[Grapho]

Biallystock said:

The X-box is a computer no 2 ways about it. It has just been optimised for games.

Psystar is not bringing out a line of PCs running hacked "freeware" versions of OSX. They are supplying Apple's OSX, fully paid for.

Let's not get too socialist here and proffer the government's skirts for corporations to hide behind.

Let's have an open market where the corporation with the best product at the best price gets its income from customers voluntarily paying for goods or services rendered and once paid for are free to use it as they wish.

In that case. Let Psystar develop their own OS. If it is fair competition you clamor for. Let me put it a deferent way. After all the development that has been put on to OS X, why should Psystar profit from it? OS X is Apple's property. When you buy a copy of OS X, it's not yours to do what you want. You are only acquiring a license to use it as APPLE see fit. They made it, it is theirs. Do you start to see the picture? This is how software is sold and music and movies and books and anything with copyright protection.

This is were you are wrong. Apple has not license Psystar to distribute illicitly installed copies of OSX, purchased or not. By installing the software, you are in fact agreeing to Apples conditions, which specifically prohibit what Psystar is doing.

[Biallystock]

Please point me to where Apple labels its OSXs as "upgrades"?*

Everyone here presumes to speak for Apple as if they were somehow in "the loop".

Apple is a very large corporation that manufactures and sells hardware, software and services.

You are all customers and nothing more, even if Apple likes to confuse you into thinking you have bought into some special relationship, Apple knows which side of the counter you should be standing on. If you have any doubt, the security guys in the Apple Stores will put you in your place.

Similar nonsense has been spouted on behalf of Psystar, that they will be sending their customers to Apple for support!

Also that the name of Apple is somehow sacred, despite Steve Jobs managing to steal it from the Beatles. (Must have been a different shift of lawyers that drew up that agreement from the Microsoft one).

Personally my allegiance is with the original fruit that singlehandedly defended its intellectual property rights to Gravity and prevented Sir Isaac Newton from drifting off into space, where many of the posters here seem to be either coming from, or heading to.

* In fact Apple sold my wife a $12 version of Leopard, for her MacBook, which was clearly distinguished as an "Upgrade", and not the "full product".

[Windows2Apples]

Come on! You'll and I know that if Apple removed the hardware lock on their software Apple and Apple developers would have to try to make it in the real world where one billion plus users have to make their software work reliably on a huge mix of hardware configurations. Something neither they nor you as Apple customers are prepared for.

Microsoft is a favorite target for all comers but they can and have done just just that.Go to your local consumer electronics retailer to compare prices on Windows based systems with those provided by Apple and look at the mix of hardware and software available for both systems.

Wake up to reality! Macs are fantastic compuers but the OS works as well as it does only because the company has a hardware lock on it!!

[Biallystock]

Apple can't even make their own software run on a wide range of their own hardware and systems.

It is one of the more annoying aspects of working with Macs, is working out what will and won't run on various models.

By contrast Apple's software for Windows will run on most any hardware and system going back over 8 years to the days of Windows 2000.

[rynoesco2]

try to get a blu-ray disc to play on your regular dvd player. dude, it's called technology. things change and improve. terrible point man.

[Biallystock]

Hmm, I think it is a worse point that you can not distinguish between technical incompatibilities and artificially imposed legal ones.

Speaking of things changing and improving, why can't we play Blu-Ray discs on Macs even if we have the necessary drives attached? Apple was on the original Blu-Ray consortium, the same as virtually every other major player.

[Gatesbasher]

Biallystock said:

Please point me to where Apple labels its OSXs as "upgrades"?*

They don't have to "label" them as upgrades--the fact that you would have no use for them if you had not bought a Mac witgh OS X already installed establishes that. That's why there were no retail copies of Tiger for the Intel platform-all Intel Macs shipped with Tiger until Leopard came out, so nobody would have a need for a retail copy. There's a difference between an "upgrade" like Tiger to Leopard, and an "update" like your wife got for $12. Apple's updates are free--she must have been paying for the disk instead of downloading it.

[Biallystock]

No she bought her Macbook with Tiger on it. The disk supplied was an upgrade that required Tiger be installed first, the full Leopard has no such requirement.

I think Psystar has made your "no use for them" pretty moot. Also those hackers who configured their PCs so that they could install OSX on them.

It's taken a little longer than I thought, but this was inevitable once Apple switched to Intel chips and made the line in the sand between PCs and Macs just a thin piece of red tape, put there by Apple's lawyers.

The EU has already made clear that corporations can not dictate to their consumers what hardware they must run their music on. I am wondering when they might pronounce on computer operating systems.

Microsoft does not have the problem because it does not restrict the hardware, so they might end up looking the good guys here, whilst Apple ends up the blagard.

[lilshortjordan]

hehe

[lilshortjordan]

What part of ILLEGAL don't you understand????????? How is it stealing property? Apple created, marketed, manufactured, sold, and shipped OS X. What most people don't understand is that you DONT own the software. If you did, you could redistribute it and make billions! but everyone needs to realize that you don't!!!!!!!!! its a LICENSE!! APPLE STILL OWNS OS X!!!! You just have "permission" to use it. But just like when your mom used to give you "permission" to go to the mall, there was restrictions (home by 10, stay out of the goth store, etc) well since apples not worried about you staying out late at the goth store, there restrictions are DONT USE APPLE BRANDED OPERATING SYSTEMS ON NON-APPLE BRANDED HARDWARE!!!!! If you did, a mac wouldn't be a mac, it would be mac os on someone else's hardware, and that's not what it was created for!

[lilshortjordan]

AMEN!!! Frankenmac was an interesting article! hehe

[Biallystock]

Whilst you are about reading from the scripture of St Jobs, which you seem to be writing as you go along, what exactly was the Mac and Mac OSX created for?

Solely for web browsing, email, word processing, organising your photos and movies, listening to music?

These are what Apple has supplied on your installed system. Are there any other possible and permitted uses that you can put OSX to? Are all of those stated? If they are not stated are they forbidden? Is it possible that users may discover and create their own uses?

Possibly they may invent uses that Apple had never thought of, perhaps uses that Apple considers not to be in its own interests, even if they are in the users'. Why should the user be limited by Apple in what uses they should make of the purchase they have made?

If Apple changes its mind, and it has been known to do so, must the user cease from using their Mac in the way they see fit, just because Apple says so?

What right has Apple to restrict what the purchaser will do with their purchase? Any more than the manufacturer of a hammer has the right to tell you what nail to bang with it, what structures to construct and how to use the results of your own labor.

Why should the user give Apple any more mind than that it is the vendor of the tools they have chosen and paid for.

Many use the word freedom liberally, with as little understanding of the meaning of the word as the many other words they throw around like mantras, just enjoying the noise it makes.

The tough part of freedom is thinking for yourself. Critically examining everything to see what real truth and value it may have. Understanding whether the "words" match the actions or motives of those who speak them.

We live in a world where labor saving and convenience has moved onto mental effort. That is making many fat and lazy both physically and mentally.

"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." ? Bertrand Russell

"What luck for rulers, that men do not think.". ? Adolf Hitler

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." ? Mark Twain

"Many Americans confuse freedom with the word." ? me

[Gatesbasher]

I just have to ask: Since you and the 90% of the people who post to this forum obviously hate Apple and all their works with such a purple passion, why do you waste so much of your time writing long and grossly misinformed if not literally insane ramblings to a venue dedicated to a computing platform you obviously detest, put out by a company whose business plan you consider criminal? I hate Microsoft with a purple passion, but I don't go on Windows forums (I assume there must be some, I don't know) and tell them what's wrong with Windows (I won't live long enough) or what a criminal organization Microsoft is.

Whether you like it or not (and you obviously don't) Apple's business plan is to offer hardware and software as an integrated system, designed to work together to give the most satisfactory performance, rather than trying to write software to function on any random collection of parts that anyone in the world decides to cobble together. Microsoft's is different: they only sell software and have to anticipate what curveballs every hardware manufacturer out there might chose to throw at it. Of course, originally DOS only had to work on IBM machines, but when the IBM clones came along, incompatibilities began to appear. In other words, this policy failed over 20 years ago, and it's only gotten worse.

If Psystar succeeds in this case, and establishes that anyone can build a computer and install OS X on it, (and anything's possible in this country, just so long as it's stupid) then the OS X experience will rapidly deteriorate. It may not become as obtuse, unpleasant, buggy, insecure, and marginally functional as Windows, but it will be just as unstable. Also, since each copy of OS X will not have a computer sale to offset its cost, the retail price will skyrocket, to probably the same level as Vista Ultimate. They may have to offer cheaper, crippled versions like Microsoft does. Also, the installation and authentication process will become much more Microsoft-like. Just like A PC, it will be illegal to sell a used Mac without wiping the hard drive and forcing the buyer to purchase a new OS. Of course, Apple has no way of forcing every OEM to buy a copy of OS X for every computer they sell, whether they want to or not, so OS X's market share will rapidly decline.

Those of us who like Macs, unlike you, don't want any of these things to happen. Apparently you do, but could I just ask: why is Apple not entitled to have a business plan? Every other company has one. And if you don't like a company's business plan, you can patronize another. Obviously the way Microsoft operates is to your liking, so why don't you buy a PC and leave we deluded Mac-lovers the Hell alone?

[Biallystock]

You must be a born again Mac user.

Apple can have all the business plans it wants.

Hey, even I've got one and guess what?

The customer, not Apple, features at the top of the list.