Pystar Annihilation Postponed (Temporarily)

I too was convinced Apple would enjoy prying the last clone from Psystar's cold, dead fingers. Maybe Psystar has agreed to rat out its funders. I recall Apple claiming an unnamed major company was supporting Psystar's efforts.

Now that would be worth the small shred of Psystar Apple might leave in tact.

"Apple’s agreement not to execute on these awards ***UNTIL*** all appeals in this matter have been concluded"

I read this as meaning that Apple will allow Psystar to finish up the appeal process before Apple gets their damage payment. I see nothing in the statement that suggests the damage payment is small.

Isn't this simply allowing the necessary legal recourse (which Apple knows will go in their favor) before closing the case with Psystar's death?

There's always a slight David/Goliath subtext to articles on this subject. Apple is only protecting the reputation of their OS. I believe their products work so well because the hardware and the operating system are carefully optimized for each other. They have every right to keep it this way.

My guess is that there is nothing more to this than Apple allowing the offending company to shut down its business gracefully. In other words, they are not interested in "damages", they just want the offender to go away.

Apple in this regard is slightly less evil than Microsoft.

Give them a round of applause.

> Apple in this regard is
> slightly less evil than
> Microsoft.

That is flat-out ridiculous. Get a grip. Apple and Microsoft are polar opposites. When you put them in the same sentence you need to proof read and make sure you didn't just say something stupid. They both make bits, they are both in the tech industry, they are both companies, they both provide platforms for Adobe, and that's about where the similarities end.

And why would you defend Psystar? Weren't you taught in kindergarden not to copy someone else's work and put your own name on it? That is all Psystar did. Copying Mac OS from a Mac mini you bought at the Apple Store onto a generic PC and selling it and keeping all the money is the exact same process as buying a DVD of a movie release and copying it onto a blank DVD and selling it and keeping all the money. It's called "bootlegging" or "piracy" or "plagiarism". There is no defense for that. This is not some big business DMCA thing, this is basic kindergarden ethics. Thousands of people worked on Mac OS and thousands of people work on a movie release. Nobody has the right to take that work and sell it and keep all the money.

Microsoft is only one step better than Psystar because they copy other people's ideas, although at least they make their own implementation. But they walk right on the edge, which is why they are always in court and why Fraunhofer (inventors of MP3) now own Windows Media Audio (Microsoft's clone of MP3) and why Video for Windows was removed from the market (it had Apple QuickTime code in it) and why Windows 95 looks just like NeXTSTEP (compare screen captures.) There are many other examples. When you consider the lack of security in Windows which victimizes consumers (e.g. during your online banking session a malware sends your entire bank account balance to Russia and there is no recourse, that is a legitimate wire transfer initiated by your PC) there is no contest between Microsoft and anyone else for evil tech.

The stupidest part of this whole Psystar thing is that they only sold 768 machines at $500 each, for gross receipts of $3,840.00, which is less than the monthly take-home of 1 software engineer. So the whole "power to the people" thing is BS. There is no mass of consumers out there who want Mac OS without the terrible oppression of having to buy it inside a Mac instead of on a DVD and do a bunch of I-T work even just to update it later. If you buy a Mac with AppleCare, you get 3 guaranteed years of 100% functionality, which nobody else offers. I have a buddy who is a high-end I-T consultant, and it costs thousands of dollars for him to keep a single Windows machine running at 100% functionality for 3 years. He has to come in monthly and work on it at $100/hr. He has to search for drivers to get the DVD writer working again after a Service Pack. He has to run tools on the Registry and update virus definitions. Meanwhile, somebody who paid $500 for a Mac mini and $250 for AppleCare just trucks along and any problems they do have they go to an Apple Genius for no charge.

The idea that Psystar is doing anything other than raping consumers by charging them almost the same money as Apple to get a bootleg version of a Mac with no support at all is asinine. To suggest that asking a court to shut them down is evil is even more asinine.