So is Psystar preinstalling a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite on these systems? And that would be covered by the $399 price, won't it?
Woah! Who was ever claiming that? The $399 price tag puportedly includes absolutely no operating system or other software whatsoever (except that they would install Ubuntu Linux free of charge on request).
If you wanted any of the commercial software pre-installed, you'd pay extra.
A base-line unit plus OS X (no other software), if the story is true, would weigh in at $554.
If these guys are going to circumvent software licenses with Apple, why stop there? They should provide a copy of the Creative Suite and Microsoft Office for Mac too!
Personally, I wouldn't have any moral objection to that at all, as long as they did the same thing they are puportedly doing with Leopard, namely, purchasing copies of those pieces of software through legitamite channels for each installed unit.
I mean if Apple doesn't have any rights to their software, why should Adobe or Microsoft (or any other software maker for that matter) be able to stop third party hardware venders from installing illegal copies of their software preinstalled?
It would be totally possible and there would be absolutely no negative reprecussions for any computer maker to purchase a copy of Creative Suite or MS Office on your behalf, and pre-install them for you before they deliver the machine. If they were not purchasing extra copies of the software for each customer, then I think nobody would disagree that it would be theft, plain and simple.
Where things are getting hazy in this case is simply the fact that the EULA of Mac OS X prohibits this particular use of the software, and there is disagreement about just how restrictive the terms of a software EULA are actually allowed to be and still be upheld in court - an issue for which there is a lack of coherent precedence in the USA to draw on.
I don't see the difference between selling Mac OS X using a counterfeit hardware key and selling the Adobe Creative Suite or Microsoft Office on these same systems using a single license string for all of them. It isn't Psystar's problem if the end user is using illegally acquired software... right? So they shouldn't stop at just Mac OS X, they should load up these systems with tons of software titles!
This is the argument that a lot of you guys seem to be making. That Apple doesn't have the right to sell software in the way they see fit. And that anyone can hack their software and sell counterfeit versions without any legal consequences.
In that case, all they need to do is stop offering OS X as a build-to-order option. The hardware alone, from everything I can tell, is just made out of generic off-the-shelf parts. To banish that, it'd follow that all purveyors of generic off-the-shelf components would have to be banished on the same grounds.
When it gets home, I'll assume the risk of purchasing a retail box of OS X and installing it. And since a retail box of OS X actually costs $129 (slightly less than the $155 premium they were supposedly charging), I'll actually save even more money!
Consultant said:
With each passing minute looks like it's just some pipe dream for those who want a superior product (Mac OS X) but wants to pay knockoff prices for a "genuine Rolexx" (yes I know it's spelled Rolex)
- lack of legal rights to include EFI emulator
EFI emulator cannot be used for commercial purposes.
http://netkas.org/?p=62
Interesting. For posterity's sake, it would have been very educational to have seen the licensing text that accompanied the EFI emulator
before the web page was updated yesterday. (Obviously, if Psystar's claims were true, then Psystar would have had to have obtained its copy of this software quite some time ago for testing purposes, before that text had been added to the website.)
Anybody who had obtained the EFI emulator before that revised license text was published, would have been be bound by whatever license had accompanied the program at the time they obtained it, not by the revised text that was put up there yesterday.
