“It seems that Apple has grown tired of Apple-clone Psystar and has filed suit against the Florida company at the federal district court for the northern district of California,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reports for ZDNet.
“Apple, Inc., manufacturer of the well known line of computers and software, filed suit on July 3 in the federal district court for the northern district of California against Florida company Psystar, Inc. The suit alleges counts for violation of its shrink wrap license, trademark and copyright infringement,” Kingsley-Hughes reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jimbo von Winskinheimer” for the heads up.]
Gee, wonder who’s gonna win this one?
“I doubt you can get Mac OS X to run on non-authorized hardware just by diddling with Darwin.”
Sure, think that. or google for hackintosh and educate yourself as to just how little it takes.
I read Apple’s complaint. Psystar is in bad shape!
clyde,
Please give Bob a hand.
“I read Apple’s complaint. Psystar is in bad shape!”
Basically in a lot of words it says “Waah! Waah!, we sold Psystar copies of Mac OS X and they did something we don’t approve of with them Waah! Waah!”
If Psystar can get the “Apple labelled” clause in the EULA overturned, Apple is done. If not, tough luck Psystar.
From the article:
“[UPDATE 07/15 14:15pm PDT: A note to those who think that this suit is about EULAs … Psystar did a LOT more than breach the terms of the EULA. The company, through its own admission, modified the copyrighted work, then distributed those modifications without license and for commercial purposes. The company also used at least one Apple trademark in its marketing.
If this was just about the EULA, Apple’s case might not be that strong (remember, the EULA’s never been tested in court), but this goes way beyond the EULA.]”
If, as one person earlier suggested, Psystar actually has the cash to ride this out, why did they not go the legal route first? Why didn’t they just sue Apple and argue that the OS X EULA represents an anti-trust violation? Or that the hardware and software should be decoupled or Darwin decoupled from the GUI (akin to MS being forced to decouple IE from Windows)?
Either they were hoping to gain enough money to weather the legal storm by selling clones (seriously?) or they didn’t consider the legal strategy as being a successful one and were hoping Apple wouldn’t call their bluff.
In any event, the strategy they chose was risky at best. Obviously they couldn’t just make a patch to OS X and bundle that with the machine because OS X wouldn’t install once it did a system check. And how do you write software that overwrites software that is yet to be installed? So they went down the path of altering the OS. And, as has been pointed out, they didn’t just alter Darwin. The OS isn’t that simple and there are dependencies in the GUI that must be overcome. In any event, most of the OS isn’t Darwin and therefore altering it (even if you didn’t touch the closed-source portion) and selling a package including it is fraught with legal peril (and it just opens them to all kinds of liability). See where the decoupling strategy would have been much wiser? Maybe they could have gotten a judge to force Apple to release two different layers of OS X, the Darwin layer and the GUI layer. But I think they knew that wasn’t going to happen. So it beggars the question: just what were they thinking? That they’d be inundated with orders for their Dell-like systems and hope to gain the cash to fight the good fight? And why not just sell the software if your goal is to open the software to run on anything? Why try to mimic Apple by making an all-in-one product? You could sell the software with a recommended list of hardware it will work on. There’s no money in hardware anyway, unless you mark it way up, which defeats the whole argument that this type of competition will drive down prices.
But instead of arguing concepts in a courtroom as a plaintiff, they will be defending themselves from infringement and damages. Dumb. If your argument has merit, get the capital and go after Apple first, then build your boxes. Your boxes aren’t going to raise the capital for you and otherwise you are just picking the wrong fight. In either case, without the $$, you’re cooked.
I found a stick. I’m no longer itchy.
Well Bob, I’m sure everyone here is relieved to hear that. I know I sure will sleep better tonight. That is, if I don’t think about itching.
Why do people keep o sisting that Apple dom’t have the right to keep their OS for their computers as if it’s the norm for operating systems to be a separate entity to the hardware. That’s an ignorant assumption. As far as I know, all computer manufacturers pre Windows had their own OS and that includes Apple. Windows is sold as a stand alone product to go on any compatible PC. M$ don’t make a PC. Apple still have the same business model they always had. UP hand their own OS. So do Sun. So just because M$ do it one way doesn’t mean Apple has to follow suit.
And to whoever thinks Macs and Psystars have the same innards, gheez, get a brain will ya!
here’s one thing people fail to see here and that is the fact that
sorry about all the typos
“sorry about all the typos”
Typing while terminally stupid has been known to cause that.
“modified the copyrighted work, then distributed those modifications without license and for commercial purposes.”
And as you all probably know by now, you can install an “as shipped by Apple” DVD on a PC today with the right EFI emulation, a few drivers and and external hacks. And that’s what Psystar does. They don’t change your Mac OS X code in any way.
Also remember the EULA is just that, an EULA, not a reseller license agreement and psystar is not the end user.
Apple with all it’s alternative pleading even seems to recognise that claiming the EULA was breached by psystar rather than the end customer might be a problem.
Has anything been stolen from Apple? No, the OS is brought and paid for. They’ve just lost the possibility of making a hardware sale to go along with the software sale they already made.
Can Apple win this? Probably not.
“Can Apple win this? Probably not.” (iCal’ed)
STFU, clueless git.
I wonder what’s to stop Psystar, of any box-maker in future selling “Open OS” boxes? They wouldn’t even have to mention ‘Apple’ or ‘Mac’ by name, just ‘Runs ALL major OS’s’
With Microsoft’s Vista problems, any big box-makers like Dell could see “Open OS” systems as a way of revitalising hardware sales. They needn’t sell OS X either… just offer a $50 rebate to the customer on proof of purchase of ANY OS.
This David versus Goliath case could be a massive game-changer.
@ Twenty Benson
“what’s to stop Psystar, of any box-maker in future selling “Open OS” boxes?”
Psystar needs to hack the MacOS on each machine – this is their downfall.
Reminds me of Apple II days when Apple sued the ‘Pineapple’, ‘Orange’ and ‘Franklin’ companies for producing hardware clones with copied Apple-ROMs to run the Apple DOS. These cases were easy since these companies were plain stealing code.
While I think Apple is taking a massive risk in suing (should they lose), the fact that Psystar has had to ‘hack’ the Mac OS (rather than install the plan DVD version) shows that Apple’s case is very clear and winnable.
WTF? According to the Apple fanbois no one was purchasing Psystar pieces of crap.
A difference between then and now is that IBM wasn’t allowing either their OS to run on other hardware or their hardware to run other company’s OS. Apple does allow anything else to run on their hardware. They just restrict where their OS can run.
I don’t put a whole lot of faith in the courts, though.
Apple is going to spend more money on lawyers than Psystar collected from selling computers.
It would be interesting to know how much Apple pays yearly for lawyers. It’s gotta be a bunch.
I wonder how much cheaper everything would be if companies didn’t have to pay for those armies of lawyers to handle stupid stuff.
@Demon:
“2) All Retail copies of Mac OS X are purchased as upgrades to a fully licensed copy that is only sold with a New Apple Macintosh computer (read the EULA with a retail copy of Mac OS X).”
So how did that work when OS X was first released? The first version released for OS X was just that- the first version.
Also, if they really wanted to beat the Apple suit, all Psystar would have to do is sell retail copies of Mac OS X uninstalled. Let the buyer do the installation. At that point, Psystar’s boxes are just your typical generic PC hardware, maybe with some added software that would allow the buyer, if they so chose, to install Mac OS X.
In order to sell copies of OS X they’d have to be Apple Authorized Resellers.They aren’t, to the best of my knowledge. Yet another nail in their coffin, methinks.