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Apple v Psystar and the Hackintoshes

Nick

Nick

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Psystar logoPC users often argue that one of the big selling-points of PCs is price and choice. They claim that they have a huge amount of models and price ranges to choose from for computers which offer the same or better specifications than Apple products.

Well Miami based manufacturers Psystar recently decided it was time to change Apple’s monopoly on things.

Back in April 2008, they decided to sell what they called “Open Computers” in the USA which came pre-installed with Mac OS X Leopard. Prices started at just $399. Apple were obviously furious about this and after a lengthy legal battle, US courts ruled today that Psystar had broken copyright infringement and would have to cease trading. The court ruled that Psystar had broken the law on 3 grounds – reproduction, distribution and the creation of derivative works.

Psystar put up no defense to the first charge, but the second and third were more interesting battle grounds as they may well have set the boundaries of what is and is not acceptable for computer manufacturers that try to emulate Apple hardware and software.

Psystar

ITWire report:

Psystar replaced the OS X bootloader, disabled and removed Apple kernel extensions, and added its own kernel extensions. Psystar acknowledged that it made those modifications. But Psystar claimed that didn’t make its copies of OS X “derivative works,” because it didn’t actually modify Apple’s source code. It merely replaced some of it with its own.

The court decided this argument was “unavailing” but only because Psystar failed to prove any supporting evidence of such a “derivative work”. Whether this is because there aren’t any, I’m not legally qualified enough to say but it may certainly give hope to those manufacturers who can work out a way round this.

The surprising thing about the third infringement – distribution – is that, as far as the law is concerned, Psystar could have distributed OS X to their heart’s content if they’d only purchased a copy of OS X for every machine they sold. As ITWire report:

Psystar argued that distributing Mac OS X on its computers was protected by the “first-sale doctrine,” which states that “the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under  this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.”

Fraudulently however, Psystar simply bought one copy of Leopard from a Mac Mini and then just kept copying it for the rest of their machines to use thus blatantly breaking the “lawfully made” bit of the above law.

The bigger picture for Apple doesn’t look quite so good though. Apple may have won a pyrrhic legal victory here but they are fighting a losing battle to hold onto their monopoly of their hardware and software. Installing OS X on non Apple computers is nothing new. Anyone with a little technical knowhow can modify a PC to create what’s known as a Hackintosh. Where Psystar went wrong is trying to make financial gain from it. By selling computers pre-installed with Apple’s operating system, they were blatantly infringing commercial copyright and quite rightly, have suffered for it. However, that’s not going to stop millions of determined users trying to save money by turning their PC’s into Hackintoshes and the sooner Apple realize this and start making money from it somehow, the better it may be for them.

In a way, Apple have brought this situation on themselves. The decision to use Intel processors inside Macs so that they can run Windows has opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for manufacturers such as Psystar to exploit. As the hardware of Macs comes to increasingly resemble PC’s, Apple can hardly complain if computer manufacturers decide to produce one machine that can handle both systems. The problem for Apple is that they have unleashed a Pandora’s box of possibilities for external manufacturers to emulate their hardware that they can no longer control.

Such Apple “cloning” companies obviously won’t be put down easily though. At the time of writing and despite the ruling, Psystar are still trading on their website. Personally, I’d rather buy a genuine Apple product and not see Macs go down the same road as PCs and suffer all the hardware and software incompatibility problems that go along with allowing multiple manufacturers to make your products.

However, is it too late for Apple to stop the ‘open computer’ winds of change?

Nick

Nick

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