After the Psystar verdict: Send in the clones

I feel a little sorry for Psystar. But only a little, because the Mac clone maker should have realized it couldn't rewrite history.

Its latest courtroom loss -- where a US District Court judge last week sided with Apple and said Psystar can no longer sell hardware based on hacked versions of Mac OS X -- will in all likelihood bring the whole concept of clones to an inglorious close. And none too soon.

Another case of history repeating itself

We've been down this road before. In 1982, when a fully tricked out Apple II Plus cost an order of magnitude more than a modern-day low-end PC or netbook, there was ample room in the market for knockoff hardware that offered the same user experience for less. If your choice was a relatively inexpensive clone or nothing at all because the name brand offerings were simply too rich for your budget, the choice almost made itself.

Franklin Computer, which introduced machines based on Apple's motherboard design, reverse-engineered ROMs and openly copied operating system, was an early and perhaps the best known example of the breed. Unfortunately, it also learned rather quickly just how aggressively Apple would protect its turf. Barely two months after Franklin's first machines hit the market, Apple sued the upstart clone maker. After a six-year, often-nasty legal battle, Apple forced Franklin out of the clone business for good.

Of course, Apple wasn't completely averse to the idea...except when it wasn't on its own terms. The company licensed Apple II ROMs to Bell & Howell and Tiger Electronics, and by the mid-90s had launched an official Mac clone program as well. This short-lived dalliance ended abruptly, however, when Steve Jobs returned to the fold in 1997. System 7-based machines from such companies as Power Computing, Motorola, and UMAX died a quick death after Jobs terminated the licensing deals forged during his absence. The company's message, then and since, has been clear: The only hardware that runs any Mac OS will be a Mac box designed and sold by Apple.

You'd think that Psystar would have gotten the message.

The not-so-hidden cost of cloning

Twenty-seven years after Apple first went postal on third party clone vendors, it's a safe bet that Mac clones are finally a dead business. While there will always be hackers perfectly willing to reverse-engineer any combination of hardware and software to allow anyone to run some flavor of Mac on non-Apple hardware, it's equally safe to assume that solutions like these will live on the fringe of the market. So-called "hackintoshes" make for fun conversation, of course, and there's doubtless a visceral thrill associated with running an Apple-sourced, partially modified OS on something as cheaply mundane as a netbook. But would you stake your business on such a solution? Probably not, and there's the rub.

Clones introduce a level of unpredictability into the user experience that makes them a ridiculous proposition for any kind of business use. When a vendor-forced system update, patch, or bug fix can easily break a hacked solution, it's difficult to understand the value proposition of saving a couple of hundred bucks on hardware. If you're building a spare machine in your basement on the weekend, by all means have at it. If you're buying a fleet of machines for your company, however, the risks of not going with something more mainstream will almost certainly result in your spending more time than normal keeping things functional.

And as you try to calculate the TCO of a clone-based solution, don't forget to attach a dollar figure to all those hours you and your IT folks will spend on your cheap-yet-unsanctioned hardware/software. That extra IT time quickly negates any up-front savings. The equation doesn't change much if your business is too small to justify a full-on IT department. Even if you're a company of one working from home, can you really afford to lose your system when the vendor of record decides to break the clones once and for all? Can you trust that every court proceeding from here on out will be decided in the clone vendor's favor? Platform stability, never a strong suit for clone makers, is a crucial component of proper IT-business strategy.

Living with Apple's choice

We can argue ad infinitum over how Microsoft's embrace of open availability of its OS on commodity hardware allowed it to build a much larger ecosystem than Apple's closed strategy that inextricably and permanently tied its hardware to its OS. Could Apple have sold more copies of its OS had it opened it up to a larger number of hardware vendors? Certainly. Would it have been as capable of defining and controlling the end-user experience? No.

And given how the end-user experience has always been at the very core of Apple's value proposition -- indeed the very basis of its ability to command the prices that it does -- it's easy to see why Apple would consistently protect its rights and move to shut down wannabe-clone vendors at every turn. It's a mindset that doesn't just stop with Macs: This culture continues to serve it well as it oversees the growth of the iPhone/iPod touch platform, and has almost certainly helped fuel Apple's brand value.

As we examine Apple's mobile experience, we can whine all we want about how tightly it controls how its devices run, how apps are submitted and approved, and even how they're installed and used. But like the Mac before it, the mobile landscape is Apple's to control.

As much as clone vendors like Psystar have banked on the Robin Hood-esque notion of allowing those who could not otherwise afford a Mac to have some sort of access to the Apple experience, the apparently permanent truth is that Apple, whatever it's selling, has no intention of ever giving up its overarching control of the combined hardware and software environment that it created. And whether we like it or not, this is the business model that the company has chosen in its pursuit of profit. Don't like it? Buy something else, because the era of pretending to be something we're not is finally drawing to a close.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.