Slashdot Mirror
Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy
StikyPad was one of several readers letting us know that Psystar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. We've discussed the Mac clone maker's battles with Apple extensively. The company apparently has over $250,000US in debt, and states that it cannot turn a profit in the current economy. "The Chapter 11 filing will temporarily suspend Apple's copyright infringement suit against Psystar, which is currently before the US District Court of Northern California. But once the bankruptcy protection is sorted out, the copyright case will resume." And PC Mag is reporting that, on the other side of the Atlantic, two new clone companies are just getting started. Like PsyStar, FreedomPC and RussianMac promise to deliver PCs with OS X preloaded.
Macs are over priced, but people pay that premium because they want an Apple product.
Or, they just want to use OS X and have barely any other legal option.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
They're filing chapter 11 bankruptcy, which means they cancel all debts and continue operations with a clean slate. Once (if) they emerge from bankruptcy, the lawsuit resumes. I wonder how their lawyers feel about being stiffed?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
Don't you actually have to sell something to make a profit? Has anyone actual obtained proof that Psystar actually shipped any products?
They shipped. What sort of proof do you want? The relevant forums are full of people who received them talking about them. Then there are the blogs of people who got them. The news coverage. The review sites... pretty much all confirm they were shipping (until the court ordered to stop).
I mean, at this stage, asking for proof psystar actually shipped any products is on par with asking for proof Alienware ever shipped anything before being bought out by dell.
What kind of an idiot CEO decides with a very small company and almost no capital, to lock horns with one of the largest companies out their with a very. . . let's say 'speculative' business proposition at best? I suppose, maybe, if you're going to test the waters, perhaps doing it as a small company with no assets might actually be very cunning, because if you lose, Apple really isn't able to take anything. . .but at the same time, without sufficient funds, there's little chance you can survive the legal battles you first have to face in order to try to attain a ruling from the Courts that your business doesn't actually infringe their copyrights.
(I mean, if I pay Apple for Mac OS X, in order to put it on a different computer, I fail to see how that has infringed their *COPY* rights - the copy is legal; they shouldn't have any say in what I do with that copy or what hardware I run it on, once the copy is licensed, but. . . it was obvious Apple would try to stop them with a lawsuit, and they'd have to fight the total GARBAGE law known as the DMCA,, before they could ever get to the point of, hopefully, getting a ruling that they weren't infringing).
Lies. They've never used the TPM chip. They've always relied on modern computers having EFI disabled. (Most computers ship with the Framework, which is EFI based, but EFI support is complete disabled and only the BIOS compatibility mode is used. Source: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/chapter10/tpm/
Or Apple could take advantage of the TPM chip that's been present in Macs since almost immediately after they moved to the x86 platform.
As I understand it they stopped including a TPM chip after a short time citing cost and lack of interest from developers. A quick Google search finds this: Tom's Hardware Article provide a source for such a claim (end of the first paragraph). Another response to your post claims Apple uses TPM to lock down OS X, but I've never heard any knowledgeable source make such a claim. Here's a detailed article explaining about Apple's use of TPM as a tool for cryptography and how it has never been used as DRM on OS X.