I’ve been saying since April or so that Apple really wanted to avoid going to court over Psystar (the Hackintosh maker) because it would open up a huge can of legal worms for Apple, but apparently most legal people think that Apple will win the case without even trying. This post gives some good reasons why my take on it (which is presumably also Apple’s) has some merit.
Very good article you’re linking to. Except the (irrelevent) bit of “returning to a propritary CPU” (PowerPC was not “proprietary”, it was off the shelf and made by no less than four different manufacturers; in fact it is still frequently used in the embedded world. Same goes for the 68×00 they used before it, which in fact was the CPU for a multitude of microcomputers in the workstation sphere before becoming the Lisa and the Mac’s CPU. The only thing “proprietary” about it was that it wasn’t the more common CPU for home computers, and in fact that off-the-shelfness in general what made (legal) Mac clones, with Apple’s blessing and licensing, possible before the return of Steve Jobs. (Jobs didn’t do anything to make them less off the shelf, under his reign PPC Macs had PCI busses and other PC-like accouterments, before going fully PC architecture with the switch to Intel.)
Apple going to a non-Intel CPU is a remote possibility though, Apple did buy a PowerPC CPU maker recently, in a rare hardware maker acquisition. They say they want to use them for embedded (i.e. iPod and iPhone, etc.) applications though, and I believe them. Intel is also doing a lot of sweet deals with Apple, making a special CPU for the Air and a special overclocked CPU for the iMac 3.086GHz system.
You’re probably wondering what the point of this reply is, I’m writing the pointless statement for your blog. My blog will have the more interesting post on the subject. I’ll try to send you a talkback. 🙂
That’s 3.06GHz. 🙂 (Typo)
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Yes, it’s not likely that they’ll switch back to a non-x86 platform — the reasons why they switched to it in the first place are still valid.
I don’t know what Psystar’s putative legal defense might be, but time should clear up that bit of ignorance. 🙂
People, I am not sure if you have forseen the long term consequences of Apple NOT winning. I believe we may all loose. Tongue in cheeck this is what may happen
February 2009 AP – APPLE GOES BANANAS – Rudy Pedraza shocking Bill Gates link – MacOSX Discontinued – Steve Jobs changes name to uSe2Have aJob – Global Warming causes Linux Penguin go exinct – VISTA gets out of sight – Psystar announces plans to clone 1,000,000 dollar bills
those could be the headlines in a while if apple does not win and obliterates Psystar.
Just give a tough to the following sucession of unfortunate events 1) Apples sues Psystar 2) Psystar gets out the hook for a technicality. Judge says he can not rule because Apple is a fruit and the whole suit should be taking care for the food administration authorities 3) psystar and other companies predates apple with cheapo clones. 4) Apple star loosing money on the whole computer category. They are not selling hardware because everyone buys cheapo chinese junk. 5) Apple exits the computer hardware business 6) Apple discontinues MacOSX 7) computer users are left without mac hardware and mac software 8) A whole branch of industry related to the mac gets whacked. some loose their shirt and go out of business. Some switch to vista 9) steve jobs is a waste of a man and suicide himself or get into a monastery in tibet were there is nothing more than abaco 10) Psystar has nothing to steal (clone) anymore and goes out of business as well
there is many posible holes on the whole thing. Thing can turn different and that should be like the worst posible scenerio. But I am afraid that if apple does not get its way and keep complete control of their own creations, they may very well just say ‘HASTA LA VISTA’ and leaves us with NOTHING but MACROSUCKS and Penguins!
Thanks for that comment Jose, it beats the fanboi comments, and anti-Apple comments on the subject that I’ve seen also, because it has a sense of humor. 🙂