Psystar: Cocaine, Car Crashes and The Company’s Chances of Beating Apple (Pretty Good)
1:25 am, November 11th, 2009, Leander Kahney
Psytar's Robert Pedraza -- the technical brains behind Psystar. Photo: Ted Soqui/Miami New Times
Psystar, the unofficial Mac cloner, may actually have a shot at beating Apple, the Miami New Times reports in an interesting backgrounder on the two brothers behind the company, Robert and Rudy Pedraza.
The six-page profile includes several interesting factoids, including the revelation that their father is a convicted coke dealer.
The brothers started their knockoff business after one of them survived a near fatal car crash. The company is shipping boatloads of computers and is likely making money (quickly eaten by legal costs). Several copycats have cropped up, including the Moscow-based RussianMac.
To recap, Psystar sells cheap Hackintoshes that run Apple’s OS X. A Psystar machine costs about a third of a comparable offering from Apple, but runs OS X in violation of Apple’s shrinkwrap EULA license.
Apple is hell-bent on shutting the company down, but some IP experts think Psystar has a shot. The case hinges on the legality of EULAs — shrinkwrap licenses — that say you don’t own the software you buy, you license it. The legality of EULAs has never been tested in the courts, which makes the Psystar case so important. If Psystar wins, it may not only throw a wrench into Apple’s business model, it may alter the entire software industry.
The paper quotes a couple of intellectual property lawyers who say the tiny Florida company may actually win.
“They’ve already put some really good arguments forward,” says Randy Friedberg, an intellectual property lawyer following the case in New York. “There’s essentially one really interesting question here, and it’s whether that licensing agreement holds up.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Macintosh, News | Comment on this article
said comments disregard Apple’s Copyright ownership which is not negated by a judgement that the EULA is invalid. or the laws against hacking access control protocols with or without actual copyright violations.
all Apple needs is for the courts to decide that installing software is a copyright controlled action and Psystar is dust. and there is case law already backing up the notion that installing is indeed such an action and the copyright holder can in fact restrict it so long as the restriction doesn’t violate other laws (like anti-trust when Apple has already been judged free and clear in a prior Psystar attempt)
course the fact that they are way off in Florida and have no real viable tech support for most of their potential audience and the drug connection is liable to turn many folks off of buying from them. plus the flipping the finger at the EFI and open source communities by attempting to sell the work they ‘borrowed’ to make the whole HackMac possible. good luck making a major profit even if they win this whole legal mess
charli, on November 11th, 2009 at 2:19 am
Ahem, so why even Psystar’s software has an EULA (and very restrictive too!)?
I’m done with this “David vs. Goliath” things.
They don’t have any intent of making the IT better. They’re just two moderately literate guys (just read what and how they write) who decided they can pursue the lucky strike of their life by winning over Apple in court (now they spend a lot in legal costs, but if they win they’ll have money and fame – inside the industry of course).
The fact is that they pursue that by destroying and not by creating or innovating. And they even do one of the worst things possible: they steal deliberately from the open source community, they use open software tools without giving any credits, and even locking the software technology they purportedly developed…
Andrea, on November 11th, 2009 at 2:24 am
When your dad’s a convicted coke dealer, you wouldn’t expect much in the way of morality and ethical guidance. The bros do not disappoint in this area…
Apple is going to smash them. And even they loose in that ridiculous state, they’ll kick up higher and win their. No way the industry is going to be stymied by a couple of greaseballs… Puulease. Let’s all just come back down to reality.
WS, on November 11th, 2009 at 2:36 am
At the end of the day the main phrase in the EULA is, and I paraphrase here, “This thing has to be installed on official Apple branded hardware, not some tinpot knock-off you put together from bits bought from the local PC hardware dealer and slapped on a free Apple sticker, Okay?”
Now you’ve had your fun, made some money, had your 15 mins, now bugger off back to obscurity!
Fuzzypig, on November 11th, 2009 at 3:32 am
I hope they win. The EULA has never made any sense. It should be exactly the same as a book – you own the copy that you buy, but copyright restrictions legally prevent you from making copies.
Joseph, on November 11th, 2009 at 3:40 am
NO NO NO EULAs have nothing to do with this case!!!! Psystar is not an End User. They are at best a VAR. They are integrating Apple’s IP with other stolen IP to create a new product that requires separate licensing period. These criminals have never had a case and have never been legitimate.
Can I buy copies of an album and add my own music videos and sell them legally NO this is no different.
TRRosen, on November 11th, 2009 at 3:45 am
Thinking this through a little more. Currently, Mac OS is the single most important competitive advantage Apple has over other hardware makers. It’s the essence of Apple’s business model and what makes it completely unique from other hardware makers, and also from Microsoft. But if the brothers do win, this will no longer be the case. Clone makers would be allowed to sell the OS on non-Apple machines and thereby, probably, eating into Apple’s computer sales. Apple would then either have to significantly raise the price of the OS when sold as a separate package, or stop selling the OS separately altogether, and only sell it pre-installed in hardware units. The 2nd solution is interesting because it would hardly impact Apple’s bottom line at all and it would be a surefire way to kill off any threat from Mac cloners. OS updates could be delivered to hardware owners via downloads (as most of them already are anyway).
Joseph, on November 11th, 2009 at 4:01 am
TRRosen is right. I retract my comment comparing books and software. In the case of software, copying is required for use. For the court to agree with the Mac cloning brothers, it would in substance be saying that when you buy software on a disk, you also get an implied license to copy it into something else and sell it. Hard to see how or why a court would ever take that position.
Joseph, on November 11th, 2009 at 5:12 am
In all honesty, does any serious person with a modicum of knowledge of the IT industry REALLY believe that flukes like Psystar are for the benefit of the consumer?????
For heaven’s sake, what does the consumer stand to gain suppose Psystar would win this case (hyper-unlikely, as others have well noted)? Crappy PC mashups with hacked OSes? Is that the way forward?
People must really understand that Apple is Apple and what is does so well it owes to its tight control. Lose that control and the Mac/iPhone universe is no more.
I fully understand that there are some fanatical PC owners who would throw a party if Apple would cease to exist. However, many millions around the world are pretty happy (to say the very least) with their products and the innovation they put into them.
Live and let live, and never forget that high-quality ALWAYS (and in all markets) comes at a high price.
Why should the computer industry be any different?
cookeecut, on November 11th, 2009 at 8:08 am
@cookeecut. You are correct. But Apple needs to fight this fight because next time it could be more than two brothers with a coke head daddy and too much time on their hands.
So Apple needs to get it put on the legal books that at this point:
1. The market is Personal Computer Systems, not Macintosh Computers
2. Apple’s lack of share in the true market is low enough that their tying of hardware and software is not abusive and therefore not illegal under anti-trust. Also, for the matter of legal debate Leopard and Snow Leopard are the same item and therefore a judgement regarding one is applicable to the other.
3. the use of EFI tools to bypass the tying is a violation of an access control system and under the DMCA is illegal
4. Apple’s GUI and the additional application softwares provided with the OS constitute enough added work to make the OS copyrightable despite the open source code. and Apple is the legal copyright holder.
5. Installing software is the making of a copy and thus under the domain of copyright. And under copyright essentially anything that doesn’t violate other laws like antitrust and certain very restricted ‘fair use’ clauses such as making a single backup copy of the physical media (cause DVDs can break), videotaping or screenshooting the OS in action for educational or review purposes or reverse engineering to make your application for that OS actually work is under Apple’s right to control.
6. companies have the right to restrict the number of copies someone can make from a single ‘installation’ disc, with or without the use of serial numbers, online activations etc (something that Apple will likely start doing in the near future because of all the torrents and such. hopefully not as annoyingly as Microsoft does with Windows)
7. A EULA is legal so far as it codifies a companies established legal rights. So it can say that this is a single user package. that it can only be installed on Apple produced/approved systems. etc. what it can’t say is that I can’t make a backup copy of the disk or now that I’ve bought a machine that came with Snow Leopard and disposed of my old machine I can not give my old (retail copy) of Leopard to the guy next door that has a PPC machine running Tiger.
also a lot in this case is riding on the notion that the EULA is illegal because you have to buy the software to read it. that’s not totally true. you can get the license online AND several cases have established the opinion that that is good enough.
charli, on November 11th, 2009 at 11:25 am
I recall when this brouhaha first blew up and the vast majority of people were ready to bury Psystar out of the gate. That’s usually a sign that there may be more to something than meets the eye. If I had to put money on the outcome, I’d probably place my bets with Apple, but the legal questions are indeed interesting and the only thing dead certain is we’re years away from a final decision.
Lonnie Lazar, on November 11th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
If Pystar were to win this the entire software industry will be in jeopardy. Anyone or any company would be able to take a software product and use it in any way they see fit.
Khürt Williams, on November 11th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
And this is why I’ll always go back to Engadget and their very sane journalism. You should take note Cult of Mac… sometimes it pays to do a bit of research as it looks like this free rag is less than credible.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/11/psystar-founders-claim-they-cracked-os-x-hackintosh-scene-is-a
WS, on November 11th, 2009 at 5:56 pm