The best part is, those are conservative estimates. According to Psystar's aggressive predictions, the company planned to move 12 million computers by 2011. 12 million! That's a far cry from the triple digit numbers they managed to sell.

The other best part is that Psystar pitched their inevitable legal battle with Apple as a competitive advantage, claiming other companies would want to stay away from that mess. Imagine asking the bank for a loan on a truck, saying you'll use it to haul stolen TVs, and arguing that fear of getting arrested will make yours the only TV truck in town. No wonder these guys are going under.

The documents were provided as part of the upcoming injunction proceedings, where Apple is trying to halt sales of Psystar's products. Hey Apple, I know this is all about protecting your IP and all, but going by those dismal figures, you really don't have to worry about Psystar's sales. [Computer Wold via BGR]

All of Psystar's motions for summary judgment were denied, while all of Apple's were granted. That means that Apple got exactly what they wanted, while Psystar got exactly what they didn't want.

Don't worry, there will be a trial. According to Groklaw, the court still needs to determine (*deep breath*):

Apple's allegations of breach of contract; induced breach of contract, trademark infringement; trademark dilution; trade dress infringement; and state unfair competition under California Business and Professions Code § 17200; and common law unfair competition.

Phew! So yeah, at this point it's looking less like a trial to determine Psystar's legitimacy, more like a trial to decide how much they owe Apple.

Now, I'm no lawyer, but from where I'm standing this case is looking pretty grim for Psystar. I'll leave it to you legal eagles to explain exactly what all this means in the comments, because all I know is that it can't be good. [Groklaw via 9 to 5 Mac, image via walknboston]

While CrunchGear was able to get Rebel EFI working, it is important to point out that we tried several times get the software up and running with no success on the same exact computer. Then we got this email from a frustrated reader:

2 weeks ago, I purchased Psystar's RebelEFI software. While I own several Macs, I also have a fairly new PC with a Core 2 Duo and Intel motherboard that I thought would be a perfect specimen.

Before I purchased the software, I downloaded the trial version of RebelEFI. Sure enough, I was able to boot and install OS X 10.6. I installed the RebelEFI utility in OS X and because it was a trial, the hardware compatibility feature was disabled. (Why this feature would be disabled in a trial version?) I called Psystar with several questions and asked what would happen if some of my hardware was not compatible? The sales person told me that they would be able to access the software's hardware compatibility list and be able to supply me with drivers for the incompatible hardware.

I purchased the software and ran the hardware compatibility test. It showed me lack of compatibility for my video, audio and USB 2.0, however there was no way to send them the results of this test. When I questioned this, I sent Psystar a tech support ticket through the software's Customer Support feature. I was told in a reply that I would have to fill out a DCR form. I asked what a DCR form is and where I could find it. (They assumed I would automatically know this information).

After not hearing anything for a week, I tried calling Customer Support and was greeted with a message that support is only handled via email. I again asked the same question via email and 3 days later I received a PDF file in response. It basically says I have to send Psystar my computer for them to make it completely compatible. WHAT???? At no point during the purchase was I told I may have to send them my computer. I am now in the process of trying to get my money back.

Mac OS X on any computer? FAIL

Send your computer to a shady hackintosh company that refuses to accept any responsibility for devices shipped to their lab? Yeah...I don't think so. But here's the proof (click and select "Full Size" to enlarge):

As the days have worn on, Psystar's response to this customer's issue has deteriorated to the point that they are no longer responding to his attempts to email for a refund. In fact, they stopped taking customer-support calls entirely, and have switched to a far less personal (and helpful) email-based help program.

In other words, a $50 solution to run OS X on a PC sounded too good to be true, and it looks like it is. So, I'm inclined to go with a flat out DO NOT BUY on this one. However, let me put the question to you—have you purchased this software? Did you experience a similar problem? [Thanks Brian!]

Turns out the OS X install screen takes ages to come (they thought it had crashed), but with some patience they had themselves a hackintosh.

Psystar says the $50 download allows for the permanent installation of multiple operating systems on a single system, and that it works with Windows 7. You'll still need your own copy of OS X.

A trial version is available (with a 2 hour time limit), and comes with all the expected warnings of them not being responsible for you losing your data should thing go awry.

Of course, you could also use an open-source EFI bootloader like Chameleon. A good alternative if you're command-line savvy, and not a fan of Psystar. [Psystar and CrunchGear]

You can actually download a trial version yourself before you hand over your $50. Keep in mind that you'll need to have a machine with one of these processors in order for this to work: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem. We haven't tested Rebel EFI, so we can't say how well it works. Let us know if you've had luck with it. [Psystar via LoopInSight]

As a result of the individual motions by both companies, two hearings have been set for November 12 to determine whether there'll be a January trial. I'm not-so-secretly hoping that Judge William Alsup will look at the "user license agreements for both Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6," arguments about Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the whole disc protection circumvention mess and make Apple and Psystar duke it out in court. Hell, I'll volunteer to transcribe the case for everyone's entertainment, stupid argument by stupid argument. Just make it happen. [AppleInsider via Crunch Gear]

You'd be forgiven for thinking Psystar had fallen off some kind of wagon a few weeks ago, when they somehow emerged from (possibly strategic) bankruptcy only to immediately release another hackintosh product, just like the ones that landed them in their predicament in the first place. Their move was bold; their post-bankruptcy statements, hilariously brash.

Now the Psystar PR team, such as they are, is back at it, and they're rallying the troops—this time, with a softer, more nuanced, but possibly still totally wrong message:

Apple's copyright on OS X doesn't give Apple the right to tell people what they can do with it after they buy a copy. Apple can't tell an applications developer that it can't make a piece of Mac-compatible software. They can't forbid Mac users from writing blogs critical of Apple. And they can't tell us not to write kernel extensions that turn the computers we buy into Mac-compatible hardware.

A new trial date has been set for January 11, 2010, in federal court in San Francisco. As we move toward trial, we'll be keeping you informed about the arguments, the evidence, and what's going on in the case. And, come January, Camara & Sibley will be ready to fight for Psystar, guns blazin'. We hope to see you there!

Camara & Sibley? That sounds suspiciously legitimate! And what happened to David and Goliath, and applesauce? It seems they're moving away from the silly rhetoric and returning to an older, more sympathetic refrain:

Everyone here values openness. And that's how we're going to fight Apple: in public. We have nothing to hide. We buy hundreds of copies of OS X legally, from retailers like Amazon and Apple itself. We're probably one of Apple's biggest customers. Then we install these copies of OS X, along with kernel extensions that we wrote in-house, on computers that we buy and build. Then we resell the package to people like you. That's it.

The court date is set for just a few months from now, when, assuming Psystar stays serious about this, we might actually get a decent show. [Psystar via OS News—Thanks, Rob!]

A superquick recap: Psystar releases the OpenMac, a $400 desktop Mac clone; people debate if this is possible, technically or legally, and if Psystar is a scam; the hackintoshes turn out to be real; they ship; Apple gets upset; Psystar grandstands; Apple continues to be upset; Psystar gets murdered. To death.

That was the story a few weeks ago, at least. Now Psystar is basically acting like nothing happened, releasing a fresh bootloader, a new computer—the $1500, i7-based Open(7) desktop—and revisiting their old, defiant tone in an email newsletter:

As you all may already be aware in late May, Psystar filed for bankruptcy protection. Although this was critical to our continued daily operations, we are now ready to emerge and again battle Goliath.

The whole thing is reproduced below, and definitely worth reading.

Psystar's been subject to all manner or canonization, criticism, popular support and backlash, but now I don't know what to think. On the one hand, all their talk about monopolies, freedom and victimization always stuck me as a little hollow. (David and Goliath? So you're going to kill Apple?) On the other, it now appears as though the guys who run Psystar are either clinically insane, extremely persistent, unusually ballsy or just poorly advised to an extreme. Or all of the above. As Mark said on the story, "they wont stop unless Apple cuts off their hands. And even then, who knows." That spirit alone has got to be worth something, right? [TUAW via Neowin via Slashgear]

Computerworld guesses that it's for 581 copies of Leopard that Psytar ordered but didn't get a chance to install on machines, but my guess is that it's one giant copy of Leopard that they custom ordered for the world's largest fake Mac. [Computerworld]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.
This comes despite the failure of Psystar and the fact that there are several options out there for DIY hackintoshing. Nonetheless, the website is expected open by Monday, offering OS X Leopard pre-installed PCs for less than $900. As for the retail store, it was set to open at 2401 West Main Street, Alhambra, California on June 1st—and at least one Tuaw reader has confirmed that it is up and running. I suppose it goes without saying, but I would avoid these morons like the plague. [CNET via Tuaw, Wired]

Under Federal bankruptcy protection laws, all cases against the company should be put on hold. This means that Apple will have to wait on their case against Psystar. The first bankruptcy hearing will be held in Florida next June 5. At that time, we may find who the hell are the financial backers behind the company.

But while all this happens, the keep selling machines on their site. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't get near these guys even while wearing a biochemical war suit. [Mac Observer]

There are no more details about this potential product, but if they are going to work as badly as the ones you can hack yourself—which is most likely the case—I don't want to know about them. [MacRumors]

I would rather get my own PC and install Mac OS X myself, thank you very much. [Flickr via Engadget]

Called the Open(3), this new PC is a marked departure from the company's clunky past. It's a slimline Core 2 Duo (or Quad) desktop with a respectable standard spec set: the 500GB HDD, 8400GS graphics unit and 2GB of DDR2 RAM are all adequate but upgradeable. At the $600 starting price, a few vitals are missing—wireless, Bluetooth and Blu-ray support, mainly—but at such a low cost, it's hard to complain.

Of course, these products aren't notable for their hardware specs and anyone could easily piece together a similar PC off of Newegg, as I suspect Psystar does. It's the OS that matters here, and true to form, OS X Leopard comes preinstalled on the Open(3), at least for the four days that it's available before Apple's legal hordes descend for the final kill. [Pocket-lint]

PearC is essentially offering exactly what Psystar is here in the states—build to order Intel hardware in three performance grades, from a €500 Pentium Dual Core machine analagous to the Mac Mini on up to a Core i7 Extreme screamer with every BTO option you would want—all with OS X 10.5 pre-installed.

As for the legality, PearC doesn't elaborate too much on any loophole they may have found in Germany to help them avoid getting brought to court for violating OS X's license agreement. This, from their FAQ via Google Translate:

7. Is it legal to Mac OS X on a PC to install?
We would not offer our PearCs if we would not think that it is legal.

Also related to the legality of the situation is that you can presently only place in order if you're also in Europe (Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Italy, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, to be exact). And you can only make an order via wire transfer or COD, which doesn't bode well, unless that's the way things go in krautville and I just don't know about it.

Either way, the hackintosh war now has two fronts. [PearC via SevenMac]

In Apple's legal trail are, for the most part, corpses. Save for one little skiffle with you-know-who that haunts them to this day. And along their bloody way, they've managed to be involved in several landmark decisions that continue to shape technology IP law to this day. Behold, Apple's most important legal disputes, arranged by date:

Apple Computer Inc v. Apple Corps - 1978-2007
Back in the tender year of 1978, when news of wily upstart Apple and their crazy "computers" filtered across the pond to the folks at the Beatles' famed Apple Corps label, they stopped drinking tea and doing hash long enough to realize they still had a business, and that they should protect their trademark. They settled three years later, with Apple Computer paying Apple Corps $80,000 and entering into a gentlemanly agreement to stay off of each other's turf—no music business for Jobs, and no Beatles-branded personal computers for the Brits. It sounded like a good idea at the time.

In 1991, litigation cropped up again when Apple Corps. lawyers realized that a handful of Macs with built-in MIDI hardware or CD-ROM drives could be used to play back and create music (a computer? play music? what?). This resulted in another payment to the Corps, to the tune of $26.5 million, and the creation of the "sosumi" alert sound (So. Sue. Me.) that lives on in OS X to this day.

But it wasn't over yet: A little thing called the iTunes Music Store perked up the Beatles' lawyers' ears again in '03, but a judge ruled in favor of Apple Computer three years later, claiming a distribution network did not count as an entre into the music business as spelled out by the original agreement.

All was settled, finally, in 2007: After Jobs was spotted getting love-y with the Beatles in his keynotes, the two companies announced that Apple Inc. would now own all of the Apple-related trademarks the two had spent the last two decades fighting over, licensing the Corps' own trademarks back to them for their use. Meanwhile, we're still waiting for that Beatles discography to hit the iTunes store—or anywhere on the internet.

Winner: Apple

Apple Computer Inc v. Franklin Computer Corp. - 1982
Franklin, they of tip calculators and pocket dictionaries, produced the Franklin Ace 100, a line of Apple II-compatible computers in the early 1980s. Said Apple II compatibility, however, was achieved by doing the ol' Ctrl-A Ctrl-C Ctrl-V on Apple's OS and ROM source code. Franklin was pretty sloppy about it: They didn't even bother to replace strings in the code that were obviously unique to Apple's version, including "James Huston," an Apple programmer and the word "Applesoft."

The district court initially agreed with Franklin's defense, which treated the code not as a written work which could easily be copyrighted, but more like a machine part, the shape of which needed to match the other "parts" it would be compatible with. The Court of Appeals disagreed, however, and in doing so, set the first legal precedent proving that computer software itself (the actual code) could be protected by copyright, not just the visual and more tangible results of the software.

Winner: Apple

Apple Computer Inc. v. Microsoft, Xerox and Intel - 1983-1997
When Apple's John Sculley first saw early versions of Bill Gates' rough and buggy Windows 1.0 OS in 1983, he spotted a number of UI elements, such as window menu bars and apps like Write and Paint, which he viewed as direct rip-offs of the soon-to-be-released Mac OS and its MacPaint and MacWrite applications. No one at Apple though was too worried—their revenues of well over $1 billion dwarfed Microsoft's $25 million in software sales at the time—so they struck a deal with Gates, allowing him to license infringing UI elements for a fee (elements many would argue were themselves licensed/stolen from Xerox) in exchange for giving Macs exclusive access to Excel for two years. At the time the Mac platform had all the momentum, and Microsoft was just an app maker, essentially, with a hobbyist OS on the side. Sculley believed their agreement was valid only for the 1.0 version of Windows and that it was a great deal.

And then along came Windows 2.0 in 1987, and with it, one of the landmark software "look and feel" disputes to date.

Windows 2.0 was significantly more polished (and successful) than the previous version, and Apple had to act quickly to quell a rapidly-strengthening competitor. They claimed Windows 2.0 ripped off the Mac OS even more extensively and illegally than before. Apple argued that things like overlapping, resizable windows, a "desktop" with icons, and specifics like the trash can all amounted to a single entity referred to as "look and feel," which could then be protected as a whole via copyright (which MS was allegedly infringing). This was essentially a move by Apple to gain exclusive use of the "desktop" GUI metaphor, which is now ubiquitous to all modern operating systems. It would have been a gigantic legal coup.

Meanwhile, Xerox filed a defensive suit against Apple, claiming they were the actual source of the disputed GUI elements, hoping to in turn win control over the "desktop" should Apple win its case against Microsoft. It was dismissed on the grounds of a statute of limitations technicality.

Then Apple's case fell apart on a technicality of its own. The judge, not buying the "look and feel" voodoo, insisted on treating each UI element as its own infringement. And of Apple's list of 189 infringing elements, he judged all but ten to be legal under the original licensing deal Sculley made for Windows 1.0, which the court found to still be applicable to Windows 2.0, much to Apple's shock and chagrin.

The suit was bloody, and it lasted four years. When the judge ruled in Microsoft's favor in 1992, Apple tried to appeal to the Supreme Court, and was denied. Even so, bad blood continued to bubble until 1997 (along with additional side lawsuits that alleged Microsoft and Intel ripped off QuickTime code for optimizing video in Windows), until a final agreement was made. With Apple floundering and Windows the undisputed OS king, the deal tipped heavily in Gates' favor: It stipulated that Microsoft should continue to develop Office for the Mac (by then a huge bargaining chip), but at the same time forced Apple to make Internet Explorer its default Mac OS browser (ahem, seeds of anti-trust, ahem), and gave MS the chance to buy $150 million worth of bargain non-voting Apple stock—a 10% share. And of course, Windows could keep being Windows.

So in the end, what started in Apple's mind as a promising play for exclusive rights to the entire graphical user interface schema as we know it became a massive financial and legal defeat that continues to define the two companies to this day. Fanboys, this is where your hatred was born.

Winner: Microsoft

Apple Computer Inc. v. eMachines - 1999
Jobs returned to a still-smoldering Apple in 1997, and with him came the iMac a year later, which promptly inspired everything from steam irons to George Foreman grills to come adorned in colorful candy plastic. But eMachines, makers of cut-rate Wintel hardware, hit a little too close to the bone with their eOne, which was released a year after the original Bondi iMac. The eOne looked almost exactly like the iMac, and came pre-loaded with Windows 98 at a price point $400 below the iMac's—a recipe for litigation. Apple took eMachines to court citing a somewhat obscure "trade dress" infringement, which is effectively a way for companies to trademark and defend distinctive industrial and graphic designs that aren't literal trademarks themselves. They successfully shut down sales of the eOne, and eMachines went on to get folded into Gateway and then Acer, where they now continue to crank out Best Buy-filling cheapos to this day.

Winner: Apple

Apple, Inc v. Creative Technology, Ltd. - 2006
In 2006, Creative was awarded a patent for browsing hierarchical listings of music files in MP3 players it had applied for five years earlier in 2001, just barely nicking out similar patents filed for Apple's then-nascent iPod. Creative immediately attempted to leverage the patent, filing suit against Apple for infringement; Apple responded by counter-suing on the basis of several other Apple patents its lawyers found being infringed upon in Creative's Zen players. Yep, it was an all-out patent war, which was eventually settled to Apple's clear advantage: Apple agreed to break off $100 million in licensing fees to Creative (a pittance compared to its $1.5 billion in iPod revenues that quarter) for rights to the disputed patent moving forward. Creative didn't get the international injunction on iPod imports it wanted, but $100 million was an 85-cents-per-share boost for their quarterly profits. And in a trademark Jobsian zing, Steve remarked in Apple's press release: "Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent." Translation: "Look at you, Creative, so cute with your patents. Take this $100 million I found under the seat of my SLR Benz and go buy something nice. And, oh, don't think about trying this ever again."

Winner: Apple

Apple Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. - 2007
Remember the original iPhone? We sure do. And so did Cisco, who owned the trademark since 1996 for a VoIP product. Apple knew this and didn't care, and the day after Jobs announced iPhone 1.0, Cisco filed an infringement suit. But it didn't last long. Our guess is that El Jobso took Cisco boss John Chambers out for a nice dinner, reminded him that he made his billions on internet backbone infrastructure and not shitty 6-year-old VoIP phones, and the whole thing was settled before the appetizers were cleared. Just over a month later, the two companies announced they would share the iPhone name like good little boys, and would even "explore" opportunities for "interoperability." Do you see how Apple can't resist the condescension in the press releases? Writing Apple press releases must be fun, as far as press-release writing gigs go.

Winner: Apple

Apple Inc. v. Psystar Corporation - 2007-Present
This one's still brewing. Apple claims Psystar's Hackintoshed "Open Computers" violate the OS X license, which dictates that the OS only be run only on official Apple or Apple-approved hardware. Apple sued for this violation in July of this year, and the two parties have been lobbing legal clown pies back and forth ever since. Psystar's claims tend to border on the outrageous, including a claim that Apple's copyrights on OS X are invalid due to "failure to register said copyrights with the copyright office as required." Something tells me that's a little task Cupertino's law troupe would not let slip off their to-do lists.

Documents have surfaced that indicate the two companies are pursuing alternative dispute resolution (for settling the matter privately and out of court), but the volleys are still flying—the most recent being Psystar's claim this month that everything is fine and dandy since they legally purchase each copy of OS X they (illegally?) load onto their Open Computers. It's a tangled web, and if Apple's tendency to shut down even the slightest hint of Hackintoshing is any indication (just ask Brian from Wired), this case will eventually reach a settlement or a trial. Meanwhile, you can still order (or at least pay for) an Open Computer on Psystar's site.

Winner: TBD??

Conclusion
One thing is clear: It takes a Microsoft to beat Apple at the patent and copyright litigation game. Not even the Beatles could win, in the end. And even when facing a Microsoft-caliber opponent, the grand mal Microsoft-Apple suit for all the bananas was essentially settled over a technicality arising from a Sculley-helmed Apple's sloppy contract writing. Microsoft got lucky.

So is Palm ready to bet their entire company on the Pre's multitouch? Many agree that without the Pre, there isn't much of a company left anyway, so there's no reason not to. And these days, patents provide only the squishiest legal ground that gets squishier by the day—to the extent where almost every software-specific patent can be "designed around" to achieve an almost imperceptibly similar user experience without infringing earlier patents.

The fact remains, the iPhone is now the gem in Apple's crown and the truest embodiment of the company's soul. Jobs and his army of lawyers aren't going to let it be challenged without a fight.

According to court papers filed on Psystar's behalf:

Apple is prohibited from bringing action against Psystar for the alleged infringement of one or more of the plaintiff's copyrights for failure to register said copyrights with the copyright office as required.

Not possessing having registered a copyright for the OS would make it kind of hard to enforce one, and would undermine Apple's entire suit suit.

I'm no lawyer, so I'll leave the copyright discussion to someone who knows better. But you really can't ignore the timing and circumstances of this development. Following a few notable failures in court, Psystar appears to be losing their fight against Apple, at least as long as it's framed as a copyright issue. Changing the terms, it seems, is their only option, and reeks of desperation. Not to mention the fact that it was utterly predictable. In our last Psystar update, posted before any of this happened, commenter Tim Faulkner said:

What people are ignoring is that Apple's already won. Even if Psystar can argue they have a legal right to hack Mac OS, they can't demonstrate that they have any right to distribute Apple's copyright without Apple's consent unless the antitrust claims (which they've abandoned) had merit. Even if Psystar has a right to circumvent Apple's weak protection (highly questionable), how are they going to prove they have a right to distribute Mac OS? They can't, that's impossible.

To which redwingsmonk added:

I think the only way psystar could win this if they claim OSX was open source and they have free reign to modify the code and resell it.

And here we are. It looks like Psystar—who is now apparently taking legal advice from anonymous Gizmodo commenters—knew that challenging Apple's copyright was pretty much their only hope. A faint hope, it's safe to say. [InformationWeek via AppleInsider]

Psystar has agreed to drop their antitrust claim against Apple, but they still have no intention of surrendering. Instead, they have shifted their focus on to copyright issues. From the filing:

Psystar alleges that by virtue of Apple's leveraging of copyrights in the context of Apple's EULA, spurious litigation via the DMCA, and various other anti- and unfair competitive conduct, there is no viable alternative to the purchase and use of Apple-Labeled Computer Hardware Systems for users who wish to use the Mac OS, for a prospective buyer of the Mac OS, or for a user of an older version of the Mac OS.

They are also arguing that Apple's inclusion of code in OSX that results in "kernel panic" does not constitute a legitimate copy protection system.

In Psystar's view, Apple's abuse of their copyright is monopolistic and is in direct violation of the "misuse doctrine," which prevents copyright from being used to block competition. Naturally, this is a major longshot and only prolonging the inevitable at a considerable and unnecessary expense. [Appleinsider and CNET]

Still, if you are the kind of person willing to drop serious cash on a shady overseas knockoff, then you will be interested to know that OpeniMac is offering two models: A $990 base version (2GB of memory, a 320GB HDD and a 256MB ATI Radeon HD Pro) and a $1,710 "Pro" version (3.0GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and a 20-inch widescreen LCD). Better hurry though, nobody escapes Apple's wrath for long. [OpeniMac via Crunchgear]