Apple has won the first battle against Psystar.  Apple has won their claims of infringement on Copyright, trademarks, and with the enforcement of the EULA.

But what is more shocking is some of the comments from The Register’s readers…

I’m at a bit of a loss how I manage to install these ‘upgrades’ on brand new unformatted harddrives which are fitted into macs with no other harddrive and therefore no OS to upgrade and somehow I still manage to end up with a full OS on the HD.

The Psystar case is not about someone installing Mac OS X on a non-Apple approved harddrive.  Apple has always supported 3rd party hardware on their own machines.  It’s about a company advertising 100% non-Apple Hardware as being an substitude for an Apple branded machine.

“If you want to use OS X you have to pay the Jobs tax, you are forced to buy expensive hardware.”

No. Apple don’t care if you buy a copy of OS X and install it on your Hackintosh. Just don’t expect any support from them. They’re not going against the hobbyists here.

Apple DO care if you sell Hackintoshes with OS X pre-installed. That’s the big no-no.

Apple cares, but not exactly for the reason you expect.

What happens when Uncle Fred shows up, and your showing off Mac OS X on your Psystar, and Fred’s digital camera doesn’t work.  Or you get a Kernel panic?  Fred won’t blame Psystar for lousy hardware or a faulty drive, instead he’ll see the Mac OS failing.  Or what about the owner?  Does he really know that he has an Hackintosh?  He’ll still call Apple and attempt to get support, you see it all the time with people purchasing Dell’s off Ebay.  (I have a Dell, what do you mean you need the reciept?).  At the end of the day, Apple will end up dealing with fall out from the Hackintoshes, and be blamed for the failures.

Much as I like fruit machines, they really could have worked with Psystar to license a cheap clone

Apple has done this in the past, and it failed. Because no matter how bad or good the clones were,  people were chosing them over the Apple hardware.  Of course, at the time the Apple hardware wasn’t that much better than the clone hardware….  But your honestly expecting Apple to consider licensing the Mac OS to a “company” that effectively has been illegally loading it on their systems?  Apple survives due to hardware sales.  The Mac OS is an important part of that, but the OS sales will not pay for the entire company.

Sure it might be nice to attempt to branch the OS off to another subsidary, but we saw how well that worked for Palm, didn’t we?

I would think it fair if they were to say, this system is designed for Apple supplied hardware, if the user chooses to run it on non Apple equipment, then they accept that Apple bears no responsibility for any support or problems.

And if Apple enforces that rule, they become the villian.  If you sell a piece of software to an intended audience, you must support it for that audience.  If Apple officially allows people to purchase the OS for use on Hackintoshes, then Apple must support it.

It’s called an implied warranty.

implied warranty is a contract law term for certain assurances that are presumed to be made in the sale of products or real property, due to the circumstances of the sale. These assurances are characterized as warrantiesirrespective of whether the seller has expressly promised them orally or in writing. They include an implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, an implied warranty ofmerchantability for products, implied warranty of workmanlike quality for services, and an implied warranty of habitability for a home.

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