Seamus Byrne05 August 2008, 3:16 PM
Psystar hires gun lawyers with good history versus Apple. Meanwhile a new clone seller targets another loophole to sell OS X ready computers. Are the flood gates set to open?
When Apple sued Psystar for selling Mac-compatible computers pre-installed with OS X, most would have assumed the story was reaching its natural conclusion, with the demand for both cessation of sale and recall of all sales to date showing Apple was not taking things lightly.
But now it seems things are set to heat up once again. Psystar isn't ready to go quietly, retaining Carr & Ferrell LLP, a firm that has met with earlier success litigating against Apple. After a two-year patent suit representing Burst.com, the intellectual property specialists reached an out of court settlement with Apple of US$10m.
While Apple has sued Psystar for violation of the OS X licence agreement, it seems the defense could head into anti-trust territory — a potential can of worms Apple would be loathe to see opened -- and which may account for why Apple took so long to respond up to now. With its growing market share, anti-trust will become an increasing threat to Apple’s total control of its software/hardware ecosystem, so having their right of control tested in court is something they may be inclined to avoid for as long as possible.
However, while Apple might be making life hard for Psystar, another company is set to sell Mac clones, targeting a different spin on avoiding a direct confrontation with Apple. Open Tech will sell non-Apple machines built to run OS X, but leaving the purchase and installation of OS X to the end user.
After all, Macs are just standard PCs these days, with Apple using Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) rather than BIOS as their primary differentiator from run of the mill PCs. There's nothing illegal about making PCs that just happen to be compatible with OS X's hardware requirements. (OS X will only install in its unmodified state on a real Mac with a correct Trusted Platform Management (TPM) chip, but this copy protection is easily removed using instructions on the internet -- and this is obviously the legally dodgy part.)
Open Tech is set to sell two models. The Open Tech Home is specced with an Intel dual-core Pentium, 3GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 8600GT and a 500GB hard drive. The Open Tech XT sports a Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, nVidia 8800 and a 640GB hard drive The systems
are listed at US$620 and US$1200 respectively.
An Open Tech representative told
Computerworld “we would definitely defend this… the only possible case that Apple can make would be based on the end-user licensing agreement.”
Now with two attackers at the gates of the Mac computing stronghold, Apple will have to play hardball to scare off other small businesses from starting up a real clone war. But the threat of clone sellers attacking from below, and the spectre of anti-trust interest from above, it would be very likely Apple’s legal team will be worried about the path they must negotiate to maintain their status quo.