Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices. Miami-based Psystar, owned by Rudy Pedraza, will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple's tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is "an anticompetitive restrain of trade", according to attorney Colby Springer of antitrust specialists Carr & Ferrell. Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple's EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages. Psystar's attorneys are calling Apple's allegations of Psystar's copyright infringement "misinformed and mischaracterized". Psystar argues that its OpenComputer product is shipped with a fully licensed, unmodified copy of Mac OS X, and that the company has simply "leveraged open source-licensed code including Apple's OS" to enable a PC to run the Mac operating system.
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RE[3]: Broader issue ...
Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2005-07-22
Member since:2005-06-30
With some work and a bit of patience, every piece of software can be adapted to run on any hardware...
However, I believe that software and hardware can be tied together to become a tightly integrated solution, which is what Apple is claiming.
The end user should be able to do whatever he wants with his purchases, be it running MacOS on different hardware or a different OS on Mac hardware. However, Psystar is not an end user, but a reseller. I'm no law expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the laws are more strict for them.
Honestly, they could have avoided all that mess by simply shipping the computer without the OS preinstalled...
Member since:2008-03-08
However, I believe that software and hardware can be tied together to become a tightly integrated solution, which is what Apple is claiming.
Not really as integrated a solution when the software is also sold separately as an upgrade for previous "integrated solutions".
Not a lawyer and I have no idea what the outcome would be, but logically speaking (which generally does not align with law
), IMO if a person has purchased/installed/preinstalled, software on hardware it was not designed for, all that should happen is that Apple should no longer have to provide support for the solution. If Apple are worried about clones hitting their bottom lines, all they need to do is create an OEM version of OSX that has requirements such as quality and other things and a price that matches their normal profit/markup. It does not have to be "competitively priced" as they are not going after the Windows crowd in the same way.
Member since:2006-01-01
If you bought a bluray disk and attempted to play it in a HDDVD drive that was hacked and vaguly capable of playing back bluray, more power to you. If I sold you a hacked HD-DVD played and told you, "yeah, this is a bluray played", who would you then blame when it failed to work properly? Me, obviously. But I'm a small fly by night operator that goes out of business and then dissappears from the radar. Who then? Apple? Probably. *This* is the crux of the issue.
Asking for it to be acceptable to hack generic hardware, should not be illegal. Selling hardware hacked for the purpose of running Mac OS X without Apple's approval? Whole different thing. As an individual, you know you are doing something technically challenging and that it might one day break. To pass such a product off to an end user - that is just an extremely cavalier and dangerous idea.
I hope Apple wins. I hope it also opens Apple to licensing the OS. But using the backdoor is NOT a good idead and not a business practice Apple sould stand by and let happen unchallenged.
Member since:2005-10-18
Selling hardware hacked for the purpose of running Mac OS X without Apple's approval?
I should not need anybody's approval to run whatever I bought on whatever I bought. Period. The artificial limitation Apple tries to enforce doesn't make any sense with any pair of physical products used together, yet somehow many people think it makes sense with hardware and software.
Member since:
2005-12-15
Depends on how you look at it.
If you consider the fact that's made by Apple and apparently only can run on Apple hardware, then sure they're related.
If you consider that it is quite capable of running on non-Apple hardware, which it is, then it is unrelated.
The depedency of MacOS to run only on Mac hardware is an artificial limitation Apple has put in place to secure control and restrict competition of against their hardware.
I fully support this case against Apple.