Another Mac clone maker tries its luck with Apple - Page 5

That is the poorest display of logic I have seen in months! It doesn't work on so man levels that if your later post wasn't so defensive I would have thought you left off the sarcasm tags.



Agreed. And that post is no an ad hom, that is related very directly to the content of the post and the logical skill displayed in crafting something so ludicrous.

The only thing to say is that if we follow your logic bwik, we should all be in jail for gross negligence and theft.

Your fallacy is that Psystar buys similar, but not the same quality material for the "Armani suit". Then sews it using a similar but not quite the same cut, followed by sewing in a genuine Amani label. Finally they add their own label to the suit that says it is just like an Armani suit, but an "open design". At several places in the sequence they clearly violated Armani's rights in the name of an "open platform" to purchase your suit. Clearly that is good for the entire industry right? Not.

As long as you don't sell it to somebody else I won't argue. Personal rights should be held in very high regard.


Dead wrong. Business plays by far different rules and laws than individuals not in business do.

Your logic on this particular example is broken too. The implication isn't mix and match an independent shirt, it would be sewing an Armani label into a similarly cut suit from the Mens Warehouse supplier and then weirdly selling it as not an Armani suit, but just as good as an Armani suit. Using the Armani name and trademarks liberally without permission as a way to bring notice to the suit nobody would have cared a whit about if it didn't have that Armani label.

Actually she can, and would take you to the cleaners in court if she wanted to.

I'm not so sure about this, although I'm basing my skepticism on half-remembered things I learned in law school more than a dozen years ago. Worse still, I've never in my life practiced intellectual property law. As a result, what I say below should not be considered accurate and is definitely not legal advice.

See: First Sale Doctrine.

When you buy a book, you own that physical copy. You can read it, lend it, give it away, burn it, shred it, resell it, or do anything else you might want with it (except for hitting other people over the head or other intrinsically illegal acts). What copyright prevents you from doing is making a duplicate of the work. So if a person repackages a legitimately purchased book, the copyright holder really doesn't have a lot to say being that they were already fairly compensated.

Software and books don't analogize with each other perfectly however, and recently, artists have become rather creative at dividing up rights to works of art (I'm thinking of that glossy chrome blob in Chicago ... I think it is Chicago ... that people aren't supposed to photograph).

Also, I think someone above confused "fair use" and "first sale doctrine" with respect to selling used books. One's right to sell used books is not related to fair use, fair use being a type of duplication that is permitted.

Sorry, you are mistaken.


You are correct. First sale is clearly in the customer's favour. You buy it, you own it, you can turn around and sell it. It's now your property.


Not perfectly, but first sale has still been successfully applied with software. The have been cases where judges have essentially ruled that software is a purchase, not a license. Autodesk and Abobe have both lost similar cases.

These companies are not putting Apple logos on these boxes. They aren't Macs, and they don't claim they are. They're generic PC boxes with legally purchased OS X. Aftermarket value added.

In your example, it would have to be one item that is a real Armani, being sold as a set with something that is not, and is not labelled as one. Like the Hathaway/Armani example I already gave. Put a shirt in a suit, put an OS in a computer.

OS X and Macs are integrated. The software is designed to work seamlessly with only Mac hardware certified hardware. What Pystar was doing was sort of partial counterfeiting. Use a real Rolex case and dial, then put a Japanese movement inside, and you would still have a counterfeit. OS X, like a real Rolex watch, is made up of more than just one genuine component.

Someone mentioned earlier that any software maker is liable for technically supporting its program/OS if a commercial vendor sells it, so if Apple allows Pystar to use its OS, then Apple would be forced to deal with Pystar buyers.

No. As I have pointed out countless times already, they are Macs. The hardware alone does not function as a Mac. The software alone does not function as a Mac. It is only the two in combination that makes it a Mac.


That analogy is ludicrous for the reasons already stated. Combined or not, the suit is a suit and a shirt is a shirt. They don't make anything together that they were not individually.

No first sale does not apply business to business. Only to a consumer. The fact you gussied up a box with express purpose of selling the book value-added made you a business and subject to business to business laws and statutes.

Want to show your proverbial mental bare arse again?



No venom for you, just remember that there is a clear difference legally between being in business and being a consumer. The rights are different. Value-added still requires an agreement or license as the overall package may actually change the copyright holders message for the original item, and that message is what is being protected by the copyright (well the financial sale value is too, but that isn't a disputed issue in this instance).

They are putting the Apple imprimatur on the boxes, the hardware doesn't have the logo (that's the non-Armani logo in my example), but the software is the genuine OS X (the Armani logo in my example). The box is explicitly being sold as every good as a Mac without being a Mac, exactly the same thing as selling the suit as as good as an Armani, but not being an Armani despite the label.

Your shirt example has nothing to do with the whole situation. As a completely third party item it is a relevant to Mac-ness as the ability of a Mac to run MS Office.

Your abilities to read without twisting away from fact are clearly in dispute, and your lack of skill in metaphor is utterly without peer.

This is a needless over-complication of the real issues, an abstraction where abstraction isn't really necessary or helpful. Installing OSX on non-Apple hardware doesn't make it just coincidentally work like a Macintosh, it makes it a Macintosh in all functional respects. If it didn't make the hardware a Macintosh in all functional respects, then the companies trying to do this would not be doing it. This is why it's so clear that they are trading on Apple's intellectual property. It's kind of a mystery to me why so many think that analogies explain the problems with this better than simply pointing the boney finger at the transgression itself.

Where did I say or imply,"Apple deliberately hamstrings their own profitability". Again you change the subject. There is a difference between market share and profitability, although quite often they can go hand in hand.

As far as my evidence only being "they don't make a product you wish that they did", stroll down the aisles @ Best Buy or Fry's, visit online sales websites and ask yourself what style of computer consumers buy. Granted many of those computers are the low to mid range which is not Apples target market. Then look at their desktop market share. In the US for all computers it is ~7%. Consider this for a moment, ~7%, yet last I saw Apple's share of the retail sales for laptops was 16%(its probably changed since then) - so what does this say about desktop sales.

Related to this is the fact that the iMac and Mac mini are expensive because they use laptop parts, or do you disagree with this very fundamental fact. An xMac using desktop parts would lower Apple's expenses and quite possibly open the door to higher margins.



I didn't, you did, by your own numbers, I never said that nor do I believe that.


That is for OS, which is different than market share. What that may mean is that people who buy Apple computers tend to hold on to them longer.


Or they could sell the most common style of computer on the Plant Earth.


I thought their US market share for laptops actually declined this last quarter, probably due to the popularity of web books or whatever they're called.


I disagree, kind of, that the "iPod has probably come to the end of it's growth cycle". I believe it will morph into something else, don't know what, but will gain a second wind and sales spurts.

Yes, the iPhone has only scratched the surface, I'm confident Apple will agressively try and increase market share here, especially since it's the gift that keeps on giving, every month just like clockwork.


It is not a good policy to have your own customers settle for something. The design of the iMac (re: the fact that it is AIO) screams simplicity and ease of use for the user. But the price range is in the class of the more experienced / technically advanced user, you know the ones, the ones that do install PCI cards, change monitors when needed on a different schedule than computers, install an extra internal hard drive, etc. etc. Then to increase the frustration of those users, Apple uses laptop parts that have the effect of increasing cost or potentially reducing computing speed to use lower cost parts or a combination of both.

Me I accept it, I have only known Mac OS since the System 7 days. I'd be lost using Windows and don't want to try, Trapped I am.

That's what I took as your implication, but you are certainly free to add to your argument so that I might understand it more clearly.


Ah, well you see -- you complain about my characterization of your argument, and then you go right ahead and confirm it. Clearly you presume to know something Apple does not about how and where they can make their desired margins. I suspect Apple knows better about this than either you or I, which goes a long way towards explaining their approach.

No, you simplify to far.

Unless the clone makers used EXACTLY the same components and the SAME motherboard to mount those components, the hardware drivers will be different or at least differently configured. This cannot be avoided except with hardware identical in spec to what Apple ships.

This means the hardware abstraction layer Apple designed explicitly for their set(s) of hardware is not guaranteed to work! ANY failure of that abstraction layer will not likely be attributed to the clone builder, exactly due to the overly simplified reasoning you have above!

So the clone maker skates because most of the time it works, so the hardware must be OK, right!?! It's just standard PC components right!?! And Apple takes the heat for a buggy operating system, which isn't buggy because of programming errors, but because of subtle timing incompatibilities in the low level hardware/driver interfaces.

That is the biggest problem Microsoft faces when shipping an operating system, getting the HAL down for a near unconstrained hardware set. It means they make a lot of very generic tradeoffs in the HAL and try to make up the differences in other optimizing choices in the kernel of the OS.

Frankly oversimplifying away those facts plays right into the hands of the clone backers who are trying to say the hardware is the same when it is not the same.

I don't honestly know what you are going on about. The point which begs to be understood here is that it makes no difference whether the hardware is exactly the same or somewhat different. What matters to the IP question is the ultimate product, which is a Macintosh computer. Unauthorized parties may not manufacture and sell Macintosh computers, and it really doesn't make any difference how they go about it.

I think that you both - Hiro and Mill - are correct in many respects.

Many of the major court cases where the right of first sale has been upheld have specifically been business to business dealings. People buying bundled Adobe software, unbundling it, then reselling it a la carte. People buying bulk licenses for software, then selling them off individually. Libraries, video stores, used book stores, rental businesses (movies, games, etc).

Add what? Obviously Apple is not hamstringing profitability, they maintain some of the highest margins in the industry. Now you're being imperceptive.



Not a single thing I said confirmed your argument that I implied "Apple deliberately hamstrings their own profitability".

Apple's insistence on offering the AIO iMac may indeed have more to do with Apple's design philosophy for consumers. Google Steve Jobs and aplpliance. Look up what Raskin contributed to this design philosophy.

Then reread what I said about the iMac, its price range and target markets. No wait, I'll explain again. It states that the iMac is designed for the less demanding computer user(ie. no expansion, built in monitor, etc.), but priced in the range of more demanding consumers who do want the ability to add the occasional PCI card, add another hard drive, etc. The price for this simplicity is more expensive laptop parts than used in desktops. This offers the potential for Apple to increase margins, not lower them and potentially increase market share at the same time.

Nice. Of course I know about Apple's margins. We're not debating that, or at least I thought we were not. Margins are one issue, growing total sales is another. A company can grow profits only so much (and not very much) by expanding margins. Apple isn't going to be able to grow profits significantly by increasing margins beyond what they are today. Profits grow by selling more product at those margins. Or is that "imperceptive" in your book?


Except when you said that Apple's talk about expanding their market share was a "pretense" (read: a falsehood), and that they'd created a "glass ceiling" for their growth (read: an artificial limitation). You appear to believe this for no other reason than they don't sell an "xMac" product. So that's more than an implication, it's in the plain language of your argument. Again, you are welcome to clarify your argument. In doing so, less hostility would be welcomed.


I don't follow what you are arguing here, or how it relates to anything we've been discussing. Is Apple's growing their market share a "pretense" or not? Have they created a "glass ceiling" for their growth, or not?

Are you thinking of trademark issues? For example Pepsi selling some sort of derogatory re-packaging of a Coke product? I could see issues there and clearly, when reselling another company's products, one would have to avoid issues with trademarks, but if businesses can't sell stuff, or put together special offers, or create their own unique displays, or bundle the item with other things, then retail in America is dead.

Maybe it's true, but I'd like to see a citation rather than an assertion.

In Apple's case, yes, I agree in the case of desktop computers, Apple probably can't increase margins much and must rely on increased market share to grow the bottom line.


I was arguing a point with piot. It was his argument that desktop market share is declining, which I don't dispute(although this may change again in the future who knows), although I will say that up until very recently the total # of desktops sold was still increasing. And that Apple has, I believe the number mentioned was, 70% of that consumer market.

It is patently obvious that the AIO computer is a very marginalized market. Apple gets by quite nicely in this market. It is also patently obvious that the vast majority of computers sold are not AIO, why?


Yes, the AIO design and the Mac mini have created a glass ceiling, if you will.

And yes, I concede, my comments although qualified with "may" and "pontentialy" could increase margins with an xMac do seem to indicate that Apple has hamstrung their profitability.

The DOJ didn't go after Microsoft because they were successful. They went after Microsoft for exactly the same reason they'd gone after IBM the decade prior: because Microsoft was an extremely abusive monopoly. The trial record is public, go read it. Microsoft didn't even try to hide their contempt.

If Apple ever acts like that, the DOJ will probably drop the hammer and they will be right to. But the thing you need to remember is that it is not against the law to be a monopoly. It is against the law to abuse your status as a monopoly to unfairly freeze out competitors. The presumption of antitrust law, as applied to corporations, is that competition is healthy. Do you disagree?


This is precisely the sort of preferential treatment that could land them in hot water.

All Apple has to do is: point out that having one company be the sole source for one product line is obvious and with abundant precedent; not threaten to shut out developers unless they abandon support for rival technologies, the way Microsoft did, and; not develop products that have to be interfaced with closed, secret and proprietary technologies the way both Microsoft and IBM have done. As long as they sell Macs on the merits the DOJ has no case.


They could, but that basically guarantees that the already-miniscule market for Mac clones would shrink to the point of irrelevance. If you're selling Macs then you're selling elegance and ease of use, and making the user patch and install their own operating system undermines those selling points completely. Anyone willing to do that is willing to build their own PC--or just repurpose a Windows PC--and pocket the savings from cutting out the middleman.

Businesses can normally bundle products together, it's just selling several independent things from independent vendors in one group. Everyone wins.

But the specific example was a vendor creating some new semi-artistic thing and then putting in somebody else's work of art as the "hook" to buy the package. That is the dangerous slope because we are no longer talking about merely bundling together independent products, we ate talking about specifically making one product saleable based on a direct dependency to a name recognized product. This type of relationship has always required a licensing agreement, or a complete lack of using the product being depended on as part of the marketing materials.

See the 'Made for iPod' licenses, that's how tie-ins are legally done. If a manufacturer wants to not play 'Made for iPod' they just don't say iPod and don't use images of iPods in their marketing and packaging materials. Psystar, violates both of those separations in their use of OS X as a tied-in product dependency and don't have a license either.

You are in violent agreement with me principle-wise. But Psystar isn't claiming they are making a Mac, so technically your particular point above doesn't apply. They are claiming their machine is as good as a Mac and runs the Mac OS adequately so you don't need to buy a Mac. It is a subtle difference, but exactly the difference the Psystar defenders are trying to use to justify the Psyatar case.

Their point is if the only difference is ip, and ip (software parent and copyright) is by definition evil, then Psystar is in the good. Why make it any easier for them? Especially when it isn't just the software?

I'm not sure "marginalized" is the word I'd use. Niche market, perhaps. This word is often used as a pejorative to describe the entire Mac market, but without good cause IMO. Most companies decide where they want to be in a market. Few attempt to be all things to all people, and fewer still do it successfully.

The computer market is hardly a normal market. It is a strange and schizophrenic one, for reasons which I think most of us understand. Still, computer manufacturers cater to niches within the Windows PC market, although it may not seem that way, because the market is so vast, and we're not accustomed to thinking of it as being divided into niches. But it is.

Apple seems to have a pretty good feel for where they fit into today's overall market for PCs. I judge this by their growing bottom line, and by the fact that they've been increasing shipments of Macs at a far greater rate than the industry as a whole for the last few years, which translates into increased market share. I feel quite confident that they understand the market and will change their approach to it if and when the need arises. I am equally confident that they have no intention of deliberately limiting their profitability, if only because that concept flies in the face of the entire reason for being in business, and I certainly don't see any sign of it in their quarterly results.

I have to add that I find it puzzling that anyone would suggest that any company, let alone one which has done so screamingly well over the last several years, may not know how to approach their market in the most successful way. If they had not been hitting one home run after another, maybe.

No I know you didn't. But you still believe that there is a large market waiting for the xMac. I, respectfully, disagree and have at least tried to back up my argument with estimated numbers.




No. It is market share. I know the difference. Apple's US share Q3 2008



Sold.. on earth? Well that would be notebooks

Re. the whole Apple segment growth thing.... what I mean... is that I doubt that any PC manufacturer will be growing much in the next few quarters (especially on the desktop) so that's a poor metric to use.

Violent? Sounds so... grisly.

Anyway, claims have nothing to do with it. They could claim that their combination of hardware and software is a Myna bird, but that wouldn't make it a Myna bird. Functionally, it's a Mac, and the Mac is the protected thing. This is the point I find myself repeating to such disturbingly little effect.


I'm completely disinterested in whether the truth makes it easier or harder for unknowledgeable people to spout complete and utter nonsense. Perhaps it would be more productive for people who are actually interested in the truth to focus on that instead.

That's hardly true either. Retailers do integrated multi-brand cross-promotions all the time without any acknowledgement from the manufacturers.

Well, going back to Twilight in a coffin box, I don't think that is problematic. For example, see the paradoies and lawsuits section on Barbie in Wikipedia for several references, including this doozy:

"In 1999 Mattel sued the Utah artist Tom Forsythe over a series of photographs called Food Chain Barbie, which included a photograph of a Barbie doll in a blender. Mattel lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay $1.8 million in costs to Mr. Forsythe."

Note, the example following the Forsythe case is very amusing (Dungeon Barbie), and is even more directly like the Twilight in box example. Matel still lost.

Yes you did, thank you.


Sorry, I missed the part about Q3 2008.
It now stands @ ~7.4%
http://www.mactropolis.com/apple-new...in-q1-of-2009/

My confusion over OS share stems from recent articles concerning Apple's OS share @ ~ 10%
I've read in the high 9s and the low 10s as a percentage.


I was talking desktops and I apologize I didn't specify.


More the reason to offer a desktop form factor that meets the needs, real or perceived, or the desires of most of the buying public


Ok, not "marginalized" and "niche market".

I do believe Apple does know how to approach their market, as the market they target is specifically the iMac and Mac mini. They have done well, at the same time they have effectively limited their target market.

To summarize my opinions / arguments as this can go on endlessly, will crop up again and again on this board and many others, as I don't ever expect Apple to manufacture an xMac or anything resembling an xMac.

The iMac and Mac mini by design are "niche market computers"

The iMac's design specifically embodies the philosophy of Steve Jobs and Raskin that a computer for consumers should be like an appliance.

Both the iMac and Mac mini use laptop parts making them more expensive than necessary if the consumer doesn't place a premium on AIO or size

The Consumer buys towers rather than AIOs or minis in much larger numbers.

The iMac especially and the Mac mini are in the price range typically associated with more advanced users that desire flexibility, but they are designed for the new or less demanding consumer that would be fine with a much less expensive computer.

While laptops are capturing market share, until recently even desktops were selling more units ,sequentially over time, worldwide. Desktops for the foreseeable future will offer the benefits of flexibility(except for Apple consumer desktops)and more performance at a lower price, so I contend they will not cease to exist for a long time. As computers get more powerful, software will increasingly become more demanding, technology will continue to advance which will provide a market for more powerful desktops as opposed to lower power more expensive laptops.

thank you for your replies and arguments and we can just agree to disagree. I'll wait for the next reappearance of this topic as I know it will surface again and again and again.

Just to add one point which I think is critical and often overlooked: most people do not buy "performance." In fact when you look at ads for Windows PCs, a great many of them don't even quote the processor type and speed in way that a typical consumer could use to make meaningful comparisons. This is one reason why I think the "laptop parts" argument is shallow. Since virtually any new computer is going to be powerful enough for any task that most people will ever demand of it, hardly anyone really cares about specs anymore, except for computer geeks, some professionals, and gamers. So this is why Apple can focus on making nice packages, much nicer than most of the Windows PC makers can afford to attempt, and distinguish their products in a meaningful way that non-geek consumers actually understand.

Anyway, I think it's important to consider on occasion at least how Apple has managed to be successful competing with the Microsoft juggernaut, rather than continually predicting future failures. I do believe I've heard enough of the latter over the past 25 years to last a lifetime.

Well I think you may have just encapsulated this whole debate in a nutshell!

Apple has decided to target the real needs of consumers, instead of the perceived needs.

WTF do you think the first line of the post you quoted says! [re-quoted below for truth] !!! We now have incontrovertible proof of your lack of ability to actually read and understand the words as they appear in the post.

Apparently your forté is more projection rather than actually reading. Try again. Note the use of the work integrated.

Trying to say "integrated" and "in one group" is different, when the context is product bundling, is like trying to say two and 2 represent numerically different values. Not even a nice try for that one.

Has any of our California friends taken a ride to see if this store actually opened?

"This week, the MyMac podcast crew interview CEO Rashantha De Silva of Quo Computer, the new maker of Macintosh computers. We go in-depth with Rashantha, asking the questions you want answers to"

Link

The context is that businesses regularly put products together in a package that goes far beyond just bundling, where a certain flagship brand is carrying the value for a parts/products/ingredients of lesser or off brands, all without the manufacturer having any say in the matter. Two boxes sold at the same time are not integrated. Multiple products installed or incorporated together and sold as one unit is integrated.

That's simply known as a bundle! Your attempt to redefine the landscape fails because it doesn't matter if one is worth more than another. You continue to serve dead red herrings.

I am not talking about bundles. I'm taking about things that require manufacturing, assembly, and/or installation. If you do not think there is a substantial difference, then you must also think that OS X cloners are just selling bundles too.