Apple is not a monopoly
FRUIT THEMED toy maker Apple cannot be considered a monopoly, a Federal Judge has ruled.
Psystar had sued Apple saying that Jobs' Mob was an evil cartel because it tightly controls which computer makers are allowed to build machines using its operating system, OSX.
The Apple cloner said that by forcing companies only to use its hardware with its software, the Cupertino outfit illegally tied the sale of one product to another.
Not even Microsoft has such control as the open source Linux can be installed on devices from any number of manufacturers, Psystar said.
However in his 16-page decision, US District Judge William Alsup ruled Apple's products don't constitute a market to dominate. As a consequence, Apple then can't be considered a monopolist.
In other words, Apple products cannot be considered as unique and you cannot be a monopoly of your own products.
It means that anyone trying to clone an Apple product can be sued into a coma, which does somewhat weaken Pystar's defence against the Cupertino Cabal.
Psystar has been selling cheap PCs with the retail version of Apple's operating system preinstalled. ยต
L'Inq
CNN
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It comes to a grand total of 100,000 US dollars, its amazing what you can fit onto a nice medium sized manila envelope. mmmmmm and it smells so good too. OF B***DY COURSE THEY ARE A MONOPOLY. I cannot buy the OS seperate, and install on any PC i choose, I have to buy an apple based hardware, which is controlling my choices. I tell you if the case had of been done in front of a jury he would of won, not having a trial is what got them, the jusdge got his manila envelope of truths and he/she is very happy. sigh one day there will be lawers and plaintiffs smart enough to win these cases
This is not a surprise ruling, apple isnt a monopoly when you see to the whole market. What is morally right cant be compared to wat is lawfully right //Bengt
Really? You didn't go for the MacBook Air in the envelope?
Ofcourse it's not a monopoly, If you think it is then you can blame Ford that there headlights don't fit on a Toyota without modifications.
"OF B***Y COURSE THEY ARE A MONOPOLY" A monopoly over what market exactly? Are you referring to the overall desktop OS market? Last time I checked Microsoft held a monopoly position in that market? Or are you referring the desktop PC hardware market, of which no one actually has a monopoly over. (Although some would argue that Microsoft does as well.) Or are you in fact referring to the Mac market? A market created and based off and around an Apple product. Sort of like how Sony has a monopoly over the Playstation market, or Microsoft a monopoly over the Zune market or IBMs monopoly of the AS/400 market. Because they control both the hardware and software of those devices/systems? So if I decide to build a system based off the cell processor, Sony should be forced to let me create and sell a Playstation clone? Or better yet, I should be able to force Microsoft to release a version of Windows to run on my PowerPC system. Apple is under no obligation to separate the OS from the hardware, the two together is a singular product called Macintosh. This idea is just as relevant today as it was 20-30 years ago, when a lot of computer makers produced their own OS and hardware. Of course they all died because they gave up on hardware and just released the OS and found they couldn't compete in a market dominated by Microsoft. Apple is one of the few sole survivors of that era and only survived because they killed off the clones that would've run Apple into the ground.
The argument that they are is consistently silly. You may as well argue that Chrsitianity is a monopoly because you're not allowed to bring in a Quran to church and allow that "program" to run in different theology-based "operating system". Apple's established business model is incomparably different to the Microsoft-IBM-Intel concept. Go watch 'Triumph of the Nerds' for some entertaining education; you'll see how they evolved differently in the same jungle.
Apple gets away with this because of market share. Could you imagine Microsoft saying Windows 7 will only run on processor x, video card y, and chipset z? And then you have to buy the computer through them. Lawsuits and complaints would start flying pretty quick. Apple holds such a low percentage of the market share no one cares that they do exactly this. Another reason why if Apple ever did get the majority share of computers on the market their business practices would have to change.
The ruling is wrong. Apple has monopoly power over a subset of computer buyers, who are strongly pressured to purchase machines running the Mac OS: They have a lot of expensive Mac-only software that they can't run on a Windows (or Linux) PC. If they are getting a new computer, and want a Windows PC instead of a Mac, they would have to pay extra to buy that software. Apple has power over those people: Apple has the ability to raise its prices by more than 5% and those people will have to keep coming back and buying more Apple products. Apple has abused its monopoly power by charging high prices and tying its inferior hardware to the Mac OS, so you can't get the OS without buying inferior, overpriced Apple hardware. There will definitely be an appeal. I wish Psystar the best. PS: I have nothing bad to say about the judge. Anyone who trash-talks J. Alsop is an idiot. People who know anything about the US legal system don't talk that way about judges.
... and definitely not to a toyota! It's more like the old days when Intel licensed their technology so other companies could make CPUs for IBM compatible systems. But the other companies carried on making functionally compatible CPUs even after intel abandoned this licensing scheme. They made processors that run any x86 software. Here, Apple use commodity hardware to assemble a platform that they intentionally close with propriatary checking code. There is no reason apart from that preventing a standalone copy of OSX from installing on any other Core-2 based system with an nVidia graphics card etc. This is different to a Playstation for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost, The PS OS isn't sold separately, and secondly the hardware is not commodity hardware. It is purpose designed. Even the components cant all be purchased separately. not enough to put together a PS3 from separate bits anyway. If you could put together a cell processor based system yourself, and then managed to build a clean room copy of the OS good enough to run one of their games, no doubt you would get sued. But if you've got a couple of good lawyers, you'd win. Remember how sony couldn't successfully sue bleem, and even when they went after commercial distributors of bleem sony had to back down. On that basis I'd say Apple is running a monoply around the macintosh platform. Psystar just didn't do a good job of representing themselves.