Psystar claims Apple asking for non-existent, redundant info - Page 2

What I am waiting for is the revelation of who is funding this stalking horse. I'm sure Apple is too.

Frankly Apples behaviour here is enough to make me go back to Linux machines. If they can't win on the weight of the evdence they need to pack up and go home. An appology to the user community would be nice too. Unfortunately I think Apples goal here is to make Pystar go away anyway they can and avoid determination of their legal behaviour.


Dave

That's what Apple's trying to do. In the U.S. legal system (and most civilized countries), the plaintiff and defendant each request a list of relevant documents from the other side. Unless the court rules that they're irrelevant, the other side HAS TO present those documents.

How is Apple doing to win on the weight of the evidence if the other side is allowed to intentionally hide evidence?


Good analogy. I'll change the title screen of Gone with the Wind (look it up, you youngsters) to something else and sell it as my product. Let's see how well that would go over.

Sound to me like Psystar was planning on disappearing since day one. Only people who want to scam or never think about committing to their business and customers run businesses this way.


Long term?! How long have they been in business?!


How convenient!!


You'd think that being a computer hardware retailer make them afford building a server for themselves!

Didn't Psystar initially, when all this fiasco was gaining momentum, accuse Apple of not properly backing up their email?!

I knew Psystar had several reasons to always be moving their offices, one reason was to throw off Apple's investigation team, and apparently the other is to claim that things were lost during their moves.

I think this shoestring company is currently studying Apple's behavior and courtroom techniques, it seems that they have something coming up. I agree with Apple, Psystar is up to something big, it's no little startup.

It's not necessarily so simple. The a commercial emulator was made, Sony sued but, Connectix ultimately won. BUT: I think they did a proper Phoenix-BIOS-like reverse engineering rather than use Sony's code. That's a very important difference in this case, among others.


To make a legal player, yes. But most of the player decks that you see for around $20-50 are very unlikely to be legal players, the license fee is about $15-$20 per player.


This is still the discovery phase of the trial. Way too early to be complaining about not being able to win on the evidence, because not all the potential evidence has been exposed. Trials are just plain slow, take a look at SCO v. IBM, I'm almost 100% certain SCO is simply in the wrong but they've managed to drag out the case for a good part of a decade.

You really need to wake up, Apple is doing what they are required to do to protect their business.

Psystar is OBVIOUSLY nothing more than a massive scam and you'd have to be pretty dense to be on their side in the first place.

I'm with you--but kinda worried that there is an escape hatch for Psystar here somewhere, and we'll all be left wondering. Re. the escape hatch:

Is there a lawyer in the house?

I have this theory, and would love for a lawyer to refute it if it's silly so I can stop wondering:

Things are looking pisspoor for Psystar (and have been looking pisspoor for a good many months), so perhaps the conspirators have already moved to their Plan B--abort mode?

So what would the plan be, if they wanted to abort? Maybe it's exactly what you see them doing now. Staged buffoonery. Let's say Psystar let the "bad guys" out the backdoor a few months ago, clearing the way for the Pedraza family to steer the case off the rails.

Seriously: Maybe their whole strategy is to throw out as many "vexatious" and legally unsound statements as humanly possible. The more infuriating, the better. They win when they take the investigation out of the courtroom, whatever it takes. In other words, their Plan B is successful when the Apple loses its right to discovery (or to make discoveries public)--such as could happen if this thing turned into a criminal investigation, right? In this scenario, one can imagine that a criminal thing aimed at the Pedrazas is an absolute perfect "soft landing."

Hear me out:

If "the conspirators" are some shady folks connected to...Dell (say), their ultimate goal is to avoid exposure. Lucky for them, this is exceptionally easy to do since their loose change is enough money to pay off a nation of jailed Pedrazas!

Maybe some of you can't imagine why the Pedrazas would be willing to go this route. And to those skeptics, I say--PLEASE! If they are a front, they are a front. In the "front" scenario, what do the Pedrazas have as their ultimate goal? To do whatever it takes to get paid. I mean, forgive me if I'm wrong, but if we're going to go with the whole "Pedrazas are a front" thing, let's see it out to the logical conclusion. (And it is pretty logical. These Pedraza folks have no credibility and no real obvious future source of income anyhow--and if you go back a lot of months and look at the sloppy, sleazy crap they've pulled in the public eye, it's easy to conclude that they never wanted any credibility. And c'mon, these guys are not businessmen--unless they're into "adrenaline business," ala Enron, heading off a cliff at 160 MPH. Really, these guys had some plan a year ago, and they have some plan now. Could the Plan be that they are inviting the feds to hit them with some big fines, which they'll gladly "pay"? Hey, for the money that may be coming to them, many people would gladly go to jail, right?)

And here's the bottom line. No matter how much you try to paint my theory as paranoid, how do you figure there is NO conspiracy? Even if you insist that Pedrazas are a couple of 20-somethings with nothing to lose--acting alone--going off the rail for lack of a better plan--you have to admit that their fancy lawyers are doing a pretty lame job. Even if they are only in it for themselves. No matter what the outcome, lawyers have a stake in super-public cases, right? Really. If Pedraza's lawyers are the hotshots people have been building them up to be, they can't be as paralyzed as they appear to be. Decent lawyers protecting their reps would be working to minimize losses, no?

Or could it be that they too profit from encouraging the Pedrazas to behave exactly as they have been behaving?

All right. Way too much said. Let me summarize:

Lawyers in the house--feel free to tell me if I'm way off here--but is there some possible strategy by which the Pedrazas can purposely steer this whole thing into criminal territory, ending the public discovery business?

Or if microsoft said no more windows on mac machines. I could see if apple delivered products that users want, mid range, headless mac, not non mobile low powered crap, i7 machines, non ECG server memory machines. Rubbish.

Go pystar, XEfi, osx86.
Down with apple tv. That's for looked. Not even HD no flash on iPhone xvid movies for free and as a sample developer who sees their material in wares groups, I can say this. Until Apple stops this non high end over priced builds, long live the clone. Some forget when there were clones, late 80s, apple had a larger marketshare. It was intel, that for years, raped the consumer, then AMD forced intel hand. Now apple a the big naughty company that ironically cares more about iPhones then computers.

hmmm I wonder if i was to make a console that could run say Wii games and call it an open wii and just copy the wii operating system onto it and sell it cheaper then the wii do you think nintendo would mind?

or what if i was to get a phone of my choice from china and hack the blackberry operating sytsem onto it and sell it as a openberry at a cheaper price that RIM would mind

what if i was to get the latest release warner brothers movies and copy them and sell them cheaper on an online store to the world and call myself something like Warnerbrothersdiscountshop.com and openly say that i sell the movies cheaper then warnerbrothers that warner brothers would mind??

and what would you do if you came up with an awesome product that you designed and spent years of R&D developing and perfecting and selling as a product that you make yourself and it is your company and business and somebody came along and said hmmm I like that so i'll just copy it and hack it and sell it saying its the same thing as yours and then even name it similar to your product that you OWN the rights to and when you complain about it have to go to court because you have to defend your right to OWN something YOU OWN and defend HOW and WHERE its used when you made it OBVIOUS where you wanted its use llimited to! Would you be happy??
NO I THINK NOT!!! I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY APPLE HAS TO EVEN FIGHT FOR SOMETHING IT OWNS psystar and anyone who backs them up should be lined up and shot! how dare they even think they have the right to SOMEONE ELSES STUFF ...bloody IDIOTS

in the end it all comes down to choices if you want the product buy it and stop being cheapskates if you dont like the way its packaged and what your allowed to do with it Tough you didnt invent it apple did so either use it as the maker intends or just simply DONT BUY IT you have a choice peoples GROW UP!

My late mother had law training but never passed the passed the bar (female lawyers in her day were little more than what paralegals are today) but I did learn some basic law from her. '

I can't see how going into criminal territory would stop public discovery because there is nothing that says that a civil case has to stop if a criminal case results. Sure a stay can be requested but the judge doesn't have to grant it. Looking around I found references to cases that might make the matter a little clearer (assuming you can read legalese without getting a headache):

Volmar Distrib., Inc. v. New York Post Co., 152 F.R.D. 36 (S.D.N.Y. 1993)

In re CFS Sec. Fraud Litig., 256 F.Supp.2d 1227 (N.D. Okla. 2003)

Brumfield v. Shelton, 727 F.Supp. 282 (E.D.La. 1989)

Wehling v. Columbia Broad. Sys., 608 F.2d 1084 (5th Cir. 1979)

Kugle v. Daimlerchrysler Corp., 88 S.W.3d 355 (Tex. App.San Antonio, 2002)

If you want something that is slightly more readable please look at Teakell, John R; Milner & Finn (2006) "Related Criminal And Civil Securities Proceedings: Parallel Proceedings Civil Actions, Criminal Cases And The Fifth Amendment" (its a doc file BTW).

What is the potential long term viability of Psystar's business model? For argument's sake, let's suppose that at the end of the court process Psystar 'wins', i.e. the court rules that it is not illegal to buy OSX and install it on non-Apple hardware as a commercial operation. If we disregard any response from Apple to that unlikely conclusion, what else would happen? Well, Pystar could start selling OSX boxes, but so could Dell, HP and every other commodity PC maker. The only presence Psystar have in the current market is due to their exclusive use of OSX, once Dell is sticking it on millions of their machines, whither Psystar?

So if they win their case, they put themselves out of business! How curious.

Since macs now a days are pcs (Intel chips and standard high quality parts) Microsoft would have be insane to prevent windows from working on macs--they would be back in court under anti-trust charges so fast they would get whiplash. Microsoft can no more prevent Windows from running on a Mac then they could prevented it from running on a Dell. Now Microsoft does have the right to control what the Xbox OS runs on as they make both the hardware and software--just like Apple does with the Mac.

XEfi does NOT make a mac clone-the whole thing was pulled hours after the announcement and was formally dead Dec 2008. osx86 is is for gear heads who would rather spend hours of their time trying to get MacOS X running on non Apple hardware then simply getting a mac; I guess they don't consider their time worth anything.

This is not competition it is theft, pure and simple.

It is not about Apple preventing end users doing what they want.
It is about a company modifying and then selling Apple's own OS and making money from it.
They are running a business on the back of Apple who have spent millions on the development of OS X only to find some one else making money from it.

You are a complete idiot and a troll.

it makes me wonder, IF they don't have financial information, because it was lost in the move.. how do we know they moved? surely they aren't "required to keep that information" either?

so, then, by their twisted logic, they haven't moved..??

or have they? and if they have AND CAN PROVE IT, surely they can provide the financial info Apple is looking for.


--

at one point I was considering getting one of their machines to tinker with, but honestly, if this is how they do business they give me zero confidence in "their" product, so how exactly is all this asshatery helping their bottom line?

not that they have to tell anyone how their bottom line is

This would make them little more than a shell company but if their financial record are as fragmentary as they claim that could result in their 'benefactor' getting into trouble as is could open the door to allegations of tax irregularities. One person said they have a plan but the more I look at this nonsense they put in front of this judge the more I doubt they have a plan.

If anything it makes Psystar look more like a stalking horse as their 'benefactor' can claim Psystar is making stuff up if their records are in as sorry shape as they claim and they could point to the civil case as proof.

I'm not a lawyer or anything close, but maybe Pystar figure somehow that the wrath of the IRS is the lesser evil than the wrath of Apple. Maybe they figure that not producing documents requested will simply make the case very difficult for Apple to win conclusively. If they do have backers and cannot produce any documentation, then it's like telling Apple to go stuff themselves and Pystar ends up with a big fine and some cease & desist order. No jail time...

Look, if Apple can run windows is then an end user should be able to out the os on any hardware they want. In fact, this day will come, not if, but when. Apple OS is already becoming a commondity. I remember saying one day it would be in x86 and got laughed out but it happened didn't it.

With regard to osx86, they have come a long way and I know many people that got a real mac after tweaking the kext, plist and device to get the gpu to work but those days are long gone. In fact, I was just there a few weeks ago and these days, all you need to do is download this tiny efi emulator and use any OS X disk, and you're done. Including updates. No more tedious hacking required. And had machines are just as stable. Further, it's hard to justify $3000, after taxes, when you can build a raid machine, i7 for 1/4th the price not to mention any GPU you desire. It's very, very cost effective, especially fir media, audio, rendering and now, the end user can download the updates. It's getting harder for Apple, not easier, to control how the OS is used. Personally, if apple sold the OS,and iLife as seperate components with a reasonable display price, they would gain a huge market share motto mention all the new Apple only apps. All they would have to do in order to make up fir lost revenue hardware sales, is this combined with a percentage if the developers apps pricing. If Apple starts manipulating hardware prices, ala $999 MBAir, and gets ready for a netbook, this could become more reality than fiction. Apple then reduces prices, still making a decent margin, but more mainstream in price but better hardware. Or packaging.

If Apple moves into the TV business, then this is happening sooner as all if Apples money will be iTunes, iPhone, TVA, apps, 35% os marketshare plus almost tripple hardware sales but 1/3 lower priced. So a mbp sells for $1200 but 3 x more. This is a great business model where Apple could really dominate, especially getting into and controlling the cloud and app store markets, only now, the apps store includes 1000's if new programs while still giving the user an experince. Plus all the millions in licensing fees they would receive from Dell, HP, the stock would reach $500 in a few years. The premium experience would still exist, just at a lower price point. This really should be a no brained plus real mac enthusiasts, still win with more affordable devices. The only thing lost us the snobbery which is sort of to e now anyway as the creatives, audio, video, arestill there, but not catered to nearly as much as the barking dog, louis vatton iLife "how to I do an email attachment" one to one crowd. LOL.

Apple's "legal behaviour" has been under scrutiny in one form or another since the advent of the iPod + iTunes. Judge Alsup has already participated in the case some months ago and has come out heavily in favour of Apple regarding several aspects of the case, particularly in terms of anti-trust.

Apple's goal here is indeed to make Psystar go away, and as Apple users who are interested in a healthy Apple that faces healthy and legitimate competition (as opposed to thieves who violate their IP rights), that should be our goal as well.

With resepct to winning "on the weight of the evidence" . . . we're talking about civil litigation here, esepcially as it plays out in the United States. At least in Canada, as part of the work I do, I've seen seemingly clear-cut civil suits drag on for several years, one in particular that spanned over the course of eight years. That's just one of the reasons the US and Canada have different forms of ADR now (since about the early 90's), that is, Alternative Dispute Resolution, like mediation and arbitration. There is (or at least was) a lot or Private Judging in the US, especially in California, to help provide an alternative means of adjudication. ADR, however, has met with varying degrees of success, and has in no way supplanted the standard civil adjudication process. It was simply meant to ease the pressure on the court docket. There are plenty of cases that go nowhere during mediation, for example, and are simply referred back to the courts.



We're talking about the integrity of OS X here as a piece of Intellectual Property that relies on heavy differentiation (stability, reliability, mated with the hardware) in order to succeed, and we're also talking about Apple's business model which relies on OS X being sold with the hardware. That's the whole point, both from an end-user experience perspective and Apple's business interests. OS X unhinged from Macs en masse would mean that it would fast become a Windows clone, facing the very same problems (and a victim of them) the same as Windows.

As long as Apple is interested in the computer business, what you're looking for will never happen. Having OS X running on a different chip architecture is one thing, but "freeing" the OS a la Windows is an entirely different thing. And ultimately, doing so would be extremely detrimental to the average user and would effectively kill Apple's Mac business at the same time. Apple went from the old Motorola 68000 architecture to PowerPC. And then then they went from PowerPC to Intel. The only reason this latter move was such a surprise to everyone was not just because it was x86, but because this was the same architecyure on which the competition ran. But all throughout the history of Apple, their OS has always in one form or another been locked to or otherwise limited to their own hardware. The advantage of x86 is that the chip suppliers are reliable, the supply is plentiful, hardware upgrades can be rolled out much faster (especailyl faster than the old G4 and G5 architecture) and more importantly, this allows Apple to boast that you can install Windows on a Mac, and really, any other OS. But OS X still remains locked to the hardware. This fact was common to ALL architectures Apple has used, and for good reason.

Apple locks OS X onto specific hardware because that's the hardware it gets tested the on the most. This means that OS X works as intended on this hardware. If there was no lock and if any old company could produce a PC that ran OS X, Apple would have less control over the hardware being used and OS X might not work as intended on it. This would pose a serious problem for the average user, which comprises the bulk of Apple's market. Unless of course it's ok for the average user to have a consistent Windows-like experience. Not going to happen.

Think about what you're saying. There is simply no way for Apple to pull it off at this time, nor for the foreseeable future, without killing anything and everything that differentiates OS X and makes it the Gold Standard of operating systems. Bye-Bye exclusivity and desirability. OS X is so successful and so universally admired because it is offered as a complete software+hardware package. It's a simple, all-in-one, turn-key solution that is targeted at the average user, and is good for the average user. It's everything that Windows is not. That's the whole point. Simple to use yet powerful, right out of the box. You unlock OS X from its hardware so it can be installed on any old PC, and you erase most of its advantages. And this is the problem with Windows . . .

Microsoft is facing a problem (like they always have), in that they are trying to compete against a vendor who uses a vertically integrated model rather than the horizontal model, which Microsoft and the PC market uses. The result is that you have a poor integrated approach to marketing, hardware and software design where the experience is as much dictated by the hardware vendor as the quality of the operating system - both of which are developed by two separate companies with different goals overall in regard to their respective strategies.

Yeah, Apple. Open up and give away your core business. That way you can grow the $119 licensing fee market, and ditch that annoying $700 per unit you earn from hardware. Then you can hire a lot more programmers and begin the arduous process of writing drivers for every device out there, and supporting untold numbers of hardware combinations with your newly expanded support team. And while you're at it, why not just give iTMS to me.

That's the Windows world. And I'm sure that's the last thing any of us would want.

delete

Oh great, I see you're another Adobe spiv who won't be happy until everyone on earth is forced into using their proprietry software.

Say yes to open standards, say no to Adobe's attempt to close parts of the web, by forcing developers to buy their software and consumers to download their plugins.

Certainly a company that is running a business has to have information for the IRS? There's no reason why they can't produce that info for Apple. They're obviously hiding something. Any business has to have some accounting records.

And really now, in light of what the iPhone does well, what it is capable of, does Flash really matter??

Hardly.

The iPhone came out of nowhere to almost overnight revolutionize the entre industry with the features it DOES have. And that doesn't include Flash, MMS, and video recording. Pretty damned impresseive. And it helped Apple break revenue records like never before. In only a few months it took #1 spot in the US among smartphones and #3 worldwide. it takes years for others to achieve that. And the iPhone is NOT a cheap or economically priced product.

And guess which platform developers are dying to work on?

Again, though, we're off topic . . .

I hope the judge in this case can see through this moronic case. I know judge Judy wouldn't stand for it.

Seems the judge agrees with Apple Wolrd-of-apple

Yeah I saw it too. It only makes sense.

I'm really interested to see how Psystar is getting their hands on OS X.

I wonder if they'd dare to produce fraudulent documents. These thieves are capable of virtually anything.

Moron.

I actually have no idea what he meant by that. It doesnt even make sense in terms of sarcasm or a joke.

Isn't it amazing that lawyers are allowed to help them lie? This is obviously perjury, but yet, lawyers can go ahead and create these BS document sand present them to the courts. By law, any company is required to file a tax statement. These include profit, losses, dividends paid, etc... K-1 form comes to mind. Where are they? Psystar is hiding someone/company or stalling before the ultimate defeat and end of business. It's too bad they they could not become a low end dealer for a few years to increase market share, then take the money and run after the license agreement expires. But I really don't know if this would help Apple.

The stalking-horse theory just won't go away. I admit I've always thought it was implausible, but now I'm beginning to wonder. Psystar is trying to hide something. The question is, what?

And this time Big Brother has an Apple logo.

that computer was accidentally dropped during the move and the hard drive crashed. since Psystar is so focused on litigation they didn't want to spend the time or money to recover the drive.

and I agree that the IRS is going to find their so called lack of documents very interesting. I wonder if Apple can demand their tax filings as part of the proof (if they haven't already)



funny you mention that. there was a company a couple of years back that was sued for blantant and gross copyright infringement for re-editing movies to clean up the language, remove sex scenes etc without permission from the studios. And yes the studios won.

I love this part from the agreement"

"... 15 - Bank statements for all of Psystar’s accounts from Commerce Bank and TD Bank
from April 2008 through September 2008. To the extent that said statements are
not immediately in the possession of Psystar either in physical or electronic form,
Psystar shall ask Commerce Bank and TD Bank for these statements on an every
other day basis until Commerce Bank and TD Bank provide said statements ... "

Given that Psystar's position was that it was not in possession of the documents, this is hilarious. It appears that Psystar was actually trying to argue that the dog had ate their paper bank statements or some such? And that they had no idea that the bank could give them further paper copies if asked? It implies that they also claimed to have asked the bank once and on receiving no reply never asked again? Who would believe this crap? What kind of fool would even try to get away with that in a court of law?

And now the judge is making them promise to ask the nice bank lady every second day until they give them to them?
HIlarious!


Psystar is acting (and being treated like) ten year old boys here.

I think this is strong evidence in favour of Psytar being more of a Judge Judy case than some conspiracy masterminded by dark forces in the computer industry. Coming to court without these basic documents is just ludicrous and claiming that you lost them is not going to cut it with most judges I think.

So did they not file taxes for that year? If they did, their will be a copy of their finances. Did they really have everything on one drive in one machine? I can't believe that a company that is completely electronic with no paper backups would not have tape backups of their servers.

If Sony did that they wouldn't sell very many DVDs

The DVD argument doesn't make sense since it's created and controlled by a consortium. Sony does make PS3 games which will only play on PS3s.

A little history of how DVD came be...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#History

well said. For a second there I thought you were taking sides with THE MORON that thinks that its ok to take as you wish years of one company's work , who itself STARTED OUT as a little one stop shop. In the case of copyrights I have mixed feelings on the issue. If company A patents something thats so specific that it prevents competition in that arena Im not ok with that because that is undermining the ability for other companies to try and make their own better version of something which is what competition is really.

But for a little sh*t disturber like Psytar to come in, and use as defence I dont know how to run a business I cant be held accountable is by far the stupidest thing, and just backs the fact that they had no clue what they were doing when deciding to steal Apple IP

Akshully, a more appropriate analogy would be that someone buys a movie on DVD, takes the disc out of the original packaging, places it in a packaging that they themselves created, and then sell that product at a much cheaper rate to people who don't care about the fancy external packaging.

Owned.

Ever hear of UMD on the PSP? The only reason DVDs play on multiple manufacturer's machines is because it is a standard that is cross licensed. Try again.