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Oct 29, 08 - 10:36 am Comment from: Predrag

Well, Psystar is obviously not selling to ordinary consumers, so those who buy it will know exactly what they are getting. It is funny, though that they don't even know that there ARE Blu-ray software solutions for Mac; they just don't play back DRM-infested Blu-ray discs.

Thes guys are really begging for more legal trouble. Rather than keeping a low profile, hoping they could gain sympathy from some uninformed juror(s), they keep poking the hungry bear.

Do they really believe they can win?

Didn't I just read a week or two ago that Apple and Psystar were settling this whole thing privately?

Either Psystar is really stupid, or they have a "wink wink" deal with Apple to keep on creating these systems.

Anybody?

Isn't Psystar in court for this? They are provoking Apple and making fun of the judiciary system!

Good for them! If Apple refuses to make systems using the technology that users want, then somebody else will. Perhaps this will give Apple the kick in the pants it needs to get off its high horse and start giving consumers what they want rather than what they tell us we want.

If Psystar was making a book this would be called Plagerism. Somone else writes the code intended for distribution in a manner that they developed and then someone says "we'll just take that work and turn a profit" I dont see how they could defend their right to steal Apple's core product [sic]

They're already in it so deep what more do they have to lose. Can Apple kill them twice?

Oct 29, 08 - 10:58 am Comment from: smyhre

@Chester Cheetah
Yes it certainly would be nice to get a blue ray in the mac, but you know that people would then complain even more for no good reason as usual for the increase in price for putting one in. Now don't get me wrong I'm all for putting blue ray drives in the machines I'm just against the idiots who would buy them and complain they aren't DVD drive prices.

'"wink wink" deal with Apple to keep on creating these systems.'

Or they have a wealthy friend who's recent dumping of ridiculous amounts of cash into advertising their product has failed miserably and is getting trounced by Apple Inc. more and more all the time.

I notice they don't mention that the 9800GT is virtually identical to the 8800GT, which Apple does ship.

I might be wrong on this, but I believe there's a reason Apple agreed to non-binding arbitration with Psystar - they know that the EULA is legally untested, and if they were to lose, the ramifications would dismantle Apple's restrictions on OS X.

My guess is Psystar will eventually go away quietly, but only after paying Apple a healthy royalty. Until then, it's business as usual for Psystar.

power computing made some good machines. i thought the psystar stuff was junk?

Its about time a company listens to what consumers want instead of dictating what it believes they need.

Psystar is rapidly turning into the small hero battling the big bad giant (sound familiar?)

This is yet more compelling evidence that Apple must be forced to licence OS X to open up customer choice and drive competition. Mid-range headless 'Macs' and matte-screen laptops are both products which have a LARGE potential market - and yet Apple is purposefully denying this market any product to fulfil their needs... and instead forcing customers to into an extremely limited choice from a constrained range of Apple-branded hardware.

Considering the thousands of dollars most users have invested in Mac-based software - tying them into the system - Apple's business-practices must be bordering on the illegal. The new laptop fiasco - with its wilful disregard for the varying needs of the company's wide customer-base (many of whom are long-term investors in the company) - has proven what happens when a company has manoeuvred itself to be without competition within its product area.

Licensing OS X would force Apple to pay more attention to fulfilling customer needs... rather than attempting to dictate them. In so much, it can only be a healthy move.

MW: 'change'. Exactly.

To:MacDonald
Dont forget what Henry Ford said to reporters when asked why he didnt give them what customers asked for.
They said they would rather have a faster horse.
It takes someone like Jobs to see around the corner and anticipate where, when and how they wish to get there. If you believe that unfettered access to others work and take credit for their labors is ok then your job would be in jeopardy too.

Oct 29, 08 - 11:56 am Comment from: Mac-nugget

Power Computing all over again?
Not quite. For those of use that did buy a Power Computing Mac clone, it was actually better then the Apple counter parts it was competing against. They designed a way for the processors to have large cash access. They INNOVATED. This is not innovation, this is simply getting new available parts and throwing them together.

Besides, what good is it to have an unsupported BluRay Player on your Mac?

@Twenty Benson
Rubbish. hero my ass. They are blatantly infringing copyright law, their is nothing heroic about that.

blu-ray is nearly dead (4% market penetration? Not even $150 players will save it)...and Psystar is going suffer badly. Sorry...but it's just a ridiculous effort. Who wants an unsupported system, likely to become an orphan...that sounds like a tiny chain saw?

rattymouse ate bad cheese

@Chester Cheetah

I want a Solar-Powered, Hover-Car, with the latest specs, and I want it for less than $500.
I want you to provide it to me NOW.

If you don't give me what I want, when I want it, I will do illegal things to you and your company and then my defense will be merely that I wanted it and you didn't give it to me.

In the Court of Chester Cheetah, I would, of course, be found Not Guilty, plus I would be awarded legal costs and damages for "emotional harm".

Psystar is the 2x4 that's needed to get Steve Jobs to add Blueray and an advanced graphics card in future macintosh hardware.

"... the way of the future with OS X"? So Pystar are going to take on the task of developing OS X are they? I think not.

Oct 29, 08 - 12:22 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@Rattymouse
Deal with this. Even if Psystar wins, the only thing they will win is a plethora of competition. Do you think for one second that the likes of DELL and HP will not jump on this bandwagon. Or even Chinese made Mac clones. Psystar is fighting a losing battle. Even if they win, the lose.

@sugar grove
"Dont forget what Henry Ford said to reporters when asked why he didnt give them what customers asked for. They said they would rather have a faster horse."

Yawn. We've got past that stage in proceedings. Horses aside, Henry Ford had to accept competition using his own innovations eventually. The time has come for Jobs must do the same... if Apple's Macs are so 'insanely great' he's got nothing to worry about from a bit of competition.


@Mac-nugget
"Rubbish. hero my ass. They are blatantly infringing copyright law"

No, the law is an ass - if it is the friend of a monopolist who is preventing the customer a freedom of choice in meeting his or her needs, and the manufacturer the freedom to build open hardware to meet those needs. Laws get amended.

Oct 29, 08 - 12:33 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@Rattymouse
It might not matter to you, but it will matter to Psystar being the way of the future for OSX.
If Apple is forced to open OSX to licensing, forget getting OSX $129 a license. Also, it could seriously undermine Apple's ability to continue OSX development. You know that currently, it's subsidized by hardware sales. With out them, what is the incentive?

Oct 29, 08 - 12:38 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@Twenty Benson
OSX + Mac = Apple Solution = $$$ = OSX development
OSX - Mac = No Apple Solution = 0$ = no OSX development.

You get it.

Oct 29, 08 - 12:43 pm Comment from: John Crawford

@Chester Cheetah

Go home please.

Oct 29, 08 - 12:44 pm Comment from: John Crawford

@Twenty Benson

Bo**ocks!

@Mac-nugget
"OSX + Mac = Apple Solution = $$$ = OSX development
OSX - Mac = No Apple Solution = 0$ = no OSX development."

Poor argument as it doesn't apply to ANY other market.

If you ask me, Apple should wise up pretty quickly and either:

Massively expand their own Mac product line to include a broad range of desktop solutions AND configurations (INCLUDING matte screen options across the range for the high-spend professional market/personal preference)

or:

begin selling a limited licensing deal to a few hand-picked companies (such as Sony) who can fill in the ever increasing gaps in Apple's own produce line.

The first might win the continued loyalty - and support - of a long-term customer base with varying needs from their systems

The second would weaken any challenge to Apple based on monopolistic practices, and allow the company to retain full control over the 'Mac' system... at the same time as letting other companies build the hardware Apple is NOT interested in - but customers ARE.

Oct 29, 08 - 01:07 pm Comment from: Macintosher

This is an absolutely ridiculous idiocy on behalf of Psystar. Apple has already built a UNIX kill code (60% chance) or a time bomb (40% chance) into Mac OS X Leopard that will cause it to deactivate once Snow Leopard is released. Snow Leopard will only be downloadable (hence the smaller OS size), and to Apple computers only. Everyone who uses a Mac will have to upgrade - free. Everyone who doesn't, but thinks they use OS X, will end up with a dysfunctional computer fit for Vista/fit for nothing, depending on how you see it. New computer users will have to pay extra on top of a cheaper Mac to fund OS development. Thus Mac OS X is already killing Psystar, and Mac OS Xs Leopard and Snow Leopard, with their clever coding, hold all the cards. That's why they announced Snow Leopard when they did, to warn these folks. They need no legal action. It does all make sense.

"No, the law is an ass - if it is the friend of a monopolist who is preventing the customer a freedom of choice in meeting his or her needs, and the manufacturer the freedom to build open hardware to meet those needs. Laws get amended."

This is retarded. I don't complain if I can't run Fanuc code on Allen-Bradley hardware in a manufacturing environment; doesn't mean they're preventing me from choosing automation equipment freely.

Apple isn't preventing anyone from doing anything they haven't always done--which is basically how Apple (and a preponderance of their customer base) likes it. You can compute anyway you want on Apple, so long as it's Steve's way. If you don't like it, you can go M$, Linux, Unix, et al, sometimes even on the same hardware. I fail to see why Apple should be forced to license its OS X any more than why M$ should be forced to remove components from their own OSes.

all you pystar supporters are missing the point.

if you want osx on your pc. do it yourself. no one will come after you. if you want to MAKE MONEY of someone else's work. then i hope you get your ass kicked in.

Oct 29, 08 - 03:14 pm Comment from: Zeke

Apple's quick solution:

Apple MacBook bundled with OS X: $999
OS X (sold separately): $599

PsyStar (and any other theives): Dead and buried.

FYI. me and my band will be doing beatles covers and selling them for $0.05 each on itunes. ofcourse it will be just the beatles, with an additional cowbell at the end of each song. i figure that since the beatles won't offer me a cheaper song on itunes and no beatles on itunes at all. they have a monopoly on beatle music! the beatles must be stopped! how dare they sell their music in places where i don't shop and for prices i don't want to pay!. you know i can get the guy in the subway to sing me a beatles song for a quarter?? i think this will force them to listen to us customers, some of us who have invested heavily in their music. a little competition is good. right paul?

None of this Psystar mess would be happening if Apple truly respected its customers. With the exception of Blu-ray playback support in OS X (a software issue), the problems are almost all related to hardware. Furthermore, all of the problems are avoidable.

Matte-style screens are no longer an option on Apple laptops. It's truly laughable when one compares the hardware specs of the Mac Pro to similarly priced Windows-based towers -- slower RAM, inferior graphics, no Blu-ray, etc. Although I'm willing to admit that Apple has meaningfully removing hardware from Macs in the past, I and many others feel that Apple has made a mistake by removing FireWire from the new MacBooks. The list of hardware-related mistakes made by Apple could go on nearly forever.

Apple used to lead the way in hardware innovation. Feel free to correct me on any of the following facts, as they are all from memory. But as I recall, Apple was first (or among the first) hardware-wise to do the following in the consumer/prosumer space: include a 3.5" floppy drive in a computer, include a CD-ROM drive with a computer, sell a laptop that was worthy of the name laptop, use USB for external devices such as keyboard & mouse, 64-bit processor in a desktop, and successful migration from one platform (PowerPC) to another (Intel).

But ever since Apple switched to Intel, the only significant hardware-related innovation that I've seen from Apple is unibody laptops; don't try to convince me that the "new" graphics chips in Apple laptops are innovative. As exemplified by lack of Blu-ray drives in any Mac model, Apple has been increasingly slow to adopt crucial existing technologies. We also have yet to see the reduction in Mac costs that we should be seeing due to the switch from PowerPC to Intel.

Oct 29, 08 - 04:20 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@Rattymouse

PisStar holds all the cards?! LOL

What many of these crazy (and lazy) analogies miss out is that the customer has already got thousands of dollars tied up in a single platform.

There has been no legal contract in this commitment. Apple - as supplier - presented itself and promised itself as a company with a commitment to innovation and choice. By doing so, it convinced the customer to commit to spending large sums of money on third-party software and hardware usable only on the Mac platform.

In short, Apple promised that if the customer invested heavily in the platform, Apple in turn would have an ongoing commitment to meeting the customer's needs.

Apple is now breaking that commitment - and doing so in the full knowledge that no other supplier can legally manufacture hardware for the platform AND that the customer would be heavily penalised for choosing another platform.

In even shorter, Apple has got its customers by the short and curlies and is giving them a very loud F.U!

Welcome to Apple - the new Microsoft?

@twenty benson

you do realize apple's policy on hardware software hasn't changed since it started. so how is it a surprise now? how is apple breaking its promise? when was apple about cheap shit? are all you guys recent apple fans? when i switched to apple back in 1998, i KNEW what i was getting into. i understood that apple was about the whole machine. i understood that apple pushed new tech, and dropped tech. i am NOT SURPRISED when they dropped firewire for a better smaller look. i can't understand how anyone is surprised. mid level mac? have you been living under a rock? macs never targeted that market. so people want it? so what. fuck all of you. get a PC you dickheads. stop ruining the way the company, i invested lots of tech and money into, way of doing things. nothing is stopping you from building your own pc and putting osx on there yourselves. but the point that you fuckheads keep missing is that you CANNOT MAKE A BUSINESS OF IT. that is the key part. you get it? YOU CAN'T MAKE A BUSINESS OF SOMEONE ELSE's SHIT. if any of you took my art, photography against my permission, i would fucking shoot you, more than once. and as you die slowly from you wounds, i would take your id and then hunt down your family. YOU DO NOT STEAL SOMEONE's SHIT AND SELL IT. you know the people that steal shit from other people's homes and sell it? they go to jail (or get shot).


to all those supporters of apple, sorry for the rant, but these fuckin dickheads are just driving me ape-wall.

Peruchito, your Beatles analogy would make sense if Pystar is stealing OS X. I have heard NO ONE stay that Pystar is stealing OS X, only that they are installing it on non-Apple hardware.

Nice try but you failed yet again.

Oct 29, 08 - 07:40 pm Comment from: blucaso

Methinks I smell a rat... or is it a Rattymouse? hehehe... You actually managed to rile up a bunch of people without them realizing in the slightest that you were just being stunningly sarcastic.

Well played, Zune Tang.

@Peruchito
I've been an Apple fan far longer than you Newbie.

Apple never targeted the mid-level Mac market? Are you joking or just thick?

Open computing hardware will be the best thing to happen to Apple in years. It's the future Peruchito, get used to it - you can't be a company shill all your life.

mw: try. In your can ...harder.

Speaking as someone who has been an Apple user since 1983 and a Mac user since 1988, I can absolutely attest to the fact that there was a long period of time when Apple had a very wide range of systems. They were absolute garbage at the low end which were sold mostly in places like Staples and I think they were the Centris models. Next came the semi crappy in the mid range which were the low end Quadra (pizza box) style. Finally, in the upper range were the decent to really good Quadra models. These were the thick desktop and tower PowerPC models some of which were developed into the early G3s. While I agree that there are 1 or 2 gaps I would very much like to see filled in (12 inch Powerbook G4 anyone?), until recently, I agreed with Apple's limited models.

@rattymouse

not stealing 'technically'
example in art,

if you want to use my art exclusive in your corporate ad campaign. i say no. i don't offer exclusive licenses, but you use it anyways and put a cheque in my mail box. this is ok in your books? it's my creation, i get to say how it will be used. i would still shoot your ass.

@marc,

thanks for the info, and i agree with you. apple is a small company, spreading themselves thin is what got them in trouble in the first place. they need to just focus on inovation.
these people that complain about mid range mac, will complain that it doesn't have all the features as the pro line, like firewire.

@twenty benson

so what? you missed the entire point. nothing is stopping you from building one and putting osx on it. you can have your mid range mac. you'll have as much support as pystar will give you. hell you can probably get better specs than they offer. the point is YOU CAN'T MAKE A BUSINESS OUT OF IT.

Oct 30, 08 - 03:50 pm Comment from: NCIceman

The one aspect of this I understand is in video card support. I really wish Apple would offer more up-to-date video cards.

"While I agree that there are 1 or 2 gaps "

1 or 2 gaps?

There's no truly lightweight (2lb) but powerful (like Lenovo and Sony and Toshiba 2-3lb 12" models) notebook. There's no value mid perfomance tower, no midrange 15" and 17" value notebooks, No entry level notebooks, no netbook, no tablet.

The product line contains more holes than coverage.

This becomes apparent when you're used to buying PCs and getting just what you want, no more, no less at a good price and then need to go get a Mac and have to take a lot of compromises or a big price increase to find the one unit in the product line that has the other features you want.

"example in art,"

Psystar is paying for the rights to use the software.

The Art example is I sell you a print, you have made your money from it, yet you try to tell me where I can hang it.

What many seem to be suggesting is that Psystar is copying and reselling more prints, but they're not. Apple gets paid for each and every copy of Mac OS X.


"YOU CAN'T MAKE A BUSINESS OUT OF IT."

Of course you can. When did it become illegal to sell WinTel PCs with EFI bios?

You don't need any proprietary Apple IP to create a completely Mac compatible computer. All you need are the right generic PC components and EFI bios.

The onto it you install a retail copy of Mac OS X which you have fully paid Apple for.

To play it safe, the company would be best to leave the obtaining of the retail Mac OS X and installing it to the customer. That then reduces the arguments Apple can make against the business.