Apple Suit Demands That Psystar Recall OpenMacs 759
Da'Man writes "The Psystar saga takes another series of turns. Not only is the website down but an examination of the suit filed by Apple shows that the Cupertino Goliath wants Psystar to recall all Open Computer and OpenServ systems sold by the company since April. It seems that Steve Jobs is out to totally sink Psystar and put an end to Mac clones."
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple particularly doesn't like things like this, (Score:2, Insightful)
EULA w/ full force of law (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that Apple filed approx a day after the WoW copyright decision. If there was some doubt on Psystar beating Apple on the validity of of the EULA...it is pretty safe to say that Psystar is about to get slapped down.
Re:Oh Yeah! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's also portable. This joke now works without context, for people who know what a Pystar is.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, IBM "got out of the game". No, it was not necessarily bad for them.
Apple demands? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, how about the thousands of us who demand a headless, non-pro, non-laptop computer, with actual desktop/decent parts in it?
Mac mini: piss-poor GPU and low-capacity/slow LAPTOP 2.5" drive in a DESKTOP computer?
iMac: fuckin' all-in-one computer with stupid glossy screens and low quality LCDs with not even average GPU choices.
Mac Pro: are you fucking insane? I don't need that much power (and even the GPU options for that one are ridiculous).
Make the Mac mini taller/bigger, put a 3.5" drive and a half-decent GPU in it (the ability to run Starcraft II and Diablo III at medium settings) and it WILL sell. A lot. You have no fuckin' idea how much people loathe all-in-one computers.
End of a Story (Score:4, Insightful)
If Psystar were rich enough, they could win their case against Apple and we could see Mac clones on the market like we saw IBM PC clones in the 80's. But still, what would be the point in having Mac clones ? We'd start to see an OS (Mac OS) that crashes all the time because the hardware is "not supported officially". So we would be forced to install an alternative OS on the machine, like Linux or BSD. Ok it could work great but it works as great on PCs.
Really I'm not trying to troll/start a flamewar, I'm just wondering.
Re:Apple particularly doesn't like things like thi (Score:5, Insightful)
Has the price changed that much? Last I looked, Apple was actually competitive (within $100, sometimes cheaper) with commodity hardware. The only difference is, you can't get a Mac without the bells and whistles.
In other words, you get exactly what you pay for, which includes $1k of hardware you don't actually need.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM only produced the hardware, Microsoft produced the software and look where they are now...
Apple produce both, by your reckoning Apple would be selling about the same level of hardware that they are now, but selling millions of units of software.
Also when you talk of retaining control, look at the absolutely farcical situation with AmigaOS 4. They are trying so hard to retain control that they've pushed away any customers they might have ever had.
Yup, they're taking the money & running... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:IBM PC (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:End of a Story (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:IBM PC (Score:4, Insightful)
iPhone anyone?
Let's be honest here (Score:3, Insightful)
Who here would expect Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft to NOT do anything if a competitor suddenly started to sell compatible systems or even just emulators for their own systems?
Remember that Apple sells systems, not computers. This may be an alien concept to kids today, but at the beginning, all companies were selling computer+OS systems and they were all proprietary (Apple II, Mac, Atari ST, Amiga, CoCo2+OS9, C64+GeOS, etc).
Also, don't be two-faced about this: you don't like it when companies don't follow GPL and other similar licenses, but when it's Apple or Microsoft, why wouldn't they be allowed to do the same?
I hope there's one good thing to come out of this mess: Apple selling a headless, iMac-specs computer (i.e. ATI/nVidia GPU with a 3.5" desktop hard drive). Heck, why don't they just make a case for the actual iMac motherboard to lower R&D costs?
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EULA w/ full force of law (Score:5, Insightful)
IAALS (I am a Law Student). Having worked with litigators, I can gurantee that yesterday's ruling (which actually sets almost no precedent because it relied on existing copyright doctrines despite what Slashdotters thought) had exactly 0 to do with the filing date.
I know this because:
1. If there had been any real precedent set, the litigators would have taken at least several weeks to analyze the decision, make an educated guess as to whether the decision will survive appeals, recraft the complaint, and make sure all of this was OK with the client (Apple) before proceeding. Litigation takes time.
2. The actual filing date of the lawsuit was July 3rd, and the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is strong, but it does not enable time travel.
Apple is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, just less successful.
Re:Apple particularly doesn't like things like thi (Score:2, Insightful)
because it exposes the fact that today's Mac desktops are just commodity hardware with an extra $1,000 charge for an OS X dongle (TPM).
Let's not get out of hand here. $1000 premium is a bit of a stretch when you compare pure hardware specs between vendors. Maybe a couple hundred, but certainly not $1000. Besides, I'll gladly pay a small premium for stability.
If you really want to bitch about premiums, then let's stop bullshitting here and talk about Vista MSRP. Those prices make OSX look like a bargain.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that going to work? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I bought something, it's now mine (the hardware anyway). I doubt Pystar can actually repossess any of the boxes. The entire demand by Apple is pretty silly. Apple's copyright claims can't possibly cover the possession of physical hardware. Very bizarre. I think Apple only has a claim against Psystar itself over copyright infringement (the distribution of hacked Apple patches). Personal use of OS X in breach of Apple's license would have to be an issue that Apple would have to deal with on a per user basis, which I doubt they are willing to do.
Re:apple will continue to suffer lost sales and pr (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny. This [yahoo.com] would almost make it seem like Apple is a very profitable company, who's investors seem quite pleased at the ROI they get from owning stock.
In fact, in almost every category that would define investor confidence AAPL outperforms MSFT, and leaves DELL and HPQ in the dust.
I fail to see any lost sales and profits in this equation. If I was a shareholder in AAPL, I'd be happy as punch right now.
Re:apple will continue to suffer lost sales and pr (Score:2, Insightful)
apple will continue to suffer lost sales and profits in till they come out with a real desktop mid-tower and they update the mini it is a joke at the price that it is at right now.
Er, have you stepped foot inside an Apple store lately? It's rather busy, which is a LOT more than I can say for 95% of the other stores in the area in this morbid economy. I don't exactly see their stock price slipping either. In fact, it's one of the few that have rebounded rather nicely so far this year.
All that being said, it's simple why you don't see more hardware options. Their hardware serves the same purpose as their software. Simplicity. It's a niche market, one they are marketing fairly well.
Re:Apple is... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Success" can be relative.
If I was an investor right now, I'd argue AAPL is more successful than MSFT.
MSFT has a gazillion bucks, but the ROI for their stockholders has suffered recently. Whereas AAPL under Jobs just keeps making stockholders money. Good money. If you bought AAPL and MSFT one year ago, you would have made 24% on AAPL, and lost 10% of MSFT.
Re:IBM PC (Score:2, Insightful)
These things aside, with other nearly-iPhones that are around (such as by LG [lge.com] and Meizu [engadget.com]), Apple still seems to be doing quite well on that end. Maybe there's something to be said about brand name (and, as some say, attention to detail)? By restricting the realm of what is an Apple device, this can be seen as an attempt to guarantee consistent quality.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If The Shoe Were on the Other Foot... (Score:2, Insightful)
What would be the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
But still, what would be the point in having Mac clones ?
Well, let's see... people looking for something that Apple doesn't currently produce could get a computer with OS X on it that fit those requirements.
Like... a conventional desktop with expansion slots.
Like... a laptop with a two-button trackpad and a decent keyboard.
Like... a laptop with a swappable drive bay. Or multiple hard drives.
Like... a compact Mac with a high performance hard drive and a real GPU.
Or, Apple could just quit being so damn insistent on making everything subservient to "style", and cut the market out from under the would-be clone makers by adding a couple of products to their product line... a "Mac mini Pro" for the desktop (it could even be cubical!) and a Thinkpad-equivalent laptop.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing is, it's not really the same thing since Psystar isn't an End User. So Honda might not be able to able to make you sign an agreement saying you'll only drive on Honda approved roads (but I don't know, maybe they can?), but Honda could probably make their dealerships sign an agreement saying they won't engage in certain business practices. The analogy isn't perfect, but analogies rarely are.
Because the thing is that Psystar is installing altering the software, copying it, and then distributing the copies. Hence, this isn't an issue of EULAs, but blatant copyright infringement unless they have a license. If the EULA specifically allowed this, they could try to use the EULA to protect themselves, but the EULA makes no provisions that allow them to do this.
Of course, IANAL, so I could be wrong.
No they don't (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of a WinMo device going into portrait mode by hitting a button or opening a slide-out keyboard, it has a tilt sensor, the Wiimote had one before the iPhone. Instead of a single touch, you can use 2 fingers, like in that Tom Cruise movie with seeing the future. Say it how it is, using terms like "multitouch" glorifies a rather arbitrary concept.
Innovation is 90% efficiency solar panels or 100 MPG cars or even the company that invented the hardware that makes multitouch work, something that doesn't exist, not utilizing things that are already available.
What Apple does is polish concepts, just like Blizzard. Blizzard didn't invent the RTS or MMO but they polished them into something really good (actually I hate WoW, but it is what it is).
LOL! (Score:2, Insightful)
If you go by "sales record" then Apple has less than 8% marketshare anyway, which means that pratically nobody wants a Mac to begin with.
I wish I could mod this funny. Even when Apple is making money hand over fist in the middle of a freakin' recession, arm-chair CEO's are trying to save poor stupid Apple. LOL
I wish Mac's were cheaper too, but they aren't. I also wish strippers were free... (as in "beer" - and disease for that matter).
Re:Apple is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I notice you didn't attempt to argue with the "evil" part of the GP poster's statement, though. . . :)
Re:IBM PC (Score:1, Insightful)
I know this is slashdot, but still... RTFA
Isn't this just a case of Psystar breaching Apple's EULA (End User Licensed Agreement)?
No. On the face of it this suit might seem a little petty given that each copy was legitimately purchased, but Apple claim that Psystar's Open Computer and OpenServ systems run a "modified unauthorized version of the Leopard operating system." Psystar has also been pushing modified versions of Apple's security updates (modified so that they'll work on Psystar's machines) via its website.
Re:Apple is... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect Apple is every bit as evil as Microsoft, just less successful.
Suspect? Imagine a world where Apple won the PC wars rather than Microsoft. Imagine what we'd be paying for computers with only a single supplier.
Of course, if Apple *had* won, they probably would've been broken up long ago as a monopoly, but it would've set the computer industry back at least a decade.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but at least they never leveraged their OS dominance by producing a "Microsoft PC" and then "phasing out" all the other hardware manufacturers. If Steve Jobs, through some twist of fate, had been in charge of Microsoft rather than Apple when he returned, that's exactly what would've happened.
And let's not even get into the fact that Apple competes via lawsuit orders of magnitude more often than Microsoft.
Apple is *far and away* more evil than Microsoft ever dreamed of being. They're fortunately just not the dominant player.
[And no, I'm not defending whatever evil Microsoft has done, only that they are not nearly as evil as they could've been.]
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Call it what you like, but handheld multitouch is fairly novel, and the automatic screen-turning isn't too shabby either.
IIRC these ideas and more where being thrown around on the OpenMoko mailing list before the iPhone was announced.
While I'm not going to dispute Apples success in putting everything together, I find it hard to credit them with technological innovation when these ideas were being casually thrown around by a bunch of random geeks on a mailing list.
By restricting the realm of what is an Apple device, this can be seen as an attempt to guarantee consistent quality.
Precisely. Which is why I say their marketing concepts are more innovative than their tech.
Re:Apple is... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are actually two differences: Apple is less successful, that's true; but the bigger difference is that Apple makes products that are above the threshold of usability. Some of them are Great, some of them are Good, and some of them are mediocre, but almost all of them are usable. Microsoft, on the other hand, has made maybe a half-dozen usable products in their history: a keyboard or two, a mouse or two, Excel, Explorer 5 Mac Version... uh... I can't think of any others, but there might be a couple more.
Re:apple will continue to suffer lost sales and pr (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the licence is binding, since the product can be returned, for full refund without penalty, as long as the software seal inside the package remains intact. Since the Licence agreement can be read withough installing or operning the software, there is a clear path for the user to take to refuse its terms.
Further, many products have not only use restrictions from the manufacturer, but under penalty of federal law, the use of certain devices in certain circumstances can be prevented. The FCC has a large part in that with anything that could potentially cause interference. The DMV has a lot to do with how a car can be used, loaded with cargo, and more.
In a more direct comparison, it have been held up in court that a software vendor can sue successfully for the use of non-commercial, or student only software in commercial spaces. Also, the resale of licenses for system-specific use, like anti virus and other subscription based packages, has also been protected.
In this case, the use of Apple's software on non-apple branded equipment would mean that the DRM functionality of that software (The requirements of an EFI firmware as well as a special ROM circuit) had been defeated, and thus is a violation of the DMCA as well as the software licence agreement.
Since the purchaser has 1) been ninformed of the licence, 2) been given an opportunity to refuse it without penalty, and 3) agree to the terms by performing a physical action (breaking the seal or clicking accept), then at that point it is no longer a licence, but a contract between parties. Licences can also be revolked, at will, by the issuer, with or without reason or provocation, and the continued use would thus be unlicenced and illegal. Apple has simply unlicenced every Psystar system.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple particularly doesn't like things like thi (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not even that bad. Compare the iMac to the Dell One, a very similar system, and the dell, missing some of those bells, whistles, and a lot of quality software, costs MORE. The Mac Pro 17" machines are VERY competitive (within $300 +/- of other name brand systems, depending on how much attention you pay to package details, battery life, and weight concerns).
If you want to overstate, fine, but keep in mind, subtract the $1000 in "unneeded parts" and the iMac is a $200 machine... NOT!
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem is redistributing the modified software for profit, big copyright no no. As I doubt any commercial software company would be ok with someone else selling modified versions of their software, this is just blatant infringement. I think this also shows why it took so long for Apple to sue, they needed to get everything in order to build a full case as the EULA by itself might not hold up. The copyright, image, trademarks, etc... side is something Apple can succeed on.
Re:Apple is... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Phasing out"? What are you talking about?
Changing the license agreement a la Apple so that Windows would only run on their own hardware they produce.
Bollocks. You're just making shit up because you hate Apple.
Are you serious? Apple is notorious for their lawsuits, starting from the infamous "look and feel" many moons ago.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there any precedent here?
FPGA manufacturers usually have a clause in their compilers that states the output of the compiler can only be used to program their proprietary chips. The courts ruled that the license is enforceable.
Saying that you can only run OSX on Apple's hardware sounds like the same thing. So if the court respects precedence, then Apple will win.
Sometimes, if you take an idea to its extreme you can find out if it is just or not. What if Microsoft said that it was illegal to use their operating system except with a Microsoft keyboard and a microsoft mouse?
Re:Apple demands? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the same thousands who make this demand also want this computer to be very customizable and to cost under $500 because that's what Dell is selling. There's not much profitability in this market. I suspect this is the main reason Apple hasn't gotten into the market. They're not going to compete with Dell, Lenovo, and countless others in this cutthroat pricing. Apple isn't in business to make computers that are unprofitable.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovation is 90% efficiency solar panels or 100 MPG cars or even the company that invented the hardware that makes multitouch work...
I think that's a very limited definition of "innovation."
A better definition might be "solving a problem through the novel application of technology". The technology might be completely new, or it might be existing technology used in a new way. Either one can be innovative.
Re:If The Shoe Were on the Other Foot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm, no. Microsoft would have every right to go after vendors who were including unlicensed, modified versions of Windows in their systems. How is this any different?
Psystar buys a license of OS X for each machine they sell? Apple may claim that the copies aren't licensed since they violate the EULA, but US copyright law doesn't limits copyright holders rights to prevent installation of software. Furthermore, the doctrine of first sale gives Psystar the right to resell OS X.
Re:IBM PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Call it what you like, but handheld multitouch is fairly novel, and the automatic screen-turning isn't too shabby either.
There's really no competition if one is comparing Apple to IBM in terms of innovation. In one corner, you have a neat interface based on multi-touch (they didn't invent the multi touch sensor itself). In the other corner you have the hard disk.
Going AC to avoid the Troll (Score:0, Insightful)
Guys why does it drive you so nuts that Apple won't do what you tell them to? It's called a free market and it's their business. Don't like their conditions? Then don't buy one of their computers. If you want an OS structured the way you want then why don't you get together with a bunch or your friends and build one.....Oh wait, already done, it's called LINUX! Just because Steve Jobs doesn't want to release a standalone OS doesn't make him the antichrist. It's only computer geeks that think that way. The average person barely notices. My business partner was in an Apple store a week before the new iPhone came out and he was stunned because it was packed on a week day. People were buying everything from iPods to high end desktops. His business model is working and Microsoft's growth is flat and they are loosing ground to Mac because it appeals to the average user. Chill out, crank up your Linux system you hand built and be happy.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
> I find it hard to credit them with technological innovation
> when these ideas were being casually thrown around by a bunch
> of random geeks on a mailing list.
And there wasn't any technological innovation involved with the Apollo program, either. I mean, Kennedy talked about us going to the moon ten years before we got there. And he was just a politician!
Sorry, I know it's a bad analogy, but the argument was bad to begin with.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Who modded the above "Troll"? It's true. Ideas are just ideas. Product is what matters, and though I applaud OpenMoko they're a bit late to the game.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Beg to differ. Right of first sale or whatever nonsense it's called.
I already bought product XYZ without limitation. You're trying to enforce a contract after the fact. The "agree or return it" is still an attempt at enforcing a contractual obligation after the fact. I simply decline the entire agreement in whole - including that part. They can't force an action upon me (such as returning) that I don't agree to.
Re:Lame (Score:2, Insightful)
That such a thing could sometime be considered valid is a testimony to how much law makers/judiciaries are on the payroll of big business.
Re:IBM PC (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, what about when there was no sale between the first and second party? Apple certainly didn't sell the security updates to Psystar. I want to make a clear separation between OS X itself and the security updates, they are two separate things. If Psystar can rig the bios to boot and run OS X with no modifications to OS X itself, no problem. But if they have to modify the update packages to work, did they legally obtain them and do they have the right to modify them for this purpose? And this is where I say no, no they do not, its a copyright thing only at this point for the security updates. The same applies to the previous example of MS's OEM licensing, yes they have the license but if I don't have it then I can't distribute my changes to others.
They could post info on how to let end users do the changes and be ok, more or less Apple would probably frown on that too, but to build a business around making these changes available to end users is where it crosses the line. Once money is clearly involved its a whole lot easier to sue.
First sale law could get a little fuzzy about copies. If Psystar modified each update separately for each of their customers, then maybe.
Re:Apple is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine a world where Apple won the PC wars rather than Microsoft.
It would almost surely be a better place than what we have now, that's for sure.
I mean, if nothing else, everyone working at Norton and Symantec would have to go get real jobs instead.
Re:Oh Yeah! (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks!
A/C
Are you admitting to replying to your own A/C post, or did you forget to click a certain checkbox? :P
Not A/C
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple demands? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple isn't in business to make computers that are unprofitable.
Interestingly, neither are Dell or Lenovo.
Re:End of a Story (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lame (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean that if I visit this page [amazon.com] (which unless my browser's search function doesn't work, appears to not contain the word "license" anywhere; in every way it appears to offer an item for sale), click on "Add to shopping cart," and then "proceed to check out" (other sales terms), then before I get to the screen where I give Amazon my credit card number (note that I'm dealing with Amazon, and have not yet conducted any business with Apple), the transaction is going to be interrupted by Apple (the party you're claiming I'm about to enter into a contract with) and they're going to show me a license?
Wow. Amazon.com must be a really complex web site.
Really? I remember signing some forms from both of those entities, before they gave me a card. I had quid-pro-quo agreements with my DMV and credit card issuer. In fact, every single contract in the rest of my entire life -- every single business or person that I am somehow bound to -- had some sort of direct transaction like that. I've either met them or at least sent 'em some paperwork with my signature, or damn, at least sent them an email (things are getting a lot less formal/provable here, but as a matter of honor I think it's fair to say that a non-forged email is your word) or at least made an http post to their server. I mean, there's at least some sort of interaction between the two parties.
But somehow, software publishers are a special case, huh? They are the one type of business, within all of the realm of humanity's economic endeavors since the dawn of history, where the usual rules and customs don't apply, huh?
Nobody's talking about disallowing software licenses. My former employer used sales contracts where the customer signed a piece of paper before they received the software, and if there was ever a dispute over who agreed to what, we had that piece of paper as reference/evidence.
What we're talking about here, are fake licenses, that one (sometimes both!!) of the so-called "parties" weren't really a party to any agreement, and there's no evidence that an agreement (or even any communication at all!) happened. This is a meeting of the minds?!?
Fraud is not a type of commerce that I value. I'm sure there are some people in Nigeria who would argue that failing to legalize their scams is costing the country some trade, but that doesn't mean anyone is going to take them seriously.
Copyright law provides an excellent, if imperfect, solution to dealing with the rights of software publishers and users. If Apple isn't satisfied with that, then they are free to start using sales contracts. Sure, that will cost them most of their customers (because it's incredibly inconvenient) but that's the price of greed -- of wanting more from their customer than money -- more than what most software publishers (and music publishers and book publishers, everything covered by copyright) need.
Re:IBM PC (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple's marketing dept is smart enough to realize that in 2008 a television commercial is not a comprehensive marketing plan.
Other companies would KILL for the kind of press Apple gets when it announces products. Did you need to see a commercial to know that the iPhone was coming out? Did anyone?
Re:Let's be honest here (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone above said, if someone started making boxes that could run Wii software Nintendo would, and should, come after them like the fist of an angry god.
Also, Apple is not in the same business as Microsoft. They don't have the market control that Microsoft has, nor have they tried to restrict to make a profit at the expense of competition within a related-but-separate field of computer hardware the same way Microsoft did. When it comes to Apple they -are- the hardware, so they get to run their business the way they want.
So, to sum up, I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just saying, your GPL objections aren't actually based on the reality of the GPL'd software in use. And whether or not you like the idea, they're selling a full product, software and hardware, in a closed environment just like a console. Of course, if I wasn't a Mac user from way back and a bit of a geek I woudn't know this, so I honestly hope you reconsider your position.
Re:Apple demands? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, I'm sure that Steve Jobs loses sleep every night over the "thousands of [you]" whose sales he's missing, but I imagine the piles of money from the *millions* of Macs they're selling every quarter comforts him somewhat.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see the mythical midrange xMac as much as any other geek, but the reality is that the business case doesn't fit very well into Apple's existing strategies. They are first and foremost a consumer company. And consumer means mass market, not geek-niche that wants to run a moderately priced widely upgradable dual-head machine.
Apple's has pegged their market very well - they know that laptops are by and large the place to be, and they don't bother with the low end or low margin products at all. That success in market segmentation has shown up in their financial results.
So as much as you might want a midrange headless desktop and think it makes sense for technical reasons, the business case is harder to make. While there may be strong support for such a machine in the online geek communities, that represents a very small portion of Apple's market overall, especially when you consider that the upgradable nature of the machine in question would keep Apple's margins quite low (if they price it where people expect, nobody will upgrade to the higher margin parts since they can do it themselves, and if they start it at a high price to make up for it, people won't see much difference between that and a low end Mac Pro).
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course at the time your geeks talked about "wouldn't it be cool if", the features were present in the test models of the iPhone - while they are still in the "wouldn't it be cool" phase for OpenMoko.
We're talking about whether the ideas themselves are innovative, not whether Apple is able to put ideas together in a mass consumer friendly fashion.
You appear to have mistaken this for the "let's bash OpenMoko" thread.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, implementing a technology that was seen in a movie also qualifies as innovation. It's quite a bit easier to implement technology using computer-generated graphics than it is to implement it in real life.
Re:IBM PC (Score:3, Insightful)
People who have never created anything worthwhile always ignore the importance of actually creating, as opposed to simply coming up with the ideas.
Rant... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why can't a company create a product for the market they want? What gives us the right to buy a product that clearly states what it's for, then, get upset about when it doesn't work the way that we want it? Why do we feel that we have the right to create a market for a product that the creator didn't intend to?
Seriously.
Apple created Mac OS X. They specifically state that it's for Apple computers. They aren't hiding it from you. They made the decision to make this software for their hardware only. What's wrong with that? Why can't a company limit it's own market?
I don't want to hear this "Apple is monopoly" bullshit. They aren't a monopoly, they are a brand. Ford has a "monopoly" on Ford cars that run Ford engines and Ford computers and Ford seatbelts. Sony has a "monopoly" on the Sony operating system that's runs on the Sony Playstation. The operating system is an Apple product for Apple hardware. They just happen to also sell it in a box. Just because its in a box, on a shelf, and you can buy it, doesn't give you the right to decide that you can change what its for. No one is forcing consumers to buy Apple computers. There are other competitors in the market. Nope, no monopoly here.
It's just so aggravating to read the posts. Fuck Psystar. They deliberately tried to tired to sell a product created and sold by another company in a way they didn't want it to be done. Why shouldn't they go down?
Really. Someone explain it to me? Why is Psystar entitled to do this? Why are we entitled to install Mac OS X on hardware Apple tells us not to?
Anyone?
Is it anything more than people who just want to get their way. Why doesn't Apple make a headless Mac for me? Why can't I run Mac OS X on my Dell? Why why why... I want I want I want... wahhhh...
It's like reading a collective bunch of three year olds. Apple doesn't want to sell you their product, for whatever reason they see fit. Shut up and deal with it. It's not an issue of EULA's and copyright and DRM. It's the fact that people are just pissed of they can't get their way. It's why this country is going to shit... people going out of their way- way beyond the realms of common sense and moderation- to obtain their way. Your sense of entitlement sickens me. The fact that Apple is successful without you getting what you want pisses you off even more.
Honestly, you can replace Apple with any other company. It doesn't matter.
Operating systems exist out there that are licensed that you can do whatever you want with them. Go try one out. If you don't like it, learn to code so you can make it something you like.
And yes, I have more custom built Linux systems in my home and in my place of employment than I do Mac or Windows systems. So don't give me a lecture about free software or the GPL.
I feel better now. End of rant.
Re:IBM PC (Score:2, Insightful)
I most certainly wasn't talking out of my ass. I did think the new iPhone fixed it. Assuming you're not talking out of your ass, I'll have to revise what I thought. But I still thought it.
Re:What would be the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
The iMac is a conventional desktop as far as Apple is concerned.
I understand that. The point of this discussion though has nothing to do with whether Apple is "right" or "wrong", or what should be conventional, I am simply answering the OP's question: "where is the demand for things like the Psystar box coming from?". And one of the sources is the disconnect between what Apple supplies and what the market demands. There really is a huge demand for what actually is conventional (as opposed to what Apple believes should be conventional), and Apple isn't filling it. If Apple doesn't want to fight this battle over and over again, then they can only win by surrendering.