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:2005-12-28
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:2005-07-24
Monopolies can exist in many different forms.
At least in law.
At least as it pertains to anti-trust legislation.
Price dumping is NOT permitted in the national market place. Local companies don't matter and are generally unregulated.
We are talking about U.S. law, where the bulk of my knowledge resides, in absolute exclusivity.
Apple has a (horizontal) monopoly on MacOS X. This is because the product was and is available for purchase on the open market, yet they have taken extraordinary efforts to restrict those who may use the product with competing products.
It is like Ford selling their V8 engines in bulk, without any contracts, to a competing car maker, then preventing that company from using those engines in production cars because Ford designed the engine to say "For use in Ford cars only," once it was started.
It is EXACTLY the same.
And it is anti-trust, which, in legal vernacular, is referred to as being monopolistic behavior.
Monopolies are not illegal, it all depends on what a company does to become one and what they do once they are one.
If Apple never sold MacOS X at retail, there would be no problem. A Macintosh would be considered a whole, including its software. MacOS X, sold separately, without contract, at retail, is governed by the laws of the jurisdictions in which it is sold. The U.S. banned restrictive terms of use long ago, so the EULA restrictions are useless.
The only way the restrictions can hold merit is if MacOS X can be proven to not be a normal product on the market. This cannot be shown. You can go and buy a copy of MacOS X without precondition. There is nothing on the packaging to indicate that a part of the price is included with the product.
Snow Leopard uses a revised strategy from Apple to help address this exact problem. Hence the $29 upgrade price from Leopard.
This does mean, however, that Psystar should be buying Leopard, then buying Snow Leopard, in order to ship computers with Snow Leopard. If they are not, they are breaking the law, now.
You see, things have changed. Apple is well within their rights to limit Snow Leopard to being merely an upgrade from Leopard. That is fine - and is not what I am talking about.
The problem is historical, and likely will exist in the future unless Apple follows my advice.
They can keep the upgrade at $29, make a bigger version more expensive, and a full version even more expensive.
All except for the most expensive package should be limited to Apple hardware by current means. The cheapest limited to upgrade one version to the next, only ( such Leopard to Snow Leopard ). The most expensive version ( which should be hella expensive, BTW ) would have no requirements, but no support ( unless you own a Mac, of course, which includes the service fee, so long as you keep your system software relatively up to date ;-) ).
Trust me, I know more than you would ever imagine.
--The loon
Member since:2006-07-12
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