Clone Thyself

Psystar Corporation, the David in the battle against Steve Job's Goliath had previously entered into arbitration to settle their suit with Apple.  Apple believes that Psystar is infringing on their intellectual property by illegally making clones of the Macintosh and running hacked versions of OSX.  This isn't news of course but what I do find interesting is that Psystar had the balls of steel to issue a press release on October 24th claiming that they will now be offering Blu-Ray burners and nVidia 9800GT video cards in their Mac Pro clones before Apple. Would Psystar really have had a chance at winning this lawsuit (if it went to court) and is this an indication of Apple losing their hold on OSX hardware exclusivity?

There has been discussion on the "what-if's" in a world where there were Apple-Compatibles and there really are only three points of view.  You've got your Cult of Apple where nothing but the fruit from the tree of Jobs will do, while on the other end you've got Windows users that could care less about weak hardware that costs 3X the market value because it's in a shiny box.  Then there are those sitting somewhere in the middle.

As previously stated, I've had experience running an "open Mac" before and it wasn't 100% compatible.  There were things at every level that had the potential to turn it back into a windows machine, not to mention the hardware dependant options like sleep and wake were not functional.  Nonetheless, It's ballsy for Psystar to issue press releases in the middle of a settlement negotiation.  This ,at the very least, will keep Apple on its toes seeing how their iPod division is slowly giving way to their computers and iPhone division as sales leaders.  It would indeed be a very inopportune time for a clone company to win in any type of decision and I believe Apple sees that there maybe a slight possibility so they chose to settle out of court.  The catch-22 is that it also sends Psystar and others like them a message: Push hard enough and there maybe grounds for you to win.

I don't want to see Apple fail.  I don't believe Psystar is a good company from the perspective of the consumer (small, upstart, no customer support, fly-by-night operation, etc).  But philosophically, they are good for competition.  There is no reason Apple cannot increase their hardware capabilities and reduce costs at the same time.  At the expense of immediate profits to be sure but the long term growth would be substantial.  Sure they harp on Microsoft for spending $300M on advertising but what about spending less money on retaliatory commercials and new fab processes but use that money to upgrade the hardware and reduce consumer prices.  Compete on a level that will gain you market share instead of industrial design awards.  Don't get me wrong, I love the look of Apple products but did changing to a one-piece manufacturing process really make a product like the MacBook Pro that much stronger?  Was the old MBP really ready to fall apart?  I doubt it; and after owning one, I say the old design is already more sturdy than other competitors on the market. With the introduction of this current generation of MacBooks, Apple continues the "wow factor" for its fans and has succeeded in attracting new clients who are distracted by shiny things.  But the core notebook computing audience, those that value performance as much as style, are left scratching their heads.  Looks like Apple better step up soon and offer a more tangible reason than "Applecare" for consumers to purchase original Macs, MacBook Clones could be next!  Now don't say I never rib on Apple!