You might have heard or read somewhere that there is this small company called Psystar that is selling regular PC hardware with a basically cracked version of Mac OS X. More precisely, they are selling a computer, and if the customers pays an extra fee, they sell a legal copy of Mac OS X Leopard to the customer and provide the service of cracking and installing it.

Why does OS X need to be cracked? Because it otherwise won’t run on a regular PC. There is no copy protection mechanism in place in OS X, but it requires EFI instead of BIOS on the target computer, otherwise it won’t work. So Psystar is solving a technical issue for their customers, which, at least in theory, should not bother anybody.

But there is a legal issue involved: The EULA (End User License Agreement) of Mac OS X requires the user to install his copy of OS X on a Apple-branded computer only.

I hope that Apple will sue this company. And I sure hope that Psystar has the guts to take it to court. And then I hope that Apple loses. Why? Because it is in the best interest of customers that OS X will be made available on non-Apple hardware.

Nobody has challenged Apple’s EULA so far, and it is about time that this happens.

In Germany, my home country, the Apple EULA is probably illegal anyway, for a couple of reasons. One being that the customer cannot read it –before– he or she purchases the product. Basically, you do not even know the terms of the contract you make with Apple when you give them your money. That certainly is not an acceptable business practice by German (or any) standards.

Another reason might be the some one that was used in the Bundesgerichtshof ruling against Microsoft which made it illegal for Microsoft to enforce the bundling of OEM/Systembuilder versions with hardware sales, the so-called “OEM-Urteil“. That court decision made Germany the only country where you can legally buy and use the cheaper OEM versions of Microsoft products on whatever computer you like.

These are two very strong reasons why I think that challenging Apple’s license model for OS X - at least in Germany - has very good chances for success, and I hope somebody will go and try it.