News Blog

Psystar launched a series of software updates for its OS X-based Open Computer.

(Credit: CNET)

In our review of the Psystar Open Computer, a non-Apple-sanctioned desktop that ships with Apple's OS X pre-installed, we reported that Psystar planned to issue an ongoing series of software updates to address any incompatibilities that might arise. As reported by Information Week, those updates are now live, and available from Psystar for download.

Among the updates, you'll find fixes for iLife stability, an iTunes update, and a patch that lets you share the Open Computer's CD or DVD drive with a MacBook Air. Each comes as a straightforward download, hosted directly by Psystar, which also says that it will ship all new OS X-based Open Computers with these updates preinstalled.

We're sure anyone who purchased an Open Computer is glad to know that Psystar remains committed to its maverick desktop. But although they offer excellent price-performance compared to any other sub-$1,000 Apple system (basically just the Mac Mini), these systems are not for the technically faint-of-heart due to their continued potential to lose functionality themselves or to stop working with your Apple-made accessories via an errant software update. That said, we also still think that the Open Computer must look very enticing to tech savvy enthusiasts looking for a more affordable OS X-based system.

We're in day five of the tech community's obsession with Psystar, that odd little company in Miami that claims to be selling Apple-like computers. There are still plenty of questions about Psystar. Shoot, we still don't even know for certain if Psystar is legitimate.

But there's one thing we know for sure: Citizen journalism has played a major role in ferreting out the Psystar story. And with that involvement, we're getting a better understanding of how mainstream newspapers can work with folks who aren't trying to make a living off gathering the news but are interested in telling the world what they know.

Do you care about your neighborhood as much as this computer?

(Credit: Psystar)

Can you imagine if newspapers could generate the enthusiasm for their stories that tech sites managed to do for their Psystar coverage? The potential for that enthusiasm is there. Newspapers, not even the online versions of them, just aren't doing a very good job of tapping it.

Think Mac fans are crazy-passionate? Try a San Francisco parent worried about what school his or her kid will get into through the city's baffling school lottery system. Think open-source programmers like to go into the weeds in their technical discussions? Try a Red Sox or Yankees fan in late September.

I bring this up out of love, not hate. I'm a newspaper junkie. My first jobs out of college were in small dailies on the police beat, and part of me still romanticizes that work. (OK, so it's the part of me that probably doesn't remember the lousy pay and waiting for a cop quote at a crime scene in a New England snowstorm.) Point is, newspapers have a lot to learn from tech news sites.

Imagine if most newspaper Web sites had community bloggers--a blogger for every tight-knit neighborhood or small town, hitting all the local school news, the restaurant comings and goings, even the local precinct's police blotter. These blogs could be neighborhood forums, meeting places for the nitty-gritty news that regular newspaper reporters probably don't want to deal with. They could even be platforms for localized classified ads.

A pipe dream? I don't think so. Not even Craigslist, which has done so much to damage newspaper revenues, can offer that kind of hyper-local advertising. No, this isn't going to save print newspapers. But it could help keep them alive in an online form.

Does that mean the role of the traditional reporter goes away? Not at all. But those full-timers are supplemented by people who are going to know an awful lot more about what's going on their neighborhood than a reporter who parachutes in for a story. Newspaper executives, in fact, call it hyper-localism. Unfortunately, few of them are doing it very well.

Of course, the citizen journalism model is far from perfect. Earlier this week, Gizmodo sent its Miami readers after Psystar. They came back with photos showing (aha!) that Psystar wasn't at the address it claimed. There was only one problem: they went to the wrong address.

Now in fairness to the Gizmodo readers, Psystar has changed the address it lists at least four times by my colleague Tom Krazit's count. And if it weren't for those readers at Gizmodo and other sites CNET like News.com (many of whom also dug up interesting business records), along with some good reporting at outlets like The Guardian, the many red flags about Psystar wouldn't have been raised so quickly.

Sure, plenty of old-time journalists go on tantrums about citizen journalism ("How dare they?! This is a profession!! You have to study at the Columbia School of Journalism first!"). On the contrary, I think it's forward-thinking. What Gizmodo did was gave their readers a stake in the news; they became participants, not just followers.

As anyone who's worked the crime beat at a newspaper can tell you, it's not the police who tell you what really happened, it's the nosy neighbors. True, the nosy neighbors (or well-intentioned tech site readers) can be wrong from time to time. That's a risk, and that's why the world still needs editors.

But then again, the way things are going at many newspapers, going out of business is also a risk.

It doesn't take much to put Apple in the news, and this afternoon's excuse is that a Miami-based company called PsyStar is selling a Mac clone.

Its Web site was down earlier--ostensibly because of the overwhelming reaction to its product. As Computerworld's Gregg Keizer reports:

Before its site went dark Monday, PsyStar was pitching an Intel-based system it said could be configured to run Leopard, Apple's Mac OS X 10.5. The machine, which was priced at $399 minus Leopard, $554 with it already installed, is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and includes 2GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive, optical drive, and on-board graphics based on Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 graphics processor. The GMA 950 is part of several Intel chipsets--notably the 945 series--that are popular on PCs designed to run Microsoft's Windows.

There are a variety of issues here:

• Are Macs really overpriced these days, compared to a truly comparable Wintel alternative? (Certainly far less than in the past.)

• Is OpenMac a trademark violation? (Seems possible. I am not a lawyer.)

• Are any possible savings worth getting a PC-Mac OS combo that the Apple won't support? (Not from where I sit.)

• Does PsyStar have the right to preinstall an operating system for which it (apparently) doesn't have an original-equipment manufacturing, or OEM, license? (Seems dicey.)

But I wanted to focus on one issue in which I have some personal experience.

The Mac OS X end-user license agreement prohibits its use on hardware other than that sold by Apple. It reads, "You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

A little legal history now. Way back in 1978, a company by the name of Digidyne brought suit against Data General, alleging that it was restraining trade by "tying" its RDOS operating system to its Nova minicomputer hardware. (Digidyne sold Nova clones.)

The case wound its way through the courts. A 1984 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision held for Digidyne; the case was later denied rehearing by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was a convoluted court case, but the bottom-line result was that Data General could not prohibit the use of its operating system on someone else's hardware. To use the legal term, you could not "tie" hardware and software. Related cases have involved prohibiting the use of specific supplies (such as punch cards) with a specific vendor's hardware.

My personal history here is that, at one point in my career, I spent many hours with huge Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, working to unbundle Data General minicomputer operating systems from the hardware on which they ran--and to do so in a way that was hopefully approximately revenue-neutral, as well as not too annoying to any customers.

This was, of course, a wholly different generation of hardware and software than was in place at the time of the original lawsuit--and there were no actual Data General hardware clones any longer. But nonetheless, it had to be done.

Does that mean that Apple's end-user license agreement clearly breaks the rules? Well, few things are crystal-clear, when it comes to legal matters. In this 2006 post in InfoWorld, James Bailey's quoted comment gives a good precis of the relevant issues:

First, DG lost because RDOS was the only viable operating-system software for Nova and any clones. There was no other reasonable OS available for the clone makers. Dell can hardly claim the same, considering that they currently ship both Windows and Linux. Claiming that those two OSes are not "uniquely desirable by buyers" would be a stretch.

To quote the 9th circuit decision: "Although expressing some doubt as to the sufficiency of the evidence, the district court assumed defendant's RDOS was superior to competing operating systems and was viewed as uniquely desirable by buyers. 529 F. We do not share the court's hesitancy about the adequacy of the proof of the strong preference of many customers for RDOS. It was a most popular product."

Even DG admitted that there was no viable alternative. Again from the record, "the only full-service operating system available for the Nova."

Second, the court determined that to re-create RDOS would be prohibitively expensive and probably not practical. Again, with Linux and other free operating-system software readily available, it is hard to believe that the courts would come to the same conclusion in the case of Apple and OS X.

Bottom line?

Apple's end-user license agreement may or may not be an issue. The tying of hardware, software, or services has generally been frowned upon by the courts. On the other hand, the ultimate resolution resolves around specific facts about market power and the like. And, in any case, there would seem to be far more immediate questions about the PsyStar approach than those that would only be resolved by multiyear court cases (which would inevitably favor Apple, in any case.)

The fundamental question, perhaps, is this: in a world where Apple has moved to Intel processors, brought its pricing much more in line with comparable competition, and is, well, cool, how much opportunity is there for an unsupported cut-rate clone, anyway?