Psystar "Definitely Still Shipping" Mac Clones 833
Preedit writes "Continuing its defiance of Apple, Psystar is reassuring customers that it is "definitely still shipping" its line of Mac clones. And, in a further nose-thumbing at Steve Jobs, Psystar this week said it's now making Leopard restore disks available to its customers, even as Apple insists that Mac clones sold to date be recalled.
In its story on the latest developments, Infoweek is reporting that tiny Psystar apparently has no intention of backing down in its legal dispute with the much larger Apple."
Good for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Follow the money (Score:2, Insightful)
Its easy. DONT GO TO COURT.
Hide in a corner doing whatever they do is their best option, and when the legal hounds come a'knockin they be a runnin.
They are trying to get sued by Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think any sane company will break Apple's agreements, licenses on USA soil.
Remember the company shipped "Apple G6 Desktop" and got sued big time? It wasn't based at USA and they weren't trying that hard to get sued. Some media guy browsing Alibaba found the machine, that is all.
For some reason we can't know, Pystar looks like they will be very, very happy if Apple sues them further or this thing becomes more complex.
Would you dare to mess with a gigantic company who even tried to sue State of New York for "Apple" logo? If you dare, would you start your business in USA? Some very big promises/guarantees by very big corporate powers must be given to Pystar. Don't get surprised if there is real IT media left and uncovers it.
Re:Well good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one am tired of Apple's Monopolistic business practices on their Mac range.
Isn't that like saying you're tired of Slashdot's monopolistic business practices on its Slashdot brand? By default, every company has a monopoly on its own products.
Re:Follow the money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Futile (Score:4, Insightful)
Its the restore disks that will be their downfall! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's going to be their downfall in this - the derivative work.
Re:Good for them... (Score:2, Insightful)
But didn't Apple spend a whole ton of money to write and maintain Mac OS X? Don't they specifically state that it's only to be run on Apple hardware? On other words, isn't OS X a specific benefit of owning an Apple system and licensed as such?
Why is it OK to break Apple's license? Would you be saying "good for them" if the news article was about someone breaking the GPL?
WRONG!! (Score:1, Insightful)
Watch carefully!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a VERY interesting case. Who is Psystar?
Seriously, out of nowhere, a tiny company starts to sell mac clones. It was so sketchy, we on slashdot originally called it a hoax.
Now, they got the guys who beat Apple once before representing them in the fight.
Curiouser and curiouser. It may be an intentionally staged dispute by various oems to create a Mac market for themselves. Vista is not moving boxes, but Mac compatible motherboards may be profitable.
The objective may be Apple's refusal to allow MacOS on non-Mac hardware. If they win, and Apple is not able to enforce this restriction, I can see a whole bunch of clones flooding the market.
Re:Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WRONG!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Everybody will win: more folks will run a more secure OS than Windows and Apple will still get all the OS sales.
Most importantly, the fanbois will no longer be special and will find some other shiny, overpriced toy to validate their whiny, shallow, pseudo-intellectual, metrosexual, idiotic existance. They'd probably be much happer(and less whinier) if they spent their hard-earned money at the gay disco instead.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
How does Apple have a monopoly? They are hardly the only OS or PC vendor on the market. This is like saying that Dell has a monopoly on Dell computers.
Re:Plus c,a change, plus c'est la meme chose (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
But didn't Apple spend a whole ton of money to write and maintain Mac OS X?
Ever heard of BSD?
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was 1990s which clones were legal, Apple wouldn't license Mac to Pystar company. If you look at the clone makers, they were very well established companies with years of experience in Macintosh market.
Apple founder believes software and hardware should be perfectly integrated just like your average household device. They even do same thing on iPhone. Why nobody thinks about the possibility of licensing iPhone OS to other handset manufacturers? Because they are phones? Well, for Apple, a computer should be like a phone which runs software perfectly. That includes OS X itself.
If you consider your nice little guys only help to OSXFree86 community was providing "realtek nic driver", you can get a very goood clue about the quality of those computers.
They are fraud, nothing else.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Or Apple's reputation of "just working" will go down the tubes because they no longer have total control over the hardware.
If Apple starts trying to support every combination of 3rd party hardware out there, OSX will start having reliability problems just like Windows does.
It's simply the Mac business model (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple has always held a tight grip on their hardware and software standards. If you don't approve, you don't have to buy their stuff. That is what ~95% (though rapidly decreasing) of people choose to do.
But it is precisely that total control that lets Apple deliver such a relatively high quality product. I'll admit that Leopard is not up to Apple standards... but overall, their products are vastly superior to Windows, despite the huge resources and community working on the Windows environment compared to the Mac world.
The control of hardware and software allows Apple to not have to adapt to the whims of a thousand hardware makers, and it lets them produce a computer like the iPhone (which is mostly just a little Mac), which clearly people love as compared to other "smart" phones. Why do people love it? Because the crushing grip Apple keeps on their standards results in a relatively easy experience for the end-user.
Does this qualify as fanboy bullshit? Why? I'm just saying if you don't like it, don't use it. But the facts speak for themselves. People hate Vista, the average Joe can't/won't figure out linux, and people generally enjoy the Apple experience.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not so much about monopolies, but perceived monopolies. Most people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that run osX. Many people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that will run media editing programs. Far too many people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that, "just work"(tm).
Re:Good for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
But didn't Apple spend a whole ton of money to write and maintain Mac OS X?
Yes they did, so if I wanted to buy a copy, I'd pay them for it. We're not talking about warez here, we're talking about the freedom to run software that I've paid for on whatever system I damn well like.
Re:They are trying to get sued by Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you dare to mess with a gigantic company who even tried to sue State of New York for "Apple" logo?
Depends. If I don't have a family to support, a respectable cushion fund, and can represent myself... why not?
Even if I make a complete fool of myself, the experience alone would be worth it. If, by some freak occurrence, I actually won.... Well, let's just say I'd like that fact engraved on my grave.
If you dare, would you start your business in USA?
Since the US legal system is the only one I have even a basic knowledge of, yes. :)
Re:Good for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this isn't the exact same situation but I can walk into an Apple store and buy a copy of OS X and go home and install on it on a system that isn't Apple. That should be my choice. I'm happy to give up whatever rights I have for support by doing this but it should be my choice. The same goes for all products. If I buy an iPhone, an EeePC, or a Dell, it should be my choice to mod it in anyway. I paid the money they asked for the product and now it becomes mine. They are willing to share their other software with my Windows machine (iTunes, Safari) so why not let us use their OS? We are paying for a license to use it.
Just my 2 cents.
Re:Good for them... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why?
1. The 'license' is not a signed contract.
2. The contract is completely one-sided, making it 'unfair'.
3. First sale doctrine.
Let's not forget that if Apple wanted to maintain complete control over their software they could have avoided selling it separately or forced people to sign actual contracts. They chose not to do this because it would be less profitable. But it's legally a bit gray, albeit less so now than in the past. One's heart hardly bleeds for the company that takes a gamble and suffers the consequences. (Cell phone companies have people sign contracts ALL THE TIME, it is not that difficult.)
Now, we can argue until we are blue in the face about any of these, but until Apple actually takes Psystar to court (and really, ultimately, the Supreme Court), we won't have any definitive answers. So one can hardly blame Psystar for taking a shot.
Re:Good for them... (Score:2, Insightful)
But didn't Apple spend a whole ton of money to write and maintain Mac OS X? Don't they specifically state that it's only to be run on Apple hardware? On other words, isn't OS X a specific benefit of owning an Apple system and licensed as such?
Why is it OK to break Apple's license? Would you be saying "good for them" if the news article was about someone breaking the GPL?
That's why Apple is Microsoft-esque, not by the week, but right from the beginning. There's nothing wrong with hoarding rights to your cash cow and IP (marketing efforts gone in packaging OSX and Mac's Intel based hardware). It is just standard big business practice.
Apple is just not that different from Microsoft.
Even if they win, they'll still lose (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if Psystar somehow manages a court victory that would allow them to purchase and sell copies of OS X installed on generic x86 boxes, all that Apple has to do is stop selling OS X to any retail outlet other than its own. If Psystar can't get legal copies of the software to put on the machines it sells, there isn't any legal way that they can stay in business at that point, other than going to Apple stores and purchasing copies of OS X at full retail price.
We're also heading towards a future of digital distribution. It started with music, has moved to movie rentals, and looks as though it can be expanded to anything in the near future. What's to stop Apple from selling you the newer versions of OS X online? In five years when everyone wants to upgrade to Puma or whatever else they end up calling it, you have the option of downloading the upgrade to your computer instead of having to go out and purchase any physical install media.
Does it really matter if the court rules that Psystar can do whatever they want with a copy of OS X once they already have it if Apple does everything that they possibly can in order to prevent Psystar from ever obtaining a copy of OS X?
Re:WRONG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody will win: more folks will run a more secure OS than Windows and Apple will still get all the OS sales.
Uhh. OSX is not very secure. IIRC a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up and the OSX machine went down first. Even before the Windows machine. OSX is secure cause nobody attacks it. As soon as more people run it you will see its shortcommings.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
More choice = better. Simple, really.
[Citation needed]
I don't like choice WRT Ethernet cables, or WIFI standards, or inter net protocols. I'm happy with IP having the monopoly of the internet.
Aside from that, Apple has no right to say what other manufacturer can build.
Of course, they can refuse to support OSX outside of Apple computers, that's their business choice.
Re:Well good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WRONG!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an entirely different case. In the case you cited, Formula were distributing a hacked copy of the Apple II software without a license. In the Pystar case, Pystar are buying a copy of OS X from Apple for every computer they sell. Apple are getting their $129 for every sale.
The first case is pure copyright infringement - you can't just take a copy of someone else's copyright work and distribute (modified or unmodified) copies without falling foul of copyright law.
The second case is about violation of the EULA. If copyright law regards installing, modifying, and running a computer program as non-infringing use (which it ought to, since a computer program you can't do any of this with is pretty useless) then a EULA is invalid because you don't need any rights from the copyright holder than copyright law grants. More likely, given the broken state of IP law in the US, it will be found that you do need to agree to a license, but whether the terms imposed by Apple are legal remains to be seen.
In the worst case, Apple will win on the basis that their EULA prevents this. In the best case, Apple will lose because EULAs are not required for computer software and this will set a precedent that no EULA is valid (distribution licenses, like any Free Software license, would be unaffected since these grant you rights beyond what copyright law gives). In the middle case, the validity of EULAs in general will be upheld but the restrictions in question (no installing it on non-Apple hardware) will be deemed unreasonable and unenforceable.
Re:Even if they win, they'll still lose (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Psystar buys them in the Apple store and tries on the "first sale principle".
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, well, problem is they are subsidizing the retail value of the OS with hardware. You get OS X for $129 because they are more interested in selling hardware. Take that away and they become another MS and the cost of the OS jumps. It also becomes big bloated mess like Windows (and Linux, sorry) because they have to support unlimited permutations of hardware.
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They are trying to get sued by Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
If they win, anyone can ship OS X installed PC and believe me there are lot better companies with very known brands to ship it.
So it is like a suicide mission but for who?
Re:Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple are getting their $129 for every sale.
But Apple has set that price point with the restriction of "must be run on Apple-branded hardware". Who's to say the price wouldn't be $478 for a non-Apple-hardware license? Think of it as an "upgrade price" for people who already bought something else from the manufacturer.
Apple has chosen not to release a version of the OS without the hardware restriction, and I'm open to debate about whether or not they should, or whether or not the EULA is enforceable. But it's disingenuous to suggest that $129 is fair compensation just because there is some version of the software license available for that price, particularly when the retail price of Windows is more like $250.
About 20 years late (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Even if they win, they'll still lose (Score:3, Insightful)
That'll work...
Considering that they sell out of Fry's and now Best Buy of all things, I don't think you realize how unviable that route will be for Apple. They need those other places because they can't afford to open up a bunch of those Apple stores to offset the loss of those venues.
Re:It's simply the Mac business model (Score:1, Insightful)
The vast majority of the general public "hate vista" because they were told to, not because they have ever used it. "Vista sux" is a pretty false reality if you've ever used it with good drivers and and up to snuff hardware.
Re:Even if they win, they'll still lose (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Apple requires you register your system serial number, and limits the number of copies they'll sell to you.
Re:Even if they win, they'll still lose (Score:2, Insightful)
They can still sell systems out of Best Buy and Fry's no problem.
You'll just see OS X disappear off the shelves and go to online-only sales, where you download and burn using your superdrive or you have a copy shipped to you.
Either way, if Psystar wins it's likely that Apple would constrict the supply enough that the only way Psystar would be able to continue would be to either buy one mac for every psystar they sell or violate Apple's copyright.
Re:Well good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, if such software was open sourced, for example, people might be able to come up with new and beneficial uses - not to mention being able to fix problems themselves.
Or do you not remember honda's "Accidental" higher mileage clocking that if people had access to the software, they could fix themselves. http://autos.aol.com/article/general/v2/_a/honda-odometer-problem/20070220091309990002 [aol.com]
Also, they use proprietary stuff just to connect to the car that is prohibitive to the consumer (quite intentionally). You don't think those devices actually cost 1000$ or so, do you?
Cars are an example of proprietary gone wrong.
Re:Good for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, well, problem is they are subsidizing the retail value of the OS with hardware. You get OS X for $129 because they are more interested in selling hardware. Take that away and they become another MS and the cost of the OS jumps. It also becomes big bloated mess like Windows (and Linux, sorry) because they have to support unlimited permutations of hardware.
If indeed they are well subsidizing the retail value of the OS with hardware, it still shouldn't be anyone else's problem but theirs. It's their job to adapt their business model to the open market, it is not the market's job to adapt to their business model.
Of course they shouldn't have to support anyone's hardware but their own. However, if I build a completely original box in my garage which can run OSX, and I sell and support it, why should Apple be allowed to shut me down?
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that is exactly the point. Apple hardware is subsidizing the OS.
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? It is a commodity good sold off the shelf - it is NOT a licensed product despite whatever bullshit is present in the EULA. You buy it without signing a contract off the shelf therefore you have the right of first sale to install it on anything you can put it on (aside from violating copyrights of course, so that means installing it on one workstation), use it as a coaster, sell it for a zillion times the price you paid for it (as long as you retain no backups) or use a heat wire cutter and carve the disc into a shuriken (local laws may prohibit the possession of a throwing star). Apple doesn't really have any legal basis to prevent your exercising your right of first sale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
The law doesn't enforce buiseness models (Score:5, Insightful)
The law should not care about apple's (or anyone else's) buiseness model. It should just care about providing a framework for a competitive market.
In my opinion, any license provision which enforces vertical integration should be unenforcable. I have not read TFA (hey, this is slashdot!), so I'll make a generic example. Let's say apple sells an operating system. It also sells computers with the os preinstalled. Let's say somebody else starts buying the operating system from apple, buying hardware from somewhere else, and selling the hardware with the operating system preinstalled. First sale doctrine should allow this. The assertion that the software is licensed rather than sold shouldn't in my non-lawyer opinion hold in court, since there are no recurring payments.
This is good for competition because it would force apple to have their hardware be competitively priced. Of course, if their hardware has a high cool factor (like the macbook air, or the iphone) and people are willing to pay extra for that, that doesn't mean it has to be cheap.
Re:About 20 years late (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Its the restore disks that will be their downfa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's simply the Mac business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never met a single iPhone user who has had extensive use of a smart phone. Most iPhone users probably couldn't even come up with a somewhat accurate definition of a smart phone. Most probably know nothing about PalmOS or WindowsCE. Your remark is FUD, at best.
Does this qualify as fanboy bullshit? Why?
Because what you're saying really isn't "If you don't approve, you don't have to buy their stuff." What you're really saying is "When Apple can no longer control the hardware OSX will be another Vista." This may be true but that still doesn't hold water if it's legal. If a Mac is so superior that it is worth the money involved than people will not buy the clones and they will go under due to the alleged high standards of Apple. Otherwise it's just a bunch of lip service and deserves to wither on the vine.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Buying a MacBook Air for performance is like buying one of those Smart Cars for towing capacity. The MacBook Air is about portability and designed for road warriors who want something lightweight that can do most things. The performance is okay as it was intended to be better than most sub-notebooks but not as good as regular notebooks. If you want performance, that's a MacBook Pro. For more general needs, that's a MacBook.
Re:Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fair compensation because it's what Apple charges.
If they want more money, they should charge more.
A seller's intent does not enter into it. My local grocery store sells peaches for about 50 cents each, intending that they be eaten. If I buy a peach for 50 cents and instead use that peach in some mysterious way to create an invention which makes me millions of dollars, that in no way entitles the local grocery store to any more than their original 50 cents, nor does it make the situation in any way unfair to them.
Apple sets their price with the assumption that buyers will be using the product on Apple hardware. If that assumption gets broken, that's Apple's problem for making it, not the buyer's fault for breaking it.
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL gives you rights that copyright would not normally allow. EULAs take away rights that the doctrine of first sale would normally permit. That's the difference.
The first sale doctrine allows you to sell the software to someone else. A clause in a EULA that doesn't allow you to sell the software on is not valid. However, the first sale doctrine doesn't affect anything else in the EULA. If you bought MacOS X with the intention to install it on a Dell, then read the EULA and find out it doesn't allow it, then you have the right to return the software, or you can make use of the first sale doctrine and sell it to me. But I will be bound by the EULA in exactly the same way, and I can't install the software on my HP computer either.
Re:Futile (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:About 20 years late (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep...and the big loser was IBM, who was trying to dominate the PC market with their hardware and an OS that they had neglected to control because they did not understand the importance of software. When people figured out that you did not have to buy a box from IBM to run DOS (or later, Windows), the PC became a mere commodity, prices dropped, and we all benefited (except for IBM, of course).
Apple saw this, and avoided IBM's fate by tying its OS closely to it hardware: Macs were built on Motorola CPUs, and had a proprietary architecture; MacOS would only run on that architecture. Apple had chosen not to go head with Microsoft as a software company, and continued to survive primarily as a hardware company. When someone tried to clone that hardware without permission (and permission wasn't forthcoming expect for a short interval when Apple flirted with licensing), Apple went after them for patent infringement.
However, all that changed when Apple adopted what is essentially the generic Wintel hardware architecture: now the only thing that prevents people from building boxes that run Apple's OS is the EULA under which the OS is sold. That is a much weaker position than Apple was in previously. You don't have to break any patent laws to build a "Mac Clone"—there's nothing proprietary about the hardware platform any more. (You do have to be careful to include only hardware that the OS supports, of course.) As others have pointed out, tying software to a particular brand of hardware may very well be in violation of US anti-trust law.
It also seems to me that the morality of Apple's position has been undermined. There is nothing special or innovative about today's Macs, except maybe the stylish cases. Yet, Apple sells these boxes for a considerable mark-up—and insists that we can only run their OS on boxes that carry their logo. In the PC business, at least, Apple has ceased being an innovator and is merely capitalizing on their historic prestige and slick marketing.
Question: I understand there are some provisions in the Apple OS that keep it from running on a generic PC platform. Can someone tell me exactly what those provisions are, and what has to be done to circumvent them? —No, I'm not planning to build myself a Mac, I'm just curious if getting around Apple's safeguards involves actions that might themselves break laws, for example re-writing any part of the OS could conceivably be a copyright infringement, right?
Re:It's simply the Mac business model (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good for them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WRONG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X supports quite nearly as much hardware as Windows. It's a matter of getting good drivers written.
There's a conflicting statement if I ever saw one. It supports nearly as much hardware as Windows, but the drivers don't exist. That would imply that it doesn't support the hardware.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them... (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Follow the money (Score:3, Insightful)
"Would you dare to ship "Windows Vista" on a no name CDR and sell it on street next to police station?"
This is utterly different to that situation, there is no copyright infrginrmrnt going on here, they are paying for the OS.
If you can't take an OS you have PAID FOR and install it on almost identical non-apple hardware, then the law is an ass.
"Apple wouldn't exist if their hardware/software combination magic didn't work."
Bullshit. Apple have sold their image to the masses. Psystar are pretty irrelevant to the apple market at the moment. They might eat into microsoft's though.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't get special privileges because it "only" holds a smaller percentage of the hundreds of millions of computer sales out there. Their computers are overpriced and they need competition.
I am confused. You state that Apple has a small market share, but doesn't have enough competition. It would seem to me that the other 85% of the market might provide it some competition. For example, there's this OS called windows, perhaps you've heard of it? I've heard it's pretty popular, and some people apparently choose it instead of OS X.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, lots of hardware vendors have various sorts of problems. I've certainly seen laptops from Dell and Compaq that have weird problem (crashing when you plug in peripherals, random reboots, etc.) that were caused by hardware defects and design flaws (which were admitted by their tech support). The two things that have gained Apple a particular reputation are:
I mean, when you're getting lots of customer complaints, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a bad product. Sometimes it means that your customers have very high expectations. I myself have bought multiple first-gen Apple products (including the Macbook Pro and iPhone) and haven't found the failure rate to be particularly out of line with other companies. Sure, that's just anecdotal evidence, but I worked helpdesk jobs for years, including supporting Dell, HP, and Apple products, so I don't think my anecdotal evidence is completely worthless. And one of the things I learned during that time was that all hardware vendors will sell you an occasional lemon. The good vendors are the ones who will fix or replace that lemon without too much hassle.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
I love how on newegg, etc, "Apple" hard drives are a separate section, and they cost a LOT more
Can you post some links? I just checked the "External Harddrives" and "Mac Harddrives" listings, filtering for Western Digital, and all the they didn't have any of the same models in both categories. The notable difference is that most of the non-Mac drives had just USB 2.0, whereas most of the Mac drives had USB 2.0, 1394a, 1394b, and eSATA. So if you can find a drive listed under both the "Mac Harddrives" and "External Harddrives" sections and is more expensive in the Mac listing, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to see it.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
IIRC a month or so back a windows, an OSX and a Linux machine were set up and the OSX machine went down first. Even before the Windows machine. OSX is secure cause nobody attacks it. As soon as more people run it you will see its shortcommings.
Not to burst your bubble, but that was when the attackers had physical access... As far as I'm concerned, if someone has physical access to your box, you're already screwed.
Re:It's simply the Mac business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess Mac fanboys just regurgitate anything Mac commercials present to them as "fact".
Are these Mac commercials?
http://news.google.com/news?q=vista%20adoption [google.com]
I'll just list those in order as I see them now:
Red Hat's Window of Opportunity Arises from Slow Vista Adoption Rates
Report Finds Dip in Microsoft's Browser Share
180 Million Vista Licenses Mean What?
Enterprise Adoption of Vista at 'Single Digits,' Report Says
More and More IT Pros are Ignoring Vista. Where's the Wow Now?
Vista Adoption Stymied Despite SP1
and so on and so on and so on and so on...
And on what basis do you say that the $130 Mac OS X costs more than the $340 Vista? Are you talking about the price of the PC (despite that not being what I was talking about)? Are you aware that pretty much every study of cost of ownership has shown Macs to cost less than Windows PCs (and usually less than any other PC)? And since Apple has gone to Intel hardware, most breakdowns of the cost of their machines show that they are priced inline with other major manufacturers. So the OS costs less, the cost of ownership is less, and the hardware is average-priced. Macs cost more how?
The Mac is a vastly superior user experience. A lot of people may have different opinions on this, but the majority tends to agree. Read any hardcore PC magazine (eg ComputerWorld, eWeek, etc.) when they review a new model of Mac. The primary reasons for using Windows are always that it has such a high adoption rate, or derivative arguments from that, such as your "more games" concept. I play tons of games on my Mac and haven't noticed anything missing from my life. But if I wanted to, I could shell out the fat chunk of change for Windows, boot my Mac into it, and play the same thousands of indistinguishable, lookalike games that you can.
I'm tired of companies selling me shit and then telling me I'm just licensing it and have no rights to use it.
But you were just defending Windows. Get your story straight. Apple has an EULA, but they don't even require a serial number to install OS X.
P.S. When you say that your computer plays the same songs... what software is it that most people use to play their songs?
Re:Futile (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Because I can't help but suspect you would scream bloody murder at a company that was modifying and redistributing GPL software for money and not following the terms of the license. After all, they paid the requested price ($0) and now they should be able to do what they want with it, right? No, because the price was actually $0 + agreement to the terms of the license. Apple is not charging $130 for OSX. They are charging $130 + agreement to the terms of the license.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the GPL license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the Apple license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Question (Score:1, Insightful)
Why does Apple do things this way?
Why not? Their business is very profitable in a difficult market/economy. Why would they want to split their business into software and hardware when they've already found a good way to stay competitive against both the OEMs and Microsoft by combining both software and hardware to produce seamless products?
Re:WRONG!! (Score:5, Insightful)
you still have a choice of wifi manufacturers, ethernet cable manufacturers and implementors of internet protocols, I think you are confusing standardization and monopolization, they're two entirely unrelated concepts.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Futile (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPL is not a license for how you can use the software, but rather a license for how you can further distribute the software. The law says you can't distribute copies without permission. The GPL is that permission. It's a completely different thing, despite the superficial similarities.
Re:It's simply the Mac business model (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying that the majority of all iPhone users have extensive experience with a smart phone? If not than your statement is false. Period.
I neither insulted people who buy an iPhone in general nor did I say that no one with an iPhone has this experience. It's great to see people post their experience with both sets of phones, for those who have it, but the majority of the current iPhone user base is people who have known Motorola Razors, some unknown model of Nokia or LG and the iPhone. You can not tell me you don't think this is the case.
And how do you know the scope of my experience? Talk about insulting.
This is exactly what will happen. I own a number of real Apple Macs, but I also own a fancy quad-core 8GB Hackintosh. I can attest that even the most modern Hacktintosh creation (like mine, running an unmolested retail copy of Leopard) is most definitely not as seamless an experience as a real Mac is. I'm not going to get rid of the Hackintosh, but I can say with some authority that the experience is sufficiently inferior to owning a real Mac that I wouldn't put up with it if I didn't enjoy tinkering with PC's.
That's fair but according to what I've read here the PC in question from the third party isn't coming with vanilla OS X. I agree that the experience is likely to be different but I would hope that even you would agree that it has the potential to be vastly different than your own. Psystar could certainly be fly-by-night but there is also a good chance that they have the talent on their side to create something that offers a robust experience.
From what you're saying it's like saying the user experience of every Vista user who isn't using a Vista badged machine should be disqualified from having their opinions known. There are tons of people, mostly amateurs from the get go, who are trying to put Vista on 8 year old hardware and having a bad time with it. Maybe OSX can do this seamlessly, I don't know but from the aspects of Linux I've also found that running the latest Ubuntu on one of my 8 year old PCs to be a painful (to say the least) experience. Should I hold this against Unbuntu or Linux in general? IMHO, not really. While fanbois will rave about how their pet OSs work fine "out of the box" the truth seems to be a bit different.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:4, Insightful)
PsyStar might be able to argue that, but it'd be a technicality. It might work for the copies PsyStar has already bought, but Apple would overcome it by issuing all new retail upgrades with "Upgrade Only" all over the box, disks, and manuals.
The "to be installed on Apple-branded computers only" line means it really is just an upgrade license, because those Apple-branded computers already have some earlier versions of the OS licensed. The PsyStar boxes don't.
Now, there's also the illegal tying route that PsyStar might argue, and a few other things probably as well.
I kind of hope Apple loses this one, but I wouldn't at all put money on that outcome.
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
And who'd guess that american trademark law requires trademark holders to act defensively of their trademarks or risk losing them?
what a funny little world we live in, although it's been nice to see the number of people who think this is about selling hardware that is compatible with running a boxed copy of OSX (which, for interest sake isn't what pystar is doing anyway - the added bonus is that the pystart units barely function for what they are said to do and have some interesting hacks to a burn copy of the install disc to get osx running on the machines at all.)
Re:WRONG!! (Score:3, Insightful)
....Their computers are overpriced and they need competition....
They have plenty of competition in the hardware as such, but are the only ones that write their own operating system. Anybody that wishes can also write their own operating system. There are no laws to stop that are there? Why should Apple not do everything they possibly can to NOT supply their operating system to other hardware makers? They are not like Microsoft, selling their software on the open market to all comers are they? If they did sell their software to all comers, then they would also have to support everybody or at least the hardware manufacturers would have to support OSX with decent drivers for their hardware.
What right does anyone have too complained about not being able to buy a certain product from its manufacturer? Can Apple be compelled to sell their OS to some other manufacturer who wants a copy to use in their own product?