Psystar US$399.99 OpenMac: Mac Clone company goes offline after Apple threats
Those who acted quickly to buy themselves a US$399.99 Mac clone were perhaps wise to do so as the Miami based hackintosh specialists, Psystar, went off-line yesterday before Steve Jobs’s legal heavies could come down on them like a tonne of bricks.
The OpenMac came with an option of having OS X Leopard pre-installed on the system rather than purchasing a copy of the operating system itself and it’s here where the Apple lawyers have focused. The Leopard end user licensing agreement (EULA) says:
“This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.”
Clearly Psystar have been running one copy on multiple OpenMacs and so appear to have overlooked a problem that could cost them a mighty amount of money, their livelihoods, their children’s education and knowing Apple, there’s a good chance they’ll probably make it the company’s mission to erase their family names from the history books forever.
But Psystar aren’t going to go down without a fight and have promised to challenge what they see as an unlawful Leopard EULA. Good luck to them.
It’s strange that Apple have chosen what seems a flimsier clause to battle over rather than the unshakable:
“You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”
But I don’t suppose it would matter even if they just decided to sue Psystar because they didn’t like the colour of their shoelaces. Even if the EULA is illegal, they’ll just bury the Miami company in more lawyers’ bills than they can manage even before the case gets in front of a judge.
I wish you luck Psystar. Macs are horribly overpriced but I don’t think this is the case to shake Apple to its core.
(via Daily Tech)
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