“Last year, the two Miami natives — one relaxed and jovial, the other driven and relentless — shoved a stick in the eye of America’s coolest corporation,” Elfrink reports. “Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X.”
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, puleeze. This thing is obviously written for the nursing home crowd.
Elfrink continues, “The Pedrazas’ company — called Psystar — legally buys the software and then installs it in boxy black desktop towers that sell for as little as $599. That’s about half the price of comparable Macs. For hundreds of buyers — and lately a score of copycats in Los Angeles and around the world — the brothers’ bold move has meant freedom: Mac’s acclaimed software has been liberated from its pricey hardware.”
“Apple hasn’t taken the affront lightly. In July 2008, three months after Psystar began shipping computers from a tiny Doral warehouse, the giant firm with 35,000 employees and billions of dollars in revenue filed a 35-page lawsuit in California claiming Psystar was selling “unauthorized” versions of OS X,” Elfrink reports.
MacDailyNews Take: See, grandma, it’s David vs. Goliath, just so you know who’s side you’re supposed to be on – now drink your Ensure.
Elfrink continues, “Fred von Lohmann, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet free speech issues, thinks the brothers just might prevail. ‘We’ve lived 100-plus years with the basic proposition that if you bought it, you own it,’ he says. ‘We don’t let vendors reach into your living room and micromanage how you use a product. Why should Apple get away with it?'”
Elfrink reports, “They’re prepared to take on everything Apple’s millionaire lawyers throw at them, because they believe they’re right, because they think the courts will eventually agree with them, and maybe most of all, because they don’t like a bully telling them what to do.”
MacDailyNews Take: You’re so forgetful. I just told you: David vs. Goliath. Apple’s the bully here. The Ensure, please. I don’t have all day.
Elfrink continues, “Last month, the Pedrazas released a new line of Apple clone computers with the latest operating system, Snow Leopard. And for an encore, they began selling their software online so that anyone can make a pirated Mac. ‘We’re all in, baby,’ Rudy Pedraza says, grinning wildly. ‘Go big or get the hell out.'”
Full 6-page article — complete with the drug dealer father (sentenced in 1993 to ten years in federal prison and fined $250,000 plus court costs), other “Mac cloners,” car crashes, cancer scares, Psystar’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Rudy Pedraza’s claim that there are no other backers (“I’m the secret funder. It’s just me.”) and more — here.
Edible Apple reports, “The profile on the Pedraza brothers references a telling quote from Rudy Pedraza, the business mind behind the Psystar operation.”
“Psystar, surprise surprise, has been accused by many of “borrowing” heavily from the work of the osx86project, a collaborative group of tinkerers who share information on how to get OS X running on PC hardware,” Edible Apple reports. “When presented with that accusation, the article noted that Rudy Pedraza ‘scoffs at the idea’ that Psystar has stolen anything. ‘The first thing you have to do is unlearn everything you’ve just read online about how to make this work,’ Rudy stated, ‘because it’s all wrong.'”
“Oh really? That’s funny, because Psystar filed a legal document in a Federal District Court asserting just the opposite – asserting that an ordinary user could use readily available information on the web to get OS X running on non-Apple hardware,” Edible Apple reports. “Rudy Pedraza even signed a sworn statement, under the penalty of perjury, indicating as such. And now we find out that the web can’t be trusted. How convenient.”
There’s much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No matter what happens in the courtroom, even they they do run into some crazy judge, Apple wins regardless. They’d simply have to make Mac OS X dependent on chip(s) of their own making (P.A. Semi, Imagination, etc.). Chips that would just not be available – and would never be available – to any random Joe Schmo and his brother who can’t understand the difference between owning a license to use a product and owning the product itself.
Basic economics: There is no impetus whatsoever for Apple to have developed and/or continue developing Mac OS X if they can be forced to sell what they own to others. And, if they ever were crazily forced to sell it to others, the actual price tag would be totally prohibitive. Apple sells Mac OS X licenses for far less than they are actually worth because the OS sells with the hardware. Take away the hardware and each shrink-wrapped Mac OS X box would cost many thousands of dollars, assuming Apple would account for the full amount of R&D, man hours, marketing, etc. that goes into each OS release.
That copy of Mac OS X you’re using? You don’t own the code, Apple does. You own a license to run the code – if you’re using it on an Apple-branded system and are in compliance with the rest of the license agreement. Read Apple’s Software License Agreement for Mac OS X 10.6.x here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “James W.” for the heads up.]
A shrink-wrapped Mac OS X box would cost thousands of dollars? Please MDN, that’s stretching things quite a bit, even for you guys.
PUT THEM TO JUSTICE!!!
Me likey Apple! Apple is so good! Me give Apple blowjobs and my bumhole.
I suppose Psystar are arguing that hardware and software are always totally independent products, with which you are free to do what you can with in terms of what you run on them and so on. Apple are obviously of the opinion that Apple computer hardware plus Apple computer software combine to make a Mac and you can upgrade that Mac to a certain extent by upgrades to that hardware (varying with the original design) and the software. Personally, in the digital era, whilst I don’t like overly restrictive usage terms for stuff (DRM on music) I don’t see a problem with a company limiting their software for use on their hardware only.
Steve Ballmer would like to repackage Apple’s OSX and call it Windows 8.
What I don’t understand is why Apple dosen’t just call the shrink-wrapped version of OSX an “upgrade”. Every Mac ever purchased comes with a “full” version of the OS, and you can buy an “upgrade” off the shelf. Dosen’t that just about completely solve the issue?
For you commenters:
Yes, MDN probably exaggerated things like the cost of OS X by itself, etc.
No, MDN is not wrong regarding their understanding of what a software license agreement is.
Apple could go back to the original Mac game plan and put part of their OS code on a chip like they did with the Tool Box. (Ok, I am a very old programer and owner of the first generation 128K Mac. It took me more than a month to find one to buy.) Or Apple could make a Key Chip and put it in the box!
FYI, I prefer Boost. Now where’s my cane, I have a cat to chase…
I have to side with Apple on this. The licensing agreement clearly states that it is for upgrade installs on an existing mac. Psystar is in violation of the license agreement. If you want to argue the legality of licensing agreements, that’s another issue. But the fact that they have to HACK the install to get it to load on non-apple hardware shows to me clear intent to violate the license.
They’re basement hackers. Big deal.
People…… take a breath and think.
Just look at the BS that Microsoft goes thru to keep people from stealing their software…… their only product.
MS Advantage, that goofy software to keep people from pirating the software and all the other dumb stuff. Apple does not have to resort to that cause they are selling the hardware and giving the software as part of the product. Also, Apple knows that the end result will be good cause they can make it happen.
Put OSX on a crap box and you get what ever crap you get. It may be good, but it may be crap. If Apple gets huge, then they may come up with a non-Apple hardware version of the OS. But until then, its the easiest way to keep things good.
@Jersey_Trader
this is one of the MULTIPLE reasons Apple bought PA Semi… Some hardware keying is probably inevitable. Wait and see.
They don’t like a bully telling them what to do??? Bully? You mean these law breakers who hack properly working mac owned properties don’t like what the law tells them… Which is don’t break the law. And that’s understandable. Why should they start now? Why should anyone? If they won, that could start a precident. Apple got where it was because of great products not because of family drug cartels and theivery. Boo hoo they hard a hard life and suffered. We all have. Suck it up like the rest of us.
I’m happy apple isn’t going to let some idiots try to get away with this. Otherwise we might as well all drive Mercedes and BMW clones, just without the quality and safety.
The tortoise like movement of this lawsuit points to the real backers of Psystar: trial or contract lawyers who need a little love in these tough economic times.
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I’ve been buying Psystar boxes at wholesale prices then rebranding the machines as HMCIVstar and selling them for $399. I’m making a killing (after my Chapter 7 bankruptcy clears) but Psystar is threatening to sue.
I don’t wanna meet the Ped Bros. And i believe it is a disservice to all hardworking entrepreneurs to showcase these thieves who believe it is their right to come through the back door & steal the work of a truly entrepreneurial person. I don’t wanna know their story, don’t wanna know why I should feel sorry for them, don’t wanna know their poor childhood, their abuse by a drunk father or drug addicted mother, or that they’re immigrants from an impoverished third world country. Don’t wana know that they’ve been discriminated against all their lives by an unfeeling society and now this is their time to undo the shackles they’ve been burdened with by us cruel Americans! I do know that they have stolen the work of people who truly did innovate to make the personal computer what it is today. I DO KNOW THAT IF THEY ARE SO TALENTED, THEY WOULD HAVE NO PROBLEM DOING SOMETHING REALLY INNOVATIVE, instead of piggy-backing on the sweat & hard work of Steve Jobs, and the mean & unsympathetic employees at Apple Computer. I am sick & tired of people who somehow believe it is their right to entitlements at the expense of other people. REMOVE THIS CRAP!. And let’s not have anymore of this foolishness.
Apple would be forced to sell Mac OS X to others? Huh? No one is forcing Apple to seel Mac OS X to anybody. Apple chooses to sell it in a rtail package, and the cloners are making use of that. As long as they purchase a copy for every machine they sell with it, there’s no copyright violation.
Do you folks honestly believe that a vendor, *ANY* vendor, has the right to control how you use an item that you’ve paid for?
What’s next? Books? You don’t actually *own* the book, you just paid for a license to read it, and you’re not allowed to sell the book used. Or better yet, do the folks here agree with Microsoft’s policy that folks cannot resell their copies of Windows on sites like eBay? That is against Microsoft’s license, afterall.
I have no desire to be kind to these two. They may not think they are affected by their father’s actions but they clearly are. Don’t develop anything new, but steal other people’s work is not a whole lot different than dealing drugs. These two have a very serious case of moral decay going on within them. While I am a great proponent of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I think Fred von Lohmann is way off base. But then he is a lawyer so what can one say? Talk about moral decay. And I thought it was also revealing that Rudy is in a car crash and wasn’t wearing his seat belt. All I can say is he is fortunate the Darwin theory didn’t work that time. And to the Rashantha De Silva’s of the world, what parasites. And to the writer, hypocrisy sir, Apple’s actions are not. If you desire to use hyperbole to get attention to your article, do not compare what is occurring here to what Woz and Jobs did those decades ago. Not even on the same scale by far. And the article still does not address exactly how this whole thing is being financed. Should we we suspect drug money?
These kids, like their father, are two-bit crooks. Their father was more like one of the Mariel Boat People who were Castros most notorious prisoners whom he released from his jails, put them on boats, as a fuck-you gift to America.
There is nothing noble about their efforts to leech off corporate America, they’re pathetic hoodlums who couldn’t survive as drug dealers when the ol’ man got pinched in a sting. They failed as pick-pockets, three-card Monty scammers, and as MDN has alluded to, their modest computer acumen has impressed the geriatric set of Little Cuba.
The only saving grace these two pathetic boys have going for them is that their illegal alien of a father married an American citizen giving the boys keys to the city in the land of the big refrigerator.
Pfffhht! You’re just a couple users and losers who are still trying to make money off other people’s property.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, puleeze. This thing is obviously written for the nursing home crowd.
MDN – we are all closer to becoming that crowd than we realize. I am almost there, and do not appreciate your take, MDN.
MacDailyNews Take: You’re so forgetful. I just told you: David vs. Goliath. Apple’s the bully here. The Ensure, please. I don’t have all day.
Again? Not good, MDN!
MacDailyNews Take: You’re so forgetful. I just told you: David vs. Goliath. Apple’s the bully here. The Ensure, please. I don’t have all day.
MDN, people who are drinking Ensure are usually dying! I think this is going beyond any level of decency; as I said, unless you die young, you will also be in an nursing home, taking Ensure, etc. Imagine if you made these kinds of comparisons using Gays, race, etc. No, you choose to use the elderly, thinking we are defenseless.
Now, to the topic – I also do not think it is right for these guys to be able to use OS X in this way. I have been pretty satisfied paying for Macs since my first Mac Plus, circa, 1986… By the way, MDN, what’s your take on individuals using OS X on the Hackintoshes?? You’ve probably already talked about that, and I probably read it – but, after all, at my age, I forgot!
IP, or intellectual property, matters. The principle of protecting years of research, investment and hard work is essential to protecting innovation and entrepreneurship. This is why patents and copyrights exist. To read that Fred Von Lohman, with wh I have sparred with in the past, believes otherwise shows me how intellectually bankrupt he and EFF really are. If Psystar wins, our entire patent and copyright system would be essentially worthless.
Oh and NikonFox: did you know there are Chinese made counterfeit versions of BMW, Chevrolet, Mercedes and even Ferrari cars? It’s true. And they are terrifyingly dangerous. This is what you get when there is neither protection nor enforcent of IP.
Written on my iPhone in the MDN app.
New Apple business model:
OS X retail: $850
OS X retail (purchased with a Mac): $0
OS X upgade retail: $850
OS X upgade retail (purchased for a Mac): $150
It’s GOTTA happen.I’m a huge Apple fan – but the company just doesn’t make the hardware I want these days. And it’s too easy running OS X on anything with Intel inside.
Just because something is in the agreement does not mean it is binding. For instance if a valet parks your car the ticket probably states that the business is not responsible for damage. That statement does not absolve them from exercising reasonable care. I believe Apple has a real battle on their hands
I have no doubt that if by any chance Apple loses this suit, they will just withdraw the Mac OS X shrink-wrapped (or download) product from the market completely. They may offer an upgrade for existing Mac users directly from within the OS (like an in-app purchase on iPhone), but there will be no legal way to buy a license for any money. Apple does NOT want this installed on non-Apple hardware, at ANY price. That should take care of the problem, and Snow Leopard should be the last version of OS X that can be installed on non-Apple computer.
If this scenario happens, I have no doubt that the Hackintosh community will continue to exist as long as Apple’s own hardware is Intel-based (and capable of running Windows; if it can run Windows, it can run OS X). However, there will be no legal gray area regarding those installations; they will all be illegal.
Fry those two little fskers….
How can anyone condone theft? Openly breaking the licensing agreement is theft……period!