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//What about their customers, all those people who bought and keep buying their expensive stuff, are they all posers and cretins?//

No, but they're incredibly stupid.

Based on that logic all non-Apple customers are stupid for using Microsoft's 'expensive stuff', meaning Windows.

Just because Apple products are expensive doesn't mean only fools buy them. Some people's personal experience has shown them that spending more a product can sometimes provide a better experience.

Laugh it up. More people, _especially_ geeks are buying Macs as they get fed up waiting for the second coming of Microsoft. Apple might be flawed, but eventually you just want to grow up and get some work done and begin to see your computer as just a tool and not a penis extension with which to score points with in Internet debates. Honestly, Mac vs. PC flame wars are about as mature as 13 year olds on Halo.

I wonder if you live in the US.
Because if you lived in Europe and realized that most Macs (take for instance a Macbook Pro or a latest generation Mac Pro) cost twice the price of a PC with similar specs, you'd probably think twice before writing that price is not all that important.
I feel especially bad when I see that simple upgrades are either not available at all (especially graphics cards) or cost more than twice as much as you would expect.
It is difficult to convince Europeans that a double price for something which on paper looks the same, can be granted by quality alone.

And it's easier to make Americans buy Macs because they are more stupid? More rich? Both? Is that what you're saying?

Actually, between your ad hominem attacks, you are actually making Thom's point. You are saying that the people who pay more for Macs are not stupid, they are doing it because it is a superior product. Based on that, how would Psystar selling Mac OS to the unwashed masses who currently buy cheapo PC's hurt you? You guys can keep on buying your expensive, superior Macs. Apple would still get your money. The only thing new is that they would also get money from those who currently by cheap PC's.

How would you guys be hurt by increased Mac OS sales to the cheap PC crowd? Apple makes more money. You guys can keep buying your Cadillac PC's.

Your logic is poor, but your yelling is loud.

First of all, don't assume I own a Mac, because I don't. I only own iPods. But that's somewhat irrelevant.

So let me rephrase your question. How does a cheap Mac clone hurt Apple customers? First of all, if left unchecked, it would seriously undermine Apple's bussiness model. If Psystar was left alone more cloners would follow. History has shown us that Apple can be buried by cloners since it almost happened before. I suspect that whoever is behind Psystar intends exactly that.

No, it's not a conspiracy theory. If you have any notion that Psystar is a small honest company out to make a small and honest buck, think again. Small honest companies don't engage in multi-million dollar lawsuits against the computer manufacturer with the deepest pockets around and one of the meanest legal teams. There's serious money and serious legal counsel behind Psystar (which also translates to money). And for what? Spend all this money just to gain Psystar the right to sell cheap computers? Does that make any sense? Engage in an uphill legal battle and spend tons of money for the right to enter a business with very thin returns? Wow, Psystar must be downright philantropists.

Returning to the topic: if Apple is hurt they can't keep on making the products that their customers enjoy. In fact, they'll probably stop making, or at least crippling, OS X itself, which everybody seems to be after. How does that make sense? No matter the outcome, the masses will NOT get OS X. Assuming that Apple is, for the sake of argument, forced to let anybody bundle OS X, they will cripple it, change the license, add serious protection methods and so on. OS X as we know and like it would be gone.

Secondly, there's a bigger issue here. Psystar is attacking a way of doing business that's not just Apple's, it's widely used in the IT industry today: renting software instead of selling it (not to mention SaaS). That model is based on current copyright law. A favorable decision for Psystar would have so far-reaching consequences that some legal experts say it might affect even FOSS licenses, and it would definitely impact lots of commercial software.

Thirdly, there's the principle of the thing. I have to admit when somebody is in the right or the wrong, no matter how I personally feel about them. There's rules and laws and if we're ready to give them up whenever we feel like it we might as well grab clubs and return to the caves. Psystar is wrong and breaking the law.

Apple is the company who said: "there are enough stupid people and enough snobs who will buy our products just because they think they will be different and cooler".

Oh, I see. So then, if I bought a Mac because it was the most accessible computer for a blind person like me, that means that I'm automatically a snob, eh? You might want to take a long look in the mirror before you start pointing the finger there.

Except that the market wasn't suffocated by windows when Apple first came to market.

In fact, quite the opposite: there was huge amount competition in the market at the time.

Maybe it's like the second come of Messiah. Even if it's a false Messiah.

While Apple may, indeed, have something good to offer, it is really in their support services and the OS X itself. Apple knows that little more than a fancy case is all that stands behind their claims of "higher quality" as machines.

I can build a top-end system for $800, pay $50 for Psystar's EFI fix, $200 on the best case I could find, and $170 for MacOS X. Apple would charge me a good $3000 for the same specs. Seems like not much of a reason to buy to me... unless you are the type that calls their tech support frequently.

I have even less reason to want to buy an over-priced Mac when I consider all of the mods I could do to my Volvo to eek out another few miles per second :-) Or how many steak dinners I could buy...

Not to mention I get 3 year warranties on most of my parts anyway, those things that don't have a 3 year warranty are so cheap to replace it wouldn't be worth the shipping costs anyway!

To the masses, whom are concerned with cash, most Apple products are not desirable. However, a cheap alternative could be. The masses are well aware that they are not buying an Apple.

Should the masses have a bad experience with the low-end knock-offs, they will then consider Apple-direct as the best possible option and will inform others around them to buy direct.

The problem is that, to the masses, Apple has nothing unique to offer in computing experience outside of the software department. And that software, IMHO, sucks pretty hard.

I don't like Windows, but I'll run it as my primary OS long before MacOS X.

--The loon

A dual socket Xeon Nehalem with ECC RAM for $800?

Reeaaaaallly.