Psystar Begins Selling Mac Clones

News Type: Event — Seeded on Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:17 AM EDT

Article Source: extremetech.com

technology, apple, mac, intel, osx, clone, eula

MacWorld reported yesterday on the launch of the Psystar Open Computer, essentially a port of the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system directly to generic PC hardware. The price? $399, which is hundreds of dollars less than any Apple product save the Mac mini, which is $599. (It appears that at one time the PC was called an "Open Mac".)

And if you were wondering: yes, this is a direct violation of Apple's EULA.

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{"commentId":1697467,"authorDomain":"janeway77"}

Michael the Great

Here's what Apple should do to avoid stuff like this in the future:

First, sell OS X for non-Apple hardware. The way to do this is to sell two versions: one version for Apple hardware that is fully supported by Apple, and one version for non-Apple that is NOT SUPPORTED BY APPLE, but is user supported the way that Linux is.

Second, sell a computer that is in between the Mac Pro and the iMac. How about a Mac Semi-Pro? use your own monitor, user swappable hard drives, and slots for 8GB of ram.

This would make everybody happy, including Apple.

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#1 - Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:36 AM EDT

{"commentId":1697525,"authorDomain":"leveldown"}

leveldown

Why would that make Apple happy? They make money selling hardware, not software. Why dilute their pool of hardware buyers by releasing a product that's easy to pirate and ultimately lower their profitability.

I personally like the idea of Semi-Mac Pro/Mini Mac Tower whatever you want to call it, but if you believe that Apple haven't already crunched the numbers as to how this would affect their profits due to it's effect on sales of other Macs you are sadly mistaken.

Here's what Apple should do to avoid stuff like this in the future:

How about enforce their legal rights with regards to their EULA which I'm sure they will do in this case if necessary?

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#1.1 - Wed Apr 16, 2008 9:07 AM EDT

{"commentId":1698306,"authorDomain":"janeway77"}

Michael the Great

Why would that make Apple happy? They make money selling hardware, not software.

I think it would make Apple happy because after folks experience OS X, they will realize that XP/Vista is clearly not the best game in town. I expect they would migrate toward the full Apple experience as quickly as possible, after they've had a taste of the Apple.

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#1.2 - Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:46 AM EDT

{"commentId":1698481,"authorDomain":"leveldown"}

leveldown

I'm afraid that's not the way it would happen. I'm sure some people would migrate towards the full Apple experience but the majority would just pirate the OS.

Further if Apple did not offer support for a product it sold and it failed to work on a customers set up could they not be sued for selling goods not fit for purpose? The issue of the myriad of PC set ups out there which you so neatly tried to avoid by including this caveat is not nearly as avoidable as you think.

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#1.3 - Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:17 PM EDT

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Psystar Begins Selling Mac Clones

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