Edible Apple

As expected, Psystar today responded to Apple’s allegations that it hasn’t been forthcoming in handing over pertinent financial information.  Psystar straight up denies all of Apple’s allegations, though its response contains an interesting contradiction and raises some interesting questions.  Unlike previous filings, this one at least doesn’t have any spelling or grammatical errors.  Yeah, I said it.

If you recall, Apple accused Psystar of not handing over financial documentation pertaining to revenues, profits, and purchase receipts etc.  Moreover, Psystar president Rudy Pedraza claimed during his deposition that he was unable to recall “answers to basic questions about Psystar’s sales.”

Psytar, however, maintains that it has made a “good faith effort to meet all of its obligations to produce responsive documents to Apple.”  The basis for this supposed good faith effort is the simple fact that Psystar isn’t in possession of the documents Apple wants them to hand over.

Curiously, Psystar asserts that documents relating to its profits and losses, and assets and liabilities don’t exist.  Really?  How convenient.  Psystar goes on to say,

Prior to this litigation, some documents were lost during Psystar’s transition to its current office space.

So on one hand Psystar asserts that the documents sought by Apple don’t exist, and one paragraph later, it argues that many of the documents requested by Apple might have very well been lost in a good ole’ fashioned move.

But why wouldn’t Psystar have any of the above-mentioned financial records on hand?  Well, Psystar blames its lack of financial records on the fact that it’s a small start-up company with less than 20 employees.  Oh, of course.  How ridiculous to expect a small company to keep financial records.

But what would a Psystar document be without a blatant contradictipn.  A few paragraphs in, Psystar writes that some of the paper documents sought by Apple don’t exist because Psystar keeps the majority of its records in electronic form.  And since Psystar is such a small company, it doesn’t have the time or resources to convert electronic records into hard copies.

Sounds fair enough, but didn’t we just read that Psystar lost quite a few documents in a move?  And now, apparently, Psystar is all about keeping things electronic?  Make up your mind Psystar, would ya?  First it claims that certain documents never existed, then it claims that if they did, they were probably lost in a move.  And then it completes the hat trick by asserting that it doesn’t even deal with hard copy documents in the first place.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that something shady is going on here.

Then, in a non-intentional attempt at humor, Psystar writes that the only purpose of Apple’s filing was to satiate the appetite of “a blogosphere otherwise rabid for new details on this litigation or to incur unnecessary expense on behalf of Psystar.”  Wow, who clued Psystar in on Apple’s legal strategy?  I guess legal victory via blogging is the legal strategy of choice these days.  Maybe next time Psystar will mention EdibleApple by name in one of its filings?? We can only hope.

All in all, there’s something really off about Psystar.

A company that keeps no financial records at all?  Are you kidding me?  And it’s not like Psystar so heavily involved in some cutting-edge technology that they can’t possibly devote any time or resources towards record keeping.  For crying out loud, all they do is buy copies of OS X and load them onto PC hardware.  I could probably create an exact clone of Psystar’s cloning business in less than 2 weeks, if even.

Tomorrow afternoon, Apple, Psytar, and Judge Alsup are all scheduled to meet in an attempt to resolve this discovery dispute.  My guess is that the Judge will side with Apple, but at the same time, how can you force Psystar to produce documents that it claims don’t exist?  Depending on how Judge Alsup rules, tomorrow could very well be a determining factor in how the rest of the case plays out.

You can check out a copy of Psystar’s response over here, courtesy of WorldOfApple.

Related: What Psystar might be trying to hide from Apple