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From the beginning it seemed like a long shot, but Psystar has only made it clearer and clearer that they are determined to prove Apple’s locking of Mac OS X to their own hardware is a violation of anti-trust laws.
It appeared that Psystar, a small company that started selling computers pre-installed with Mac OS X, had given up recently when they entered out-of-court settlement talks with Apple. More recently, however, one of Psystar’s lawyers has denied that the suit is over, saying that settlement talks are only standard practice and the lawsuit is “very much alive.”
So what happens if they win? Apple is going to have to change the way they do things. The problem is that they rely on the control they have over their hardware. Notice that few people complain about driver issues on the Mac? Apple only has to support 6 or so machines, Microsoft and Linux have to support millions. Impressed by how cheap the OS X software is? I doubt that price could be sustained if Apple’s core business was software sales. In addition to these issues, Apple gets some benefits by only selling premium machines. Want to know why people who usually use $500 Dell computers are impressed when they get a $1000+ Mac? Sure, a lot of it has to do with Apple, but a fair bit must have to do with the experience of using nicer hardware.
None of this is to say that Apple could not survive. They could. They would just need to change.
The truth is that Psystar has little chance of prevailing against a company as large as Apple who has tons of money and lawyers to throw at the problem. Still, they have a chance and everyone should support them. If Psystar wins, Apple may have a problem, but consumers just get more choice.
Now this is a Linux site, so a lot of you are probably wondering why you should care if there are more options for Macs out there. One word: virtualization. Right now (servers not included), you cannot legally or easily virtualize Mac OS X. If Psystar wins, you can go out, buy an off-the-shelf copy of OS X, and run it in a virtual machine. This would let you run every major operating system on just about any computer. That would be awesome.
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Cloning and reselling can help keep a company vital, and monopolistic “bundling” generally is frowned upon.
If Apple’s OS happens to run on other hardware, and I want to use it that way – as a practical matter, if Apple really claims to use an open source OS foundation, they can’t stop me. Yes, I know that the license agreement may say otherwise, but unless they’re prepared to back that up with the most draconian DRM measures, then they’re just irritating ALL of their users by acting like the RIAA or MPAA.
Happily, GPL v3 provides an alternative, by preventing crypto and DRM encumberance on my open source rights.
Otherwise a firm could sit on its installed base and not continuously improve their products.
Another option – sell phone support aka “AppleCare for certified non-Apple hardware”
[Thomas]: “Now this is a Linux site, so a lot of you are probably wondering why you should care if there are more options for Macs out there.”
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I haven’t used a Mac since 1987, but I care because it’s interesting, and it informs my use of Linux. I’ve had a lot of Windows friends defect to Apple over the past three years and not a single one of them came back to Windows. Only four of us went Linux, and one of them went back to Windows (XP!).
On the Psystar case, I’m wondering if a judge would decide whether market share is relevant to the freedom to, in essence, resell the Apple OS [on any machine other than Apple]. If Apple could be indemnified against non-Apple hardware users’ issues, then why not?