You do realize that Apple holds the licenses and copyrights for OS X. They can and do dictate what you do with the product when they sell you a license. What Psystar does is illegal. They are taking an Apple product, rebranding it as their own, and profiting off of it.
This is no different than those 'free for home use' applications. Any delusional thinking that this is somehow even remotely legal are just wishful thinking for the Hackintosh Mac wannabe owners. Apple does not license the use of OS X to any other vendor. Microsoft does. That is the difference between the two. MS sells the rights to distribute its OS to vendors like Dell, HP, Sony, etc, as well as individual licenses to home users and business to use it's product. MS also grants vendors the right to sell the OS product for resale.
Apple allows none of those things and they have no legal obligation to do so. You can't force a private company to sell a license, a product, or a service.
I'm no fan of Pie Star, but can they just sell the hardware and whatever "enabler" software they use, and have an end user buy a retail copy of OS X and install it themselves?
For those who don't understand Apple's position, you would if you spent the dollars on R&D, education, support infrastructure, advertising and marketing, among other categories. Apple's success (and our benefit) has been built by carefully managing and balancing an airtight ship with enough portals for third party developers to enter into. There is a tremendous upfront and ingoing investment to do this well, as Apple has, and for a third party to try and leverage a major aspect of that effort for their own profit without the prerogative of Apple saying yes should have no legal basis whatsoever.
Remember, this is licensing, not purchasing, so any anaology of "buying" parts is not applicable.
Then by your reasoning, Apple shouldn't care what Psystar does at all unless they start offering an "iStar", iMac clone, or similar model. By your own admission, the people purchasing from Psystar were never potential customers and thus in no way threatened Apple's potential profits. In fact, it actually benefits Apple since they (should) have been receiving $79 for each copy of OS X installed on a Psystar PC.
And will it benefit Apple if Psystar starts selling OS X notebooks (as they have threatened to do)? And Mac Mini clones?
And if Psystar is legally allowed to continue their "Mac" business then HP and DEll et al would be free to do the same. Does that benefit Apple?
I'm no fan of Pie Star, but can they just sell the hardware and whatever "enabler" software they use, and have an end user buy a retail copy of OS X and install it themselves?
For those who don't understand Apple's position, you would if you spent the dollars on R&D, education, support infrastructure, advertising and marketing, among other categories. Apple's success (and our benefit) has been built by carefully managing and balancing an airtight ship with enough portals for third party developers to enter into. There is a tremendous upfront and ingoing investment to do this well, as Apple has, and for a third party to try and leverage a major aspect of that effort for their own profit without the prerogative of Apple saying yes should have no legal basis whatsoever.
Remember, this is licensing, not purchasing, so any anaology of "buying" parts is not applicable.
I think that would be less offensive then their current business model, but still illegal. If Psystar offers an 'enabler' of any sort, it is illegal.
There are back end issues, and I think economic issues (cost of infrastructure and share holders wanting a certain profit margin) would mean that I doubt that calling it all data is going to change things. You're probably not going to get a $30 3G everything plan, it would become a $80 data plan.
The exact points that the "it's all data" crowd never seem to address.
Could someone please point me to a law somewhere that states when a company writes an operating system that it has to run on any computer?
Quote:
Originally Posted by success
can you point me to the opposite?
I'm pretty sure the answer is copyrights and trademarks. Until those two legal concepts are invalidated, I doubt businesses are going to get a legal right to sell hackintoshes without Apple's permission.
Pilot, you seem to think that since these folks were to cheap to buy a Mac, and that as a result, Apple wouldn't profit from them, that it follows that anything they do to work around the legalities of buying a mac are therefore legal? Do you see how silly that sounds?
Psystar damages Apples business just by competing with it with an unfair advantage.
Psystar spends 0 dollars on research and development of Apple OS X. They profit off of Apple's blood, sweat, and tears. They simply take a product that someone else made, and turn around and resell it without permission.
Had Psystar actually developed their own version of Free BSD Unix (the base that OS X was built on) then it would be perfectly legal for them to resell it. Instead, they are profiting off of another companies intellectual property. No amount of weaseling can alter that fact.
They SHOULD allow competitors to load the software, but with a two-tiered price structure. If you're loading the new OS X on an Apple product then you are entitled to "upgrade discount" for example for snow leopard and Mac users, $29. If the user is loading it on a non-apple machine. it would be a new install for which you could charge MS prices, shall we say $399 and their upgrade pathway would be some equally ridiculous figure, say $249
Why?
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
(2) You force those idiots unethical enough to rip off Apple's IP by making their margins so low, that they make only $25-$50/unit sold; they'd have sell cheap to survive.
(3) Customer support would only need to ask for the serial number to find out if it's an APple Box or a Brand X box, then politely decline to help on the hardware side (some call this 110% cooperation)
(4) Once the Ripoff artists get returns of their cheaply made boxes, the customers would realise the truth in the phrase you get what you pay for. Let's be honest here, Jonny Ive et al have produced works of art; everything else is a wannabe, Heck my 4 1/2 year old Powerbook is still serving me just fine
(5) Allowing "competition" with such a razor thin profit margin would mean that such companies (e.g., Pystar) would die a natural death--and save APple a lot of money in lawyer fees)
I wouldn't be surprised if Dell or microsoft is funding this behind the scenes. Where do they get the money to do this and who in their right mind would buy them not knowing if the company will survive the 90-day warranty?
Had Psystar actually developed their own version of Free BSD Unix (the base that OS X was built on) then it would be perfectly legal for them to resell it. Instead, they are profiting off of another companies intellectual property. No amount of weaseling can alter that fact.
Hell, even taking the open source Darwin OS and building their own UI on it. That is too much for them to do, but Dell or HP could have done it.
Psystar could have been legal if they only sold PC hardware that was compatible with the OSx86 Project HCL. Even priming the HDD for the OS X install, but letting the user do the final step of actually installing the OS thereby having them accept the EULA and having them actually initiate the transfer from the optical media to the magnetic disk medium.
It's a poor analogy. A better one might be if you bought Toyota engines and decided that you could now build and sell Toyotas. The software license isn't the key. People get the wrong ideas about this situation because they focus too much on the license. You can't start building someone else's proprietary product just because you are able to buy one or all of the parts that make up that product.
Hell, even taking the open source Darwin OS and building their own UI on it. That is too much for them to do, but Dell or HP could have done it.
I do find it a bit odd that neither of these guys have tried developing their own OS. I wonder if it's ever even been discussed as an option behind closed doors.
It still doesn't add up. Delaying the lawsuit means that the case takes longer to get settled. If Micheal Dell was bankrolling Psystar to get OS X on his computers, why would he want the case to take longer? So no, I'm not seeing a convincing argument that a computer OEM such as Dell or HP is playing "sugar daddy" to these people.
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
This is a common misconception. Having a monopoly per se is not an issue anti-trust wise. The problem comes if you abuse your monopoly position.
For example:
Let's say in 10 year's time, Apple has 99% of the mobile phone market and 99% of the portable audio/video player market, but only 10% of the computer market.
Assuming those two monopolies where built independently and with no strong-arming of third-parties (e.g. resellers, mobile network operators) there would be no problem. However, if Apple then decided that their phones and audio/video players would only work with Macs (to try and force people to buy Macs), that would be an abuse of their monopoly position and therefore illegal.
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition.
HP is the largest PC maker in the world with about a 25% marketshare. That includes mostly PCs that are sold for well under what Apple charges per machine. While I think that Apple will have to make a 13” and 15” MacBook as their higher-end gets saturated, they would not be a monopoly even if they were selling 1 out of every 4 PCs on the market like HP. MS would still likely have a 70 to 74% marketshare for their OS, depending on Linux.
Quote:
(2) You force those idiots unethical enough to rip off Apple's IP by making their margins so low, that they make only $25-$50/unit sold; they'd have sell cheap to survive.
That is true, except that Apple also loses out on profit, too. Apple makes more on a Mac sale than MS makes on a Windows sale. MS has to sell a lot more copies of their OS than Apple to make the same amount because Apple makes their OS to sell their Mac branded PCs.
Quote:
(3) Customer support would only need to ask for the serial number to find out if it's an APple Box or a Brand X box, then politely decline to help on the hardware side (some call this 110% cooperation)
Even the $29 version of Snow Leopard sold for a machine running Leopard for a single user can be installed on any machine as many times as you wish. Apple doesn’t see it as profitable to stop their honor system, thank goodness. Having serial numbers and a system that does checks home for validation and the people to support this system for customer service and technical support just add costs. While they could make more money in bulk sales they can also incur more costs and potentially negatively affect their current premium brand.
Quote:
(4) Once the Ripoff artists get returns of their cheaply made boxes, the customers would realise the truth in the phrase you get what you pay for. Let's be honest here, Jonny Ive et al have produced works of art; everything else is a wannabe, Heck my 4 1/2 year old Powerbook is still serving me just fine.
Or they may just install another OS on their HW, blaming OS X for all their issues.
Quote:
I wouldn't be surprised if Dell or microsoft is funding this behind the scenes. Where do they get the money to do this and who in their right mind would buy them not knowing if the company will survive the 90-day warranty?
MS is the last to fund Psystar as they are the most to be hurt if Apple were to be required to license their OS to other PC vendors.
Apple may also restrict the copyrights on Darwin as well. I'm not sure. I know it's freely available but there is 'free' and then there is free.
As long as their 'priming' the HDD for an OS X install didn't infringe on any Apple IP, then that would probably also be legal, but they cannot in any way offer OS X without license from Apple.
What Psystar does is the equivalent of buying a Yugo, sticking a Mercedes sticker on it, and then turn around and sell it as 'Mercedes-Lite' at half the Mercedes price.
Just because you say something it doesn't magically make it true. Apple focuses on segment that will never make it monopoly. Apple does not try to get huge market share simply because most of market is created by low margin low cost machines. Apple will gladly leave this segment to Dell. Just compare the turnaround and profit of Dell and Apple and it will become quite apparent why.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jcsegenmd
Why?
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
HP is the largest PC maker in the world with about a 25% marketshare. That includes mostly PCs that are sold for well under what Apple charges per machine. While I think that Apple will have to make a 13? and 15? MacBook as their higher-end gets saturated, they would not be a monopoly even if they were selling 1 out of every 4 PCs on the market like HP.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on a PC Manufacturer's web site lately. Show me comparable hardware at Lenovo, HP, Sony, or Dell that is substantially cheaper than a comparable Mac. Other than the odd 'sale' price, they are about the same price. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It seems like these price fanatics always confuse a Reseller like TigerDirect's $600 PC for a PC Manufacturer's PC prices. A manufacturer has an entire infrastructure to sustain (Warranties, repairs, service, sales). A reseller just needs a warehouse and cheap parts. Comparing the prices between the two is illogical.
I can go to Frys Electronics, and put together a $500 dollar PC, but I can expect the power supply to fail in a year, the hard drive in 2-3, and the mother board to be either great as long as you never touch it, or a piece of crap that warps and fails, and the case to be substandard, bent, and likely missing half the package contents. I can also buy a top of the line board, memory, hard drive, display, power supply, and optical drive and case and far exceed even a PC manufacturer's price offerings. You get what you pay for. When it comes to actual manufacturer's prices, they are all about the same price, although arguably apple offers better quality since they consistently rank at the top for quality.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on a PC Manufacturer's web site lately. Show me comparable hardware at Lenovo, HP, Sony, or Dell that is substantially cheaper than a comparable Mac.
Here's the key word in your paragraph above: comparable. All Logisticaldron said was that most of the PCs that HP sells are cheaper than Macs. He didn't say the machines were comparable, just that they were cheaper. And it's true. Apple has no mainstream consumer desktop (i.e., one with a consumer desktop CPU in it. The Mac Pro is a workstation, the iMac is a laptop on a stick, and the Mac Mini is an ultra-compact SFF desktop which also uses laptop parts), and their laptops are comparably thin and light with mid- and high-end CPUs (and Apple have an irritating penchant for tying screen-size to computing power). HP and Dell offer low-end and mid-end machines that have no "comparable" Mac.
e.g.:
The Dell Mini 10v laptop has no Mac equivalent, but at $299 is much cheaper than any Apple laptop
The Dell Studio 17 is a 17" laptop with a starting price of $649, much much cheaper than the 17" MBpro. That's because the 17" MBP is a vastly superior machine; there is no direct Apple equivalent to the Dell
The Dell XPS Desktop starts at $849 and will absolutely piss on any iMac performance-wise. Again, there's no Mac equivalent.
Comments
I doubt it. If that was true, Psystar would have been able to pay their first set of lawyers.
The bankruptcy thing may have been a legal ploy to delay the Apple suit as the bankruptcy was dismissed (see Moran Law Group's online glossary of Bankruptcy terms ie Psystar still owes their first batch of lawyers.
This is no different than those 'free for home use' applications. Any delusional thinking that this is somehow even remotely legal are just wishful thinking for the Hackintosh Mac wannabe owners. Apple does not license the use of OS X to any other vendor. Microsoft does. That is the difference between the two. MS sells the rights to distribute its OS to vendors like Dell, HP, Sony, etc, as well as individual licenses to home users and business to use it's product. MS also grants vendors the right to sell the OS product for resale.
Apple allows none of those things and they have no legal obligation to do so. You can't force a private company to sell a license, a product, or a service.
For those who don't understand Apple's position, you would if you spent the dollars on R&D, education, support infrastructure, advertising and marketing, among other categories. Apple's success (and our benefit) has been built by carefully managing and balancing an airtight ship with enough portals for third party developers to enter into. There is a tremendous upfront and ingoing investment to do this well, as Apple has, and for a third party to try and leverage a major aspect of that effort for their own profit without the prerogative of Apple saying yes should have no legal basis whatsoever.
Remember, this is licensing, not purchasing, so any anaology of "buying" parts is not applicable.
Then by your reasoning, Apple shouldn't care what Psystar does at all unless they start offering an "iStar", iMac clone, or similar model. By your own admission, the people purchasing from Psystar were never potential customers and thus in no way threatened Apple's potential profits. In fact, it actually benefits Apple since they (should) have been receiving $79 for each copy of OS X installed on a Psystar PC.
And will it benefit Apple if Psystar starts selling OS X notebooks (as they have threatened to do)? And Mac Mini clones?
And if Psystar is legally allowed to continue their "Mac" business then HP and DEll et al would be free to do the same. Does that benefit Apple?
I'm no fan of Pie Star, but can they just sell the hardware and whatever "enabler" software they use, and have an end user buy a retail copy of OS X and install it themselves?
For those who don't understand Apple's position, you would if you spent the dollars on R&D, education, support infrastructure, advertising and marketing, among other categories. Apple's success (and our benefit) has been built by carefully managing and balancing an airtight ship with enough portals for third party developers to enter into. There is a tremendous upfront and ingoing investment to do this well, as Apple has, and for a third party to try and leverage a major aspect of that effort for their own profit without the prerogative of Apple saying yes should have no legal basis whatsoever.
Remember, this is licensing, not purchasing, so any anaology of "buying" parts is not applicable.
I think that would be less offensive then their current business model, but still illegal. If Psystar offers an 'enabler' of any sort, it is illegal.
There are back end issues, and I think economic issues (cost of infrastructure and share holders wanting a certain profit margin) would mean that I doubt that calling it all data is going to change things. You're probably not going to get a $30 3G everything plan, it would become a $80 data plan.
The exact points that the "it's all data" crowd never seem to address.
Could someone please point me to a law somewhere that states when a company writes an operating system that it has to run on any computer?
can you point me to the opposite?
I'm pretty sure the answer is copyrights and trademarks. Until those two legal concepts are invalidated, I doubt businesses are going to get a legal right to sell hackintoshes without Apple's permission.
Psystar damages Apples business just by competing with it with an unfair advantage.
Psystar spends 0 dollars on research and development of Apple OS X. They profit off of Apple's blood, sweat, and tears. They simply take a product that someone else made, and turn around and resell it without permission.
Had Psystar actually developed their own version of Free BSD Unix (the base that OS X was built on) then it would be perfectly legal for them to resell it. Instead, they are profiting off of another companies intellectual property. No amount of weaseling can alter that fact.
Apple is missing a GOLDEN opportunity
They SHOULD allow competitors to load the software, but with a two-tiered price structure. If you're loading the new OS X on an Apple product then you are entitled to "upgrade discount" for example for snow leopard and Mac users, $29. If the user is loading it on a non-apple machine. it would be a new install for which you could charge MS prices, shall we say $399 and their upgrade pathway would be some equally ridiculous figure, say $249
Why?
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
(2) You force those idiots unethical enough to rip off Apple's IP by making their margins so low, that they make only $25-$50/unit sold; they'd have sell cheap to survive.
(3) Customer support would only need to ask for the serial number to find out if it's an APple Box or a Brand X box, then politely decline to help on the hardware side (some call this 110% cooperation)
(4) Once the Ripoff artists get returns of their cheaply made boxes, the customers would realise the truth in the phrase you get what you pay for. Let's be honest here, Jonny Ive et al have produced works of art; everything else is a wannabe, Heck my 4 1/2 year old Powerbook is still serving me just fine
(5) Allowing "competition" with such a razor thin profit margin would mean that such companies (e.g., Pystar) would die a natural death--and save APple a lot of money in lawyer fees)
I wouldn't be surprised if Dell or microsoft is funding this behind the scenes. Where do they get the money to do this and who in their right mind would buy them not knowing if the company will survive the 90-day warranty?
Had Psystar actually developed their own version of Free BSD Unix (the base that OS X was built on) then it would be perfectly legal for them to resell it. Instead, they are profiting off of another companies intellectual property. No amount of weaseling can alter that fact.
Hell, even taking the open source Darwin OS and building their own UI on it. That is too much for them to do, but Dell or HP could have done it.
Psystar could have been legal if they only sold PC hardware that was compatible with the OSx86 Project HCL. Even priming the HDD for the OS X install, but letting the user do the final step of actually installing the OS thereby having them accept the EULA and having them actually initiate the transfer from the optical media to the magnetic disk medium.
It's a poor analogy. A better one might be if you bought Toyota engines and decided that you could now build and sell Toyotas. The software license isn't the key. People get the wrong ideas about this situation because they focus too much on the license. You can't start building someone else's proprietary product just because you are able to buy one or all of the parts that make up that product.
That is a better analogy, thanks.
Hell, even taking the open source Darwin OS and building their own UI on it. That is too much for them to do, but Dell or HP could have done it.
I do find it a bit odd that neither of these guys have tried developing their own OS. I wonder if it's ever even been discussed as an option behind closed doors.
The bankruptcy thing may have been a legal ploy to delay the Apple suit as the bankruptcy was dismissed (see Moran Law Group's online glossary of Bankruptcy terms ie Psystar still owes their first batch of lawyers.
It still doesn't add up. Delaying the lawsuit means that the case takes longer to get settled. If Micheal Dell was bankrolling Psystar to get OS X on his computers, why would he want the case to take longer? So no, I'm not seeing a convincing argument that a computer OEM such as Dell or HP is playing "sugar daddy" to these people.
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
This is a common misconception. Having a monopoly per se is not an issue anti-trust wise. The problem comes if you abuse your monopoly position.
For example:
Let's say in 10 year's time, Apple has 99% of the mobile phone market and 99% of the portable audio/video player market, but only 10% of the computer market.
Assuming those two monopolies where built independently and with no strong-arming of third-parties (e.g. resellers, mobile network operators) there would be no problem. However, if Apple then decided that their phones and audio/video players would only work with Macs (to try and force people to buy Macs), that would be an abuse of their monopoly position and therefore illegal.
Why?
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition.
HP is the largest PC maker in the world with about a 25% marketshare. That includes mostly PCs that are sold for well under what Apple charges per machine. While I think that Apple will have to make a 13” and 15” MacBook as their higher-end gets saturated, they would not be a monopoly even if they were selling 1 out of every 4 PCs on the market like HP. MS would still likely have a 70 to 74% marketshare for their OS, depending on Linux.
(2) You force those idiots unethical enough to rip off Apple's IP by making their margins so low, that they make only $25-$50/unit sold; they'd have sell cheap to survive.
That is true, except that Apple also loses out on profit, too. Apple makes more on a Mac sale than MS makes on a Windows sale. MS has to sell a lot more copies of their OS than Apple to make the same amount because Apple makes their OS to sell their Mac branded PCs.
(3) Customer support would only need to ask for the serial number to find out if it's an APple Box or a Brand X box, then politely decline to help on the hardware side (some call this 110% cooperation)
Even the $29 version of Snow Leopard sold for a machine running Leopard for a single user can be installed on any machine as many times as you wish. Apple doesn’t see it as profitable to stop their honor system, thank goodness. Having serial numbers and a system that does checks home for validation and the people to support this system for customer service and technical support just add costs. While they could make more money in bulk sales they can also incur more costs and potentially negatively affect their current premium brand.
(4) Once the Ripoff artists get returns of their cheaply made boxes, the customers would realise the truth in the phrase you get what you pay for. Let's be honest here, Jonny Ive et al have produced works of art; everything else is a wannabe, Heck my 4 1/2 year old Powerbook is still serving me just fine.
Or they may just install another OS on their HW, blaming OS X for all their issues.
I wouldn't be surprised if Dell or microsoft is funding this behind the scenes. Where do they get the money to do this and who in their right mind would buy them not knowing if the company will survive the 90-day warranty?
MS is the last to fund Psystar as they are the most to be hurt if Apple were to be required to license their OS to other PC vendors.
As long as their 'priming' the HDD for an OS X install didn't infringe on any Apple IP, then that would probably also be legal, but they cannot in any way offer OS X without license from Apple.
What Psystar does is the equivalent of buying a Yugo, sticking a Mercedes sticker on it, and then turn around and sell it as 'Mercedes-Lite' at half the Mercedes price.
Not sure if it would be legal to sell Darwin.
Good point.
Why?
(1) As I've said before on this forum, Apple WILL sooner or later reach monopoly status and will be required by the anti-trust police to allow competition
?
HP is the largest PC maker in the world with about a 25% marketshare. That includes mostly PCs that are sold for well under what Apple charges per machine. While I think that Apple will have to make a 13? and 15? MacBook as their higher-end gets saturated, they would not be a monopoly even if they were selling 1 out of every 4 PCs on the market like HP.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on a PC Manufacturer's web site lately. Show me comparable hardware at Lenovo, HP, Sony, or Dell that is substantially cheaper than a comparable Mac. Other than the odd 'sale' price, they are about the same price. Sometimes more, sometimes less. It seems like these price fanatics always confuse a Reseller like TigerDirect's $600 PC for a PC Manufacturer's PC prices. A manufacturer has an entire infrastructure to sustain (Warranties, repairs, service, sales). A reseller just needs a warehouse and cheap parts. Comparing the prices between the two is illogical.
I can go to Frys Electronics, and put together a $500 dollar PC, but I can expect the power supply to fail in a year, the hard drive in 2-3, and the mother board to be either great as long as you never touch it, or a piece of crap that warps and fails, and the case to be substandard, bent, and likely missing half the package contents. I can also buy a top of the line board, memory, hard drive, display, power supply, and optical drive and case and far exceed even a PC manufacturer's price offerings. You get what you pay for. When it comes to actual manufacturer's prices, they are all about the same price, although arguably apple offers better quality since they consistently rank at the top for quality.
I'm guessing you haven't spent much time on a PC Manufacturer's web site lately. Show me comparable hardware at Lenovo, HP, Sony, or Dell that is substantially cheaper than a comparable Mac.
Here's the key word in your paragraph above: comparable. All Logisticaldron said was that most of the PCs that HP sells are cheaper than Macs. He didn't say the machines were comparable, just that they were cheaper. And it's true. Apple has no mainstream consumer desktop (i.e., one with a consumer desktop CPU in it. The Mac Pro is a workstation, the iMac is a laptop on a stick, and the Mac Mini is an ultra-compact SFF desktop which also uses laptop parts), and their laptops are comparably thin and light with mid- and high-end CPUs (and Apple have an irritating penchant for tying screen-size to computing power). HP and Dell offer low-end and mid-end machines that have no "comparable" Mac.
e.g.:
The Dell Mini 10v laptop has no Mac equivalent, but at $299 is much cheaper than any Apple laptop
The Dell Studio 17 is a 17" laptop with a starting price of $649, much much cheaper than the 17" MBpro. That's because the 17" MBP is a vastly superior machine; there is no direct Apple equivalent to the Dell
The Dell XPS Desktop starts at $849 and will absolutely piss on any iMac performance-wise. Again, there's no Mac equivalent.