[Macworld]

Post your comments for Apple: Psystar?s antitrust claims ?deeply flawed? here

[TheUpbeatPenguin]

So Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers, then, according to Psystar. That makes perfect sense, a company that delivers a product that is not like anything else on the market, is being accused of having a monopoly on that product. Well duh, OS X is OS X, and if it were made by anyone else it wouldn't be as unique anymore and would sacrifice most of the reasons why it exists in the first place! It's what drives Apple's sales, and apparently Psystar would rather see the company as a whole die off. Great idea, then nearly everyone will be running Windows and there won't be an OS X at all. Or maybe that's the plan, which makes me very suspicious that there could be another party involved with Psystar financially ... though far be it from me to make any kind of accusation like that.

[bgrieco]

The minute Apple introduced Boot Camp it announced that what differentiates their product from an ordinary PC was the OS. So if they tie the purchase of the OS to the purchase of the hardware, that looks a lot like trust to me.
But I do agree that it's just plain stupidity to raise a flag that will lead you to a courtroom if you are not prepared to sustain the costs of the fight. The question remains: Who is behind Psystar ?

[MacFan007]

Apple is a monopoly!
Can you imagine buying a car and two years later manufacturer tells you you can fix that car only at their gold plated authorized dealers and no one else. If you tell them "I can fix it myself provided I can buy parts from you or your dealer" they will tell you "Oh no, we will sell parts to you only if you pay through your nose to our gold plated dealers for parts and installation".
This is only one aspect of Apple monopoly. I have repaired PowerBooks for people where only DC Jack was cracked and they could not charge battery. Apple told them they will have to replace logic board and it will cost them $ 1000.00 plus. They can say that because customers do not have any other place to go.
If this trial is allowed to go on lot of the dirty secrets will come to the surface. I love Mac and Apple but there is no fat left for anyone in America why should it be protected for Apple and Hollywood types. If you make your junk in China do you deserve Swiss paycheck?
Perhaps we can pay $ 500.00 for a copy of OS X 10.5 but let us take advantage of Chinese slave labor that is used to make cheap off the shelf parts used in a generic PC. Let us supplement our miserable paychecks and not Steve Jobs who has more than he can ever spend.
When IBM came out with a personal computer they did not plan to have everyone copy them. Psystar of that day was known as Compaq and rest of is history. I can not afford $3000.00 for MacPro, but I did buy Dell Precision Work Station 390 for measly $320.00 on eBay and it runs 10.5.5 as good as MacPro. I should know it, I fix them.
Poor people are resourceful and they can not jail everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing what Psystar is doing. So look out Apple!

[dmjossel]

Please look up the definition of "monopoly".
Being unique and driving Mac sales does not make OS X a separate market, or make Apple a monopoly.
Tying the purchase of the OS to the purchase of hardware also does not make Apple a monopoly.
Apple's repair policies do not make them a monopoly. You people are all using this as a catch-all term for things you don't like, but it actually has a definition. Please look it up. Apple is not and cannot be a monopoly with regard to PCs. There is no separate market for "PCs" and "Macs". They are directly equivalent, and in some cases now even compatible, which is what Psystar has built its business on: a PC that can run OS X.
To the last poster: Apple is taking no actions against individuals for breaking the EULA and installing OS X on PCs, nor are they particularly likely to. However, building a business based on Apple's property against that agreement is something else. Apple at the very least must rigorously defend the agreement.
Since Apple's market is so many times smaller than Microsoft's, yet it spends just as much time and money on R&D for the OS, if they didn't have margins on hardware they simply wouldn't exist. That's what the last round of clones proved. An Apple competing against a half-dozen Psystars is just on borrowed time-- and those companies, like Dell before them, simply do not have the resources to do the R&D required to create and maintain an OS, their margins on hardware alone are simply too thin.

[mdawson]

Where to even begin with all of the errors in this post.

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MacFan007 wrote:

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Apple is a monopoly!

Wrong. Apple has a five percent share in the personal computer market. It is therefore impossible for Apple to be a monopoly.

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MacFan007 wrote:

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Can you imagine buying a car and two years later manufacturer tells you you can fix that car only at their gold plated authorized dealers and no one else. If you tell them "I can fix it myself provided I can buy parts from you or your dealer" they will tell you "Oh no, we will sell parts to you only if you pay through your nose to our gold plated dealers for parts and installation".

What does this have to do with anything? First of all, attempting to repair nearly any product on your own voids the warranty. Cars are the exception, because it is expected that car owners will engage in a certain amount of maintenance. As to service, yes you do have to go to an Apple authorized service center to maintain your warranty, but all authorized service centers are not affiliated with Apple.

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MacFan007 wrote:

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This is only one aspect of Apple monopoly. I have repaired PowerBooks for people where only DC Jack was cracked and they could not charge battery. Apple told them they will have to replace logic board and it will cost them $ 1000.00 plus.

Yes, because unlike the Wintel OEMs, Apple actually designs every motherboard that has gone into every single Mac since 1984. Apple does not bulk purchase off-the-shelf ATX/BTX boards so a motherboard replacement is expensive. Secondly, I seriously doubt that the standard solution to repairing a damaged power jack is as extreme as replacing the entire logic board. Your statements here scream ?strawman?.

MacFan007 wrote:
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If this trial is allowed to go on lot of the dirty secrets will come to the surface.

Really?

MacFan007 wrote:
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I love Mac and Apple but there is no fat left for anyone in America why should it be protected for Apple and Hollywood types. If you make your junk in China do you deserve Swiss paycheck?

This has got to be about the most puerile logic yet. While I am no fan of outsourcing, it is the fact that these products are not made in the US where tech production labor is paid substantially more, that allows Apple to sell the standard configuration Mac Pro for under $3000. If you have been a Mac user as you claim, the you would know for a fact that professional level Macs used to cost as much as $4000 to $5000+, which when adjusted for inflation would put those Power Mac 8000 and 9000 series computers at just shy of the $10K mark today.

Aside from that, even the PC press has had to face the music and admit that for any given Mac a truly comparable Wintel PC will cost just as much as that Mac. Also, as you approach the high-end they cost significantly more. Just adding as second Xeon processor puts any Wintel PC that can be configured to match a Mac Pro well over the top.

But then, to people like you that is all that matters: getting a cheap PC. A cheap PC is not comparable to any Mac unless it is in the same price class. The thing is, Apple does not make cheap bargain basement computers to be sold off at Wal-Mart. Apple does not and has never attempted to compete in the bargain basement PC market segment.

MacFan007 wrote:
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I can not afford $3000.00 for MacPro, but I did buy Dell Precision Work Station 390 for measly $320.00 on eBay and it runs 10.5.5 as good as MacPro. I should know it, I fix them.

Bulls?! Any Dell Precision that can be honestly compared to a $3000 Mac Pro will cost significantly more than $3000. Only a fool would sell just a system for just over $300 on eBay.

MacFan007 wrote:
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Poor people are resourceful and they can not jail everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing what Psystar is doing.

As dmjossel stated, Apple is not going after individuals. Apple has not pursued, nor have they commented on the OSX86 Project. Apple is rightfully taking legal action against a company that is profiteering by illegally installing OS X on non-Apple hardware.

[mdawson]

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MacFan007 wrote:

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The minute Apple introduced Boot Camp it announced that what differentiates their product from an ordinary PC was the OS. So if they tie the purchase of the OS to the purchase of the hardware, that looks a lot like trust to me.

No, when Apple introduced Boot Camp they showed that they were willing to take advantage of the fact that Macs are now using the same processor that Windows code base is compiled to run upon. While people refer to using Boot Camp as running Windows ?natively?, that term is not completely true. What is actually occurring is that Boot Camp facilitates Windows as the primary operating system on a Mac. You cannot just shove an NTFS-formatted Windows boot volume into a Mac and have it work. Without OS X and Boot Camp present to facilitate a Windows boot volume, you cannot run Windows as the primary operating system on a Mac.

Secondly, a company cannot be in collusion with itself, so an anti-trust violation is impossible. Several companies release products with proprietary software drivers. You cannot run Tom Tom software on a Garmin GPS unit or vice versa. Nothing about that is illegal. Apple is no exception in this area. Apple, unlike the Wintel OEMs, actually puts resources into developing an operating system for their hardware. Users do not buy that operating system, they purchase a license and as Philadelphia attorney M. Kelly Tillery stated,

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If I license something to you, and say you can only use it in a certain manner and you breach that?it is in fact copyright infringement.

Therefore, even if the Mac were just another PC, no on has the right to violate the EULA and install OS X on non-Apple hardware.

[Grapho]

MacFan007 said:

Apple is a monopoly!
Can you imagine buying a car and two years later manufacturer tells you you can fix that car only at their gold plated authorized dealers and no one else. If you tell them "I can fix it myself provided I can buy parts from you or your dealer" they will tell you "Oh no, we will sell parts to you only if you pay through your nose to our gold plated dealers for parts and installation".

Having a monopoly is not illegal, abusing a monopoly is illegal. Let's get that strait from the get go.

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This is only one aspect of Apple monopoly. I have repaired PowerBooks for people where only DC Jack was cracked and they could not charge battery. Apple told them they will have to replace logic board and it will cost them $ 1000.00 plus. They can say that because customers do not have any other place to go.

Sure they do. Lots of 3rd party places sell used Mac parts, and if this was to happen to a 6 month old Mac, you are covered. People should know to get Apple Care for their laptop anyways. I have purchased parts of iBooks and other Mac models that where no longer on Apples menu. All you have to do is Google it.

With the new design Magsafe, you will not be getting to much business form cracked DC jacks anymore.

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If this trial is allowed to go on lot of the dirty secrets will come to the surface. I love Mac and Apple but there is no fat left for anyone in America why should it be protected for Apple and Hollywood types. If you make your junk in China do you deserve Swiss paycheck?

The only dirty secret is that Windows stinks, and cheep Windows users want to get on the OSX bandwagon with out paying the piper. How do you think Apple subsidies OS X development, by selling it for a mislay $129?

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Perhaps we can pay $ 500.00 for a copy of OS X 10.5 but let us take advantage of Chinese slave labor that is used to make cheap off the shelf parts used in a generic PC. Let us supplement our miserable paychecks and not Steve Jobs who has more than he can ever spend.

China manufactures everything, cheap and expensive, everything! Maybe if you where half as creative and had half the business sense that someone like Jobs has, you would not be complaining about your miserable paycheck.

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When IBM came out with a personal computer they did not plan to have everyone copy them. Psystar of that day was known as Compaq and rest of is history. I can not afford $3000.00 for MacPro, but I did buy Dell Precision Work Station 390 for measly $320.00 on eBay and it runs 10.5.5 as good as MacPro. I should know it, I fix them.

Man!, I should have purchased a Dell for $320 that has two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors, that run on a 1600MHz, 64-bit dual independent frontside buses and have also 800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory compatibility and that supports 32 Gb of RAM. What was I thinking! But I wonder if it would render my work in hours not day like my MacPro does.
Poor people are resourceful and they can not jail everyone. There are hundreds of thousands of people doing what Psystar is doing. So look out Apple!
Nope, only Psystar is assembling cheap PC boxes compatible enough to sort of run Leopard, advertising and selling them. Apple could care less about you and your Dell. One more thing, if poor people where resourceful, they would not be poor.

[mdawson]

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Grapho wrote:

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One more thing, if poor people where resourceful, they would not be poor.

Well on that point I would have to disagree. Someone living in poverty can be very resourceful and they would in fact have to be in order to survive. Changing their financial status requires access to (legal) opportunities. Enough works against the poor even in the US, if not especially in the US, that it can be very difficult for the average person in that situation to rise above their circumstances.

Planning for the future is not a priority when you have to figure out how to make it through today. Moving up the economic ladder is near infeasible even for those that do take advantage of limited opportunity and work it to their benefit when the middle class is being eroded.

[lwdesign]

There is a lot of fuzzy logic going around on what is a monopoly and what rights a company has. If any company produces a product (hardware, software, toy, tool, furniture, etc.) they have the right to determine what to do with it and who they sell it to. If the company's policies are obnoxious or against the normal laws of the land, people simply won't buy it or due legal process steps in, and the company goes out of business. People vote with their money, which is the basis of the free enterprise system.
The age-old argument remains: If you don't like Apple's policies on how the software can be used--DON'T BUY IT, DON'T USE IT! This alone will either force the company to rethink its policies or go out of business.
If YOU were to make something and I wanted to buy it, I simply cannot dictate to you what you must do with your product or service. It's yours, and what you say goes. If I disagree I simply don't buy it. To then try to use the legal system to force you into doing things the way I think you should is an invasion of basic rights of ownership.
It's human nature to want to get things "cheaper". Money is hard to come by, especially for those who have neglected to put any kind of skills together through their lives. However, even the most disadvantaged can go to a library to learn things. I am a firm believer that a person makes his own life. I personally started with nothing from a relatively low-income family. When I moved out on my own at the age of 19, I was on welfare for a short time. I pulled myself up through reading and studying things I was interested in and eventually made a career and a business for myself as a designer. I had no silver spoon that handed me my job. Now, in my mid-50s, I have clients all over the world. I was disadvantaged, yet I made my way. I've never bought into the idea that poor people are all put-upon by the rich. Anyone can create their own life and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. There's no trick to it. Go to a library, find something you're interested in and learn. Make some effort to learn some skills and make yourself valuable to others. Then you can afford to buy a real Mac and not have to put up with cheap clones that violate Apple's license agreements.

[xybernaut]

WOW, if only I was smart enough to use a Dell server as a Mac OSX platform. Why isn't this common knowledge?

[MacFan007]

Grapho must be a Republican!
He or she does not have any sympathy for poor people. I was rich at one time and now I am poor. Fortunes are changing even for those smart ass people who were spiting at poor people. Grapho, it is good to remember that, your turn might be in the making.
Courts will decide if Apple is a monopoly! In my heart, they are monopoly when they employ unfair practices.

Regarding MacPro vs Dell, I would prefer MacPro and it is great value for those that can afford it. I have priced MacPro compared to Dell of similar configuration, and it comes out Dell is around $1,300.00 more than MacPro. This fact does not help me! I do not use my computer for editing films or doing scientific research so that my $ 320.00/ Dell 390 that has Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz/ 2GB Memory/DVD/RW/200GB HD is the fastest computer I ever owned. I also own at least 15 older Macs including fastest G4 Dual 1.42MHz MDD.

Apple has lost me when they decided to make Mac Mini as the low end and nothing else up to MacPro. I do not like iMacs or Apple notebooks because they are so expensive to repair. Lot of iMacs are turning out to be lemons, and expensive to repair. MacPro is a great machine for those that need that kind of power. I do not.
I recommend Apple's 3 year service contract to people who buy new Apple products. I have been told by some users of Apple service contracts, that, Apple uses numerous excuses not to honor contracts. Blaming problems on the users of their products. By the way there is a problem with mag connector, it is too short and people pull cable to disconnect it whereby they break or puncture cable which causes electrical shorts.
Yes Grapho, in China they pay their workers slave wages! Steve Jobs and people like you could care less if these jobs were at one time high paying jobs here in America. It is not true that this machines would cost $ 10,000.00 if they were produced in America. American car manufacturers produce cars of similar quality at similar prices as do foreign manufacturers. I bought my first Mac IIsi in 1990 and I still have it. It works and it looks new. I spent $ 6,000.00 on Mac IIsi/ Apple Personal Laser II/ 13? Color Monitor. I thought I got a good deal for the money.

Apple does not manufacture a thing in America! They became basically a merchant operation relaying on contract manufacturing in China in order to maintain high rate of profit. Dell has announced sale of all of their manufacturing plants, so , they too, can embrace purely Chinese slave labor model and contract manufacture in China or slave labor elsewhere.
Is this what global economy means! It does not take brains to be a slave owner.
It does take brains to build a business that pays living wage to the producers of it?s products.

[Grapho]

Sure, I agree, but in the context that he used it, it's almost like you should have inherited entitlement rights, just because you are poor.

Poverty has a lot of deferent aspects that we could discuss at length, suffice to say that the system is designed by the rich to benefit the rich and this situation is not exclusive to any specific country. It does seem to have even more polarized economical aspects, the richer the country is. That said, at least here in U.S., if you are not selfish, your kids can still make it, even if you can't, but it's up to the parents. Unfortunately parenting is also a rare commodity, again, across the world.

I have seen people immigrate to the U.S. fleeing from poverty stricken situations. Asians for example, almost in every case, will end up with collage educated kids that will thrive and manage to clime out of poverty in only one generation. Latin-Americans are a deferent story thou. Culture, off course plays a huge roll and the perception of what is important and the values they are instilled through their upbringing.

The U.S. does give unique opportunities that are simply not found in other parts of the world, that is why I said what I said.

Back to the topic.

In any case, it's not like everybody needs a MacPro, even professionals in a lot of deferent fields would benefit more cost wise form an iMac or Mac mini. The case of even bringing up the MacPro as an overly expensive example of Apple being greedy is simply disingenuous from his part. Only a small percentage of computer users need to tap in to the processing power that a MacPro affords, and only for specific jobs. Yet, people on the other side of the Psystar argument seem fixated on the MacPro for no good reason other than it's cost, totally disregarding it's purpose or it's market.

[Grapho]

I am not a Republican, or a Democrat for that matter, and I agree with you that circumstances can drive almost anybody in this country to poverty, but this hardly gives me the impulse to back what Psystar is doing. Filling a gap for a market through illegal means does not justify their actions.

You will be pleased to hear that the rumor mill has alluded to the elusive upgradable headless Mac. I do agree with you that such a model would fill in a gap on Apple's lineup. They have had such a model before, IIci, 7600, IIsi., Performa you name it, so I don't see why they would not have something similar to offer. But again, this does not automatically give license to Psystar to jump in and fill that gap, illegally.

Last thing, where do you think Psystar is getting their parts, Iowa?

Last I checked, not just Apple is manufacturing in China and you do have a point, but isn't your argument that Apple hardware is to expensive, you really think it would be more affordable if manufactured here. It's easy to blame the executive team of shipping jobs overseas, but you don't think consumers drive this? Last time I checked Walmart is doing very well, and it's not because they keep their employees happy, or because they award them great health benefits, or because they only sell american goods. They are doing good because they usually have the cheapest price, and guess how they can manage that, so it's easy to blame the corporation, why don't we blame the people that support them by wanting the cheapest price?