Apple has Psystar's lawsuit stay lifted; Palm Pre unhurt by iPhone

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Psystar's hopes of stalling Apple's lawsuit have crumbled as the Mac maker has successfully overturned the court stay on its case. At the same time, Apple's legal hammer has been falling on iTunes gift card fraud, and the Palm Pre continues to sell out even with the iPhone 3GS threatening to pull customers away.



Stay lifted in Apple lawsuit against Psystar



Apple's motion to lift the stay in its copyright infringement lawsuit against Psystar has succeeded in a Southern District of Florida bankruptcy court.



Granted on Friday of last week, the relief overturns the automatic freeze on any court proceedings that followed when Psystar filed for Chapter 11 last month and will force Psystar to defend itself even as it tries to reorganize its business. While Psystar has maintained that Apple is trying to drive it out of the market before it can defend itself, Apple has accused the Florida clone builder of using bankruptcy to avoid facing its legal reckoning. It has also positioned the lawsuit as 'helping' Psystar by giving it a way to emerge from bankruptcy without promptly having to resume a legal defense it might lose.



Even with the short-term win, however, Apple won't have a complete victory in the lawsuit. The bankruptcy court reminded the California firm that it has to ask permission from the court before it can collect any damages from Psystar as long as the company is still insolvent.



Apple taking action against users of fraudulent iTunes cards



Those that gave into buying illegitimately made iTunes cards, whether aware of their authenticity or not, are finding out the hard way through a new Apple crackdown on the practice.



Various reports aggregated by PC World have pointed to Apple permanently disabling the accounts of those it catches using the cards, which often cost well below the value of the number of songs they buy. The ban not only prevents shoppers from buying new songs but disables access to any songs they've bought that are still using FairPlay copy protection from before the switch to DRM-free music on iTunes.



Apple says its terms of service for the iTunes Store explicitly warn against fake iTunes gift cards or other rewards and warns those users in advance so that any unwitting or experimental use doesn't lock customers out of their collections. Customers who've had their accounts shut down were those that should have known better, company spokesman Jason Roth implies.



To avoid this level of fraud, shoppers are asked to not only watch out for too-good-to-be-true discounts on cards but to only buy cards from within their own countries but, if they can, to insist on receiving a physical copy of the card in question.



Palm Pre still selling out despite iPhone



While doubts have existed that Palm would continue enjoying brisk sales of its multi-touch Pre smartphone after the unveiling of this year's iPhones -- which occurred just two days after the Pre's launch in the US -- Sprint's chief finance officer Bob Brust has revealed that sales are still strong and that there are continued shortages even as Palm gets a better grip on its supplies.



"We still have a backlog of subscribers but it's not unmanageable and we get shipments every week," Brust said during an investor's conference, adding that Sprint was "catching up."



Analysts had originally predicted that about 50,000 Palm Pres were sold on its launch weekend early this month, or just one twentieth Apple's 1 million iPhone 3GS units sold two weeks later. Further estimates, however, had Sprint doubling its total sales count in less than a week.



The performance is such that the carrier's CFO says he hasn't seen "any big change" since the 3GS was released and believes that the Pre is both drawing in converts from rivals as well as preventing existing customers from jumping ship. Sprint sorely needs a halo device like the Pre as it has continued to lose millions of customers due to a combination of its poor reputation for customer service and a lackluster collection of handsets.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 94
    nerudaneruda Posts: 439member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post


    Even with the short-term win, however, Apple won't have a complete victory in the lawsuit. The bankruptcy court reminded the California firm that it has to ask permission from the court before it can collect any damages from Psystar as long as the company is still insolvent.



    Psystar is, by all accounts, broke, so Apple's motive in getting the stay lifted is not about a desire to get monetary damages. A win in this case will establish a precedent which will be more valuable (as a potential deterrent to others ) then any damage award at this point.



    BTW, there are a lot of these fake Macs on Ebay.
  • Reply 2 of 94
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    edit number 4
  • Reply 3 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    I'm more concerned about the two other companies operating outside of the States, esp. the one in Russia.



    About Pre sales:



    Considering the size of the sales, which is to say, fairly small, who is to say that initial sales weren't depressed by the news of the new iPhones arriving a week later?



    If so, then sales are what they are because of that.



    First we saw estimates of weekend sales of between 50,000 and 100,000, then we saw estimates of full week sales of between 90,000 and 100,000. That doesn't seem as though sales were where they had hoped they would be, but rather were at the bottom of the estimates.



    Even though iPhone sales were in 8 countries, at least half of the sales were likely within the US, going by past results. If so, then Apple had 10 times the sales in the US than Palm that first weekend. That doesn't sound so impressive for Palm, and I don't know why it's being written up in various places as though it is. Even if you account for the greater size of AT&Ts' base, Apple has over seven times the sales per million customers.



    For such a "hot" phone, the sales don't seem all that great.



    While we all know they had shortages, so did Apple.
  • Reply 4 of 94
    tt92618tt92618 Posts: 444member
    I guess it's nice to know that Pre is doing ok. I would not call a couple hundred thousand of these phones rolling around significant in any way, however.



    Right now, the Pre's biggest enemy is not Apple, it is Palm.
  • Reply 5 of 94
    minderbinderminderbinder Posts: 1,703member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neruda View Post


    Psystar is, by all accounts, broke, so Apple's motive in getting the stay lifted is not about a desire to get monetary damages. A win in this case will establish a precedent which will be more valuable (as a potential deterrent to others ) then any damage award at this point.



    BTW, there are a lot of these fake Macs on Ebay.



    Exactly. I doubt apple cares much about collecting damages, their goal is to get the court to force these guys to stop selling the machines.
  • Reply 6 of 94
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Good for the Florida bankruptcy courts and good for Palm. I hope Palm can sell a 1M Pres this summer as I think that is the magic number for some odd reason. It doesn?t fit my needs but it really is the best US competitor the iPhone has seen to date.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Neruda View Post


    Psystar is, by all accounts, broke, so Apple's motive in getting the stay lifted is not about a desire to get monetary damages. A win in this case will establish a precedent which will be more valuable (as a potential deterrent to others ) then any damage award at this point.



    BTW, there are a lot of these fake Macs on Ebay.



    I agree with that. I don?t think Apple is particularly hurt by Psystar?s moves but the precedence is what is important.



    The eBay sellers aren?t so much of an issue as they aren?t really setting themselves up to be hit by Apple the same way. Just as the OSx86 Project has yet to get any wrath from Apple as far I can see. Hobby is hobby and I do know a couple people that did it for fun with an old PC, but ended up buying a Mac after playing it for awhile.
  • Reply 7 of 94
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post




    While doubts have existed that Palm would continue enjoying brisk sales of its multi-touch Pre smartphone after the unveiling of this year's iPhones -- which occurred just two days after the Pre's launch in the US -- Sprint's chief finance officer Bob Brust has revealed that sales are still strong and that there are continued shortages even as Palm gets a better grip on its supplies.



    "We still have a backlog of subscribers but it's not unmanageable and we get shipments every week," Brust said during an investor's conference, adding that Sprint was "catching up.".



    Doesn't surprise me.



    I think the vast majority of Pre buyers are folks that are stuck with Sprint, for either business/contractual or geographic/network coverage reasons.



    Those folks were waiting for a decent smartphone on Sprint, and now they presumably have one. They weren't choosing between an iPhone and a Pre.
  • Reply 8 of 94
    mactrippermactripper Posts: 1,328member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by minderbinder View Post


    Exactly. I doubt apple cares much about collecting damages, their goal is to get the court to force these guys to stop selling the machines.



    Smack one mole, another pops up elsewhere.



    Apple needs to address the lower margin market it's ignoring with a low cost, expandable tower.



    So, it has a cheap plastic case, big deal. Cheap looking computers are supposed to be ugly, so the staff don't steal them.



    Next Apple buys up Codeweavers and expands upon it integrated into OS X, runs most all Windows apps natively.



    Kick laughing boy Balmer right in the sack. I'm sure they would like to just go back to selling Office and forget about a OS anyway.
  • Reply 9 of 94
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    First we saw estimates of weekend sales of between 50,000 and 100,000, then we saw estimates of full week sales of between 90,000 and 100,000. That doesn't seem as though sales were where they had hoped they would be, but rather were at the bottom of the estimates.



    Even though iPhone sales were in 8 countries, at least half of the sales were likely within the US, going by past results. If so, then Apple had 10 times the sales in the US than Palm that first weekend. That doesn't sound so impressive for Palm, and I don't know why it's being written up in various places as though it is. Even if you account for the greater size of AT&Ts' base, Apple has over seven times the sales per million customers.



    For such a "hot" phone, the sales don't seem all that great.



    While we all know they had shortages, so did Apple.



    In the end, it’s all about the net profit, which Palm sorely needs, though the 13x stock bump since the Pre announcement at CES does help (though only if the company can maintain those investors).



    Since Sprint has slightly more than 50% of the AT&T’s subscribers, we can probably drop that 500K number if half again making the difference only 5x. Now before you say anything, I am fully aware of the number of people that are moving to AT&T for the iPhone, and I while I think this particular metric is certainly not the strongest, I don’t think it hurts to at least conceive of the numbers in such terms. I do think the Pre is good enough to help keep some people at Sprint, which is a benefit for Sprint (of course) and a testament to the relative success of the Pre. I don’t think we could say that for the Storm, Instinct or really even the G1. On top of that, selling a 50k smartphones may pale in comparison to even the original iPhone for a weekend selling that many, expensive smartphones in general is still a really impressive, IMO.
  • Reply 10 of 94
    msanttimsantti Posts: 1,377member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NeverInDoubt View Post


    Doesn't surprise me.



    I think the vast majority of Pre buyers are folks that are stuck with Sprint, for either business/contractual or geographic/network coverage reasons.



    Those folks were waiting for a decent smartphone on Sprint, and now they presumably have one. They weren't choosing between an iPhone and a Pre.



    Surely there is at least 100,000 or so iPhone/Apple haters out there. Right?
  • Reply 11 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tt92618 View Post


    I guess it's nice to know that Pre is doing ok. I would not call a couple hundred thousand of these phones rolling around significant in any way, however.



    Right now, the Pre's biggest enemy is not Apple, it is Palm.



    As of the end of the first week, between 90,000 and 100,000. Not that much.



    And depending on what's happening with the cracking...
  • Reply 12 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    In the end, it’s all about the net profit, which Palm sorely needs, though the 13x stock bump since the Pre announcement at CES does help (though only if the company can maintain those investors).



    Since Sprint has slightly more than 50% of the AT&T’s subscribers, we can probably known that 500K number if half again making the difference only 5x. Now before you say anything, I am fully aware of the number of people that are moving to AT&T for the iPhone, and I while I think this particular metric is certainly not the strongest, I don’t think it hurts to at least conceive of the numbers in such terms. I do think the Pre is good enough to help keep some people at Sprint, which is a benefit for Sprint (of course) and a testament to the relative success of the Pre. I don’t think we could say that for the Storm, Instinct or really even the G1.



    Isn't it closer to two thirds? 49 million to what, 77 million?



    I'm wondering if there will be bad publicity from the cracks, bubbles, and other problems that are cropping up, and the way that at least some of these people are being handled.



    If that were an Apple thing, it would already be on CNN.
  • Reply 13 of 94
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Isn't it closer to two thirds? 49 million to what, 77 million?



    I think it’s really right around 50%. According to March 2009 subscriber numbers AT&T had 86.6M to Sprint’s 49.1M (source). If we assume the typical exodus from Sprint has been in effect for the mast 3 months and the AT&T infusion as well as the new subs bought from Verizon in the Alltel deal the number for the next quarter may actually make Sprint less than 50% of AT&T, though I think ~50% is accurate enough for any speculation. At any rate, when dealing with an underdog I tend to think it’s okay to add favour to their end when unsure of exact figures.
  • Reply 14 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I think it?s really right around 50%. According to March 2009 subscriber numbers AT&T had 86.6M to Sprint?s 49.1M (source). If we assume the typical exodus from Sprint has been in effect for the mast 3 months and the AT&T infusion as well as the new subs bought from Verizon in the Alltel deal the number for the next quarter may actually make Sprint less than 50% of AT&T, though I think ~50% is accurate enough for any speculation. At any rate, when dealing with an underdog I tend to think it?s okay to add favour to their end when unsure of exact figures.



    Couldn't open the page. Could you try it again? Is that to Sprints numbers, or that of AT&T? I don't remember AT&T having numbers that high.
  • Reply 15 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    I just went to AT&T's page, its a bit over 78 million as of April.



    Be warned, it's VERY small type:



    http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pi...rticleid=26752
  • Reply 16 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    If I divide 48.7 by 79, assuming that the numbers have changed about that much since, I get almost 62%.
  • Reply 17 of 94
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Couldn't open the page. Could you try it again?



    The vBulletin markup is adding quotes around URLs that don?t need to be there. It?s been happening for awhile now. Link fixed!





    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    I just went to AT&T's page, its a bit over 78 million as of April.



    Be warned, it's VERY small type:



    http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pi...rticleid=26752



    Ah, I see what I did. I grabbed Verizon?s numbers.



    PS: I think I am coming down with something as I have been making stupid mistakes all day.
  • Reply 18 of 94
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Ah, I see what I did. I grabbed Verizon?s numbers.



    It's called wishful thinking.
  • Reply 19 of 94
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NeverInDoubt View Post


    They weren't choosing between an iPhone and a Pre.



    I am choosing the Pre over the iPhone for mainly one reason... a real keyboard. I use my phone for email and text messaging a lot and the virtual keyboard is just too slow and unreliable (yes I have tried it... it pails in comparison to physical keys).



    The iPhone is obviously a great device that works for a lot of people... I'm not one of them. Why Apple seems to have the same disdain for a physical keyboard as they did for the 2-button mouse, I have no idea. But if they had a version with a physical keyboard, or if they would at least allow drivers for third-party bluetooth keyboards, I probably would have bought one a long time ago.
  • Reply 20 of 94
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    It's called wishful thinking.



    I guess I wish for Palm to survive but I have no stake in it either way, so I’m not too sure about that. I think I’m just having a Dvorakian day.
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