Mac Ping!
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Posted on 01/17/2010 1:06:32 AM PST by Swordmaker
We're still not clear on whether Psystar is still in business, or if it's selling anything other than T-shirts, but the would-be Mac cloner isn't totally out of the game yet: it's filed an official notice of appeal in the California court, which means it's going to try and fight that decisive victory and injunction won by Apple a month ago. Just based on the simple open-and-shut legal reasoning involved in the decision -- surprise, you can't copy, modify, and resell a copyrighted work without permission -- we'd say this appeal is a long shot, but we didn't go to Harvard Law School like Psystar attorney Eugene Action. Man, we missed that guy. Let's quote from his website again, shall we?
The matrix is born and the energy sucking machine herds Americans into pods of predetermined limitations. Forced programming on your computer is just one of the provisional patents looming against freedom and democracy. Capitalism spurring innovation and creativity through open and competitive markets is at risk on this new frontier. This new battle is being fought on the abstract electronic plains of America while most of us cannot even open our email. The beachheads are red with the blood of ambitious Americans gunned down for their initiative.
Let's be honest: we never, ever, want this story to end.
P.S. -- Wondering why Rebel EFI is listed as "out of stock" on the Psystar website? It's because there isn't any stock, shockingly enough -- in a statement filed with the court on December 31, Rudy Pedraza says all copies of the bootloader have been destroyed except for one that's in the possession of his attorneys. Between this appeal and the pending case in Florida over Snow Leopard, we'd say that means it'll be a long time before the software is back on the scene -- enough time for the legit OSx86 scene to leapfrog it entirely.
The Summary Judgement was followed by a permanent Injunction that essentially prohibited Psystar from selling anything that infringed Apple's patents and copyrights, including the Rebel EFI.
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This is the deal.
Diffusion is is the path that technology always takes.... history shows this. It goes on today all the time as technological secrets get stolen and spread
Psystar will prevail....
Maybe not Psystar as you know it but a clone or rip off of the Psystar model will prevail
Are you Eugene Action's portage'?
:-)
Ya gotta like Los Hermanos Psystar!
So, basically, if your track record for predictions holds out, Psystar will not only crater spectacularly - again - but this time they’ll even reveal their secret backers *and* go to jail!
Remember, folks, every time dennisw opens his mouth and makes a prediction involving Apple, he’s 100+% wrong.
Well, if somebody's gotta root for Psystar, might as well be Dennis; he makes it look so easy.
> Remember, folks, every time dennisw opens his mouth and makes a prediction involving Apple, he’s 100+% wrong.
Aww, that's not fair. He spells Apple's name correctly. :)
Good news. May the rights of the consumer and the original intent of copyright be restored!
And may Psystar go out of business anyway because their systems and support are crap.
Thousands have met their doom betting against Los Hermanos Psystar. They are too legit to quit and one day Jobs&Co Cuppertino mafioso punks will regret tangling w them
The Psystar concept itself is being cloned worldwide far from the reach of the Cuppertino legal attack dogs
Really? Care to name, oh say, three?
> ... betting against Los Hermanos Psystar. They are too legit to quit and one day Jobs&Co Cuppertino mafioso punks will regret tangling w them
I was gonna ask you where you get your smoking compound, but on second thought it seems likely somebody drizzled some shroom squeezin's over it, so no thanks.
> The Psystar concept itself is being cloned worldwide far from the reach of the Cuppertino legal attack dogs
The "Psystar concept" is hardly unique -- product theft and unauthorized piggy-backing in various forms have existed for as long as businesses have been in competition.
If you mean the particular act of trying to ignore Apple's uber-restrictive license, of course that's being done by individuals all over the globe -- but Apple tolerates individuals. Psystar's fatal error was trying to do it on a large scale and spit in Apple's eye and that of the law as well. That inane audacity earned them their well deserved Gong Show accolade.
The best part is that the Psystar guys were complete idiots about this. By pre-installing the software on the machine they violated the law.
If they were smart (and like dennis, they’re not) they would have sold it as something like the OpenComputer and advertised it as being able to run multiple operating systems including Mac OS X, but that it was unsupported. There wouldn’t have been a thing in the world Apple could have done then. The bundling and installing was the stupid part and what put the nail in their coffin.
Edit unsupported/unsupported and not included.
There is a firm in the Dallas area that is doing exactly that and Apple has said that they don’t have a problem with it so long as they don’t bundle/preinstall OS X and leave that up to the purchaser.
Including the software-based hardware lockout workarounds? I thought part of Apple's case was the reverse-engineering done to produce Psystar's "special sauce". Maybe I misread... and I reckon that it's harder to win a case on reverse engineering anyway.
So you're saying, Psystar (or whoever) would produce a hardware box -and- offer some special sauce software, which when combined with a customer-supplied copy of OS-X, would allow the OS-X to run on the non-Apple hardware?
> The bundling and installing was the stupid part and what put the nail in their coffin.
For sure. Too high a balls-to-brains ratio.
> There is a firm in the Dallas area that is doing exactly that and Apple has said that they don’t have a problem with it so long as they don’t bundle/preinstall OS X and leave that up to the purchaser.
Interesting... have contact info for that outfit? I've got my share of real Apple hardware (two minis and a macbook of my own, plus an older imac, and a few others in the family), but I would enjoy playing around at the edges, too...
If they were smart (and like dennis, they’re not) they would have sold it as something like the OpenComputer and advertised it as being able to run multiple operating systems including Mac OS X, but that it was unsupported........
Pretty much what Psystar does
Their computer is even called “Open”
I’m going to call Los Hermanos Psystar and see if they need any marketing help
Uh, no, it’s not. They pre-installed the OS which is a no-no. They bundled the OS, which is a no-no.
It’s like buying academic versions of Windows and Office and installing them on a PC for retail sale. If you don’t think Microsoft will come down on you like several tons of bricks, why don’t you try that and let us know how that turns out.
They don’t sell anything but the hardware. You’re on your own for the software (which isn’t hard to get at all). But that’s how they stay legal and how Psystar could have but didn’t.
They could have offered their box sans OS or even with Linux installed and said that it met the specs for running OS X and even demonstrated that it could run OS X - but that they would not sell OS X with the machine nor would they support it if you installed it. That’s a quick way around it.
Instead, Psystar had to be stupid and now they’re pretty much dead in the water - as is proper.
I do have contact info, but I don’t think it’s any good at the moment - they were in the middle of a move to less expensive quarters, last I heard.
If they only sell hardware, and there's no special sauce software for OS-X workaround, then it's no different from any other random Intel box. What's their angle, at that point?
They would say, "Buy our hardware, add your legal copy of OS-X, add special software for OS-X loading that you can find elsewhere, and you can run OS-X on this, and by the way, we won't support it if you do." That's it? Not a very compelling marketing strategy; probably 1000 other random hardware vendors could say the same thing.
But maybe Dennis has a better angle (see his post #14).
Dead wrong
Microsoft is sprinkling down OS7 and Office like confetti on campus these days. All to keep the young ‘uns from getting their brains jacked by the Jesse Jobs gang. OSX is a turkey, is doomed
The difference is in the hardware selection. Not every piece of commodity hardware is OS X compatible - they could offer configurations that would be “tested compatible”, which is the biggest hurdle and takes out a lot of research time.
There are a surprisingly large number of products sold as “suitable for purpose X, but we won’t warranty it or support it if you do” - notably racing parts for automobiles, for one. Firearms parts for another.
You said that about Vista and Office too. OS X is still here.
And if you take those Academic Licensed copies and try to sell them installed on a machine in a retail store, Microsoft WILL come down on you if you try it. They all have big stamps that indicate ‘NOT FOR RETAIL SALE’.
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