We already had the news about Psystar's Rebel EFI possibly including open source code, but now we have another story which doesn't really seem to bode well for the small Florida clone maker. Gizmodo has a story on an interesting customer experience.
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Member since:2005-07-24
None of that matters one lick.
The ability to recreate or inter-operate is not at issue. The issue is to utilize copies purchased, legally, at retail, in ways already protected by law.
MacOS X is a product existing in the retail market space and is governed by the laws of the jurisdictions in which it is sold. In law, it is NOT the sum of its constituent parts. It is a singularity.
Apple's assertion of exclusive access to MacOS X is without merit should it choose to sell copies on the open market as it has done.
Sure, they can limit MacOS X to only Apple-made machines. But they have to do so correctly. The U.S. does not permit automatic, non-elective, non-signatory restrictive terms of use contracts. Period. And that is a good thing. Seriously.
They have made a move in the right direction by calling the latest iteration of MacOS X an 'upgrade,' but have failed to provide additional value, which will ( well, should, anyway ) lead to some problems for them as they attempt to force restrictions on consumers' rights. The law is often written by the emerging consensus of a market or community, the general definition of 'upgrade' as pertaining to an iteration of a line of computer software will be utilized.
Considering the historical presence of full-fledged versions of MacOS X, pricing and value trends will be determined in order to calculate the value of the 'upgrade' version. In this test new versions of MacOS X will fail - unless Apple were to show an improved value over existing prices.
Which means, Apple, in the end, should create a "full version" at the $289 price point, and keep the upgrade version at the price of the previous version. The upgrade has a ( legal ) caveat: "Part of the price of this copy of MacOS X is included in your Apple-branded computer, usage restrictions apply."
The full version will have no limits of any kind, save for one: "Apple product support is included in the price of a Macintosh computer system, support is not included in the price of MacOS X."
Done.
Honestly, though, in the end, the problem is not what Apple wants to do, but the very fact that they did not start out that way.
If, all along, MacOS X was properly distinguished as a Macintosh software upgrade, then this problem would be a bit easier to sort out. EULA restrictions can, often, be enforced when price subsidies are involved.
Who knows, the courts may even find that Apple was forthcoming enough in the retail marketplace to not misrepresent MacOS X as a full-version operating system, but instead a Macintosh System Software Update.
In which case Psystar is using subsidized software, illegally.
Of course, if you look at the MacOS X retail box, you will find that the courts are not too likely to see things that way. Prominence is of primary importance. If they simply had the words "Macintosh System Software Upgrade" on the front, we would be laughing at Psystar rather than debating the merits of EULAs and how a rather small company can still be a monopoly.
--The loon
Member since:2005-12-28
OSX (Snow Leopard) is already 30 dollars. Priced well below Windows and some boxed Linux distros...
Apple can charge whatever the want for the hardware. Your logic is flawed. By your reasoning Dell and HP couldnt keep dropping prices to compete with each other. They can lower there prices to whatever because they sell on volume.
Member since:2006-06-21
Loon, are you an idiot? Seriously. Why the hell would a monopoly use price dumping? It's a contradiction in terms. If it's a monopoly it has no competition. Price dumping is a tactic designed to undermine competition.
That's if Apple even was a monopoly. Which it isn't, not as long as it has under 10% marketshare both in hardware and software. It's simply stupid to suggest that they are.
Secondly, price dumping is most definitely not considered illegal, not out of hand. Most countries will allow price dumping to occur as long as the company doing it is local ie. not owned by foreign parties. In other words, if the local companies decide to play this game, it's their problem.
The reasons are simple:
1) Artificial business regulation by the state is in most cases a bad idea.
2) Price dumping benefits customers.
3) Price dumping is not sustainable in the long term, so it dies down eventually anyway. It's only in the short term is can achieve anything.
Member since:
2006-05-26
The unique portion of OSX is.... Aqua, and some of the Core Frameworks: otherwise, it's another certified Unix OS variant with a pretty face, and the underlying OS itself is completely open source and available for free, just not Aqua and all those Core Frameworks.
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As such, your argument is senseless for the OS as a whole, and all Aqua is, is a very pretty (depending on the eye/mousing/keyboard habits of the beholder) window manager on top of a solid certified Unix, of which Apple absolutely has zero monopoly over window managers (you could put just X over the OSX kernel, or any other window managers and frameworks, no problem) for any OS, including OSX. Next, you'll be telling me the people of KDE have a monopoly over KDE, because they're the only ones with the rights to claim they have the power: well, that's not an exact comparison, true, because KDE is fully OSS, and downloadable and installable on... yes, OSX in addition to other systems, including Linux, which is not *quite* a Unix, but also other true certifiable Unix OSes.
There's absolutely nothing stopping Psystar (not even Apple!) from taking Darwin and creating their own competitor to Aqua and the associated frameworks, and nobody would get upset, except for anyone insisting Apple must give their hardware/software combination unfair labels and restrictions as to what they can do with it, on the specious argument that Apple is the only one that can sell OSX and run it on their hardware. Well, if they were to try to do that to run Mac OSX software, sure, they could legally do it: but it'd likely take them at least as long as Haiku has taken thus far to get to where the user space of OSX is now, and by then, who knows what might have changed? Would you still whine that Apple had a monopoly? (Rhetorical question