nerdhook

John Gruber provides an alternate take on the recent developments in the Apple v Psystar legal battle. Gruber speculates the “John Does” named in the complaint might actually be those behind OSx86 development, as opposed to some villainous corporate entity:

Reselling generic x86 computers is easy — the hardware is commodity. Psystar’s secret sauce — getting Mac OS X to run on non-Apple computers — isn’t theirs, but rather comes from the OSx86 Project. Without the OSx86 Project, there would be no Psystar Mac clones. From Apple’s perspective, suing Psystar out of existence wouldn’t necessarily put an end to unauthorized Mac cloning.

Seems like a much more likely, albeit less juicy explanation. It is hard to believe any successful company would back the Pystar effort knowing its miniscule chances of surviving the predictable Apple legal challenge.

Additionally, another knock-off artist has emerged this week according to AppleInsider (with a desktop tower “OpeniMac” no less!). This revelation dovetails nicely with Gruber’s theory.