Erstwhile ‘Mac cloner’ Psystar pulls plug; ‘shutting things down immediately’

55 Comments

1. @F. Maxwell

   Don’t worry, when it comes to “erroneously failing” (LOL) it’s an unfortunate side effect of Stockholm Syndrome – as we have frequently seen in your “erroneously failing” to squirm out of facing the facts.

   As you know, the FACTS are that if Apple was forced to accept third-party hardware suppliers competing with its own pitifully limited offerings in an open and healthy free-market, MILLIONS of OS X users would choose from a much broader range of hardware supplied by Apple’s competitors (myself included).

   Obviously, these discerning customers would shop-around and make their buying decisions on what hardware solution best met their computing needs.

   You can huff and puff about this market truth until you are blue in the face – you can even carry on scribbling acres of verbiage claiming not to understand (or want) customer choice and free-markets. You can even continue refusing to look at the broad range of hardware available under your nose for other operating systems and make a simple comparison… but in all this you just continue digging yourself into a hole and confirming everyone’s impression that you are suffering under a severe bout of Stockholm Syndrome.

   It sounds like you are unable to use ANY OS without feeling the need to become a ‘fanboi’ – and your very recent jump from being a Windows fanboi to becoming a Mac fanboi involved swopping one state of blissful denial for another… that would explain the absence of any intelligence or coherence in your “erroneously failing” responses.

   On a previous thread I offered you the chance of stepping outside of your Stockholm Syndrome bubble so that our exchange could make progress. You refused to show me you can think for yourself by making the very simple comparison I asked you for… so I had no choice but to end the exchange. I have now given you another chance and see you still are clinging to your ‘ignorance is bliss’ dead-end.

   @Gabriel

   That’s good news that Psystar has its website back up. RebelEFI, of course, is no different to programs like Parallels and enable hardware to run a choice of operating systems. I really hope the company can make a success out of its version… but no doubt the enterprising Psystar will have to overcome Apple’s vicious hypocrisy and refusal to release OS X users from its highly lucrative hardware lock-in scam along the way.

   Reply

2. @ Twenty Benson – Please seek professional help.

   The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

   The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. […]

   Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. […]

   Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere reason, and the case against him put logically. But it can be put much more precisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one idea: he is sharpened to one painful point. He is without healthy hesitation and healthy complexity. […]

   And I have described at length my vision of the maniac for this reason: that just as I am affected by the maniac, so I am affected by most modern thinkers. […] They all have exactly that combination we have noted: the combination of an expansive and exhaustive reason with a contracted common sense. They are universal only in the sense that they take one thin explanation and carry it very far. But a pattern can stretch for ever and still be a small pattern. They see a chess-board white on black, and if the universe is paved with it, it is still white on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter their standpoint; they cannot make a mental effort and suddenly see it black on white.

   – from Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

   Reply

3. Many analogies have been offered to the Apple/Psystar case which mostly fail to draw a good-enough correlation to understand what is going on.

   I think that looking at the events within broadcasting in the UK back in the 1960’s provides a very good parallel with what Apple is trying to do now – and why it will ultimately fail.

   Back in the 60’s the UK government had total control over UK broadcasting. Through the BBC, it provided listeners with three national stations and refused to issue any licences to third-parties to broadcast alternatives. However, many people felt the government’s stolid and polished limited offerings failed to meet their needs. In response to this situation, ‘pirate’ stations emerged from ships anchored just outside UK territory and broadcast dedicated, customised programming – which quickly became very popular with UK citizens. The BBC, of course, began losing huge ‘market-share’ to these enterprising new upstarts and the government, fearing its loss of total control, began issuing dire legal threats to both the pirate stations and to their millions of listeners. It tried every trick in the legal book to close down the stations and frequently threatened the UK population that it was illegal to tune in to them. But still the stations grew in popularity.

   Here we can see a direct correlation between the attitude of the UK government and Apple:
   – BOTH have provided a severely limited ‘product’ range which patently fails to meet the varying needs of a locked-in ‘customer’ base.

   – BOTH have aggressively tried to crush any enterprising challenge to its lock-in (threatening both the suppliers and the clients of alternatives).

   – BOTH have attempted to cling hold of their total control of the ‘market’ by being heavily negative about the public’s alternative choice.

   – BOTH have attempted to establish the idea that it would somehow be the ‘end of the world’ if its competitors are allowed to establish themselves.

   – BOTH have refused point-blank to issue and manage licences to alternative suppliers who are more able and willing to meets varying customer-needs.

   The moral of this story? The UK government eventually had to concede its lock-in and substantially broaden its product range to begin meeting varying customer needs. It also had to accept the presence of healthy competition within the marketplace and issue licences to legal commercial stations to broadcast (under a strict framework managed by a UK government agency). Of course, none of this revolution turned out the be the ‘end of the world’ for the government-funded BBC – in fact the corporation flourished as it quickly broadened and improved its product range to compete with the alternatives – in many instances hiring staff from the old ‘pirate’ stations so that its output could equal the quality of those stations and really begin meeting customer needs.

   Apple, of course, haven’t yet reached this point in their evolution (the company is still kicking and screaming to hang on to its lock-in in exactly the same way the old BBC did)… but all the pieces are lining up for Apple’s necessary comeuppance in the near future. And we can all know the change will bring nothing but good for the customer AND for Apple itself.

   Reply

4. Erstwhile.

   hee hee

   Reply

5. You’re wasting your breathe F. Maxwell. Anyone fanboi can mindlessly parrot Apple’s press releases. That’s precisely why I asked you to look at the broad range of hardware line-ups for other OS’s and make a note of the differences with the tiny line-up Apple markets to its lock-in customers. Until you do this, I remain convinced you are refusing to think for yourself (just like all those grey, nodding nerds in Apple’s iconic 1984 advert).

   You really aren’t helping yourself by trying to change the subject or pass the buck on to me (or anyone else). If you REALLY can’t find what I have asked you for, just say: “Twenty, I may be stupid but I’ve looked and I see no difference”.

   Then we can all move along… I can find someone who IS prepared to think for themselves to exchange with, and you can waddle off back to your fellow Stockholm Syndromers and continue blissfully warbling on together as MDN turkeys voting for Christmas.

   OS X users – SAY NO to Apple’s hardware lock-in scam!

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.