I'm confused. What exactly is stolen (in real terms or copyright terms) if I purchase a copy of OS X and install on my own hardware?
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Psystar to Challenge Mac OS X EULA?
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I'm confused. What exactly is stolen (in real terms or copyright terms) if I purchase a copy of OS X and install on my own hardware?
Yeah, it put them on the same map as other people who sell pirated software and stolen items. Great! Except noone likes them.
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=99201
http://netkas.org/?p=62
Absolutely right there, hiptobesquare.
I want Apple to be strong, and I want Apple to produce products that I want to buy. I have too much tied up in Mac experience (30+ years) and software (£££), and don't want to change, I just want the right product for me.
Good to hear a few more voices pushing the Mac Pro Mini approach
And a vote too EagreDragon's Monopoly 'essay', in an earlier post. Well argued and researched, with good referencing and it scanned! B++
Because a Pro is priced at (roughly) $2 grand and this "Open Computer" can be tricked out nicely at around $750 without all the extra drive bays and slots. It's what a lot of people who buy an iMac who can't afford a Pro, want. This computer could be configured low-end, low-price or mid-level, reasonable-price. It's what's missing in Apple's current line-up (my opinion, of course).
Of all the gripes about Apple's line-up, this is the one that I hear most often. Clearly Apple believes the All-in-one iMac models are the easiest to use format, but why not included a mid-level expandable model at a more reasonable price than the monstrous Pro with, of course, fewer slots and bays.
Something like this "Open Computer" though at a slightly higher price point that won't kill the Mac Mini. A model you could configure online or at the Apple Store just like the Pro. Something that would cost -configured- around the same as an iMac after you purchased a monitor.
I think an Apple computer like that could fit in nicely with Apple's line-up.
Just my 2 cents.
One more thing:
I do agree that in the end this will be a good thing if it pushes Apple to add a little more variety to its lineup and finally add an affordable mini-tower, which I think would satisfy a lot of people. Personally, I don't care since I don't need one, but I think there would definitely be a market for it.
I do agree that in the end this will be a good thing if it pushes Apple to add a little more variety to its lineup and finally add an affordable mini-tower, which I think would satisfy a lot of people. Personally, I don't care since I don't need one, but I think there would definitely be a market for it.
J
jmadlena
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So they should go sell it in Germany, Switzerland, or Austria; not in the US were contracts, you know, actually mean something.
The pro-Apple side seems to be having a difficult time distinguishing Piracy with breech of EULAs. One is illegal, the other is not.
-Clive
As I've said I doubt the price of OS X covers all the development costs, the value of the product are probably spread on both hardware margins and the price of boxes OS copies, why would Vista cost so much more if it wasn't? Windows even sells many more copies.
You purchase an updated version of OS X to run on your mac, which you have already paid plenty for. You don't purchase the first ex of OS X you own and you don't purchase it for use on any hardware.
What are stolen are atleast Apples right to decide what they want to do with products coming from their work, and also all the work from people who made it possible to run OS X on PCs. They are trying to earn a profit on that. It's like selling Microsoft Office with some crack/keygen which someone else had made, you are just being a jerk and steal others work for your own profit. It's way better to download a copy of Office and crack it yourself in that case, because atleast then you don't support someone else OR SPEND MONEY ON THE PRODUCT NOT GOING TO THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT.
If you download a music album it's hard to argue that the people who made it actually lost a sale. But if you buy a pirated copy of the music album for say 30% it's easy to see how the people who made it actually got robed of a sale for 30% of the price. Since it's these people who should had been paid.
Also a lot of people will probably not pay for the OS X optional with their system, and just download it, and in that case they help/more or less encourage piracy and stealing of the OS, even if they don't put it in text that way.
I think the real issue here is not that I would want to have a computer other than a Mac to run OSX, its just that I resent the over priced under specced hardware that Apple use. And given the sales of the iPhone in Europe, it seems I'm not alone.
Since the move to Intel the components now appear to be pretty much standard, albeit in a nice looking package, and the pace of updates appears to be very slow.
Watching the Apple apologists justify the existence of combi drives is an amusing sport but it gets wearing after a while. Apple routinely take the piss with their pricing, especially given that the vast bulk of their systems are "closed" and hence you cant upgrade.
Yes I can add extra USB ports via a hub, a bigger external hard drive, but given the price I've paid for a computer, should I have to? I think its a sick joke that the iMac has less USBs than a Mini, and when they do next upspec the mini anyone want to guess how much they will charge for memory knowing how difficult it it for the casual user to fit it?
If nothing else, I'd like Apple to be suitably embarrassed over this - but Jobs of course doesnt do embarassment!
Since the move to Intel the components now appear to be pretty much standard, albeit in a nice looking package, and the pace of updates appears to be very slow.
Watching the Apple apologists justify the existence of combi drives is an amusing sport but it gets wearing after a while. Apple routinely take the piss with their pricing, especially given that the vast bulk of their systems are "closed" and hence you cant upgrade.
Yes I can add extra USB ports via a hub, a bigger external hard drive, but given the price I've paid for a computer, should I have to? I think its a sick joke that the iMac has less USBs than a Mini, and when they do next upspec the mini anyone want to guess how much they will charge for memory knowing how difficult it it for the casual user to fit it?
If nothing else, I'd like Apple to be suitably embarrassed over this - but Jobs of course doesnt do embarassment!
Apple doesn't develop MacOS X and the iLife applications to make money selling software; they develop this software to entice you to buy Apple hardware. The price that you pay for Leopard reflects this: You pay nothing at all if you purchase hardware, you buy $129 if you have existing hardware with an older version of MacOS X, and $199 if you have several older machines with MacOS X that you want to upgrade at the same time. If Apple were to sell the software on the open market, you would expect them to have margins like Microsoft, which would lead to a much higher price. In other words, every copy of MacOS X is subsidized by Apple to make you buy a Macintosh.
PsyStar isn't trying to compete with Apple. They are trying to rip off Apple by using Apple's software to entice people to buy their machines, but the subsidy is paid by Apple, not by PsyStar. Let them buy MacOS X at market value (that is at a price similar to Windows Vista Professional), then we can talk about competition. Or they could by the rights to BeOS, which is a fine operating system and should be going cheap now and surely they can make that work, if they want to compete with Apple.
The guy doing this seems to have the trouble distinguishing between piracy and EULA ...
Does disagreeing with Apple give somebody the right to sell a hacked version of the OS for $129, and toss in a real copy for $21 -- or is he selling the real one for $129 and the hacked OS version for $21.
Don't think the court would take kindly to this whether it was an OS, or a DVD ... hey buy this region locked DVD for full price and we will toss in this cracked region free version for an extra $1.
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He says the kernal isn't hacked, but what about some of the other files ... hopefully one of them isn't a file with an Apple copyright statement in it.
This is bu115hi+.
You can easily make a system with similair specs as a mac mini for less.
You can make with similair hardware specs as an iMac and a better screen for the same price.
You can get something similair to the Macbook for less.
You can get another premium laptop with higher res screen, better graphics, for less than a macbook pro.
And you can build a desktop machine with say quad core CPU and normal DDR3 modules and better graphics then what the Mac Pro ships with (or sells with as optionals aswell) which althought using different hardware will smoke the Mac Pro for less.
Apple machines are indeed overpriced/more expensive. But I accept the fact that the software are part of the price and reason for that. And they have every right in the world to defend the way they want to use the software without anyone trying to steal that.
It's a good point. And what many people fail to understand is that if Apple is required to "tolerate" non-Apple hardware vendors, then that will change Apple's business model. They would be forced to do what MS used to do with Office, which is charge $129 for an "upgrade" vs. $399 for a "first-time license."
Oh my god. When you buy a DVD with software on it, copyright law allows you to make the copies necessary to use it (installation on the hard drive of your computer _is_ making a copy), a backup copy (which you cannot use for anything except to restore your legally made copy if required), and "incidental copies", like the copies that are made when the software is copied into RAM, the copies that are made when Time Machine runs, etc.
Yes, copying the software into RAM is a copy and only allowed because there are explicit words in the copyright laws that allow it.
What I'm about to say is unpopular: one of the reasons I left the Mac platform was because every single Mac I owned was, hardware-wise, a complete pile of crap. My Powerbook would crash if the fans ever needed to come on full blast. One of the hinges on it has broken through metal fatigue. My PowerMacs would only come up occasionally if they were ever rebooted - I remember one time having to try ten times to get the Mac I used at work to come back up.
I don't buy the "Apple only chooses superior components" crap and the figures do support my impression: while Apple has a slightly better return rate than Dell or HP, the figures for all three are a percentage or two around 10%. And given the different audience, it's hard to tell for sure whether Apple's hardware really is more reliable, or whether the type of people who buy Macs find them more usable than the type who buy Windows PCs, or whether Windows PCs are just being shipped with buggy drivers, or whatever.
Ubuntu is driving my Thinkpad much more solidly than any version of Mac OS X did any of my Macs. It's not the quality.
Hoo-whee, competition for Mac Pros!
Time for Apple to fix several major issues with the Mac Pros (not least of all horrific video card and blu-ray support) and bring them back to the cutting edge that warrant their high prices. This can only be a good thing for high ticket power users in the long run.
And my favorite, the gleamin' chrome monolith...
When a company is as woefully unresponsive to its power users as Apple as become as far as the large desktops go (just LOOK at the horrendous time between updates right at the buyers' guide here for the Mac Pro AND the Cinema Displays, AND lagging far behind windows/PC's on blu-ray support), sh*t happens.
Am I going to buy now instead of the tricked out $9,000 Mac Pro (cart that's been sitting at the Mac Online Store for five MONTHS now waiting for a Cinema Display upgrade and blu-ray support)?
I am SERIOUSLY considering it, especially since they won't rape me re: the custom configuration I need.
Besides, it was far too much to ask Mr. Steve Jobs for a Mac Pro with a Blu-ray burner in it, or better video card support. I think these folks will be far more accomodating.
Time for Apple to fix several major issues with the Mac Pros (not least of all horrific video card and blu-ray support) and bring them back to the cutting edge that warrant their high prices. This can only be a good thing for high ticket power users in the long run.
And my favorite, the gleamin' chrome monolith...
When a company is as woefully unresponsive to its power users as Apple as become as far as the large desktops go (just LOOK at the horrendous time between updates right at the buyers' guide here for the Mac Pro AND the Cinema Displays, AND lagging far behind windows/PC's on blu-ray support), sh*t happens.
Am I going to buy now instead of the tricked out $9,000 Mac Pro (cart that's been sitting at the Mac Online Store for five MONTHS now waiting for a Cinema Display upgrade and blu-ray support)?
I am SERIOUSLY considering it, especially since they won't rape me re: the custom configuration I need.
Besides, it was far too much to ask Mr. Steve Jobs for a Mac Pro with a Blu-ray burner in it, or better video card support. I think these folks will be far more accomodating.
That is nonsense. "Little people" buying a copy of Leopard or any other software spend about ten seconds of their life thinking about the license, while Apple has hired some lawyers who spent many, many hours thinking about it. So this has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with how much money is spent. That's why Europe has consumer protection laws, to compensate for the fact that a company has spent about a million times more thinking about that contract than you have.
Even if you are a better lawyer yourself than anyone that Apple has ever hired, you wouldn't have the time to study every single contract, EULA etc. that you are confronted with. That is what consumer protection laws are for.
I am not a lawyer...
Under an extreme view (which is not necessarily the view that a court of law would choose to endorse!), without EULAs, it would be impossible for any computer user to ever make use of anybody else's non-public-domain software without violating copyright.
The original software, stored a CD, has to be copied from the CD onto the hard drive.
Then, when the program starts up, it has to be copied from the hard drive into system RAM.
Without an EULA granting the end user specific rights to make those copies, both of those electronic duplicates would comprise unauthorized duplication of a copyrighted work, ergo, copyright violation. But that would make for some pretty useless software, so EULAs are brought into the mix, obstinently acting as the only means through which the end user can gain the necessary permission to make the few specific copies of that software which are necessary to make use of it.
It would be impossible to legally be in a position to make use of the software outside the terms of the EULA, because in order to start using the software in the first place you have to take an action that results in unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material from hard drive to RAM.
The opposing viewpoint might go along these lines: the reasonable man would conclude that those intermediate electronic copies are necessary components of to the fundamental nature of computer software in general, and thus it is reasonable to expect such copies must be inherently included in the rights you implicitly, automatically, and irrevocably received when you lafwully obtained the original copy of the software in the first place.
Indeed, Apple's EULA agreement is not cast into law, but simply represents an implicit agreement ("contract") between the user and company. The enforceability of EULAs, however, has been a subject of much debate, and a true legal challenge would be very interesting. That being said, Robert's loose use of the word "monopoly" and car/road analogy does not necessarily inspire confidence in his legal prowess.
Apple's EULA certainly is cast in law, as much any other similar contract is cast in law. Contracts are legal so long as they provide adequate consideration or both parties -- you pay $130, they license you the software -- and don't violate federal, state or local laws. The questioning of enforceability of EULA's has a little bit to do with certain restriction on what you can do with something you've bought or licensed, which would violate the latter requirement of a valid contract. But mostly, it's that consent to the contract is implied by using the software, not by documented agreement -- like a signature -- and although you can't return the software if the box is open, you can't even read the bloody EULA until you've opened the box. On it's face this scenario says: You don't agree to the EULA, you're out the money. Some people have had had some success obtaining refunds from software companies, notably Microsoft, for the price of the OEM version of the OS software -- they wanted to keep the computer -- for a pre-installed OS, but it was a hassle of meticulous documentation -- after all, most people boot their computers if only to install a different OS, and that's use, that means you agreed to the EULA -- perhaps beyond what a court would find acceptable, and it doesn't apply to shrink-wrapped, boxed software.
Throwing around the word "monopoly", you're right there. That's dumb. Apple has a monopoly, in the vernacular, on Macs and, say, iPods, not on personal computers or even, despite iPods popularity, digital music players. Even further, the criteria for legal monopolies is pretty deep. So, no one at Justice cares.
Where Apple will take these people apart is most likely not on the EULA or OS X but on reverse engineering of Apple's products in order to reproduce patented functionality. That's probably provable, the reverse engineering, or just plain old patent violation, in there somewhere. In the case of hobbyists, Apple doesn't much care. In the case of selling a competing product, if they see it as a threat to their business, yeah, they care. These rubes, they don't care. But if they don't rabidly pursue them and shut them down, when Lenovo decides to make an OS X compatible laptop w/o an agreement with Apple, they'll have hard time in court explaining why they care then but didn't care now.
In the event, these guys are toast. I don't know why they bother. They must be young, altruistic and not well-versed in the legal ramifications. But, you know, your first bankruptcy due to injunction and/or decision against you and resulting insurmountable dollar amount in reward, well it's the first is always the best.
Are you trying to say that the price of OS X R&D and production is subsidized by the sale of their other hardware? If that's the case, let's use a similar argument to state that Apple is stealing from users who never update their OS and just buy a new computer. Or for people like me, I've used four different OSes on one computer. Certainly Apple didn't plan for me to upgrade three (maybe four, I haven't decided about Leopard yet) times. Does that mean I stole from Apple?
Subsidization is a common business practice. If subsudizing is too risky, that's Apple's fault if they miss out on money from people like me who use a computer for 6 years.
The reason Vista is so expensive is because 1) Their R&D cycles are longer. 2) they use the surplus to subsidize the cost of their other projects, i.e. Zune, Xbox, etc.
If a user chooses to purchase an Xbox but never a copy of Windows, by your logic, they are stealing from MS.
-Clive
I don't really care to side with Apple because on this topic, I agree with most people's sentiments here (I think Apple should have more options with their machines), however, what decent progress has happened in the last 2 years with LCDs?
All it's been, is progress demanded by the idiots known as professional gamers: MOAR BRIGHTNESS! MOAR CONTRAST! FASTER RESPONSE! MUST HAVE MOAR MOAR MOAR!
To the point that staring at a 20" shiny TN+F with eleventy billion nits brightness and 8000:1 contrast is like having a set of purple 100W HID projector headlights aimed right into your eyeballs.
I'm sick of the way LCD tech is maturing, glossy and super-high contrast is not[/i] the way to go, I'd much rather buy a nice S-IPS with an LED backlight
well... exactly
You idiot! correct me if I'm wrong (which i am not) but was it not microsoft who let 3rd party companies using their software, thus screwing up the users experience? And microsoft users are experiencing all sorts of problems as a result? the answer; yes
you don't want apple to become microsoft? then you want apple to win. They want hardware and software to be made by the same people; them. Furthermore, if this company win, then it opens the door for all sorts of other companies, which will in turn destroy apple. Their main principle would be ruined. much like microsoft.
You idiot! correct me if I'm wrong (which i am not) but was it not microsoft who let 3rd party companies using their software, thus screwing up the users experience? And microsoft users are experiencing all sorts of problems as a result? the answer; yes
you don't want apple to become microsoft? then you want apple to win. They want hardware and software to be made by the same people; them. Furthermore, if this company win, then it opens the door for all sorts of other companies, which will in turn destroy apple. Their main principle would be ruined. much like microsoft.
Sorry, no. What makes EULA unenforceable is when they infringe on the rights of users, therefore making it of PRIMARY CONCERN over the terms of the contract. Someone threw out the example that an EULA couldn't state that the first-born of each user must be surrendered to Apple to use in their child-labor facilities.
While the example given is certainly extreme, it is a clear example of an EULA infringing on a user's rights. It is the opinion of some that Apple is infringing on its users rights to dictate what (s)he does with the software once (s)he purchases it. That is what is being disputed here.
It is believed by an even greater number of people that violation of an EULA just means Apple is absolved from supporting the user's copy of the product. I don't know if this is true (IANAL), but it is of secondary importance to the underlying theme which is the right of the end-user to use the product as (s)he chooses.
-Clive
I don't really care to side with Apple because on this topic, I agree with most people's sentiments here (I think Apple should have more options with their machines), however, what decent progress has happened in the last 2 years with LCDs?
All it's been, is progress demanded by the idiots known as professional gamers: MOAR BRIGHTNESS! MOAR CONTRAST! FASTER RESPONSE! MUST HAVE MOAR MOAR MOAR!
To the point that staring at a 20" shiny TN+F with eleventy billion nits brightness and 8000:1 contrast is like having a set of purple 100W HID projector headlights aimed right into your eyeballs.
I'm sick of the way LCD tech is maturing, glossy and super-high contrast is not[/i] the way to go, I'd much rather buy a nice S-IPS with an LED backlight
I agree with you. I think why the cinema displays have lagged is Apple had to SCRAP their planned next shiny screen line because people caught on that it, quite frankly, sucked in a room with actual windows. Like most people live and work in.
I'm waiting for the NEXT matte screen displays in line after the now (hopefully shelved) shiny screen line.
And there are improvements to be made. And if not, there's the Mac Buyers' Guide advice; updates to screens usually come as PRICE DECREASES.
That would work too. Charging more for less features than currently available in the marketplace is a sure ticket to customer resentment, and inevitably if that goes on long enough, failure.
Look, if I didn't like Apple I wouldn't be bothering to complain so much.