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Beige Box Apple Clone?

Posted by michael on from the lawsuit-already-on-the-way dept.

steve.m writes "Finally it looks like I'll be able to get a cheap box to run MacOSX on, but not from Apple! John Fraser is (sort of) getting into the clone business 5 years after Apple shut down their 3 year long 'experiment' in licensing the hardware. Based on off the shelf apple components in a custom pizza box style case with no bolted on display, a barebones 'iBox' will be around 300 USD and require a processor, disk and memory (and the OS). Complete systems (again, without the OS) should start at around 650 USD."

7 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What will you run on it? by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Informative
    Had you read the article, he's using Apple motherboards - bought from Apple. You know - "Apple Hardware".

    --
    Evan

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  2. Misleading title by binaryDigit · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is not really a Mac "clone". It's simply using used Mac parts and repackaging them. It's not like the PC market where you can build a NEW and current pc. Hardly a beige box like clone. People have been doing this for years, I have a repackaged Mac SE (it's in a rack mount case) from way back when.

  3. Re:Apple's business model by Millennium · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't believe there is any money to be made from hardware sales. The profit margin is too small.
    Apple's margins on its machines averaged 28% across all lines last quarter. Highest margins in the industry by an absurd degree. They seem to be doing fairly well with that.

  4. shades of MagicSac... by The+Lynxpro · · Score: 3, Informative

    Had this guy owned an Atari ST way-back-when, he'd know the problems of relying upon Apple parts meant for repairs. Many Atari ST owners bought the MagicSac and SpectreGCR Mac emulators which consisted of a cartridge that you bought and plugged in Apple Mac OS Rom chips, and then slid it into the Atari ST's cartridge port. They were great. You could have a far more powerful Macintosh (and the ST was more powerful to begin with) at a savings of more than half the cost of an actual Macintosh. When Atari brought out its laptop (the STacy), with the emulators, it became the first Macintosh laptop. This infuriated Apple, and they threatened to sue any Mac repair shop/dealership that actually sold Mac Roms to people not actually requiring repairs... The better route to a Mac clone is to get IBM and Nvidia to produce an NForce type mobo chipset for the PowerPC 970 under the guise of having another platform to run Linux on with a 64bit chip and no chance of Palladium being placed in the BIOS (since AMD and Intel are both vying for the Microsoft payments). Then someone could come out with a hack for OS X Panther to run on it without shutting down due to not detecting an Apple BIOS or whatever protection scheme they have cooked up... It would be pretty funny; IBM turning the clone strategy on some other company. But then again, this would cater to the PC enthusiast market who do not normally buy Apple anyways, and as long as they actually purchased the OS and didn't pirate it, this would benefit Apple tremendously...

    --
    "Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
  5. Re:clones are bad by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've heard this story before... I don't know how people can actually believe it.

    He is using Apple hardware and sticking it in a different box... How is that going to make it difficult for OSX to find the firewire port and the camera connected to it? You do realize that software doesn't have to know the PHYSICAL LOCATION of the firewire port don't you? :-)

    The hardware will be the same, hence the drivers will be the same, and all the software will work the same. In fact, even if the hardware was different, installing the proper drivers is all that is required to get it to work exactly the same. In other words, you could replace the Superdrive with some other burner, and as long as you have some way of installing the proper drivers for the new burner, it should operate identically to the Superdrive.

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    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  6. Re:Lost sales and/or lower profits for Apple by Krow10 · · Score: 5, Informative
    JabberWocky wrote:
    Had you read the article, he's using Apple motherboards - bought from Apple. You know - "Apple Hardware".
    To which some AC Responded:
    Had you read the article, you'd know he is using motherboards Apple sells for repair and spare part purposes. Manufacturers supply boards like that with much lower than retail markup because they're intended to serve its existing user base. ...
    Technically correct. This has nothing to do with the point that JabberWocky was addressing; namely, this statement by (perhaps some other) AC:
    Apparently nobody is aware that Mac OS X CAN'T BE RUN (legally) on non-Apple hardware?
    See, since this is Apple hardware, running software that has a "you can't run this on non-Apple hardware" clause in it's license does not violate that clause of the license.

    -C
    --
    Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
  7. Re:attack of the clones -- NOT -- by ygbsm · · Score: 3, Informative

    He's not really building clones . . . he's simply repacking Macs . . . if he takes a Biege G3 ZIF motherboard and puts it in a box with no memory, hard drive or processor . . . what's he really doing?

    Clones implies different (compatible) hardware, the original Mac clones were great becuase they actually pushed apple in areas they probably wouldn't have moved too (at least under the leadership at the time).

    This guy just sounds like someone destined to go out of business.