Last week I sold a book I'd annotated while studying. I know the new owner will be grateful for the learning opportunity, as the book was hard to find, and I didn't exactly make more than a few $ on it. Nevertheless, I'd made money from modifying someone else's work and selling it on without their permission; may the FSM have mercy on my soul.
This case is not about Apple making a decision to license its EULA to 3rd parties. They do not have to support it anyway this comes down. If I buy a washing machine, put solvent in it to clean engine parts, Sears can not stop me, but they also do not have to warranty the machine since I broke the agreement.That's an outcome I'd accept as reasonable on some level: buy OS X (or by a Pystar with OS X) and maybe it will run, maybe not. Maybe the next software update will kill something important, maybe not.
But I don't think Psystar or consumers would care for that
And who would Psystar go to? ONLY Apple could fix problems with OS X on other hardware. Unless Psystar were to develop a whole new model and send it to you for free exchange every time something in OS X broke on non-Apple machines.
The only MEANINGFUL way to achieve the dubious goal of OS X on non-Apple hardware is if Apple supports it.
"Support" doesn't mean "this is the phone number you call." Support means:
* Apple fixes a bug in OS X. Works great. But it breaks on a certain Psystar model! Gotta fix that. More testing, more programming, more delay, more complexity, more risk of a domino effect of even MORE bugs
* Apple adds a feature to OS X. Works great. But it breaks on a certain Psystar model! Gotta fix that. See above.
* Apple makes a whole new OS version with thousands of little fixes and new features. But some of them break on a certain Psystar model. Gotta fix that. See above.
Etc.
And third-party OS X software developers would have to deal with many of the same issues too! Just like they do with Windows now. A HUGE burden at both the development AND post-sales support phases.
If OS X is sold for non-Apple hardware, there is only one way problems will be fixed: on Apple's end or not at all. (Unless of course the courts force Apple to give Psystar their source code to current and future OS's. Then we have software developers dealing not only with a chaos of unpredictable hardware configs, but multiple slightly-different OS versions too! Not gonna work.)
All of which carries a huge cost to Apple in time and money, and a huge cost to Mac users in terms of how fast we get Apple software and how good it is when it arrives.
)Not better; less costly.
Mainly I've heard of people doing it for the sake of the power and specs Apple wedges into such a thin space with their laptops.
(And of course it's also the very reason Microsoft gained and kept their abusive monopoly. All that manufacturer variety has been a two-edged sword for Windows: more profits, more "choice," but lower quality, fewer features, and later releases. See also Windows Vista
Not quite. Microsoft rarely develops the drivers that are used in Windows, in terms of all of the products that are released. The vast majority of the time, driver development is left up to the individual company (for example, Microsoft doesn't develop nVidia or ATI graphics drivers, nVidia and ATI do. Microsoft doesn't develop Intel or AMD chipset or processor drivers, Intel and AMD do).
Once a company develops a driver, there are a few options available: one, they can submit the driver to Microsoft for testing, in which case if it passes Microsoft's likely limited testing, it receives WHQL certification. If it doesn't pass testing, Microsoft will usually request that they go back and make changes to get the driver to function properly.
Otherwise, what often occurs, is that companies will instead directly release the driver onto their website, etc., and thus they take Microsoft out of the equation. Microsoft has for years warned Windows users that using any driver that hasn't passed certification, can lead to system instability. The ultimate reality however, is that so many thousands and thousands of Windows-related products get released each year, that it would essentially be almost impossible for Microsoft to ever provide the support Windows would need, to achieve OS X-like manufacturer-guaranteed stability.
However, that having been said, if you consider the entire scenario behind Windows and what it faces in terms of driver support, I doubt OS X or any other OS could ever approach the general stability that Windows provides, if you had to have OS X and other OS' support everything that Windows does.
OS X is a great OS, and I do think what of the greatest benefits is that in general, it is highly stable (although I've never seen my Windows-based systems ever crash more often than OS X, it's about the same, given that if you know what you're doing, Windows is very stable itself), and that for the average user, it does provide that almost guaranteed security that Windows cannot provide. I do wish however, that Apple would release a free, non-or-limited-support version of OS that us home system builders (one of my main reasons, besides gaming, for sticking with Windows primarily is that nothing is quite as fun as getting one's hand dirty with the building and upgrading of a PC. A lot like working on a car...) could use, because it would be quite a bit of fun, without having to resort to "hacking" OS X.
