Archived copy of A Swedish wolf in Norway

I was going to write something here about how Apple incorrectly claims that Psystar is “stealing” their intellectual property by installing it on their Mac clones, but examining the English news sources seems to indicate that they are not saying “stealing”, but instead that they are “misappropriating” it.

I haven’t got my handy dictionary here, but Mirriam-Webster on-line seems to indicate that “misappropriating” is just “like” theft, not actual theft. But Psystar weren’t stealing anything anyway, they were buying Mac OS X copies legally from Apple, and installing it on their computers. That the Apple EULA has some bogus clauses like that you are not allowed to install it on hardware that does not bear the Apple logo, is about as bogus as the Microsoft EULAs that claim that you are not to install the software under emulation (I believe to recall that, at least for a while, you were not allowed by the EULA to install Internet Explorer on WINE).

That is of course bogus. Once you have bought the software, the one who sold it to you can’t restrict what you are doing with it. They can stop you from installing it on “unregistered” hardware just as little as they can stop you from hanging the CD on a wall to make a clock from it (hmm, I wonder where my Internet Explorer 3 wall clock ended up after my last move?).

Apple, please stop playing Microsoft. Rise above it.