Engadget calls out New Times for shoddy reporting. Turns into a back and forth.

Some of my local readers may have not seen this spat between Engadget and Miami New Times. Tim Elfrink of the New Times wrote a piece on the two brothers of Psystar, the company that makes Mac clones out of PC parts for half the price of a legit Apple laptop/desktop. Young second-gen Cuban immigrants from hardscrabble upbringings defy stereotypes by dressing well and take on an established American corporation by creating grey-market shadow products. It’s like BrandsMart but sexier because Apple is involved. Almost sounds like a made for TV movie on Univision, Telemundo or Spike TV. Well there is a lot some nerd rage out on the interwebs with some of the details.

From the Engadget article.

[...]there’s a quote here from Psystar founder Rudy Pedraza that simply leaps off the page:

Rudy scoffs at the idea he borrowed from the Hackintosh scene. “The first thing you have to do is unlearn everything you’ve read online about how to make this work,” Rudy says, “because it’s all wrong.”

Really? Because we think there’s a very large, very active hacking community out there that would disagree with you, Rudy.

• “Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X.” Yeah.
• “Psystar legally buys the software…” That’s not in question, really. The issue is what happens after Psystar buys OS X, when it modifies and redistributes it. You know, the specific thing Apple’s suing about.
• “[Apple] filed a 35-page lawsuit in California claiming Psystar was selling “unauthorized” versions of OS X.” Why is unauthorized in quotes? That’s exactly what Apple claims.
• “As with Microsoft, which lost a multimillion-dollar antitrust decision in Europe in 2004, Apple is protecting an illegal monopoly, Psystar claims.” Psystar has already lost this part of its case in California, and in the new Florida case Psystar only claims Apple has a monopoly on “premium personal computers,” which pretty much invalidates the pricing argument and has driven the company to sell more expensive machines.
• “Robert says he found his own way around Apple’s built-in security devices. The breakthrough meant that, among other things, the cheap machines were virtually immune to viruses and hackers.” This is simply not true. OS X is vulnerable to hackers in its shipping form, and hacking EFI doesn’t change that.
• “Psystar pays full price – $29 – for each copy of OS that it installs on its computers.” $29 is the Snow Leopard upgrade price. The full price is $169 with iLife and iWork.
• “What’s more, Apple holds that consumers who purchase an operating system don’t actually own the software…It’s a dubious-sounding arrangement that courts, at least so far, have upheld.” It’s not dubious to the courts, who’ve been upholding EULAs for over a decade across the country. (And striking some down, to be fair.)
• “Pretty much anyone with basic computer knowledge can make a cloned Mac for just the cost of a full tank of gas in an SUV.” Actually, anyone can do this for free, without having to pay Psystar.

Now, don’t get us wrong — the personal story of Robert and Rudy Pedraza laid out in the article is moving stuff, but when the chips are down, we’re picking the hacker and enthusiast community over a couple guys trying to make a buck selling unlicensed software, and that Hackintosh quote struck us as impossibly arrogant and extremely foolish. The OSx86 community is already wary of Psystar, and we’re guessing no one’s going to rush forward the next time these jokers need some help.

I haven’t been taken to task for my own crappy writing so I don’t have a full understanding of what Tim is feeling. I’m sure it sucks to have such a big article that took time to be lambasted by faceless people on the internet. Well faceless except for the Engadget writer Nilay Patel. Tim was nice enough to respond in the comments of his article.

Hi Edwin –

Yes, Endgadget did such a good job of calling out our “errors” that they spelled my name wrong until I called them out on it. (Looks like the’ve fixed it now).

As for the other “errors” — I see 7 complaints about characterizations in the story and no complaints about factual errors. (Way to bust us for putting “unauthorized” in quotes. That’s because it’s “quoted” straight from the Apple lawsuit.)

There is only one charge about a supposed factual mistake: that Snow Leopard’s update runs at $29 but the whole package sells for $169 with the whole iLife package.

I’m not certain which version Psystar purchases, nor do I claim to know in the story — I was simply providing readers some context on what Apple charges for Snow Leopard updates at the Apple Store.

Tim

Comment by Tim Elfrink from Miami on Nov 11th, 2009, 18:55 pm

Well, Nilay didn’t take too kindly to his article being accused of shoddy writing either.

My reply is that it’s pretty ballsy to take on a copyright lawyer who’s been covering Psystar and its associated litigation since day one by bitching about a typo and trying to re-cast my criticisms of his piece as taking issue with his “characterizations” of the facts.

His entire piece is centered around a single, provably false “characterization”: that Robert and Rudy Pedraza developed the EFI hack that enables Mac OS X to run on non-Apple hardware without any reliance on the hackintosh community. That’s a joke, and he clearly didn’t do the required research before writing his piece.

As for the rest, Psystar’s antitrust claims *have* been thrown out, so a comparison to Microsoft is ridiculous and misleading, there’s simply no way the EFI hack renders any machine “virtually immune to hackers and viruses,” the Snow Leopard price is simply wrong, calling EULA law “dubious” is even more misleading as it’s been so well-tested, and anyone *can* make a hackintosh for free.

Psystar tells a good story, and it’s clear that Tim bought it without question. It’s just too bad so much of it is based on lies and mistruths.

I don’t know about you guys, but I am with Nilay and Engadget on this. They have far more experience and the actual facts on their side. Yes Engadget had a typo with Tim’s name, but that’s really a secondary and minor issue. But at least one of the issues in the original Engadget list could be easily fixed with a little more detail. Let’s do some comparisons.

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X.”

That’s too vague for me. Let’s try again.

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X that prevented the OS from running on non-Apple hardware.”

“Robert cracked the code behind Apple Computer’s elegant operating system, OS X. But some in the Hackintosh community claim they stole the code from open source projects.”

Depending on what you want to believe, either of those may work and I’m sure a ton of other people can re-write it better ways. As for the others on the list, I believe the New Times did fail to get the facts on this. Granted this isn’t a quick and easy subject but with time and some research, this would not have been a problem. Sadly, time is valuable for any newspaper. Time and money that seemingly no paper has to spare. I just hope this doesn’t burn the Miami New Times from writing about more tech articles. I really enjoyed the majority of the article and wish for them to write more stories about technology.

Update:

I originally wrote this story on Wednesday of last week and something new has happened in the Psystar vs. Apple case. On Saturday this update was posted:

Yet another bad day for Psystar. After both Apple and the shady hackintosh company filed for summary judgements, the rulings are out, and Psystar is looking pretty screwed.

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. 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. [Gizmodo via Groklaw via 9 to 5 Mac, image via walknboston]

So there you have it.