Great news, I fully support Psystar and their wild applesauce escapade.We need choice and better offerings.Apple is way too high on their Iphone horse right now, with 10.5.7 a mess, phones overheating , and MBP's cheapened lets get something new for once.Clones are not bad when put in perspective.People can still buy the Ikea based Apples if they want and feel all superior while others can buy more utilitarian machines for their needs.Win Win
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Psystar Exits Bankruptcy, Launches New Xeon-Based Systems Running OS X
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The courts will decide if what Psystar is doing is legal or not. They're the experts in IP.
For me personally, I could careless. It's cheaper, but if they go under you lose support. Who knows, when I start looking for another computer they might be an option.
As far as the EULA goes, in my opinion, it takes away from consumers' rights.
It reminds me a lot of credit card companies that used to be able to raise interest for no reason at all until government stepped in a few months ago finally trying to protect the consumer.
For me personally, I could careless. It's cheaper, but if they go under you lose support. Who knows, when I start looking for another computer they might be an option.
As far as the EULA goes, in my opinion, it takes away from consumers' rights.
It reminds me a lot of credit card companies that used to be able to raise interest for no reason at all until government stepped in a few months ago finally trying to protect the consumer.
If you look at the prices I got, you'll find a $2,000 discrepancy. Your list of trinkets there is worth $200 at best. I can't even begin to explain how many firewire 800 PCIx cards, advanced audio cards and additional Ethernet ports I can get for $2K. I can get a friggin' MacBook Pro 15" 2.66 w/ 9600M for the difference in profit margin between Dell's W3540 and Apple's W3540. For the difference in profit margin!
I didn't say it was 50-60% cheaper. I said it costs 50-60% of the Mac. I've explained that twice already. What the US store shows is irrelevant to me since I don't live there. I gave you the Swedish links so that you can check the prices for yourself. The argument I made was that not only are Apple charging busloads of money more for the same components, they've also added an extra ripoff tax for the international market, something that Dell hasn't done. Obviously you're not going to see that in their US stores.
No. The build I went for is the one I would get if I ordered one, since that's the most relevant example to me. If I wanted the widest possible difference I would have gone for a fully decked out configuration, since Apple charge much more for CTO options that Dell do (e.g. Dell wants SEK 4,425 for upgrading from 2.66 GHz to 2.93, Apple wants SEK 5,350). I could easily work up a $3,000 difference that way.
It most certainly doesn't. If you start looking at basic configurations the difference becomes even more jarring since the Mac starts at mid-level and goes up from there, while the Dell starts at rock bottom -- the cheapest T3500 I can possibly get costs SEK 9,500 ($1,217), the cheapest MP I can possibly get costs SEK 26,995 ($3,460). They're by no means comparable, but you did say 'basic configurations'...
I doubt Apple will let this year go by without a substantial upgrade package for Final Cut Studio. I'd expect to see some very nice Grand Central and OpenCL optimizations where applicable, and hopefully we'll see Blu-Ray authoring support. I realize that Blu-Ray isn't hugely popular at this point in time, but Apple needs to dive into that sooner or later.
Should you be forced to give up the fruits of your labor as well?
How is a lease different from a license in your context?
First, courts in the US do not see it that way.
Second, in Psystar's case, even if that argument may apply for the first copy they installed, how can they claim to be ignorant of the terms of the license after that?
If becomes an ethics issue when you agree to the license.
Apple's gross margins are around 34%. Their profit margins are around 12%.
Apple can _demand_ damages. Apple can demand lots of damages. As soon as a judge decides for Apple and it comes to paying, Psystar will be straight back to bankruptcy. But I'd just like to point out that the two biggest creditors to Psystar are one of its directors and its lawyers. So for creditor number one: Tough, that many is gone. For creditor number two: I am just curious who is going to defend Psystar in court against Apple.
Like I said, I'm not getting the same numbers that you are. The difference I'm seeing is maybe $1k with the trinkets. That almost hits your 60% difference.
Again, as far as US markets are concerned, Apple isn't charged "busloads" more for components. International markets are a different thing. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing the weak dollar is why Apple is cranking prices. They want to maintain margins. Dell doesn't seem to have the same problem with that. Maybe Apple should take a hint.
Again, not what I'm seeing at all. Putting a Precision 5500 up to a dual 2.93 puts it at just about the same price as the Mac Pro. Other BTO options vary, but some are awful, like Dell only giving you hugely expensive RDIMMs above 6GB. Hard drive upgrades are a bigger ripoff than Apple as well. Hell, maxing them out makes the Mac Pro look even better.
Pardon me, basic comparable configurations. I'm not going to compare a bottom-of-the-barrel cheapie with the low end Mac Pro.
Perhaps your point would be better if you said that the Mac Pro is more expensive in some international markets.
You should be forced to give us your hard earned money so that we can see if socialism is all it's hyped up to be.
There is one enormous difference between Palm and Psystar. To see the difference, you have to read the license for the iTunes application, and the license for using the iTunes Music Store, just to be sure, and the license for MacOS X. Palm doesn't make any copies of iTunes, and the license for iTunes doesn't seem to mention anything that would make it illegal in the first place to use iTunes with a Palm Pre (it seems to me it might have been illegal to install music with DRM bought from the Apple Store on a Palm Pre, but first, it doesn't work anyway, and second, it doesn't matter much anymore. But the MacOS X license clearly says that copying MacOS X is illegal.
I can imagine that Apple isn't happy about what Palm is doing, but to prevent it, they would have had to take some legal measures earlier, exactly as they did with MacOS X.
From Apple's point of view, it seems you answered your own question. If anyone in the world does anything that forces Apple to lower their prices, whether legal or illegal, then this is very obviously a bad thing for Apple, really.
But what you really have to keep in mind is how competition works: There are dozens of big computer manufacturers in the world, all competing, all in their own way. Each of them tries to find its own way of competing. Dell for example tries to compete by building the worlds most efficient supply chain, getting the cheapest suppliers, building highly configurable computers and selling them directly without giving money away to resellers. Apple competes in a completely different way: Apple paid $400 million for NeXT and with that it got the first version of MacOS X; then it spent hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars to improve that operating system.
Dell's strategy gives Dell certain advantages over Apple, just as Apple's strategy gives Apple certain advantages over Dell. This is Dell's and Apple's choice; obviously Apple could have done what Dell did, and Dell had enough money back in 2000 or 2001 or so to outbid Apple on the NeXT sale. But the important thing is: Competition only works when there are laws that protect the competing companies. For example, copyright law is there to give people or companies an incentive to create new works; in this case copyright law is what gives Apple the protection that nobody can copy their software except to Apple's conditions and with Apple's permission. Without that protection, you wouldn't have Dell copying MacOS X. You would have a world where Apple would have never created MacOS X.
The regular crew of the IP Law ignorati show up whenever there is Psystar news, and continue to display little no no knowledge of What IP law is and how Psystar's actions are not just wrong, but detrminetal to the entire industry, not to mention those that depend on the integrity of IP law in order to make a living.
Never mind that, let's talk about something as simple as the EULA. No one, that is, NO ONE, selling computers or software in the current market is interested in seeing a legal precedent set that blows a hole in the principal of the EULA. And that's just the EULA.
Psystar will lose, and lose big, if this does gor forward. And I'm going to love posting here in November to see the reactions of the IP Law ignorati. It'll be priceless.
Never mind that, let's talk about something as simple as the EULA. No one, that is, NO ONE, selling computers or software in the current market is interested in seeing a legal precedent set that blows a hole in the principal of the EULA. And that's just the EULA.
Psystar will lose, and lose big, if this does gor forward. And I'm going to love posting here in November to see the reactions of the IP Law ignorati. It'll be priceless.
Psystar has not yet "exited" bankruptcy (according to their case docket)...
"More information will be available in the coming days when we will be formally discharged by the Bankruptcy court"
Apparently, people have not read Psystar's release closely enough. It is still in bankruptcy. All it did was file a motion to dismiss its case. TOTALLY different thing then getting a discharge of debt through a bankruptcy. There is no discharge of any debt, and if the motion to dismiss is granted, there will be no discharge of any debt through the bankruptcy.
But, whatever. I'll continue to buy my Apple products, not knockoffs
"More information will be available in the coming days when we will be formally discharged by the Bankruptcy court"
Apparently, people have not read Psystar's release closely enough. It is still in bankruptcy. All it did was file a motion to dismiss its case. TOTALLY different thing then getting a discharge of debt through a bankruptcy. There is no discharge of any debt, and if the motion to dismiss is granted, there will be no discharge of any debt through the bankruptcy.
But, whatever. I'll continue to buy my Apple products, not knockoffs
Interesting, but over the 18 months I have owned my iMac, I really do see the benefits of matched hardware/software. I suppose there is a need by some to be able to buy something other than Apple hardware and be able to run OS-X but I also think there are a lot of folks like me who are happy to have something that works.
Yes, the USD has recovered a bit from its rock bottom value at the end of the Bush era, but not that much. Dell is an American company too. Apple must be using exchange rates that a pink Christina Aguilera monster whispered to Steve while he was under narcosis, I don't know where they're getting these numbers. It's not just the EU, I've heard the same complaints from Aussies, Kiwis and others.
It might have something to do with the fact that Dell's BTO machines are assembled in Ireland, while Apple's are assembled in China. I don't know. Either way, Apple's international sales must suck right now. Mac is like the Star Wars franchise, disproportionately successful on the home market. Internationally they're still struggling with a 3-4% market share, despite the recent Mac boom in the US.
Depends on the OS manufacturer though. Windows 7 installed almost perfectly on my Mac (which Win7 certainly wasn't built for), the only stuff that wasn't correctly identified were the Realtek soundchip and the proprietary Apple stuff like the keyboard and trackpad. OS X, on the other hand, only ships with the handful of drivers required to work with Apple's hand picked components. I wouldn't say it's "better" matched, it's just that it isn't matched with anything else.
I love my Hackintosh. 100% identical operationally to my old iMac, just well over twice as fast.
If 4.5% of the world's population accounted for 54% of the sales, and 95.5% of the world's population accounted for 46%, I'd argue that their international sales do suck.
HP's international sales account for 68% of their revenue. One third US, two thirds international is a rather typical ratio for anything from hi-tech products to box office (Titanic = 600 million US, 1200 million international).
Companies like Microsoft, Dell and HP are pumping out ads and TV commercials in all corners of the world. I have yet to see a single Apple ad on Swedish TV. I think they do some local version of the Mac vs PC ads in the UK, but apart from that they don't seem to advertise on TV in the EU. Macs are still niche products here, they're extremely rare outside the offices of creative professionals.
for a workstation....not a desktop
i dont want a workstation, i want a desktop
and no, the imac is not a desktop in any form of the word
How about we at least stick to only counting people whose annual income is above the price of a Mac!
And who live in a country where Macs are sold.Much more reasonable comparison.
Just let those feelings out. Glad you feel so confident in IP law and in the interests of everyone in the free market.
It'll be nice to see what the US Courts decide.
BTW, I can't seem to find "ignorati" in any English dictionary.
Perhaps you meant to use ignoramuses.