Submitted by Two days ago, the news that a company called Psystar was offering a Mac clone made quite some waves across the net. They were offering their Open Computer, a standard x86 machine, which they could pre-load with Mac OS X Leopard.“We’re not breaking any laws,”, they insisted. ComputerWorld and The Guardian did some digging around, and found some discrepancies.The Guardian noted a whole boatload of shady matters surrounding Psystar. First, they called the Miami Chamber of Commerces, but they had never heard of a company called Psystar. In addition, even though the company’s website was registered in 2000, Google and Live.com searches find nothing about the company dating from before this week.
That’s not all though. Calling the company either gives you an error, or you get someone on the line who keeps referring your questions to the press email address of the company. Sending an email to the company leaves you with no reply. The weirdest thing is yet to come, though.
The company changed address. From one place in Miami, a residential area, to another, more ‘business-y‘. The Guardian has the screenshots to prove it, too.
ComputerWorld picked up where The Guardian left off, by contacting the second address. This address is home to three business, one of which is CottonImages.com, Inc. They say they have never heard of Psystar. “I don’t know how they got this address,” said a spokesman.
While you really shouldn’t jump to conclusions, the findings by The Guardian and ComputerWorld are unnerving at best. Ars says Psystar promised them an Open Computer for review, so I would wait a few weeks before placing your orders. In the meantime, Steve Wozniak says he likes the prices, so he may get one.
Will be interesting to see how this one truns out…
Since it’s just a beige box PC with an osx86 DVD. Big deal, sort of not news worthy, althought bad practise from them.
Since it’s just a beige box PC with an osx86 DVD.
Are you sure? The article that I read implied that they were using a straight up Leopard installation. They had actually fooled the Apple installer into thinking it was a genuine Mac by installing a custom Bios/EFI on the system.
Nothing new there. They were using the same trick that every hackintosh uses. The issue is that they are actually stupid enough to try to sell it. I don’t see what the big deal is. Its not like OSX has anything software wise that you really need. the only software of any real value on the Mac are the Pro ones and if you can afford those you can afford a Mac and are most likely to already own one. I have an MBP and I have Logic, other than that there is no other reason than “because its a mac” that I see to even get one of these. You have strict hardware limits, so that defeats the purpose of expandability, you may not be to use future versions of the OS. The only people i can see benefiting from this are the ubergeeks who just want to shove it to the man because they can’t do so in real life lest they get their asses kicked.
The only thing of note here in this whole Psystar debacle is the debate about the EULA, other than that I’m really not interested in a tocheaptobuyonesoIcrackedoneintosh.
Edited 2008-04-16 22:14 UTC
Why is it so stupid? As long as they are legitimate, I think it’s quite clever. Just because avid reader of osx86 forums is able to hack together a system using torrents and carefully selected parts doesn’t mean that everybody else can. Maybe some people just want to try OSX without paying $1200 (for an iMac) or buying a Mac Mini. You can call me cheap, but the price of hardware is by far the biggest reason that I’ve stayed away from Apple desktops.
Honestly, the owners of this company might be people with nothing to lose, and whether they succeed or fail, this will put them on the map. Being renowned (even as a failure) is invaluable.
That’s what Apple stores are for…
No, no just kidding… I think this is pretty funny… To save a couple of extra dollars you’re willing to pay for a built system on which nothing is guaranteed to work.
Vunderful…
Since your time is not so valuable, it seems like building your own box would be even a cheaper entry into the Mac OS X “””experience””” (triple quote for emphasis), and when things don’t work right, you can complain about how “””broken””” the Mac OS really is…
Sounds like a win for everybody.
Yes, but if it doesn’t work with OSX in the long run, you can always just install Windows or Linux on it.
I guess the point is… You’re spending good money to “experience” Mac OS X on a product that is _BOUND_ to break and cause you frustration… Not exactly a fair assessment of the OS or Apple.
Again, if money is _THAT_ much of an issue why set yourself up for failure? Whether or not you can install *nix or Windows on it doesn’t matter.
If you’re that “curious” and that “tight” with your money, just build your own hackintosh and save even more money.
Buying a product that isn’t guaranteed to work, and has a high probability of being killed off with a simple firmware update seems mind numbingly stupid to me.
You’re mentioning a valid point here. Let’s just assume the “Clone-Macs” are going to be sold, people buy it, and then they encounter problems, maybe during an update that fails and renders the system unusable, or while running a program that constantly crashed. What would be the content of the complain you’re going to hear? “I just bought this Apple thing, and Mac OS X is complete bullshit! It crashes all the time and nothing no work!” So this may lead into bad publicity for Apple. They are usually famous for the “computing experience” they sell (hardware + software), but if a similar product occurs that is – for the average customer – too difficult to distinguish from their own product, they will be blamed for things that fail, no matter if these problems don’t occur on their own Mac systems.
I still hope that’s not going to happen. Please get me right: In principle, I welcome the idea of a “low cost Mac alternative”, but to be honest… I’d rather buy a “real” Apple system if it’s up to real work; but for entertainment and exploring the Mac OS X world, they may be good starter’s alternatives. – Just assumptions, nota bene.
So Apple would be apples to apples with Microsoft. Anyways, I think the ‘computing experience’ thing is vapor or some kind of jedi mind trick. Of 3 Apple laptops I’ve owned, 2 have died right after the warranty expired from mobo failure. I’m sure Psystar’s experiment will fail under pressure from Apple or lawsuits, but I do wish for OSX built for generic hardware. That would help solve MS’s monopoly and Apple’s ‘bundling’ issues that seem less than competitive.
Is OS X really so fragile and poorly-designed that it’s incapable of running on any hardware that isn’t explicitly Apple-“blessed”?
If that’s true (and not just a lazy excuse favoured by Mac fans), then that sounds pretty “”””broken”””” to me.
Last time I checked, Apple works with vendors and provides the drivers for graphics cards, wireless, NICs etc… Should you go with hardware that is unsupported… Have Fun. Should Apple decide to brick your computer with a software update… Have fun. It won’t be Apple’s fault if it doesn’t just work, but I’m sure y’all will try to make it out to be.
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.2/Desktops
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.2/Portables
Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but Mac OS is designed to run on Apple hardware. It’s not going to include drivers to every bit of hardware out there… And trying to run an incomplete system is not giving the OS or Apple a fair shake.
Your argument has ZERO merit, but I’m sure it made you feel better.
…and? Would any thinking, rational person expect differently?
Even on OSAlert, I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever read a post by someone suggesting that Apple should be taken to task for not supporting hardware that they don’t use. None but the most asinine would assume that any OS would run on unsupported hardware.
The argument is also a complete red herring – because Apple doesn’t just prevent (or “protect,” as you’d characterize it) users from running OS X on unsupported hardware. They go beyond that and prevent users from running OS X on the exact same ardware that Apple uses themselves, if it lacks Apple’s logo. There’s no technical justification for that whatsoever – it’s purely a deliberate limitation imposed by Apple, done entirely out of financial self-interest on their part.
BeOS had/has absolutely no problem running on generic hardware, as long as drivers are present. It would be truly pathetic if Apple couldn’t achieve at least as much, considering that they have exponentially greater amounts of financial and developer resources than Be ever did.
Actually, if they were to deliberately *brick* machines and it was provable, then yes – it *would* be their fault and they would likely be liable for damages.
Speaking of asinine assumptions, how did you come up with that gem?
And “y’all”…?
…which is utterly without relevance, when you consider that “Apple hardware” is little more than Intel and Asus hardware that happens to have been Apple-branded/blessed.
There are no special/magical qualities conveyed by the Apple branding. Any clown can go buy the exact same components from any computer retailer – and if it weren’t for the deliberate steps taken by Apple to lock OS X to Apple-branded hardware, then off-the-shelf Asus/Intel gear would run OS X just as well as Asus/Intel gear that happens to carry the Apple logo.
You haven’t even supported your own argument yet, chum. Perhaps you should try that *before* you start tossing out unqualified critiques of arguments made by anyone else.
Nobody has suggested that Apple’s hardware is magical… That would be ridiculous… Ever since the Blue&White G3 tower, their hardware has been commodity PC hardware except for the motherboard and PPC processor.
They have locked their OS in with EFI and TPM. Again, nobody has suggested otherwise.
To get their OS to run on non-Apple hardware (maybe you should admonish the OSx86 guys, as they refer to it as Apple hardware too) you have to emulate EFI and bypass TPM.
What other interest would they have? Until they transition from being a hardware company to a software company, their interest in selling Apple boxes isn’t going to change. Are you trying to suggest that they should be allowing other businesses to compete against them with their own product? That’s asinine.
Drivel. BeOS had a different agenda than Apple. Darwin has no problem running on generic hardware as long as drivers are present. What is your point?
If Apple writes an update that breaks the EFI and TPM hacks suddenly they’re liable? You seem to be confused… Is or is not Apple responsible for hardware “”””they do not support””””?
Without relevance? Why do you qualify your BeOS statement with ” as long as drivers are present?” I would say it has plenty of relevance… What’s the point in installing the OS on the computer if say neither the NIC or wireless card work?
So you have a company like Psystar selling turn key white boxes “running” Mac OS X. The hardware is under warranty with them for 1 year, but what happens if you have a problem with the OS? What happens when you need to patch? Or you want to upgrade your video card? From Psystar’s own FAQ, they warn you against updating the computer! They even tell you that you have no options on which hardware to choose. You won’t get any help from Apple because it’s not a Mac. So suddenly the consumer is in the lurch and Apple will ultimately take the blame because it’s their OS that has left a bad taste in the consumer’s mouth.
My argument hasn’t changed. You have no argument, just bile. Perhaps you should deal with that first.
the last paragraph of your post is exactly what I think is wrong with our society today. People would rather be notorious than be known for doing something of worth of innovative or different. Paris Hilton is known is she worth more than someone who has actually done something of worth with their life. Rant over.
Anyway. I argue that you are not getting the same Apple experience if you are not using Apple hardware. Its just the way I see things. Why? Because I’ve known Apple nearly all of my life. My first experience with computers were Apple computers. What apple sells is the experience of using an apple computer. What type of experience are you going to have when you have an issue with Psystar hardware? Anyway my point is that I have a general distaste for what they are doing it just seesm underhanded on their part.
It’s the same but faster hardware then in a mac,
so the experience will be the same but faster.
Only problem is that steve’s next update will require some work.
There is nothing special about apple hardware, bog standard and sometimes slower pc hardware because they value form over function, the macmini only takes laptopdrives and they are slower and smaller than a decent 3,5″ version.
Some people would love to get away from Apple hardware, and more specifically, Apple Care and support. Oh, and they’d love to be able to turn the thing off properly when problems occur.
I don’t so much feel as if I’m operating a Mac, as I am there sharing the Mac experience.
You do what other people do. You have this thing called an OEM you go to, or you buy some hardware and do it yourself cheaper and faster. It’s an interesting concept.
Yes but Psystar already said that they won’t help you if OSX craps out on you. What I meant to say is what experience are you going to have if OSX doesn’t support your hardware? OSX hardware support is very minimal compared to Vista, and damn near bare compared to Linux.
You’re complaining about a piddle $1200? geeze, if I was over there, I’d buy you the damn thing; $1200 is chump change. If you can’t afford it, maybe it speaks highly of stupid decisions you made in your life which results in the lack of cash flow today.
Sorry to sound old-school, but this laptop set be back NZ$2300 incl gst, and I certainly don’t consider myself rich; considering that the first computer I purchased for myself 8 years ago set me back NZ$3500, this machine is a bargain.
Edited 2008-04-17 04:56 UTC
That’s a lot of arrogance for one post.
I live in one of the richest countries in the world, but 1200 USD is still a heck of a lot of money. That’s nine months’ worth of full-coverage health insurance. More than three months’ worth of rent for my apartment. Half a year’s worth of university.
Maybe you’re rolling in riches, but that doesn’t go for everyone. Insulting someone for finding 1200USD a lot of money is… Well, only someone still living with his parents, with everything cared and privided for, would say such a thing. And if you don’t, then you’re just an idiot (offence definitely intended).
Holy shit – are you serious? $1200 barely covers tuition for a single class here in the US (at least at schools I’ve attended recently). It covers about a quarter or less of most technical “bootcamp” style training, and perhaps half of an online based “self paced” version of the same material. No wonder people “study abroad.”
With all due respect, not everyone has been working at a job that pays well for long enough, and has enough cash coming in when compared to expenses they need to account for to just drop $1200 to get a new machine. There’s not enough information available about the poster you’re replying to, to really understand their current financial situation, and whether or not they’d reasonably be expected to have that be a “casual” amount of cash to drop on something, although one could argue that an iMac is an investment. But, if you don’t really need all the hardware that comes standard on the iMac, or the form factor (perhaps you have space constraints as to what you can get and where to put it: the iMac actually works well for that, really, and is quiet) then you also would have a harder time justifying paying the larger amount of money. Not all people in all countries pay the same or relative amounts for the same thing: some countries have much higher tax rates than others, leaving very little cash in the pockets of ordinary citizens, although more things are taken care of for a lower out-of-pocket-if-you-don’t-count-taxes price. The US is a great example of where in most cases, compared to quite a few EU countries, the overall federal/state taxes are fairly low, but health insurance, school and rent can vary widely and be very expensive, as very little public college education is free or low-cost (you need to be in certain states and qualify for the state-paid or state-subsidized education) and rent can vary wildly, and proper health insurance? Oh my, that’s a can and a half of worms for expense! Now, if you also happen to have a family to take care of, and you have medical/health issues, that all adds up quite quickly. Just maybe, the budget that’s available says that the time spent futzing around with something that’s somewhat of a crap shoot is a better bargain, all depending on the overall resources, computer experience, computer needs of the person. If you can afford the cash, sure, it’s far more cost-effective if you put a high enough value on your time to spend the $1200 and get a known-good working system that Apple provides, but if you’re only making minimum wage (I think it’s currently around $6.85 in the US right now, not sure: Washington state has a higher one, due to cost of living differences, and I’ve not been minimum wage for years) and you don’t have the energy/time to work anymore hours, but you can put some hours into the hobby/project of a Hackintosh that fulfills your needs, well, that may actually be a better decision.
Spoken like a typical Mac idiot on one of those forums few computer users read, let along sign up to.
It’s called economics. When you have lots of companies producing similar, compatible, products the price comes down and, lo and behold, more people will buy the cheaper products. That’s why Apple switched to Intel! The tide will come in and out, no matter what certain peoples’ protestations are. The lack of that kind of environment for Mac clones means that Mac users are still very much a small and insignificant, but very noisy, slice of the pie on both servers and desktops.
But then 20% or so of all “PCs” are macs? Some people say.
While I certainly would personally not waste my money on this junk, allow me to say this. $1200 is nothing to you? Well how about I give you my P.O. Box and you either send me a check ASAP, or otherwise apologize for such a f**king idiotic post.
FYI, this is what $1200 can get you in the US:
5 Day all inclusive Cancun in May
Nice weekend in Vegas
42″ HP LCD TV
4 High Performance 17″ Goodyear tires
Month’s mortage payment
1/3 Health Insurance for the year
17″ HP Laptop
3 months groceries
Replacement exhaust system for my car
Round trip 1st class to Fort Myers/Tampa
Year electricity bill
Starting to get the picture now, or do I need to spell it out any clearer?
You’re complaining about a piddle $1200? geeze, if I was over there, I’d buy you the damn thing; $1200 is chump change.
I’d love to see you actually stay true to word. You don’t even need to be there, all you need is to either order the thing online for him, or just provide the $1200 via PayPal. Let’s just see if you do what you say you’d do, shall we? You SHOULD be easily able to afford it, it’s chump change after all..
Hey kaiwai – why don’t you prove you’re not all talk and exchange emails addresses, and go ahead and order it for him? You’re such a hot shot, then go ahead and do it. Otherwise, why don’t you stop proving to everyone what an ignorant ass you are?
The problem being that, for the moment, they aren’t even on Miami’s map.
The EFI-part are done by another guy called netkas and you can install that on your own harddrive yourself. They haven’t done shit except stealing other peoples work and trying to get paid for it. It’s not exactly “unmodified”, but yes, it can run vanilla kernels which couldn’t be done before. But as I said it’s done by netkas and not by this company.
Installers and updates necessarily perform hardware sanity checks, rather than TPI or decrypting against anything in hardware.
We know this because major releases are routinely cracked and released as torrents, and those installations cannot be upgraded using Software Update.
Until The Switch, XPostFacto was notable for overriding OS X’s installer’s hardware sanity checks by slipstreaming new code into the installer; it’s reasonable to guess that whoever’s cracking the installer DVDs is doing similar work and releasing remasters designed to work with BIOS-based beige boxes.
If the Open really exists, in order for it to be compatible with legacy BIOS-based OSes it needs to have a BIOS compatibility module already installed in EFI — or have instructions for slipstreaming your own OS X install DVD to run on a BIOS-based system.
A more disturbing issue is EFI’s ability to police itself–if the Open is an EFI box, it could potentially be bricked by a Software Upgrade designed to detect clones.
Edited 2008-04-16 22:09 UTC
Had to laugh to relieve the stress…
Ars Link:
“Woz on Psystar OpenPro: “I like the price,so I may get one” (with a toothy grin)
Isn’t he smart enough to build his own?
I hear Logic being mentioned as a reason to have a Mac, funny that cause I initially purchased Logic 5 for Windows 1 week before the Mac only/takeover announcement. I took it back to the store straight away and demanded an exchange for Cubase SX.
Now that I have run the audio gauntlet, from Logic to Cubase SX to Traction I have ended up on Reaper, a cross platform audio app that blows them out of the water and at a significantly cheaper price. Runs on OS-X too as well as Windows and Linux (via WINE which is supported).
Have a look and enjoy a refreshing take on audio software from a developer who gives a toss.
I’ve used Reaper and no it does not blow Logic out of the water the value for money that you get out of just Logic express trumps Reaper ten fold. The Pro version takes it even further. Logic has the most value for money of any DAW I know. You are not dongled (Thanks Apple! Well, unless you count a Mac as a dongle) like you would be with other daws out there (I’m looking at you ProTools) and you get more effects, high quality instruments, Loops on a default install than any other daw on the market. Express by itself is value for money, it has all the features of its bug brother but with a more focused approach, a few missing effects and instruments and less support for commercial grade hardware. Midi is no longer crippled like in previous versions for express.
Anyway, my point is that reaper doesn’t compare on any level. I’ve used a lot of daws Including all the cubases) and the only one that I don’t feel cheated on is Logic. The only other daw I own at the moment is Live, but Logic is my primary daw of choice.
Reaper is nice because you can see that down the line they might have something, but they will still be far behind Logic, Cubase, and Sonar. Right now Reaper is just a toy, it needs to mature quite a bit before I even put it on my mac.
Edited 2008-04-17 12:49 UTC
Is anybody surprised that there’s something shady going on? LOL. This reminds me of the big iPhone scammer from Vancouver who ran away with tens(hundreds?) of thousands of dollars and never delivered a single iPhone to Canadian customers, after promising cheap unlocked fully functional iPhones…
No matter how smart we think we are, there’s always a scam juicy enough to fall into LOL
Patrix
I do hope they are legit, as I was very interested in getting me one of those $400 computers to put OS X on it.
http://netkas.org/?p=62
It appears that Psystar is making friends everywhere…
What I think is that Psystar is doing exactly what one poster suggested. they are trying to gain notoriety and are just trying to gain publicity. This is the equivalent of flashing you goodies when getting out of your car.
Hope they do fight and win. Hope they do have a standard system that can boot MacOS.
I’d hate to think this kind of crooked scheme could continue. Is A$$le saying I can’t use their OS after I purchased it as I please?
Kind of like saying I have to use Brand X gas in a Brand Y car, isn’t it?
Hmm.. No It is not, and here is why, gas is just an energy source. For the comparison to be valid the example had to be: A Dell only runs on 230V/50hz delivered by E-On.
And besides, you do not own A copy of OSX you have a license to use a copy under the terms set by the entity licensing it to you (in this case Apple inc), if you do bot like the terms do not buy or use the product, or start a campaign to have Apple change it.