Psystar begins deposing Apple executives
Psystar lawyers have begun deposing Apple executives in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Apple last year, the Mac clone maker announced.
Surprisingly, it seems that Psystar executives are actually enjoying themselves. In a Thursday post on its Web site called "A taste of their own medicine," Psystar seems to gloat over the fact it is now deposing several Apple executives. "For the past week and for the following ten days we will be doing depositions of some of Apple's highest level people. After numerous depositions of Psystar employees and associates the shoe is finally on the other foot, oh the joy!"
Apple accused Psystar of copyright infringement after it began making Mac clone computers and selling them with Mac OS X installed. Apple's license agreement clearly states that the operating system can only be installed on an Apple-labeled computer.
Psystar is even allowing its customers to submit questions to ask the Apple executives, according to a report on AppleInsider. The company said it will take the top 10 questions to each executive deposition.
According to the blog post, Apple executives being deposed are:
- Aug. 07 -- John Wright -- OS X -- Senior Software Manager
- Aug. 12 -- Kevin Van Vechten -- OS X -- Software Engineering Manager
- Aug. 13 -- Phil Schiller -- Marketing -- Senior VP Worldwide Product Marketing
- Aug. 14 -- Mike Culbert -- Mac Hardware -- Senior Director
- Aug. 18 -- Gary Thomas -- TBD
- Aug. 19 -- Simon Patience -- OS X -- Head of Core OS
- Aug. 21 -- Mark Donnelly -- Apple -- VP Finance and Worldwide Business management
- Aug. 21 -- Greg Christie -- TBD
- Aug. 21 -- Bob Mansfield -- Mac Hardware -- Senior VP Mac Hardware Engineering
Psystar said these executives were chosen because they are the most knowledgeable in their field.
The company kicked up the rhetoric a notch since changing lawyers in July. Psystar is now being represented by Houston-based Camara & Sibley, which is also defending convicted music-pirate Jammie Thomas-Rasset.
Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection in May, which normally could shield a company from its legal woes. But Apple asked the court to lift the automatic stay of proceedings in the copyright case. Apple won its argument, and a new trial date has been set for January 11, 2010.
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple. 
I hope Apple screws these clowns for good !
Crapple has always sucked more than most other companies. Not allowing people to install their software on whatever computer they want is clearly anti-competitive.
Go Psystar !
1. apple did lower its prices on its notebooks.dont you remember?
2. microsoft is the one that cares about money. like how steve ballmer defends vista by calling it the 2nd most popular os in history.
3. what is wrong about them wanting to not license its os to other vendors. let them.
I hope Psystar kicks Crapple's anti-competitive a$$.
Crapple has always sucked more than most other companies. Not allowing people to install their software on whatever computer they want is clearly anti-competitive.
Go Psystar !"
Judging by some of your past comments, why does it matter to you? If you don't like it (for whatever reason), then you can get another OS. I heard there is this one called "WIndows" that has been pretty popular for last 20 years or so. For good or bad, if Apple doesn't want to license their OS, they do not have to. This is not a necessity of life. It is just a computer. That anti-competitive non-sense just doesn't fly in this case, as there are other choices.
up with 3 more
Apple is fighting a losing war
I also doubt that MS would fund psystar because they have alot to lose with this case as well they have the advantage of being the main OS on several dozen PC vendors. With Apple losing this case they may end up sharing that with Apple.
---Neutral---
Here's why: If by chance Apple were forced to rescind that portion of their EULA, the ruling doesn't mean that Apple would be forced to support everyone else's hardware. It doesn't even mean that Apple would be forced to change any of their codebase.
Sure, a random OEM would be able to license and sell OSX (well, roundabout and at retail prices...), but they would still be completely on their own for drivers and compatibility if Apple so chose to ignore them.
Not so sure about vuln counts going up, either - if the vuln exists in OSX now, then it will exist on other hardware, certainly. OTOH, if it does not exist in OSX now, then the only way new ones would show up was if the additional non-supported drivers and such had them. If OSX cloning fever (for lack of a better description) spread far and wide, and things went haphazard, then such a vuln would be tough to replicate across non-common and often incompatible hardware types. All of this would still leave an 'Official' OSX/Mac combination the safest bet around (not perfect, mind, just the safest).
Of course, Crapple doesn't quite have the brain to figure that out. It's funny that a company with such good designers can have such poor managers.
I agree, but most of the drivers today are written by the hardware makers. You don't think they'd be willing to write drivers for osx? If they didn't, I bet there's an "open source community" out there that might. After all, what is the OS based on? Hmmm.. maybe?
Windows has a whole infrastructure dedicated towards making sure drivers work on windows (WHQL). Without that, how many drivers do you figure would work worth a damn in Windows? (before you answer that, think back to the early 1990's, when men were men and most drivers just sucked). Now pile on a complete non-support for non-Apple reference hardware... how far do you think that would get?
Community efforts? For years, Linux languished due to a lack of driver support for certain devices (big example: Broadcom-based wireless, WinModems, and etc)... in spite of massive work done to crack the driver barriers by volunteers. Not seeing much improvement on the OSX front for non-supported stuff, even among the Hackintosh community (they just barely managed SSE3 emulation on SSE2 chips a year or so ago, and Intel has their SSE specs published!)
Actually, that already exists (TPM chips on Apple mobos were supposed to be that barrier). You simply replace the bootloader, issue dummy calls that claim success to init, and off you go. That's (mostly) how a Hackintosh works.
But here's the catch - instead of relying on DRM (which in truth only punishes your legit customers), you simply refuse to support any non-Apple product. For the hobbyists, no problem - my own Hackintosh ticks along just fine, and if it breaks? that's my problem, not Apple's. For an OEM, it's suicide - since their users are generally going to be lost if something breaks, and aren't going to be very adept with a command prompt, boot prompt, or any of the like.
In fact the vast majority of Apple laptops & desktops don't even have a TPM chip. There are also no TPM drivers, nor TPM support in the EFI.
Hackintoshes work mostly by emulating Apple's proprietary EFI, not by doing anything with the TPM or circumventing any DRM. If they did then Apple would be suing companies like Psystar on the basis of DMCA rather than EULA.
If Crapple had half a brain, they would sell the o/s for use on any platform and charge a premium to people just purchasing the software with hardware to go with it. This would force the clones to be the same price Crapple sells it's hardware for, thus making Crapple a better deal than the clones. Easy as pie.
Of course, Crapple doesn't quite have the brain to figure that out. It's funny that a company with such good designers can have such poor managers."
Dude, how old are you? Ten?? Is "Crapple" the best you can come up with? Get a clue and get a life outside of the basement.
What I would really like to know.... Does microsoft want psystar to win or lose? Think about it.
Sure, on some level HP and Dell would be happy to see the restriction removed and all, but they'd still have a couple of obstacles. First, they would have to get some sort of bulk deal on licensing from Apple (after all, the big OEMs likely pay a mere couple-dozen bucks per seat for Windows... suddenly paying $129 per seat in a thin-margin business makes zero sense). Second, Apple would have to agree to support the thing on the OEM... something they're not likely to do.
That said, they sure are opening a can of worms at Apple and this may just be their entire purpose for existing. The list of executives they are going to get depositions of is impressive. The answers those executives give will be public record and that may be a trap laid to come back at those executives later with. It's just the sort of sneaky ploy I can see legal teams doing.
I agree with Monkeyfun14- I don't think any software company like Microsoft, Adobe, or similar is involved- they have too much to lose themselves to have EULA's struck down in court.
From the industry point of view, I'd like to see this go to court and not end up as a quiet settlement. Let's lay all the cards out here and see exactly what is and what is not legally enforcible for a EULA or restrictions an OEM can place on how their products are used. It's about time the consumers really understood their rights in this sort of situation.
Not just Apple (as you've mentioned...)
Personally, I agree - I would love to see the whole concept of a EULA tested in court. I know that a lot of software makers would get real nervous all the sudden, but overall, from an IT schmuck's perspective, I would kill to see this thing get decided once and for all (and more importantly, some sort of legal conceptual argument as to why or why not).
Since this keeps coming up every couple of years, then gets quietly shuffled out of the forefront of the public's view, we never see what really happens. Yes, let's get the thing out in the open and decided once and for all.
I have to admit I'm curious about some of Psystar's actual hardware products. Has anyone seen or laid hands on one before? Might be worth buying one if only for the curiousity factor and collector interest. I love Apple's laptop designs, but the desktops have been lacking in that special area of appeal since the last G5 model in my opinion. Some of the Psystar designs have been quite interesting to look at.
@ggggsssss: You're confusing a standard ("IBM Compatible") with software compatibility. If your logic held, Microsoft would be forced to make an OSX port of Halo, or a Linux version of Office.
They even seem to need help from the public over what questions to ask.
Maybe they are just a bunch of high school kids with next to zero knowledge about running a company.
A link to the document in PDF format http://www.groklaw.net/images/Psystar-89.pdf
IMHO Psystar's hackintoshes are an embarrassment to Apple. I bought one in May, and gave it away in June to a sheriff's youth camp. It was loud, ugly and I had to install the OS three times before it booted properly. When it arrived, I had purchased memory to add, and when I opened it up, the hard drive was not fastened to its bay and there were 5 loose screws and some pieces of wire flying around inside.
THIS is why I support Apple in their fight to crush these impostors. I bought it, tried it and determined that compared to what I already own, it was garbage. Not even the bargain basement price would convince me to buy a system that has no support and no craftsmanship in production.
If you want to buy a cheap pile of junk that sounds like a prop jet when you turn it on... then Pystar is the choice for you.
But in reality, that "shoe" that's on the other foot is probably going to wind up being back up their uknowhats when Apple gets done with them.
It`s hard to get anything out of Apple. They don`t give "full disclosure" for hundreds of MegaBytes of security fixes for OSX. MSFT DOES give full disclosure. I hate secretive companies like Apple.
- by Stormspace August 15, 2009 8:44 PM PDT
- Psystar is modifying open source software to allow OSX to run on third party hardware. The mistake they made was doing the installation for people. They should have written an installer and supplied the OS in an unopened package so that they weren't breaking any EULA's.
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