Psystar Winding Down Business as Web Site Goes Dark

MacRumors · Dec 18, 2009

Dow Jones Newswires reports that unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar has begun the process of winding down its business ahead of a December 31st deadline set by a federal court judge in granting Apple a permanent injunction preventing Psystar from selling hardware with Mac OS X preinstalled or enabling others to infringe on Apple's copyrights.

The Doral, Fla.-based computer maker, which made machines that run Apple's popular Macintosh operating system, intends to fire its eight employees, company attorney Eugene Action told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday.

Psystar President Rudy Pedraza will then be "shutting things down immediately, " Action said. "They will not be in business."

To that end, Psystar's web site, which serves as its primary sales channel, became inaccessible yesterday and it appers doubtful that it will be revived.

In the permanent injunction granted earlier this week, federal court judge William Alsup declined to grant Psystar's request to exclude from the injunction its Rebel EFI software, which enables consumers and other third parties to install Mac OS X on non-Apple computers. Alsup noted, however, that Psystar could bring a separate case to address the legality of Rebel EFI, which was not subject to full disclosure in the trial, although the company could be held in contempt if it continued selling the software before its legality had been addressed.

Given Psystar's bold history of business and legal moves, it did not appear out of the question that its management might decide to press the issue of Rebel EFI's legality, but it does now seem that Psystar has finally conceded and will be shutting down its operations in the very near future.

Article Link: Psystar Winding Down Business as Web Site Goes Dark

rubberduck007 · Dec 18, 2009

*sniff*, a sad day indeed

roxnadz · Dec 18, 2009

Don't mess with Apple, apparently.

studiomusic · Dec 18, 2009

8?

They had 8 employees?!?!?

oldwatery · Dec 18, 2009

At last.
Good riddance.
These guys were just ambulance chasers.
Now can we move on?

KnightWRX · Dec 18, 2009

rubberduck007 said:
*sniff*, a sad day indeed

Sad only for a very weird definition of sad. This is a big win for Apple and all Apple customers (notice I said customers).

studiomusic said:
They had 8 employees?!?!?

They sold 768 PCs. What did you expect ? Even at 1200$ per PC, that doesn't even break 1m$. Minus business costs, parts, website maintenance, that doesn't leave a lot of money for 8 employees.

Gregintosh · Dec 18, 2009

8 Employees is misleading. A lot of companies these days operate with only a core staff and outsource all other functions to subcontractors (manufacturing to a company in China, a call center for support in India, Shipping and distribution to a fulfillment center in California, an ad agency for the marketing somewhere else, etc). So despite only "8" employees on the payroll they could really have had hundreds of people or more working "for" them.

Anyway, this does mean that any dreams of Mac OS being sold on or even being able to run on non Apple hardware with the official backing of SOME company are dead at least for the next several years. Too bad too. While I am a fan of Apple and Apple hardware I was secretly hoping that if Mac OS became through other companies then I would benefit by Apple slashing prices even more.

J the Ninja · Dec 18, 2009

I'd love to see Rebel EFI brought to court. It would be funny to make them prove it's just code stolen from the osx86 folks. Oh well, at least they're gone.

movieator · Dec 18, 2009

Well, back to obscurity for Pedraza.

Yvan256 · Dec 18, 2009

KnightWRX said:
They sold 768 PCs.

Isn't it a bit strange? I mean 768 is kind of a round number (3x256) in computing terms... I find it odd/funny that they sold exactly that number of computers.

KnightWRX · Dec 18, 2009

Gregintosh said:
While I am a fan of Apple and Apple hardware I was secretly hoping that if Mac OS became through other companies then I would benefit by Apple slashing prices even more.

That's the problem with the current generation of Mac users, they don't remember Apple's history. There's a reason the first thing Steve Jobs did when he returned as temporary CEO of Apple in 1998 was to cut out the clone market.

This same reason still applies today as Apple's market strategy hasn't changed, nor as the market.

Yvan256 said:
Isn't it a bit strange? I mean 768 is kind of a round number (3x256) in computing terms... I find it odd/funny that they sold exactly that number of computers.

That's the number I remember. I know it was quoted elsewhere to be around that, maybe that's not the exact number.

ferrous · Dec 18, 2009

Not as good as you may think

I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

movieator · Dec 18, 2009

ferrous said:
I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

Someone shut Microsoft, HP, Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, and Compaq down?

KnightWRX · Dec 18, 2009

ferrous said:
I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

That's the point, Apple's competition hasn't been shut down, they've just been prevented from selling what they didn't have any right to sell.

Dell, Toshiba, Sony, HP are still very much alive and compete with Apple without resorting to trying to use OS X without a license to do it. Why couldn't Psystar do it ?

You don't need OS X to compete with Apple, just like Sun or HP didn't need AIX to compete with IBM.

studiomusic · Dec 18, 2009

I was thinking 8 was a lot for a small company like theirs.
My father's company has 5 or 6 and does 3-4 million a year... I can't imagine Psystar needing 8 (unless they count their lawyers as part of their staff).

Michael CM1 · Dec 18, 2009

ferrous said:
I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

No competition? Are you nuts? Apple makes PCs. So do HP, Compaq, Toshiba, Dell, Sony, etc. Apple developed Mac OS and decided it didn't want to allow other companies to install it on their hardware. Microsoft developed Windows and decided to license it to hardware-makers. This is the same deal as movie companies selling movies on BD or DVD but saying you can't play them to a big theater audience.

Why has computing made people not understand laws? I had someone this morning try to tell me that because he bought an MP3 it was his and he could do with it whatever he wanted, including giving the files to other people. Just wow.

Rocketman · Dec 18, 2009

Yvan256 said:
Isn't it a bit strange? I mean 768 is kind of a round number (3x256) in computing terms... I find it odd/funny that they sold exactly that number of computers.

They sold 768 bits not bytes.

VTMac · Dec 18, 2009

ferrous said:
I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

No direct competition????????? Are you kidding??? Have you not heard of people like Microsoft HP, Sony, Dell, etc. etc??? That is direct competition.

The "problem" is that you prefer what apple makes but don't want to pay for it. And the alternatives are sufficiently poor, that even at their reduced prices you don't see them as valuable as Apple kit.

There is no problem that. That is Apple flat out whipping their competition.

The real "problem" is that Apples competition are bunch of bungling idiots that have collectively decided it's a good idea to race to the bottom. All of them have the resources to compete on a quality / whole experience level with Apple. None of them have the leadership of vision. And that is what is sad.

KnightWRX · Dec 18, 2009

Michael CM1 said:
Why has computing made people not understand laws?

It has nothing to do with computing and everything to do with the current generation's strong sense of entitlement. The world owes them, they don't owe anything to the world.

If a 20 something today was to make the JFK speech, it would go like this : "Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you".

Berio · Dec 18, 2009

Umax

KnightWRX said:
That's the problem with the current generation of Mac users, they don't remember Apple's history. There's a reason the first thing Steve Jobs did when he returned as temporary CEO of Apple in 1998 was to cut out the clone market.

oh i do remember, we bought a UMAX clone, a dreadful machine, kept crashing, multiple repairs etc. it was my first contact with apple-related stuff, (using amiga and atari before the UMAX).

any yes, it did lead me to think the whole apple-thing wasn't worth it, and i bought a windows machine instead. only years later did i buy an apple - a pismo laptop - and quickly understood that apple stuff works best when hard- and software are both delivered by apple.

i don't know how things are today, whether hackintosh stuff runs smoothly, but i can understand apple wanting to avoid a repeat of the 90's clones.

VTMac · Dec 18, 2009

Gregintosh said:
8 Employees is misleading. A lot of companies these days operate with only a core staff and outsource all other functions to subcontractors (manufacturing to a company in China, a call center for support in India, Shipping and distribution to a fulfillment center in California, an ad agency for the marketing somewhere else, etc). So despite only "8" employees on the payroll they could really have had hundreds of people or more working "for" them.

Anyway, this does mean that any dreams of Mac OS being sold on or even being able to run on non Apple hardware with the official backing of SOME company are dead at least for the next several years. Too bad too. While I am a fan of Apple and Apple hardware I was secretly hoping that if Mac OS became through other companies then I would benefit by Apple slashing prices even more.

From reading their court filings (Groklaw has great summaries) it is clear that Psystar was building the machine by hand in their office. It was a essentially a garage operation moved to an office. They had 2 Mac Minis that they used as imaging server. (Oh the irony of using real Macs to make illegal clones.)

Any how, it was/is quite apparent Psystar was providing nothing more than the average Hacktintosher does when building their own machine. They pretty much did the same thing with same level of quality control, etc.

KnightWRX · Dec 18, 2009

Berio said:
i don't know how things are today, whether hackintosh stuff runs smoothly, but i can understand apple wanting to avoid a repeat of the 90's clones.

Well, the few guys near me who jumped on some HP mini 10 sale are all raving that it runs OS X perfectly... except for the fact that sleep doesn't work. Seems like a pretty big issue to me...

VTMac said:
Any how, it was/is quite apparent Psystar was providing nothing more than the average Hacktintosher does when building their own machine. They pretty much did the same thing with same level of quality control, etc.

And that's why they failed to sell many units. The hackintosh community (no matter the legality behind it) is all about tinkering. The goal isn't to have a generic cheap PC with OS X on it to surf the web. It's to build a PC with just the right specs, with some choice hardware, hand assemble it and then play around with the software to get it installed. In a sense, those people who probably be better off just playing around with Linux and Enlightenment DR17 as a desktop (at least then there's no legal issue).

The hackintosh is very much about the trip, not so much the destination. Psystar doing the trip for you kind of defeats the purpose. What's left is essentially the entitled kids that want a OS X computer, but don't want to pay Apple what it's worth.

cmaier · Dec 18, 2009

ferrous said:
I love Apple and what they make. I use quite a few gadgets from them.
However, I can't help but to feel sad that Apple's competition has been shut down. I know, legally they violated this and that... nevertheless, I am often taken back by the prices of Apple products and since there is no direct competition in their line, they can price things at higher level. One may argue the quality, etc., but still.

To say that Psystar was competition is ludicrous. That's like saying that I can be competition to Best Buy by breaking into the store, stealing a bunch of TV's that I didn't have to pay for in the first place, and undercutting Best Buy's price.

If Psystar wants to be competition to Apple, they should go write their own operating system.

VTMac · Dec 18, 2009

KnightWRX said:
Well, the few guys near me who jumped on some HP mini 10 sale are all raving that it runs OS X perfectly... except for the fact that sleep doesn't work. Seems like a pretty big issue to me...

Hackintosh is a great thing for hobbyists / enthusiasts. I have no problem with it.

But I crack up laughing every time I read how it "works perfectly except..."

Unless the definition of perfect has changed, I'm pretty sure most Hackinstoh advocates are abusing that term.

HiVolt · Dec 18, 2009

MacRumors said:
Alsup noted, however, that Psystar could bring a separate case to address the legality of Rebel EFI, which was not subject to full disclosure in the trial, although the company could be held in contempt if it continued selling the software before its legality had been addressed.

If these guys at EFI-X can sell a hardware dongle that allows running of OSX on generic hardware, then I don't see why Rebel EFI can't exist either.

http://expresshd.com/

Psystar Winding Down Business as Web Site Goes Dark

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