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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.
The company apparently has over $250,000US in debt.
That must be a typo - could they mean $ 250 million USD ? Most companies would not
choke on $ 250,000 worth of debt.
Why would anyone want to run Mac OS on unsupported hardware? It's going to be unstable, missing features, and chances are that getting updates from Apple to install with or without hosing your installation is going to be a bitch.
If you want OS X that bad why not just buy a Mac?
Until out of chapter 11.
Let's see Apple try to sue them. Jobs will get whacked on the way to the Moscow courthouse.
Basically it boils down to this (As a prepare to build my hackintosh, parts in the mail),
I can get a great tower computer with lots of expandability for $1100 (Includes the cost of the OS). To get an equally expandable tower from apple (with room for more than 1 hard drive) would cost me $2500. The larger and growing larger hole in the mac lineup is the tower. as an apple investor I find it inexcusable.
For me its this or a windows box, both have the tools for my photography and programming.
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. . . if I owe a bank $250 million, the bank has a problem.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It will be interesting to see if the Microsoft, etc. conspiracy rumors around Psystar are validated.
Why would Microsoft be funding Psystar? How would weakening the effectiveness of software EULAs help Microsoft?
I dunno. The "Apple suing them in the face" problem was a pretty serious one, and is probably what did them in in the end; but their business model is by no means a certain failure.
PC assembly is a fairly low margin business; but there are plenty of companies, large and small, that make a living at it. Psystar had the advantage of massive word-of-mouth and R&D done for them by the hackintosh enthusiasts. Were it not for the legal trouble, I would assume that (barring specific incompetence) they could have carried on for a fair while.
This is a point worth considering. A similarly important point, where is the money coming from for the non-U.S.clones?
The most simple explanation is $250,000 in debt happens very quickly once the lawyers bills start hitting the books
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I dunno. The "Apple suing them in the face" problem was a pretty serious one, and is probably what did them in in the end; but their business model is by no means a certain failure.
I don't understand this opinion. So let's say in the best case, most realistic scenario Pystar and these other companies get the relevant provisions of Apple's OS X licensing declared unenforceable and they are removed from the license. They are now in the business of competing with Apple to sell hardware, while having to buy the OS from Apple. If they become moderately successful, what is there to stop Apple from no longer selling boxed copies of their OS and thus killing them?
Seriously. Selling boxed copies of OS X is a small part of Apple's business. They could switch to online distribution for upgrades and use DRM to prevent them from installing. End result, Pystar and their ilk die and Apple's customers are inconvenienced with DRM. Gee, thanks guys.
Or, Apple could go a more drastic route. They could simply ditch selling new versions of OS X and provide them free of charge to all Mac owners. It would barely dent their profits and lower their support and development costs considerably. Or they could take a middle road and sell a yearly service like their ".mac" service and include in that service upgrades to the OS and network services like e-mail, but provide no other upgrade path for individual licensors. Either way Pystar dies and Apple moves on without worrying about being undercut.
The way I see it, if Pystar and the like succeed, all they do is drive Apple to change policy enough to kill them. Any business model built upon being successful but not too successful lest the company you rely entirely upon kill you, is a doomed business model.
Or they simply won't sell retail copies of OS X, which is how Psystar was doing this.
Which will leave only the people who are violating their copyrights, something far more easily pursued (if they sell in Europe, the US, or Japan.)
Mac clone companies will never make it. Macs are over priced, but people pay that premium because they want an Apple product.
You must have missed the clone companies in the 1990s.......they were eating Apple's lunch.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
They've also built their fortune on making an OS you can install across x86 hardware (and even some other platforms).
It's not so much the EULA as a whole that's in question here as much as it is a specific clause of the EULA - the clause that states the OS may only be installed on a specific manufacturer's hardware. That is not Microsoft's business model so they would have absolutely no interest in helping their arch enemy protect it.
"Macs are over priced, but people pay that premium because they want an Apple product."
Your statement seems to contradict itself. If something were overpriced then it would cost more than the market would pay for it, slowly leading to the demise of the manufacturer. But as you note, Apple products seem sell reasonably well, even at a perceived price premium. That would lead me to conclude that, from a market perspective, their products are not truly overpriced.
If a company offers a product that the market percieves as superior, people will pay more for it. This applies to everything from dairy products to automobiles to consumer electronics. The fact that Apple is able to sell products for a reasonable profit isn't really much of an argument against them or their products.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to drive my over-priced Honda home and watch my trendy, over-priced and fashionable Sony HDTV. (no, not really)
Lets do ignore that the last time they allowed clones, they got their lunch eaten.
I agree, stability would be an excellent reason. But the pure truth of the matter is, even with the change to Intel, Mac's are priced more on brand name than the cost of the parts that go into them.
Apple can't compete against a company that can produce cheaper products because Apple considers one of it's strengths to be it's "Designer Computer" status.
Apple will never (in it's current incarnation and under Steve) allow anyone but Apple sell Apple computers. Period. They can talk all they want about how in the future we'll have jetpacks and a "Dell Mac" on every desk. But when it comes down to the brass tacks, it'll never happen and they certainly are not basing their business plans on the idea that it could.
The larger and growing larger hole in the mac lineup is the tower. as an apple investor I find it inexcusable.
The tower is in its last days as a mass market product. Too much space. Too much power. Too much weight.
It also means that people might blame OSX for quirks in the hardware compatablity. That is something Apple, a company very much concerned about reputation, does not want. As long as Apple controls both the hardware and software, they are able to eliminate a large portion of things that can go wrong and thus nothing threatens people's perception of the "mac experience".
Psystar had the advantage of massive word-of-mouth and R&D done for them by the hackintosh enthusiasts. Were it not for the legal trouble, I would assume that (barring specific incompetence) they could have carried on for a fair while.
I agree that they had major name recognition, but that recognition equated to them being labeled "the guys who are pissing off Apple by making clones" and not "the guys who are making awesome, cheap Mac clones that I want to buy". The members of the /. community that enjoy Macs do so because of the technical merits (UNIX underpinnings, efficient GUI, etc. [don't flame me]). The rest of the world likes Macs because they're "cool" and they don't necessarily define that "coolness" explicitly. So, if a /.er wants the technical advantages of having a Mac without the price, they go for a hackintosh. The problem there is that a /.er is probably just going to build that hackintosh him/herself rather than pay Psystar for one. Not only is it cheaper, but you get to learn something in the process. The rest of the world would see a Mac clone and say "that's not a Mac! It's not cool!" and move along.
When I hear "normal" people complain about Macs, what I hear consistently is "I wish Apple would make a cheaper Mac", not "I wish some other company would step in and compete with Apple to drive down the price." What I'm trying to say is that the market for pre-built hackintoshes is tiny. Of all the people I know, both technical and nontechnical, I can't imagine any of them buying one.
Apple would be violating anti-trust laws by not selling their operating system & upgrades separately, period.
I have two comments here. First, to be violating antitrust laws Apple would have to have a monopoly in one of the relevant markets. I suspect you know very little about antitrust laws, but on the off chance you are not clueless, what market do you think it is that Apple has monopolized? Second, writing the word "period" followed by the punctuation mark "." is redundant. I understand in speaking using this technique but it does not apply in written communication. Please stop it.
Psystar's case was legally winnable, but they didn't have the backers for winning in court.
Do you know what Pystar's case was about? Even if it was winnable, my post explains why it doesn't matter.
It might fair better for European clone makers since anti-trust laws will be enforced more correctly against non-European companies, i.e. Apple.
The EU antitrust laws are about the same as ours and I still don't see the monopoly you are predicating such action upon. Further, you specify non-European companies as though that makes a difference, which anyone with a clue knows is irrelevant. Please do a little research and see the hundreds of European companies the commission has taken action against before making such slanderously uninformed claims.
So you expect them to just give up on the rather lucrative sales of OSX to all their old macs? I bought leopard for my 3 year old macbook along with a new hard drive. Thats $150.00 of almost pure profit for Apple, that they wouldnt have gotten from me otherwise, I had restore CD's, I could have used them, but I wanted expose and spaces and time machine. I highly doubt they'd give up that second sale just to spite another company.
All Apple's software sales together make up about 6% of their profits. That includes iWork and all their professional software. OS X is probably less than 1%. It is fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. They can eat the cost. They can raise the cost of Macs ever so slightly and people will pay it, especially if the value of macs goes up by having free OS upgrades. Or they can incorporate the sales into the .mac service thus increasing profits by getting people to subscribe to a yearly service when they mostly just want on OS update. Or, as per my first suggestion, they can move to all online sales and lock it down with DRM.
I highly doubt they'd give up that second sale just to spite another company.
Spite another company? I don't recall suggesting any such thing. They're protecting their market for PC's which is about half their income and at the same time preventing the Apple and OS X brands against dilution. They might not do it to stop a very small company, but the larger any such competitor grows the stronger the business case for such a move.
Exactly.
The bottom line is... that if I want to do the hackintosh thing, I'll do it myself thank-you-very-much. In fact, I've been seriously considering picking up a netbook and doing exactly that. Basically, the only thing holding me back is the wait to see what comes out at WWDC. And even then, I still may just roll my own. But I accept that, in that case, I'm on my own if something goes wrong.
But if I'm actually going to pay a company to build my computer for me; to my mind, I'm not paying just for some drone to pull the parts off the shelf and throw the mess into a box. I'm paying for support and service. Can I get AppleCare for these psystar boxes? If it breaks, can I run it down the road to the Apple store and have a Genius fix it for me? Is psystar going to provide someone to talk me through twenty minutes of the merits and flaws of Parallels vs VMware and let me try both out on a demo machine before I make a choice? Somehow, I think not.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Until he walk into Best Buy, Staples, or Walmart to buy a device for his new system and finds out that consumer level hardware support in Linux is practically non existent. In a server or enterprise setting Linux is top drawer. It works because companies like Red Hat and Novell spend good money to make sure there are drivers for the server and enterprise hardware. Pretty much the only "support" you get for consumer level hardware in Ubuntu or any other Linux is either some guy on a forum trying to nicely say 'I'm sorry, but your new device will NEVER work. You should have come here and done research before you purchased, which you will have to do with every single device you buy from now on." or worse "LOL Winjunk! LOL Windblowz!". This of course translates to the consumer as "Please return the machine immediately and demand Windows, which actually has drivers for your device."
Here are some facts- FACT- You will NEVER get consumers to research before buying hardware. They are not going to do it, and you are frankly deluding yourself if you honestly expect them to. FACT- The reason the above mentioned stores carry so much PC peripherals is NOT because they are unpopular, it is because they are three of the largest retail stores and make quite a handsome profit from consumers buying such devices from them. FACT- Consumer level support in Linux sucks. I'm sorry but it does. And saying "But but but-They won't give us the specs or support us!" is just an excuse and the consumer frankly doesn't care. If the device doesn't work it is YOUR FAULT and they will return your "broken" OS for Windows which has top notch support for consumer hardware. FACT- Even on netbooks, which were practically designed around the strengths of Linux, a nearly decade old MSFT OS now owns over 90% of the market and Ubuntu has a 400% return rate compared to Windows. And that is a nearly decade old MSFT OS VS brand new Ubuntu. This makes it a support nightmare and gives OEMs a good reason not to carry it.
Accept these facts. Accept them, and work to fix them. Demand an NDISwrapper for all in ones. Demand that corporations that take from the community and only give back to the server market like Red Hat and Novell spend a little of the large profits they are making on giving Linux a chance to grow. And make damned sure that at LEAST 80% of the devices sold in the above stores work in Linux, and strive for 100%. Do these things and Linux has a shot. Otherwise Linux will continue to stay at 1% marketshare while the rest of the world passes you by. I mean come on, Vista sucked the big wet titty and you couldn't even gain marketshare against THAT. If that doesn't tell you that Linux has some serious problems then nothing will.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not sure Microsoft is really where it is because of lack of cheap alternatives else Linux, certainly since the later Ubuntu releases would be doing much better.
I think it comes down more to interoperability, businesses buy a machine, it has Windows on it, so they figure they'll just go with Windows server, then they figure they may as well develop with Visual Studio and use MS SQL for their database and so on.
I think it's more about lockin - sure people could get systems with Mac OS X cheaper, but would they really want it if it wouldn't run all the applications they've built in .NET at least without hassle? What about the fact Mac OS X server is a rather poor offering, they'd probably want to keep their Windows servers and how well would they integrate there? What about retraining their techies to deal with any problems that may arise with Macs?
Of course, one business sees their partner or customer business using Microsoft tech. so they use it to so they can interoperate with them easy, this carries on down the line is why so many businesses use MS software. I think the only way to deal with that is if a complete offering can be provided that is at least as good as Microsoft's or simply over time by pushing Microsoft to follow open standards and then building alternatives based on those standards so companies can migrate away one peice of software at a time. Whilst Mac OS X is indeed a fine OS, it's only a small part the puzzle, you'd still likely be running MS office on it and Mac OS X server leaves a lot (too much really) to be desired. For all Micrososft's faults, Visual Studio, .NET and C# really does offer the best combination of development speed, performance, application quality out there so Apple would really need to bolster up their development tools, provide a database offering that integrates as nicely with everything else in the network as MS SQL server does.
I think Microsoft just has their claws in too many markets for people to switch to a new OS regardless of price, even if many people see it as better than MS' OS, it's the whole package that Apple can't provide but Microsoft can. People are in general lazy and unwilling to take an ethical/moral/personal stand if it requires more effort and the full solution model of doing things just caters too well to that.
You're right. If you go out and buy those things without doing any research, they won't work on Linux. Of course, they won't work on a Macintosh either. So, I guess Macintosh isn't ready for the desktop yet as well?
I went to Best Buy.com and picked the first of each that came up. The printer (Epson PictureMate Dash) probably would have worked on a Mac and maybe would have worked on Ubuntu (the flavor of Linux I use). Without buying it, I can't tell for sure, but the information I found online seemed to show that it would. Neither the wifi card I chose or the TV tuner supported Linux, but then they didn't support Mac OSX either.
So because hardware manufacturers don't support Mac OSX it just isn't ready for the average user?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Apple is a business and will do what makes the most business sense. In the face of significant erosion of their Mac business to clone makers or to threats to their brand, that's probably to move away from their currently DRM free, trust the user, policy and towards a DRM lockdown.
Trust the user. You must be new to dealing with Apple.
Apple has been fucking over their users for years.
You're an idiot. It's perfectly legal to run a business so successfully you gain a monopoly. It's only illegal to abuse that monopoly by damaging other markets.
Tell that to Ma Bell. There are many issues involved in anti-monopoly law. The simplest is leveraging your monopoly to take over another market.
Try reading something other than than an Apple press release, you cock-smoking fanboi.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano