Ever since Steve J. came back to crunch Apple corp., J. began killing, all the licensed manufacturers of Apple compatibles. I remember UMax apple clones that many schools bought. These machines were inexpensive, good and fast. But, this was a desparate move on Steve J.’s part. The Apple was diving into history section fast, and was bleeding money like redrum-elevator scene in Shining. The move partly saved the Apple from extinction, but, can Apple pull the same stunt now that they are bigger and fatter?
Mind you, it’s 2008 now and Apple owns almost 10% of the market. Every single move they make gets analyzed. They make moves slowly and carefully. But the move they made last week was nothing if not anticipated. They started a lawsuit. They started a lawsuit against a company for selling PCs.
Apple’s move to Intel CPU was based on an assumption that ,somehow, Mac OS will be able to detect the hardware its running on, and not run if not on genuine Apple product. The idea is that the Mac OS will have this built in suicide program that kills itself if not run on genuine Apple product. For a long time, the idea seemed sound and working. Apple was happy and investors were happy. Only consumers were unhappy, but, hey, cash talks and bullxxxx walks, right? Apple charged many mulas for their privilege of running Os X. Under the hood, what Apple was doing was simple check of hardware. This hardware, supposedly only available to Apple’s computers, was the key to the kingdom we all wanted in.
Lately, old BIOS was losing its prestige. A new kid in town Known as EFI – Extensible Firmware Interface, was courting many modern hardware manufacturers. Invented by Intel, it was a soft of software version of BIOS that can live on harddisk, for example. This means, it is flexible and hackable.
Strange things happened. People began wanting to run MacOS on their Dell machines. Their IBM thinkpads were far better suited to run MacOS, they believed, than Apple Powerbook ever was. Everyone began asking why their shiny new PC cannot run Mac OS? Without going into detail, there was no good answer. Besides, Vista was perceived as a dog and the Apple charged mucho dinero for their Logo on their laptop lines. People are not stupid, you know. So began the Osx86 project! Many smart people began disassembling boot code and found ways to bypass that hardware presence check! If you have no hardware to prove you are Apple, get rid of the program that’s doing the check. This simple idea worked! Once the hack was done, Os X ran on plain PCs. This was the beginning of the drip that took down the dam.
Soon, OsX86 project fellows had a hacked kernel that I can replace my original with. This altered OsX can be installed on any Intel machines. OK, That’s not entirely true. Many hardware partrs that Apple doesn’t use has to be written by somebody. So, there are many motherboards that have problems. But, most of modern motherboards with intel chipsets or Nvidia chipsets will run this modified MacOS fine. Of course, other drivers has to be installed to fit your needs, but the point is that you can make your machine run MacOS period. Now, fastforward a few years.
Psystar saw a huge opportunity and jumped in. The idea is simple. They will make a PC with components known to run this Hacked MacOS, sell them at basement bargain prices and Voila! You have a Mac for $500 and it runs at twice the speed of $1000 Macintosh!
To test this, I bought a copy of Leopard 10.5.2. I tried to install it on my Gateway DX440X – Q6600 Quadcore Intel machine. It simply refused to boot. Then again, I already knew that. I burned a Kalyway 10.5.2 image onto my DVD and within minutes, I was installing MacOS! After the install, I tried Update service to see if it would break my MacOS. It didn’t! Now, I am running Mac Leopard 10.5.4 on my Gateway PC! This is truely amazing.
Seeing all this, Apple sent lawyers to Psystar ,and their expected lawsuit followed. Psystar is fighting back! From what I see, Psystar is not selling anything illegal. They are selling cheap PCs that can run this Modified Mac OS! Out of convenience to its customers, they are pre loading them like Dell would, but each copy is legetimate, purchased copy of Leopard from Apple. Now, can Apple win this case? What are they claiming? Are they claiming that the Psystar illegally cloned OsX? But it was osX86Project people and other hackers that worked on kernel patching. Psystar is selling nothing but cheap hardwares. Should Apple sue Gateway because my Gateway runs Mac OS? Is Apple claiming that Psystar is enabling illegal activity? What is illegal? It’s a legal copy of OsX and the owner decides to use patched kernel instead of Apple provided one. This is not uncommon. Matter of fact, early Linux had to be compiled from source code to customize to fit your machine! Each machine had a slightly different kernel! Is Psystar breaking any agreement? Well the only license is for OsX Leopard and it merely states that MacOS must run on Apple labeled machines. OK, I printed “Apple” and taped to my Gateway. Problem solved.
It might have worked had Apple kept its original 3% share of the market, but now with over 10% of the market, Apple is not so cute anymore. Will jury find defendant, a small startup company selling cheap hardwares, guilty of selling cheap pcs? Guilty of giving buyers a choice? I don’t think so. I think this will open a floodgate of companies selling MacOS loaded PCs if Apple fails. It’s a huge gamble for Apple. But they have no choice! They cannot simply sit back and let them get away with this, right? Imaging a PC with MacOS and Vista preloaded? This is a large market. I think Apple’s monopoly days are over. Apple must allow other manufacturers sell compatible and competable products. Apple is, after all, a software company. Their skills are designing and writing good software. Like Microsoft, they should do what they do best. Look at the ME launch fiasco. They are thinning their talent all over the place. Drop the hardware Apple! You can keep Air, iPhone, IPod, iTouch and new tablet and one PowerBook Pro model. And sell the Os X to manufacturers to preload.
Posted by simonjko 