Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 16 July 2008 04:20
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
It's hard to see the basis for the first point. Indeed, Psystar's strategy seems to have been to position itself as an alternative to Apple.
The second and third points seem to imply that Psystar's hardware and software patches are of lesser quality to Apple's, so customers get an inferior experience of Mac OS X. While it's most unlikely that anyone buying from Psystar is under the illusion that they're getting a Mac (except perhaps for those that bought an OpenMac before the name change), Apple could be suffer harm if a dissatisfied Psystar customer give up on Mac OS X completely rather than buying a real Mac.
The Mac OS X licence only allows the use of the software on Apple-labelled computers, so if Psystar is firing up the systems as part of its QA process it could be in breach of that agreement. It also appears to be encouraging its customers to break their agreements with Apple.
However, we don't know at this stage whether the licence terms form part of Apple's suit, and in any case there is a school of thought that believes most licence agreements (at least those typically accompanying packaged software) are not legally enforceable. Court decisions, at least in the US, have been mixed.
Whatever the legal arguments used, Apple needs to win this case if it wants to keep control of its platform. One of the reasons often cited for the relative stability of Mac OS X is the relatively small number of hardware configurations. If modified versions of the operating system start turning up on a wide range of white box systems, the Mac's reputation is likely to suffer.
And there's the financial aspects: does the extra profit Apple stands to make on additional sales of Mac OS X licences (the 'expand the market' thesis) exceed the lost profits from people choosing to buy clones instead of Macs (the 'cannibalisation' thesis)? Apple clearly thinks not, otherwise it would be licensing its operating system more broadly.
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