Apple and the clone wars

Why doesn't the company open up its architecture and allow everybody to freely make machines like the Mac?

Apple and the clone wars

Why doesn't the company open up its architecture and allow everybody to freely make machines like the Mac?

In The Valley of Fear, Sherlock Holmes says, 'Mr Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in circlesu00e2u0080u0094even Professor Moriarty'. And this applies to the IT industry too.

Once upon a time, IBM used to develop all components on its own, but for the original PC that they launched on August 12, 1981, they decided to take another route. They felt that they should use OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) in order to cut down on the development time. Apart from this, IBM did something revolutionary it decided to adopt an open architecture at a time when nobody even understood fully the concept of an open architecture. This meant that other manufacturers could produce and sell peripheral components and compatible software without purchasing licenses. In fact, IBM even sold an IBM PC Technical Reference Manual which included a listing of the ROM BIOS source code.

Arcane EULA

If you find history boring, we can always cut to the present and see a company called Apple, which, though producing some outstanding products like the iPhone and the iMac, still has a EULA (end-user license agreement) that was ancient when the dinosaurs became extinct. Their EULA actually says that "This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labelled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labelled computer, or to enable others to do so."

But this has not stopped other companies from trying to run the OSX on non Mac computers. This move started gaining steam around June 2005, when Apple shifted from the PowerPC architecture to the Intel architecture.

One of the companies involved was Psystar, against which Apple filed a suit in July 2008 for violation of the EULA. In January 2009, Apple also had issues with Wired magazine for running an article on how to install the Mac OS X on an MSI Wind net book.

But now, one company has come up with a way of overriding Apple's EULA. This company, called PearC, is only selling the Apple clones in Germany because it is using a loophole in German law to protect itself. In fact, as a spokesperson for PearC's parent Hypermeganet told Der Speigel, Apple's EULA has no legal validity in Germany because Apple's Mac OS X EULA is inside the box and therefore cannot be viewed until the box is opened (if this flummoxes you, we are with you toou00e2u0080u0094after all, the law is never easily understood!).

Fine print

To checkout what the law states, I visited PearC's site (https://www.pearc.de/) and found that everything was in German, which is Greek and Latin to most of us in India. Fortunately, I also found a posting by a person called Thom Holwerda (https://www.osnews.com/story/20939/German_PearC_Sells_Macintosh_Clones) that cast some light on the matter. According to Thom, who knows German, "end-user license agreements in Germany are only valid if they have been offered before the transfer of goods/money, which in the case of Mac OS X does not happen. As such, PearC claims, the clause in Apple's EULA binding Mac OS X to Apple hardware is unlawful."

This site also says that PearC is selling three models with pricing ranging from 499 to 1,499 Euros, all with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard pre-installed.

But the legalities apart, is it not time that Apple looked at its own EULA? Is it not possible that they could do a lot better if they were more open about clones, the way IBM was several decades ago? One of the reasons why Windows PCs beat Apple hands down in spite of Apple's better capabilities if its fans are to be believed is because of the open nature of the IBM PC architecture. Maybe, it is time that Apple learnt a lesson from Big Blue. Even if the lesson is late, Apple clones may improve competition and give users a lot more choice than what they have today.

QUICK TAKE
>>A company called PearC is offering Apple clones with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard pre-installed
>>They claim that a German law ensures that they are not doing anything illegal
>>Maybe Apple should look at its EULA before going after clone makers