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Psystar Not Closing Up Shop
Despite several sources reporting that post-indefinite-injunction Psystar was closing their doors for good, the company's lawyer is claiming Psystar plans on going forward with PC sales — they just won't be pre-loaded with Apple's OS X. Psystar plans on selling systems pre-loaded with "other operating systems," including Windows, as well as selling their "Rebel EFI software" that allows consumers to load OS X on generic PCs.
What Apple needs to do is set the price of OS X to be $2k. The OS costs $2k. The hardware is free. Have a blast kids.
How is creating your own platform anti-competitive? Why shouldn't Apple be allowed to create a product how they see fit and let the market decide if it's worth purchasing? Do you also think all those home computers from the '70ies and '80ies were engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by tying their OS'es to their hardware?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Really what needs to happen is the courts need to say that is it legal to A) modify a legitimately purchased OS to run on whatever hardware B) Allow licenses to restrict what hardware you run things on only in number of quantity (for example, Apple could sell you one license for OS X to be installed on one machine, if you install it on 5 you are breaking it, but if you install it on one PC, it would still be legal. and C) allow for companies to sell machines with OS X on them so long as OS X was legitimately purchased by Apple and there is a license for that one machine.
So, if I acquire a piece of open source software, I should be able to use it however I want? That would mean that any company could ignore the GPL. Apple's OS X license (that you can only run it on Apple hardware) is just as valid as the GPL, even if you would like to ignore it.
The dogcow says "Moof!"
The thing to note here also is that Psystar were modifying Apple's base image and redistributing it without a license to make a derivative work and to then distribute the results. The EULA was only 1 part of the case, they were very on the way to be found guilty of copyright infrigement when they decided to settle with Apple. Not to mention the DMCA claims because they circumvented Apple's protection measures (that kext I listed earlier).
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Monopoly or not, palm os is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's OS to it's hardware.
Monopoly or not, mercedes Benz is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's software to it's hardware.
Monopoly or not, cisco is engaging in anti-competitive behavior by tying it's firmware to it's hardware.
See how silly your argument becomes when you take out the most important aspect of anti-trust law? If it's a monopoly or not.
Businesses by their nature act anticompetitive. Put simpler, competitors act anti-competitive. Big shock.
Apple is not Microsoft. Software is not it's business, software/hardware integrated in one package is. Some people like Porsche engines but don't like their cars. Let's say porsche sells replacement engines cheap (low margin) because Porsche owners race their cars and burn them through fast. Taking advantage of this fact, a company opens up that offers to sell you Porsche engines in a cheap car like a Hyundai. Porsche should be happy but it's not because they no longer have significant competetive advantage (their engines) to lure customers but actually lose some who are lured by Porsche power in a cheaper car. Plus the engines in nonporsches also generate more service calls, support that costs $ on small margin product.
Now, to combat this, porsche, in the next gen models, installs a very proprietary and nonstandard coupling to the transmission they don't license out to anyone else.
Now, most would say, including I, that you can do with the engines you buy as you please, but can you really force them to use a standard coupling as a non-monopoly?
"I seem to recall reading that they are actually ripping off an EFI-emulation boot loader that was open source, removing attribution, violating the license, and claiming it as their own. If this is true, they should not be given the dignity, in press articles or otherwise, of having it called "theirs"."
http://www.geektechnica.com/2009/10/psystar-steals-open-source-bootloader-and-sells-it-for-50/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If the license is void then that just leaves the usual "first sale" sort of stuff you get with a Book.
The notion that any creative work requires a license merely to "use" is assinine and only serves to increase the ability of corporations that are larger than many nations to fuck with individuals. It doesn't even benefit the rank and file artist.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I think the move to Intel was necessary for Apple from a logistical perspective. It's not that PowerPC isn't a bad platform; it's that no one in the business makes a PowerPC chip for consumers. PowerPC chips are more designed for workstations and servers than desktops. Apple had the same problem with IBM as it had with Motorola. The PowerPC they required had to be a custom chip in order to handle things like multi-media. Even if Apple ordered millions of chips a year, Apple would only be a small customer to either company.
These days no company wants to keep a large inventory. Apple would only order as many chips as it thought it needed; Motorola and IBM would only make so many. If Apple required more, it would have to order more and IBM and Motorola would have to re-arrange their manufacturing schedules to accommodate. The problem was Apple could never order enough. They were always short. IBM and Motorola would never make a large excess of Apple's chips because if Apple didn't buy it, they couldn't sell it to anyone else.
Thus Intel came into the picture. For Apple, ordering more chips from Intel was logistically much easier since they were no longer ordering a custom part; they were order more of a stock part that Intel makes anyway. And for Intel making extra chips in anticipation of Apple's increases wasn't a big deal. If Apple didn't buy the extra, Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc would buy the extra.
So if you're Apple, do you stay on a platform that is better but you can't get enough parts or do you move to a platform which is not technically better but logistically easier? From Apple's customers' perspective, most of them didn't care which platform.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.