Numerous irrelevant issues and feelings about them are ventilated in comments on the case. However, there are only two important issues. One is what the law is, the other is what we think the law should be.
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Member since:2006-02-12
Well that is odd because I do not seem to be suggesting anything remotely extreme or unreasonable. The Mac OS comes at a deep subsidy without a lot of hassles about what you can install it on. I do not think that it phones home invades my privacy or even requires a serial number. Heck I _could_ install it on every Mac and PC in the house for the same $129. I do not even want to think what Microsoft would give me for the same 129 U.S.Dollars.
Software is vastly different than a book. When I have a book I generally have one copy - I cannot give one away (or sell or transfer it) and then go to the library grab one of the shelf and say 'see-ya' I own this.
I am speaking more to the lines of Apple HW. YOU can install whatever you buy on whatever you want. That if I was a lawyer (my dad is) I know that I would not even send a paralegal or even a legal secretary to think about telling you what to do with a copy that you bought.
HOWEVER when a company starts a business model on the back of the RD that comes from another company, well that is just bad ethics. No Apple does not own the x86 reference instruction set but they do own the OS you buy a license.
This is real simple a company or a copyright holder has the right to protect their copyright or trademark. McD could sell a whopper and BK can sell a big mac, but I cannot open a McG and sell both the Whopper and the Big Mac. Well I could but it is not a sustainable business model. Psystar can do what they want but Apple likely has better paid lawyers and also has the law on their side. What would you do if it was your copyright.
Member since:2005-10-12
Its not really about Apple or Psystar. The particular case is, but the fundamental issue is not. The issue comes up, as Thom says, in clear form in the question: should MS, having decided to sell retail copies of Office, be able to stop you installing them under Wine?
As to making money from Apple's efforts, objections to this are pure nonsense. Every Mac retailer, every Mac software developer does this. It is true that Jobs always had problems with this, always felt that there was something not quite right about Mac developers. But this was pure nuttery on his part.
Apple is not obliged to sell OSX at all, or for any particular price, or adopt any particular method of distribution, or release developer SDKs. It makes a commercial choice on what to do in all these respects, so do others in the surrounding parts of the industry. If it doesn't like the opportunities it is creating for them, it can always change how it sells. As an example, it does not sell Filemaker for Linux. No-one thinks it has to.
The issue is solely this: having decided to sell OSX at retail, for reasons best known to itself, what limits can it place, and what limits should we want it to be able to place, on what we install it on?
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2006-09-18
"Because Apple did all of the hard work and all of the engineering and especially all of the marketing and as such they deserve all of the profits on their SW."
Psystar is buying their copies of OSX. Apple is getting profit from their hard SW work.
What is also happening, is Apple is not making a profit from their crappy (many dead ibooks) hardware because of tying SW to HW.
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"It may be reasonable, for example, for a vendor of gas tanks to be able to forbid, by a contract entered into at the time of sale, anyone but an authorized agent from recharging the tank."
I don't like that idea exactly, Ford gas stations? Nope. If there were a open or government standard, that a vendor had to meet then make that a law.
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Can I install OSX on an Asus motherboard installed in a Mac pro case? How about an apple motherboard (http://www.dvwarehouse.com/Apple-Motherboard-c-245.html) in a HP case? Does it matter who made the hard drive? Does an "Apple labeld computer" mean the logo when it boots up?
Anything Apple can do, Microsoft should be able to do? I await the days of the Microsoft PC which only works on "Microsoft labeld computers." Ask yourself, why limit this to software. Maybe your next dictionary will only be legal to read under Merriam-Webster lights.