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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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More than four years after Psystar challenged Apple by first selling $399 unauthorized Mac clones and later shifting tactics to offer software supporting installation of Mac OS X Snow Leopard on PCs, the dispute between the two companies has finally reached its conclusion. As noted by CNET, Psystar's persistent legal appeals have now been exhausted as the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review an appellate court ruling from last September upholding a ban on Psystar's sales of Mac clones.
Following a rejection of Psystar's appeal to that decision in September, the company's lawyers vowed to take it up to the Supreme Court. "This is far from over," K.A.D. Camara of Houston law firm Camara & Sibley LLP told Computerworld in an interview. The company kept to its word, and filed for a review from the Supreme Court on December 27, 2011.

"We are sad," Camara told CNET by e-mail this evening. "I'm sure that the Supreme Court will take a case on this important issue eventually."
Psystar's persistence that saw the company press the issue with Apple as far as the courts would allow led Apple to suggest a potential conspiracy, questioning why a small company would be so bold in the face of Apple's legal action and how it could have financed the expensive court battles. No such conspiracy was ever revealed, however, with Psystar's financial backing remaining something of a mystery.

psystar_openmac.jpg



Psystar's original "OpenMac" Mac clone, quickly rebranded "Open Computer" to skirt Apple's trademarks
While Apple was quick to file suit against Psystar in July 2008 and an initial injunction against Psystar effectively shut down the company in December 2009, the court cases continued to play out over an additional period of nearly two and half years. Psystar attempted to fund its legal defense during some of that time by soliciting donations and selling T-shirts, and did somehow manage to secure enough funding to support filing several more appeals taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Article Link: Psystar Case Comes to a Close as U.S. Supreme Court Declines Review
 

smokestack

macrumors member
Feb 12, 2008
82
14
Just curious, do any Mac Rumors readers own a Psystar machine?

How are they doing 4 years later?
 

godslabrat

macrumors 6502
Aug 19, 2007
346
110
Just curious, do any Mac Rumors readers own a Psystar machine?

How are they doing 4 years later?

I'd have been curious to see what kind of prices they could have offered, had they gotten a little bigger. Apple computers are expensive, no argument, but so is customizing a standard box to run OSX. It would be neat to see how much of a price advantage a knockoff Mac would be, in 2012.

That said, it'd be moot, since I don't do minitowers anymore.
 

Marcus-k

macrumors regular
Nov 17, 2011
111
0
In what way was it a Mac "clone"? It looks nothing like a Mac, and having it configured with OSX would have just made it a computer running OS X, not a mac clone, right?

Edit:
Why is my question downvoted so much? Is it wrong to ask questions?
 
Last edited:

chirpie

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2010
646
183
it's the new Mac pro! wait a minute...

For half of a second, my brain saw a tower image as the page loaded. I was temporarily excited that we had some new Mac Pro news... and then, disappointment.

I can't help it. Their tower is still the apple product I use the most. By a sizable margin.
 

shaunp

Cancelled
Nov 5, 2010
1,811
1,395
It would be interesting to know how they ran. Personally I find Apple's current desktop lineup a bit limited. I want something between the mini and the Pro, and the iMac just doesn't cut it as I don't want an all in one. If Apple made such a machine I would buy it.
 

lkrupp

macrumors 68000
Jul 24, 2004
1,867
3,789
There's no doubt in my mind as to Psystar's "mysterious" financing. Somebody big was out to undermine Apple. It could have been any of the PC manufacturers like Dell, HP hoping to be able to build OS X compatible beige boxes that would evenutally bring Apple down. And of course I would put nothing past Microsoft. All that talk of an Apple monopoly within its own market was nonsense from start to finish.
 

BaldiMac

macrumors G3
Jan 24, 2008
8,745
10,845
In what way was it a Mac "clone"? It looks nothing like a Mac, and having it configured with OSX would have just made it a computer running OS X, not a mac clone, right?

Nobody said it was a good clone. When you try to clone on the cheap, sometimes the clone comes out horribly disfigured. :D
 

Jimmy James

macrumors 603
Oct 26, 2008
5,488
4,067
Magicland
In what way was it a Mac "clone"? It looks nothing like a Mac, and having it configured with OSX would have just made it a computer running OS X, not a mac clone, right?

Used in the spirit of what used to be an "IBM clone" the terminology is correct.
 

cvaldes

macrumors 68040
Dec 14, 2006
3,237
0
somewhere else
Since you do not seem to understand this basic point, I will mention it right here:

There are functional clones and there are design clones.

The Psystar machine was a Mac clone in function, although it did not closely resemble the Mac in design. Psystar managed to cobble together commodity PC components and find workarounds in the Mac OS X installation process to get their boxes to run. The End User License Agreement for OS X prohibits the use of OS X on anything by a computer manufactured by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer Inc.).

By creating an environment which allowed OS X to run on a third-party system, they basically created a Mac clone in function.

That's why Apple won the initial lawsuit. It's also why the appellate court upheld the initial ruling. SCOTUS probably found that the appellate court had adequately addressed the issue and is therefore not interested in re-examining the case.
 

pdjudd

macrumors 601
Jun 19, 2007
4,037
65
Plymouth, MN
In what way was it a Mac "clone"? It looks nothing like a Mac, and having it configured with OSX would have just made it a computer running OS X, not a mac clone, right?
No, the word "clone" refers to the OS (which is how they got the OS on there in the first place - they cloned an image). If the computer looked like a Mac hardware wise it would be a counterfeit. Back in the day when OSX was licensed to other makers they were called clones too.

Back in the day, a computer that ran windows from different makers were coined "winclones" since they were running the same OS.

ETA: The term clone actually dates back to the IBM DOS days referring to any computer that ran DOS.
 

MacinDoc

macrumors 68020
Mar 22, 2004
2,268
10
The Great White North
In what way was it a Mac "clone"? It looks nothing like a Mac, and having it configured with OSX would have just made it a computer running OS X, not a mac clone, right?
A non-Apple computer running OS X is, by definition, a Mac clone. It's OS X that makes it a Mac. And the cost of OS X is included in the purchase price of the Mac. But when you purchased a Psystar Open Computer, it was equipped with what was an OS upgrade (when you purchase a copy of OS X, it is assumed that you have already paid for the original installation of OS X, so you are simply paying for an upgrade, not a full install). In addition, I believe Apple demonstrated that Psystar equipped all of its machines with duplicates of a single copy of OS X (again, a copy of an OS X upgrade, not an authorized full install, which Apple has never sold, although it did license OS X to authorized clone makers in the bad old days when Apple was hanging on the edge of the financial abyss).
 

charlieegan3

macrumors 68020
Feb 16, 2012
2,394
17
U.K
For half of a second, my brain saw a tower image as the page loaded. I was temporarily excited that we had some new Mac Pro news... and then, disappointment.

I can't help it. Their tower is still the apple product I use the most. By a sizable margin.

there no denying that the mac pro (as it is is) a great looking computer.
 

phasornc

macrumors member
Jul 7, 2003
72
0
It would be interesting to know how they ran. Personally I find Apple's current desktop lineup a bit limited. I want something between the mini and the Pro, and the iMac just doesn't cut it as I don't want an all in one. If Apple made such a machine I would buy it.

You don't need a Psystar. Chameleon/Chimera are free and my Dell Optiplex 780 has been a great Mac for the past year and a half. Most recently I built CustoMac Mini's at home using UniBeast and they are great. Just google CustoMac and UniBeast all the info is there.

PS I also have 2 legit iMacs, a Macbook, an airport extreme and 2 iPhones in the family so the CustoMacs are just a hobby for me.
 

klamse25

macrumors 6502a
Oct 25, 2009
610
6
I'd have been curious to see what kind of prices they could have offered, had they gotten a little bigger. Apple computers are expensive, no argument, but so is customizing a standard box to run OSX. It would be neat to see how much of a price advantage a knockoff Mac would be, in 2012.

That said, it'd be moot, since I don't do minitowers anymore.

If you have an intel machine, it's pretty easy to install OS X on it. :D
 
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