“Psystar is currently selling Open Computers with Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled, in what appears to be a clear violation of Apple’s software licence agreement,” Tom Krazit reports for CNET.
“These types of agreements, known as end user licensing agreements (EULAs) have been upheld by several US court rulings as valid contracts between a software maker and a customer, even if the customer didn’t have a chance to read the licensing agreement until after they purchased the product,” Krazit reports. “Specific provisions of EULAs have been deemed unlawful, but the general concept that software customers licence software, rather than purchase it, has endured.”
Krazit reports, “According to legal experts, Psystar will need a significant amount of cash to fight off Apple’s likely challenges on several different fronts.”
Krazit reports, “While Psystar might be able to make some headway, their only apparent hope of scoring a decisive win is to file an antitrust suit and convince a court that Apple’s domination of the market for computers running Mac OS X is harming consumers.”
Full article here.
Has anyone else noticed MDN’s notable absence on this subject. You know, I think it is ok if they want to stay neutral in this fight, meaning they will support Apple no matter what but are secretly hoping for an Apple “OK” here.
But why don’t they just say that they are holding a neutral position until things settle down a bit.
Pystar isnt gonna get anywhere with this… other than pissing off a lot of customers when they cant upgrade OS X. I suspect that apple with come out with a new low end mac besides the mini.. aimed directly at the enterprise market. I would bet we see it in the next year or so… but I wouldnt put any money on apple releasing OS X into the wild.
I did not want to risk the “wrath of Apple” by purchasing a Psystar computer, but their story did inspire me to build my own Hackintosh. I’m very pleased with the results. Perhaps Psystar could offer the compatible hardware, and instructions to the purchaser to install OS X themselves (rather than offering the hardware with OS X pre-installed). This would get around the legal questions, and still allow them to offer a viable product, right?
File an Antitrust suit agaist a company that builds the entire product? I don’t even know if the Morons in the east texas courts would buy that. Get rid of these ass clowns running OS X on whatever junk box they can piece together. If you want Leopard buy a Mac. If you want to “build your own box” Run whatever other OS you want. The reason OS X runs so well is hardware and software are made to run together. This is just childish and moronic. While you are at it unlock your iPhone and brick that too.
Bunch of entitlement morons in society today. WHine whine whine.
Yes, you can go to the junkyard and buy all the parts you need to build your own car………….
How’s that working for you?
Seriously, I CAN do that, I have the experience and ability.
But few actually can pull that off.
But why would I when I have a lot better things to do? Just buy a Mac and get on with life!
@ Regnillub
No you infantile Moron is still does violate the EULA, now just you are, so doen’t your Hackin Piece of crap. Can’t you read. Why bother with little things like laws and license agreements. Spend weeks trying to get your HackinCrap remotely working and the rest of of will continue getting work done on better hardware.
The only time I was pressured into installing a ‘Hackintosh’ was on my Office Lenovo. The department had no money to buy me a Mac, and I just couldn’t efficiently function in Windows, so I tried putting Hackintosh on a partition. Well, two months and four different distributions later, I gave up. It’s just not worth the colossal hassle of hunting down drivers, partitioning for dual boot, figuring out what to update, what not to update, only to have half-baked, buggy solution. I may end up buying a mini from my own money and hooking it up.
Apple probably won’t need to do anything here. Psystar won’t be selling too many of these, regardless of enormous publicity they have received.
Hackintosh is exactly what its name implies: a hacked contraption that resembles the real thing. Outside of a very limited group of tinkerers, very few people can use it productively. It has its purpose, spreading the word about Mac OS, continuing the Apple buzz on different levels. This is as far as it can realistically go.
@ Predrag: At a certain point in time I’d rather just buy my own machine. Screw the company’s budget.
These idiots deserve to get bled to death…what the hell were they thinking?
Morons.
@Streetool
Your post reminds me of a story about people in glass houses…
I did. It was the best thing I ever did. I was more productive than anyone in the company and no one could figure out why!!!
<snip>
It’s just not worth the colossal hassle of hunting down drivers, partitioning for dual boot, figuring out what to update, what not to update, only to have half-baked, buggy solution. I may end up buying a mini from my own money and hooking it up.
I think it’s just silly that anyone would buy an under powered lame excuse for a Mac clone instead of the real thing! This company will be gone in very short time.
Hackintosh…No thank you. Now if Apple put out a version of Mac OS X that would allow me to pick from a list of very specific components that have been certified to work with it. Then, yes, I would really consider that.
“Made for iPod”… “Made for iPhone”… “Made for OS X”
@ Spark
So you support people like Psystar ripping people off for a piece of crap that sounds like a 50’s Hoover vacuum and having something thst still doesn’t work. Remember they paid $399 plus $129 for the OS, HOW is that such a deal and better is any way. ?????
Tell me there glass house clown.
This just degrades the rest of the user experience for everyone else and puts a lot of mis-information into the public eye. Just plain stupid. You want OS X? buy a mac. Or go put a Ford engine in your Chevy. YeAh you can kind of get it in there, but at what price. Compare any mac hardware with any custom build hardware you can muster, the price difference if any is small, the cost in lost time and aggravation far outweighs any gain.
If I were Apple, I would argue that Unix, not Leopard is the operating system. Leopard is merely a front end user interface to Unix that Apple has developed to make it easier to use Unix on Apple computers. That there are plenty of other Unix operating systems out there with their own front ends that people can use on clones, such as Solaris.
dallas,
Read the “Related articles” before you spout off. MDN has been quite clear in their Takes.
Apple needs to expand its product line, not because of Paystar, but because as it expands, it needs to offer more models to address the various needs of the market, including for user friendly small towers where users can fit their own hard drives into a case without having to buy an all in one. These would sell like well, and the business market would buy tonnes. Apple’s margins might suffer a tad, but volume would increase, as would market share. The market penetration of technology such as Firewire, would increase accordingly and Apple could offer features attuned to large corporations’ low end users. It’s time to review the idea of limited SKUs and think of the bigger picture, given the weakness of competing operating systems.
Forgetting the legality of the situation entirely, in the case of this company I don’t know why anyone would buy anything from them. They seem shady at best. What support can you expect for the machine down the line? The software offers no upgrade path other than hacks so makes the machine a rather a poor purchase. Regular consumers aren’t going to want the hassle of it and more technically inclined people are likely to want a better machine and hack it themselves. I just don’t see Apple needing to waste too much money/time on a legal fight with these guys.
Forget lawsuits from Apple. How soon before Psystar gets sued by an irate customer who tried to update Leopard or noticed the system prefs were wacked or got their finger chopped up in the CPU fan?
[Psystar’s] only apparent hope of scoring a decisive win is to file an antitrust suit and convince a court that Apple’s domination of the market for computers running Mac OS X is harming consumers.” —macoverdose_dot_com
Did Palm get sued for dominating the market for PDA’s running PalmOS? That’s ridiculous!
While I would never buy this computer, I am intrigued in what may happen. If a million people bought these, maybe it would convince Stevie Boy that Apple needs another product. The iMac is not the answer for everyone. I currently have a 4 year old Power Mac G5 and I can’t justify spending $3000 on a new one. How about a $1500 expandable Mac? I used to run Linux on my desktop while I used OS X only on my laptops, but then I found Final Cut and Aperture. So I made the switch to the Power Mac G5. You’ve got me now Apple, and I’d really love to spend some more money on you, but there is a piece of the puzzle missing for me.
On what grounds would Apple take Psystar to court?
People take their PCs with Windows XP and use Parallels Transporter to copy it to their Mac or just move it to another PC. As long as they’re not using the one copy of Windows twice this is still against the EULA, but no one is getting sued.
I still think the judge would rule against Apple, plus the negative press against Apple would be awful whether they won or lost. Apple have the lack of updating option should they ever decide to use it.
Maybe Psystar had to reverse-engineer some Apple code is illegal or the actual ‘sale’ (rather than X86 hobby install) is illegal, otherwise I cannot see how Apple can claim to have been harmed or had code stolen (since Psystar sell you MacOS X).
All this aside, it is not tempting to me in any way since I am not a tinkerer, a PC-fanboy or a lawyer.
@ Jocknerd.
The Imac may not be the answer for everyone, but it probably is for 95% of the people who use computers to simply surf, email, chat, pay bills on line and download PDF or use an Office or Iworks Document of some sort. Thats the ‘consumer’ market’ What is a Imac other than a desk based Laptop anyway? No one adds stuff to a Laptop right? Running linux or hacking code, add a sound cardssis beyond the needs of most.
I too have a first generation G5 20 inch (1.8) I see no compelling reason to upgrade. In fact, perusing the net, there are many quite serviceable G5 17 inch 1.6 machines out there to be had for about $600.00 . For your average user, look no further.
If you want new. Imacs and mac books to be had at Apples reconditioned store for about $1,000. Again this is for 95% of users. Apple has done their market research. Few folks no matter WINTEL or Apple crack their box after purchase except to maybe add memory.
Pystar might have some appeal to a very small segment of the Apple market. They will be gone in the next 6 months.
You know it would be great to build your own system- like the days win I use to build my own pc. But, we all know the problems that happen and all the upgrades or the upgrade to help the last upgrade. In short, a pain.
I switched to Mac to get away form all the problems, software conflict, and the bloating of the OS or patches to it. So in short, I find it easier to buy a new mac and sale the old one-they bring more in resale than a pc.
Fewer problems and just works. I personally like it the way it is.
AntiTrust law does not apply to the MacOSX and Apple. MacOSX is a feature of Apple’s Computer Hardware. It would be like suing Jeep over it’s monopolist control of the RockTrac 4×4 Drive Train because, you can’t get it on a Yugo, Toyota or GM 4×4 and it’s hurting consumers freedom of buying the best and most serious 4×4 drive train of any vehicles. MacOSX is not a standalone product even in it’s retail form. All retail copies of MacOSX are upgrade copies (read the EULA). The only full licensed copy is the one that comes per-installed on a Mac system.