Buying vs. Licensing

First off, I'll admit that I haven't read all the comments, but here goes...

Common argument against EULAs: "If I buy something, I can do with it what I want"

Well, that's rubbish - and here's the - obligatory - analogy to prove it:

I buy a bus. It is mine. Yet I *cannot* drive it because __my driver's licence__ doesn't allow me to.

Owning something whose *use* requires a licence does not imply that you can use it in any way you want. That is what the licence is for (funny that, wonder where they got the name...)

If^H^HWhen this goes to court, Apple will win. Even if it is in Texas. All that may come out of it is a requirement to display a plain-english (non legally binding) summary of an EULA when it is presented to you.

Pah!

Although I agree with users on here who imply there is an anticompetitiveness and anticonsumer issue about Apple having a monopoly on tied software-hardware packages, nonetheless UK users commenting should note in the US Apple self-cert-taxpayers get a tax deduction anyway, to buy a new computer every three years; as for other users being disadvantaged by the overpriced hardware Apple sells with its superior OS, it should be borne in mind that the low-end Macs work fine: other than video and photoshop (which worked fine on G4 Macs -admit it), the seriously processor-hungry software like proper voice recog, and gaming, is all only on PC!

To look at the starship-enterprise-specced Macs in some folks' homes, running email and youtube, you'd wonder how people got by in 2000 with their 366mhz G3s and G4s -and yet they did, just fine, and Hollywood and the music charts and god knows what else, from the time, are testament to that; I remember the 400mhz G4 Powerbook being called 'the first portable supercomputer' - and it was!! The upshot being, if you need a supercomputer, get a Mac Mini (OK wait til the i5 version comes out) and enjoy.

Paris, because, er, we'll always have her.

eula IS NOT dmca, et. al.

@ (Trygve Henriksen) @AC: Apple never had to do copyright protection on their OS before? I seem to remember something about Heath Computers putting out a Motorola 68K chip-based kit computer that Apple simply freaked out about. As I recall, that is what started the hardware copyright engineering of MAC OS. There are still things going on in the BIOS, and that is why Apple had to release BootCamp to allow MS OS to run on a "WinTel" machine...

@ (Chris P) Mac Cracking FAIL: What the BMW dealership says when the customer brings in a Ford, or a Chevy, or a Cooper; "Thank you sir, please sign here on the estimate, and we will have your car back to you in XX days for $$$. Please have a good day, and thank you for your business!"

@ (Jonathan 6) @ Go Psystar: You are absolutely, positively, 100% exactamundo right! If Psystar has to go against the DMCA, they are toast. Good thing this is not IP or copyright infringement, then, isn't it? The Digital Millenium COPYRIGHT Act does NOT APPLY in this case because Psystar is 1) NOT selling its machines as genuine Apple brand machines, 2) NOT selling unlicensed copies of Apple's MAC OS, and 3) NOT attempting to reproduce or distribute counterfeit or forged copies of Apple's copyrighted software. All "preinstalled" software from Apple appear to be legally purchased.

The problem here has nothing to do with copyright law, people. Sorry, sad fact, but true. An EULA (End User License Agreement) is a CONTRACT, and therefore does NOT gain any protection from DMCA or any other clause or statute about copyright, international or otherwise, even though Apple DOES copyright its EULA's (but that's another matter)...

Because of this, Apple needs to be suing under BREACH OF CONTRACT, and its current claims of "copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, trademark infringement", etc. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9991779-56.html). In fact, Apple attorney, Mark A. Goldstein, compares this sale to the "Grokster ruling", which was about a company convicted of contribuatory copyright infringement through the sale of its software. How this relates to LEGALLY PURCHASED copies of its software...

Well, Apple claims that the LEGALLY PURCHASED copies of MAC OS Psystar must be using are upgrade versions only, and not valid (or available) for clean installs. Yet, this is shown to be false from here (http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html), where an installed MAC OS is not listed as a requirement; simply a "Mac computer with Intel processor". While it may be argued that Apple INTENDED to have it listed as "Mac computer with Intel processor [and existing copy of MAC OS]", IT DOES NOT, and that is what lawyers drool over and judges rule over. Likewise, while the page details upgrading from v10.5 and v10.4, it does not say that you CANNOT upgrade from any other version of MAC OS, or from anything at all.

As YOU CAN install MAC OS without having a previous version installed, then Apple's case falls apart (it must be what Apple intended, otherwise the software WOULD NOT DO IT). If they try to argue differenly, then the lie quickly comes to surface, and the "update EULA" shows to be a red herring. For notice, I have not found a MS CD of XP labeled "Upgrade" that would install WITHOUT a copy of Windows installed on a hard drive, or without having a valid MS Windows installation CD of previous versioning. That is, after all, what MS intends.

Now, if the install is predicated on something being in the computer to prevent "unintended or unauthorized" installation, THEN there is a case for DMCA, because that would be circumvention of a copyright enforcement mechanism (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html#1201). However, it is useful to point out that the Apple legal team do not appear to have that as part of the case... And it is also worth noting that it is not required, as "Michael C" points out above.

@ (Doc Spock) Buying vs. Licensing: Sorry, but in order for you analogy (as it stands) to be applicable, there must be a STATE MANDATED AND RUN licensing bureau, department or agency that will license you to operate a computer. However, you DO NOT need such a license to operate a computer. Your analogy would actually be "I buy a bus, it is mine. Yet I *cannot* drive it because _my driver's license_ doesn't allow me to run the ROM code in the bus' internal computer module that controls the fuel injection and timing", which is FALSE. Even without a CDL (Commerical Drivers License) Class C (or Chauffer's licence) you CAN get in, turn the key and run the engine, legally (at least in my state, and in TX from what TX BMV seems to say on the website) as long as you do not drive on PUBLIC roads or property. You can drive your bus all day long on closed tracks, private property, etc. There is still nothing about your driver's license to stop you from TAKING OUT that computer module, and putting it in ANOTHER BUS OF A DIFFERENT BRAND, which might be a closer analogy to what is actually happening here.

Of course, I am not a lawyer. Luckily, lawyers have no monopoly on common sense, or the ability to take the time to read a contract properly, or even to interpret law. That just means that I cannot (legally?) charge someone to give my advice to them on legal matters, and I cannot represent anyone other than myself in court without a legal instrument (power of attorney - ironic, isn't it?).

@Doc Spock

If I buy a bus, I most certainly may drive it, license or no, *on my own private road*.

The PR Firm of Camara & Sibley

Based on the way the Jammie Thomas trial went down, it's obvious that Psystar doesn't expect to win. What he plans to do is to cop-opt the machinery of the legal system to distribute his press releases and opinion statements. (Same thing with the Tenenbaum trail.) Expect a lot of briefs that are long on rhetoric and short on citations, and only tangentially (if at all) refer to the case at hand.

A Response

OK, I'll admit there were flaws in my analogy, and that I would be able to drive the hypothetical bus on a private road, modify said bus with "go faster stripes" (for example), and so on.

However, my intended point was that there exists a legally-enforceable licence which prevents me from doing certain things and thus I cannot do **whatever I want** with the bus. In the same vein, there is a licence that is designed to prevent owners of OS X from using it in certain ways. Saying that, I will concede that its enforceability in law is not as clear cut.

Still, I would be very surprised if Psystar got anything other than a big fat bill to pay when it goes to court.

[the odd loonie's rant] Of EULAs and Apple PCs

This EULA is a joke, but which EULA is not? How can a post-sale "contract" be enforceable in the first place?

Yes, I know why Apple are doing this. It's twofold actually. First, the "official" reason: they tweaked the OS to work with their machines and want the end-user to get as good an "experience" as possible. I'm no fan of AppleOS myself, but I use it from time to time and it's reasonnably pleasing, if only a bit bloated (but I reckon that my expectations are pretty high on this front). Then the "unofficial" reason: they want to preserve the cashcow that their hardware business is. Unlike many Mac fans seem to think, Apple hardware is really less than prime-cut, and you can find better hardware for a fraction of the price (_including_ very high-end workstations). In my limited experience in Mac (or, as we normal people call them, "Apple PCs" or "Apple workstations") support, I couldn't help but notice that Apple hardware has a very annoying tendency to crap itself regularly when presented with sustained high workloads. Only anecdotic evidence I must admit, but quite reproducible in "my" hands. Maybe I'm just not very lucky. I have to admit that Apple's post-sale support is better than most, which kinda makes up for it, but repeated downtime is not acceptable in some cases, no matter how diligent the rep is. Think million-dollar microscopes shared on a pay-per-use basis....

Now before I'm called a "windows fanboy" again, I must say that I also have to maintain a shitload* of Windows systems, and that has made me to hate MS beyond what words can express, but at least it will (legitimately) run on "inexpensive", reliable harware, leaving you with only the software cockups to deal with (and with Windows, that's far more than enough, thank you very much for asking). So if I didn't know how to tweak and deploy Linux or BSD distros, I would welcome the possibility to put AppleOS on some real good -and cheap- hardware. But hey, look, I don't need to! Still, being able to (legitimately) slap AppleOS on cheap and reliable machines would be a plus for some. That's why I still stand against Apple on this one (not _with_ the guys at PsyStar and their somewhat dubious morality. See, Hackintosh guys? that's why a "cancer" like the GPL is sometimes needed. But _against_ Apple, and _against_ ridiculous EULAs, that's for sure).

On the other hand, the inflated price for Apple's PCs and workstation is probably what allows them to sell the OS at relatively low prices. I'm sure the hackitosh guys will agree with a significant increase in their beloved OS' retail price if they want to be able to slap it on random machines... or will they?

As a sidenote, I'd like to remind the "Jobs is god and Apple is its prophet" -or the other way round- crowd that there is about as much real innovation in AppleOS as there are vitamins in a standard McDonald meal**. That's true for other OS vendors, too (Who just shouted "Microsoft!"?), but it doesn't make it any more glorious. It's all shiny wrapping around stolen ideas (which, incidentally, makes the often-heard "Vista stole Apple's look-and-feel" stance very, very ridiculous).

Sorry for the boring rant, best regards to all, flame on!

*shitload being a very appropriate term in this context

** In case you wondered, it means "not a lot at all" ***

*** Jobs _did_ come up with reasonably new ideas at some point. But I guess no Jobsian will want to talk about NeXT right now...

Blood is all the same colour

OK, as the title suggest, take a knife and cut yourself, the go and cut someone with Asian, middle eastern, European, and African decent, the blood is still red. Also check the location of all organs in each of these people, they're all in the exact same location.

Now open up a Mac and a Dell, the guts of these things are practically the same, even the CPU will be identical, so why can't I run OSX on my Dell???

What I'm getting at is this, if Apple opened up the EULA, and the OS to run on ANY x86-64 system, they would probably find that more people would purchase OSX.

My last question is this, if the Mac and the Dell are 95% identical internally, why is the Dell 1/3 of the cost of the Mac?

You know, if I could install OSX on my custom built PC legally, I'd go out and buy a copy, just because I could.

Eh.

At one point the Apple Mac was definitively a different beast from the PC. Different processor, different architecture, different interfaces. They were like the last company from the 70s and 80s where you bought a computer from company Foo and only software and hardware designed to run on or work with company Foo's machine would work. It was Commodore vs Sinclair vs Atari vs Acorn vs how many other companies.

The PC has gotten where it was because it was designed to run on "commodity" hardware - standard stuff that you could buy off the shelf from anywhere, possibly even from third parties outside of IBM. After the BIOS got reverse engineered, it meant anyone and their mother could make an "IBM/PC compatible" computer. The inevitable result is that "PC" is now a standard computing platform used everywhere, and the only alternative machines that survive are ones that find their own niche. Apple's niche was graphic designers, because back in the day, the PC's graphical capabilities were less than stellar.

These days though, the PC isn't the same lumbering old beast that it used to be. You've got people plugging the equivalent of three playstation 3s into their computer at once and calling it an "SLI rig", with the equivalent of a high end synthesizer posing as a sound card. The old way of "make your own special product and tie an entire market to it" only works for one company these days, and Apple aren't Microsoft. If it wasn't for the iPod and other similarly capitalized products, I don't think Apple would exist today except as a subsidiary of someone else, possibly a Redmond based company.

What Apple did with the latest generation of macs is to get the guts of a PC, put their own variation on a BIOS in there (sorry, EFI, whatever) and call it a Mac. A sound business move because it's got to cost a whole lot less, much like grabbing the guts of BSD and putting a nice Appley interface with Apple apps in it and calling it OS X. You get to please the appletards while also grabbing a chunk of unixtards who aren't so bothered about being a freetard but like their bash shells and hey doesn't it come in a nice swanky slightly-off-white case?

As for the ruling, I want PsyStar to win. I've never liked the idea of a software patent or EULAs that think they are more powerful than copyright law to begin with. It was - if I remember right - Compaq's devious ingenuity that first used the cold-room reverse engineering method to make "A machine that does the same thing as an IBM/PC but isn't an IBM/PC", and that resulted in creating not just a product but a whole industry. You can't say IBM did badly out of it either.

Now if someone were to make a similar standard operating environment that was free to use, modify and redistribute, and you didn't need to pay a tax to some company or other for every machine you have, and came with in-built protection devices in its license against monopolising behaviour, I'd definitely be for that.

Oh hang on, wait..