Contrary to report, Psystar not shutting down, lawyer says
(ComputerWorld)

I guess Psystar is still at it. And good luck to them.

The problem is that Psystar did engage in copyright violations in order to get the Mac OS to run on non-Apple hardware. And that should be stopped. But, injunctions should not stop a company from trying to engage in a legal business no matter how much Apple might hate someone trying to get the Mac OS onto other hardware. That is an antitrust issue. And not a copyright issue.

As far as copyright and antitrust are concerned they are both important and one does not excuse the other. Neither should Apple be able to use copyright law to carve out a monopoly business for itself. Other than being the only company to sell and distribute their own product. Controlling what consumers can do with the product might be fine as long as it does not violate antitrust laws.

Of course the Rebel EFI product is the interesting one.

Apparently with Rebel EFI a customer can install the Mac OS on any generic PC.

The question is whether or not giving a customer the ability to install the Mac OS himself is somehow violation. My guess is that if the customer is legally entitled to engage in “copying” of the Mac OS in order to install it on a Apple system, it is also entitled to copy the Mac OS in order to install it on a non-Apple system.

Such an act may in fact violate the terms of the EULA. But, those kinds of terms (terms that carve out monopoly markets) can and should be invalidated as violating the antitrust laws.

Once Apple is getting paid for every copy of the Mac OS that gets installed, its rights under the copyright law should be satisfied.

We will see if Psystar has the guts and the money to pull all of this off. But, one thing is certain. You can not engage in copyright violations in order to do so. And enabling a consumer to install the Mac OS on non-Apple hardware is not necessarily a copyright violation either.

Again, Apple is making a big mistake here. Apple would be much better off licensing HP, DELL, Lenovo, Acer and others to preinstall the Mac OS. That would create a much larger marketplace for Mac applications not to mention increase the number of Mac OS sales.

As my earlier article may have suggested, the longer Apple persists in restricting the Mac OS to Apple hardware, the more it appears that Apple and Microsoft do have an illegal market sharing agreement. Microsoft will continue to provide its office suite for the Mac as long as Apple does not compete directly against Microsoft by licensing the Mac OS for non-Apple hardware. Of course, such an arrangement could be matter of convenience. Or, Apple and Microsoft could actually have discussed the market sharing arrangement. And in that case it would be illegal.

As mentioned above, Apple would be much better off to expand its horizons and license the Mac OS for use with generic systems. Raise the price a tad and lower the cost of Apple hardware by the same amount if necessary. That would permit pure Apple customers to brake even and at the same time open up the market for the Mac OS. Is the Mac OS any good? If so, why restrict it? Why limit the size of the market for Mac OS applications?

And, again, as I have often suggested, I am perfectly happy to allow Apple limit the size of its own marketplace. I am not interested in their premium hardware. And besides it leaves the market wide open for Linux.

You really have to look at the success that Linux has shown in a number of markets simply because no one is interested in restricting its application. (Maybe Microsoft is. But, not the developers or distributors. And they are not likely to ever be so interested either.) More power to Linux.

Apple should be looking at the benefits of being able to run Linux applications. And Linux should be looking at the benefits of being able to run Mac applications, right? There is simply a lot more to be gained by giving consumers additional choices than restricting them and trying like hell to establish some kind of a monopoly in hardware. Apple can be the only distributor of the Mac OS. Just as Microsoft is with their OS. But, restricting the hardware choices is a fool's errand. It might look like you are better off for the moment, but in the end it is self defeating.

Copyright law does not need the ability to restrict the hardware upon which software can be run (technically or legally). That is simply self defeating.