Company claims to sell Mac clone for $399

[Tulkas]

Found this little article interesting. For all you people who may want a mac but can't afford it, this company offers a solution, even if it is illegal. LinkY

Quote:

Personal technology enthusiasts yearning for the Mac Experience without the Apple Tax—that huge markup that Mac users pay for off-the-shelf PC hardware with OS X—your days of gnashing teeth may be over. Psystar, a plucky little company from Miami, Florida is, for the moment, selling OpenMac, a Mac clone with Leopard pre-installed for $554. You also get:

2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
250 GB Hard Drive (7200 RPM)
2 GB DDR2 667 RAM
Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
DVD+/-R Optical Drive
4 USB ports

For another $110, you can get an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, and for another $50, you can get FireWire too. Even without that, this price seems a little high compared to other OEM PCs sold by mom and pop. I guess we could call the overhead the Apple Legal Defense Fund Tax, because the EULA (PDF) for Leopard makes the legality of this computer seem dubious.

You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.

[Craig]

Apple should let people install OSX on PC's...they should not support it officially, as they don't with bootcamp, but given how they are being compatible to a degree with XP, it would only make sense. maybe one day soon we'll see such a thing...or hell, maybe someone will just hack it effectively to run in such a capacity. OSX is just awesome, I'd love to use it in a dual boot on my PC tower.

[Pale.Rider]

Years ago (mid 1990s) I was a systems administrator on an Apple network. We had close to 25 servers and about 200 desktops. Besides the fact that it was beyond horrible and I will never work with Apple products again there were also the Apple clones of the day. We had about 25-30 Mac clones. They were utter junk, even more so than the actual Macs. We were averaging one failure a day with the clones. At one point we only had 5 of them working.

Never again.

[Tulkas]

yeah, well apple went after those clones and killed them apparently.

Also, Apple hasn't gone after anyone with the OS86 hackintoshes (able to load OS X on a PC). I agree with Craig though, they should open up the awesomeness to the rest of the world. If anything it's a good business move, especially to compete directly with Microsoft and Linux. Only problem is that apple, like everything else, makes you buy everything apple.

[Unbroken]

mac = owned

[FuzzyLogik]

crap-in-tosh clones... same old crap but missing a few more genes?


anyways... I find it interesting that it almost always seems to be that those that get to support Mac's tend to not like them very much.

[Craig]

this 'clone' wont last long...they will probably have it shut down before the end of the day. legally, they have that right IF this thing claims to run OSX.

There's a great article in Wired this month about how Apple is doing everything the wrong way as far as Silicon Valley is concerned (secrecy, closed-source, single leadership) yet is still having more success than any of their brethren...and probably because of these tactics.

There are many points and counter-points to Apple right now...probably why it's such a hot topic no matter what tech circle you're in.

[FuzzyLogik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig

this 'clone' wont last long...they will probably have it shut down before the end of the day. legally, they have that right IF this thing claims to run OSX.

There's a great article in Wired this month about how Apple is doing everything the wrong way as far as Silicon Valley is concerned (secrecy, closed-source, single leadership) yet is still having more success than any of their brethren...and probably because of these tactics.

There are many points and counter-points to Apple right now...probably why it's such a hot topic no matter what tech circle you're in.

[DominiKing]

I'd love to run OSX on my PC, it'll end up saving dough that you'd have to spend on an Apple if you wanted it. My coworker just bought a MacBook Pro and spent about 3500 bucks with everything including bootcamp. They're waaaay too exclusive for my pockets.

[Dopefish]

Closed source? Are you kidding me? Apple is the most open-source commercial operating system there is. You can log into their website and download the source for just about everything from the kernel to the services to the web browser.


Anyway, ever since the release of 10.3 for x86, you've always been able to build a PC just for OS X. Just buy the supported hardware yourself and throw it together. You can run better CPUs and video cards. You just have to make sure the NIC, Audio, and a few other things are compatible. You can basically build a computer that can run OS X perfectly for super cheap (compared to Apple).



However, every one of you seems to be missing what Apple is. Apple is a hardware company. That has always been their target. This is why they have the iPod and iPhone. This is why they have all their various Apple branded hardware. This is what they do. It would be completely against themselves to open up their operating system to other companies. This would kill their hardware sales (which, again, is what Apple is all about). This also explains why their operating system and software are so cheap compared to their hardware.

Hopefully this clears up some stuff.