Apple defeats Psystar in clone wars

Title Win

'nuff said.

By phantombudgie on 16 Nov 2009

And if this were Microsoft, there'd be loads of negative comments. But its Apple, they're nice cuddly folks, they're not greedy and they don't over charge do they ;-) (takes tongue out of cheek)

By rjp2000 on 16 Nov 2009

No back up

Guess Psystar is/was just a small, back street operation and not just a front organisation for Dell or some such.
Shame, another conspiracy theory bits the dust - unless Psystar is a front company for Apple in order they could get a ruling to make things easier later on...

By greemble on 16 Nov 2009

Looks like....

those touchy-feely, laid-back, anti-corporate hippies at Apple strike again. The REAL message of course, is just how evil Microsoft is, because of [fill in gap with the usual Apple fan-boy ranting]

By Lacrobat on 16 Nov 2009

Modern day bios wars

This just reminds me of the compaq v IBM bios wars, without which if IBM won we would all either be using IBM, or Apple machines, the home build pc market as we know it simply would not exist, the only thing that made a computer IBM compatable, was the bios, the rest was off the peg components that any man could buy, same with a modern mac, the only diff is the EFI, aka the apple bios, like compaq if a company reverse enginnered it without actually copying the code line for line, then there is nothing stopping someone making a mac clone, hell im running one myself at the moment.... mac pro for £600 anyone? same thing is £2799 with the apple tax on top.... i could build 5 of these and still have change left over. some crazy markup that! i wish psystar had won, it would have set a precedence muck like the compaq case did in the early 80s to let the floodgates open to competition for both Apples hardware and Microsoft's dominance, giving users more choice. never a bad thing imho

By Cerberus73 on 16 Nov 2009

Judge jumps in Apple's Pocket!

Is Apple really competing with anyone on an even and ethical basis - I don't think so. They behave much like Intel in that they Monopolise their market.
The OS is little more than a heavily modded Linux and as such might be considered to violate GPL or other licenses on which linux and the kernel are based which normally states you may take a product, customise it but you must essentially give the product and source code for free - you make your money from support.

Similarly Apple now uses common components found in many regular computer, the difference being that the BIOS and Boot Camp have been modified to provide a recogniseable signiture available only on Apple machines. If someone were to provide a PCI-E card, a USB card or a modified BOIS which simulated this, then Apple's OS would load on practically any modern Intel Based machine - possibly AMD too - without modification.

You might escape any legal issues by using generic equipment which is not designed to perform this function on sale, but could be updated by end-users to perform that function!

Unfortunately Apple is treating competitors unfairly. When will Apple sue Nokia, Ericsson et al for competing with the iPhone or Microsoft, Sony et al for competing with the iPod.
All Apple does is produce products that are not worth one tenth the price they charge for them, as by Steve Job's own admission, he would prefer you to chuck out your iPod every year and buy a new one - inspite of the fact that they are extremely expensive, more so than memory products like SDHC cards which can be used in cheaper better players.

I for one will not touch an Apple product with a bargepole - Anything that is built to be entirely proprietry cannot be good and is doomed to be extinct - Apple's own legacy MAC's built on other non-Intel Processors - Are these able to run the latest Intel specific OS's?
I prefer and would recommending building PC's from much faster less expensive components and using Linux.

The cost of such products is far less, the warranty just as good, and the OS is free and constantly updated to support more hardware and features by hundred's of thousands of people.

By j_woolliscroft on 19 Nov 2009

Interesting.

Interesting that Apple can create derivative works of someone else's code (BSD/Mach -> Darwin) and then build on top of it, and then tell other people that they cannot do the same.

They perhaps have the right to tell people that they cannot make derivatives of Aqua, but how exactly do they have creative control over Darwin, the semi-open-source layer of their operating system?

Judges are often idiots when it comes to technological issues like this, and I wish that Psystar had mounted a competent defence.

W.

By wp_canada on 19 Nov 2009