Just hours after announcing plans to sell a high-end Mac clone, niche electronics reseller EFIX USA changed course in order to avoid a nasty legal confrontation with Apple.
"We certainly don't want to get into a legal battle that's over a couple thousand dollars," an EFIX USA spokesman said. "Potentially Apple could have a legal issue there. They may not have a legal issue, but with all the money they have they might try to make one."
Despite the sudden turnabout, it's getting harder and harder for Apple to guard the most precious jewel at the core of its success: The Mac operating system.
Apple forbids Mac OS X from running on anything but a Mac. But in the past year, an army of Mac cloners has emerged, their rise facilitated in large part by Apple's 2006 decision to switch to Intel chips. The most prominent example is Florida-based Psystar, a startup selling Mac clones, which has been in legal battle with Apple since July. Shortly following Psystar's lead were companies with similar offerings:
Friday morning,
HR&O attorney Eric Overholt said the dongle will likely face legality issues with Apple. He explained Apple could potentially allege piracy and copyright infringement in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, because the Taiwanese company is essentially copying the Mac BIOS and putting it in a chip (the dongle).
"My thought is that this company will face the same type of lawsuit and claims that Psystar is facing," said Eric Overholt, an attorney with HR&O. "This dongle tricks the clone into thinking that the clone is actually a Mac. There will also most likely be claims against [the company] for 'reverse engineering' the Mac BIOS in order to create their 'dongle.'"
Art Studios Entertainment Media's dongle shows how the definition of a "Mac clone" has become blurry. And that gives away just how easy it's become for manufacturers to steal Apple's operating system -- and market it in different ways in order to dodge legal bullets.
"I would say that one of the things that's happening to Apple is that it's less able to keep secrets than it used to be because it has broader supply chain and broader distribution," said Roger Kay, an Endpoint Technologies analyst.
Apple wasn't always opposed to Mac clones. For a brief period in the 1990s -- when Steve Jobs was still exiled from Apple -- Apple CEO Michael Spindler licensed the Mac operating system to several manufacturers: Power Computing, Motorola, Umax, APS, Radius and DayStar. When Jobs retook the helm in 1997, one of the first items on his agenda was to destroy the clone program and eliminate these cheaper alternatives to Apple's goods.
But in 2006, Apple opened itself up to attack again (knowingly or not) when it ditched its own Power PC processors in favor of Intel's more power-efficient CPUs. Because Apple then had to code OS X to run on Intel processors, it opened a door for hackers: They could modify the operating system code to run on any Intel-powered, non-Mac machine.
The Intel switch gave birth to an underground community of hackers dubbed OSX86, who
"People were talking about Apple coming out with a laptop under $800 for the first time, and someone already made one and it's a [hacked] netbook," said Brad Linder, blogger of Liliputing.
Although running OS X on a non-Apple machine may violate Apple's software license agreements and copyrights, and may be a violation of the DMCA, the new crop of clone makers have plenty of tricky moves to evade legal trouble.
One of the trickiest moves comes from Art Studios Entertainment Media. The company isn't selling a Mac clone, per se. It's
Confused yet? EFIX USA says it is too.
"We get somewhat mixed signals on what [Art Studios Entertainment Media] would really like to accomplish," an EFIX USA spokesman said. "They produce the device and want to sell it, but somehow they don't want it to come out that the primary function of the device is that it allows people to run OS X on generic Intel hardware."
Another company with a creative plan to put out a Mac clone was OpenTech. The Florida-based company launched in July, promising to sell computers together with a how-to kit on installing the operating system of your choice, including Apple's. A spokesman for OpenTech made bold statements, saying, "Our legal team has come to the conclusion that we wouldn't be violating any copyright laws or any other laws." But just a month later, OpenTech
Apple continues to battle Psystar, a Florida-based company that
Since the Mac clone market is young, it's difficult to tell how much these clone makers and netbook hackers are actually cutting into Apple's sales. Given the difficulty of getting the hacks to work, or even of getting a clone maker on the phone, total sales of Mac clones are probably miniscule. And it's unlikely we'll see Mac clones break into the mainstream any time soon, given Apple's ruthless legal team.
Even so, Apple's clone problem is unlikely to go away in the near future. As long as OS X runs on Intel hardware, and as long as the developers behind OSX86 continue their work, it will be difficult for Apple to stop cloning altogether.
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