Man.) They were just a bunch of college kids having fun, and they didn't have money anyway. When they got sued, their reaction was: "Cool, we get to go to court!" Sometimes it's nice not having anything to lose.;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
While it may be shaky grounds to sell these machines as Mac Clones. There should be no reason not to sell those machines with a Linux Equivalent. The nice thing is that you -could- buy a Leopard disk and load it, that is your own choice.
This is no different as my Intel PC that runs Ubuntu, but -could- run Vista if I wanted to.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
Read TFA, googled a little. It seems like I'm missing something. It seems they simply charge outrageous markup on generic, mediocre Intel systems. Throw in a moderately cheap-looking case and charge $155 for the OS installation. What's new here?
If this was back when Apple was using PowerPC processors, maybe they'd have a point. But I don't see this as being a "clone" of a Mac, because clone implies hardware and this (and the Mac's) hardware is the same as everyone else's.
They're kind of compelling, actually check this out one:
http://psystar.com/index.php?&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=38&Itemid=72
Base Configuration
* Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled
* no keyboard, mouse, or monitor included
* 2.0GHz Intel Dual-Core Pentium 2.0GHz Processor
* 2GB of DDR2 800 memory
* PCI-Express nVidia GeForce 7200GS 256MB
* Dual Layer 20x DVD+/-RW SATA drive
* Gigabit Ethernet
* 4 rear USB Ports
$560...
The lowest-priced Mac I can find on http://store.apple.com/us is $599, and that's a Mini.
What am I missing?
It's the same for the software. Apparently no one thought of testing the procedure of upgrading Tiger to Leopard if you had File Vault enabled - if they had done, they'd have discovered that after the first reboot your home directory becomes unmountable (by Leopard - Tiger can still read it fine).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If they win, they will have invsestors beating down their door. And they will break into the market of the fastest growing personal computer manufacturer. Plus, it will resolve a long standing legal question as to the validity of EULAs. I see no down side here for them at all.
Why does Apple do things this way?
This is my own musing on the subject - MS did the smart thing in just making software and letting people install it on whoever's hardware. This allowed dozens of companies to create systems for Windows to run. i think that was a big part of what allowed Windows to become dominant (more than the anti-competitive stuff they did later). Wouldn't the MacOS run on more machines if there was competition in the market to build hardware to run it? If Psystar can build less expensive and less queefy looking boxes, Apple might lose money on hardware but sell more copies of the OS. Part of the fun of playing in Windows world is that i've got dozens of vendors that can sell me an assemble system, or i can buy the parts from hundreds of vendors/manufacturers and build it myself. That's another thing Apple seemed to miss.... The MS model created entirely new industries. Apple spawned a few companies that make things for hte iPod, but that's about it. From a previous /. conversation i learned that it is possible to home brew a mac, but it's very difficult and few people have the knowledge to do it.
Could someone more familiar with the history post on why they this is their business model?
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
That's a really interesting point. So had the IBM PC come out today, no one would be able to copy it, the phrase "IBM compatible" would never be coined, and the PC revolution wouldn't have happened, or would happen MUCH more slowly. I think this a wonderful gedanken experiment for how patents (in their current form) actually stifle, rather than promote innovation.
Yeah, the verb tenses are a little confused, but you know what I mean.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
They do have a right to say that upgrade-only versions of their OS are not sold as full versions.
We went through this with cars. The manufacturers, who had just as deep of pockets and just as many or more of lawyers as apple could possibly throw at this situation wanted to make it so you could only get and install bloated price OEM parts to go on their cars. They lost in court and now you can go to the parts store and get a variety of parts that don't come from the major manufactuers and have their stamp on them, but they will fit into place and work. You can get out your welder and mix and match for that matter, if you want a belchfire motor and an Acme transmission in a roadhog chassis, it is legal to do so. IOW you can get 50 buck starters that work just as good as the original 150 buck starters. Or engines or what have you. And they can't insist you only burn "their" brand of gasoline either, nor can the gasoline company insist you can only put it into approved brand cars. So there's your car analogy, hardware is the cars, software is the gasoline.
Now the car parts clone makers can't claim they are the original manufacturer, but they can still do it and the consumer is obviously better off by a wide margin. Apple is out to lunch, hope it makes it to the supreme court.
With that said, I don't want either a mac clone nor OSX, Linux works just fine on generic commodity hardware if you do just a bit of homework before you buy components or systems. But the *principle* is important. And if Apple throws a hissy fit about patents, that needs to go to the supreme court as well as to why if they can get a patent there is no warranty as to being suitable for purpose for software. That is such a blatantly glaring ripoff to the end user consumer it ain't funny. One or the other for software, copyright or a patent, but not both.
Windows may have some pretty severe reliability problems. However, I haven't had any problems with hardware drivers since the Win9x days. Hardware drivers are not a major source of Windows' reliability problems.
There isn't a terribly wide selection of hardware currently in production that isn't already supported by OS X. We already have good drivers for Intel chipsets, ATI and nVidia graphics, and most commonly-used networking controllers.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Pystar is distributing them with a purchased license. It's not just a warez copy they're chunking in. The whole crux of the issue is whether the clause that OS X can only be installed on an Apple machine is legally enforceable. Despite having a metric shit-ton of money to throw at this trial, previous legal decisions don't look good for Apple in this case. They're free to sell any software they develop. They're free to sell any hardware as well. To try and artificially lock one to the other when there is no techincal reason to do so just might not fly.
If Toyota developer "SUPERGAS" that got 125 MPG in the new Camry but only sold it at Toyota dealerships and only to Toyota owners (with the explicit instructions that it not be sold to Ford owners), then they'd have a hell of a time legally claiming that somebody couldn't buy it from them and then sell it to owners of modified Mustangs to use. Doesn't matter that they developed the new gas with their cars in mind. Doesn't matter if they claim that you're not allowed to resell it to others. They couldn't legally restrict you from reselling it and using it as you see fit.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
"I have never met a single iPhone user who has had extensive use of a smart phone. Most iPhone users probably couldn't even come up with a somewhat accurate definition of a smart phone."
You have a deliberately narrow experience, you implicitly insult everyone who would buy an iPhone, and yet Slashdot readers think you're insightful.
"If a Mac is so superior that it is worth the money involved than people will not buy the clones and they will go under due to the alleged high standards of Apple."
This is exactly what will happen. I own a number of real Apple Macs, but I also own a fancy quad-core 8GB Hackintosh. I can attest that even the most modern Hacktintosh creation (like mine, running an unmolested retail copy of Leopard) is most definitely not as seamless an experience as a real Mac is. I'm not going to get rid of the Hackintosh, but I can say with some authority that the experience is sufficiently inferior to owning a real Mac that I wouldn't put up with it if I didn't enjoy tinkering with PC's.