Has Psystar Ruined the Hackintosh for Everyone?

Since the first Intel Macs debuted back in January 2006, there has been an enthusiastic community of hackers — in all senses of the word — working tirelessly to get OS X running on commodity PC hardware. While they have operated without Apple’s blessing, the Cupertino computer maker seems to have turned a blind eye to their endeavours. Up until now, that is.

In court papers unearthed and documented by Computer World’s Gregg Keizer, it appears that Apple is adding charges that Psystar breached the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to its on-going legal case against the cloner. The additional complaint reads:

“Apple employs technological protection measures that effectively control access to Apple’s Copyrighted Works. … Defendant has illegally circumvented Apple’s technological copyright protection measures that control access to Apple’s Copyrighted Works. … [By creating code that] avoids, bypasses, removes, descrambles, decrypts, deactivates, or impairs a technological protection measure without Apple’s authority for the purpose of gaining unauthorized access to Apple’s Copyrighted Works.”

Sinisterly, these papers also allude to parties other than Psystar being involved. It’s well known that the hacked version of OS X Psystar uses comes — entirely without permission — from the work of the OSx86 community. There has been unquiet and displeasure for some time with this commercial exploitation of code such as the EFI boot loader, which is released under a licence specifically worded to prevent such abuse. Is it possible that Psystar’s actions could bring about the forced curtailment of the wider OSx86 efforts?

We heard last week how Apple has sent ‘cease and desist’ notices to the BluWiki site, which hosted discussions about breaking the encryption on the iTunes music database. A similar DRM-circumventing move is needed to get OS X running on non-Apple hardware, making the numerous boards hosting links and discussions on the subject seem equally fair game. It seems unlikely that Apple will seek to bring legal action against any of the individuals involved, but if they are not seen to act against all infractions of their copyright then their case against Psystar could be weakened. It’s possible that this could spell an end for the Hackintosh effort.

[UPDATE: Dee Dee 'Dizzle' Warren provides her own commentary on this development — as she has on previous developments: well worth checking out the archives — over at World of Apple. -SJC]

• Computer World