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Beige Box Apple Clone?
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."
He's using spare parts manufactured by Apple and sold to repair shops. Why do I have a funny feeling that there's language in the repair parts purchase agreement that prohibits them from being used in just this fashion? IANAL, and IANAACT, but that would be the obvious way to prevent this.
Will the price of spare parts remain the same if they are used (eventually in large quantities) for building iBoxes?
The free market has some laws.
Bye!
apple legal is going to go after him for creating brand confusion and misleading the consumer into thinking the "ibox" is an apple product.
I wish him luck, but I bet he's going to get squashed by apple legal.
John Fraser, if you read this, I would sure as heck not call this thing the i-box! Let everybody else call it that, but not you.
Apple will jump hard on you for that. It's going to be very difficult to convince a judge that you're not trying to fit this in with the i-mac and the i-book. In fact, I'd say it will be impossible.
The only way to win this lawsuit is to have deeper legal pockets than Apple. Don't try.
Name it something else like: TINAA. It stands for This Is Not An Apple. It sounds good to me, though I haven't researched the IP issues. A quick Google only turned up Finish and apparently one proper name.
Good luck!
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Apple's profit margins for hardware might be a bit higher than usual precisely because there AREN'T any Mac cloners out in force. If you want to use Mac OS X, you need to deal with Apple.
In addition, there are probably more Apple loyalists than there are loyalists to any particular PC brand, given how commoditized and cutthroat the PC platform is (well, for desktops anyway).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I'm not entirely sure about this. Apple releases a $100+ OS upgrade which most Mac users buy every 2 years or so. The hardware upgrade cycle for a Mac is 4-6 years (twice as long as for a Pc, don't ask me why), so software sales just from the OS are a big chunk of Apple's income, add in other Mac apps, and the percentage goes up.
Another key source of income for Apple is their AppleCare package, which gives minimum-hastle repairs / replacements to people who break thier Macs. This would not be availible to iBox users, so would help to differentiate the Apple brand.
If this guy can sell to the 'I want a Mac, but can't afford one' crowd, but not poach many of Apple's potential customers, then this will provide Apple with a small amount of extra income from OS and component sales, and a potentailly large market share increase, which will benefit Apple hugely.
I know people still using 604 and early G3 based Macs, who can't afford to upgrade to a new Mac. Do you think Apple would rather that they were using a Windows box, or a non-Apple built Mac?
If Apple can still supply inovative machines with a higher build quality, then there will be a place for them, and if they control the OS, they control the platform (How relevant is IBM, how relevant is MS?). Apple will have to work hard to offer something that this guy doesn't, but I suspect that they could.
Of course they'll probably sue him out of existence, but hey, I can hope.
For myself, I can say that if these boxen were availible today, then I would be a Mac user. Since they are not, I am still a PC user. If I were a Mac user, then my next box, or possibly the one after that would be a genuine Apple box because, let's face it, they're so much more cool than the iPizza.
Which reminds me, my pizza dough has probably finished rising now, so I shall stop rambling and go and turn it into food. Mmmm, pizza....
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Same thing could have been said about Intel's chips in 1997-98 when the PowerPC chip was way further ahead in MHz and raw speed.
The industry fluctuates. Just because one company leads doesn't mean they will forever. Quit being so short sighted.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
I like his idea; if I got a Euro for every person who told me that they would like to have a Mac but couldn't afford it, I'd be able to buy a Apple branded G4.
There is also a huge crowd of very knowledgable Mac owners who have to satisfy themselves with older systems or iMacs because they can not afford to buy the luscious Apple Pro systems while they would love to tinker as much as their PC buddies can with their systems of 500-600 Euros. Some of those I know switched to PC hardware because they got fed up with Apple's stance of exploiting their customer's loyalty and keeping prices high.
There is a huge demand for low cost Apple-compatible hardware which can be expanded easily.
Apple could play this very smart by providing hardware to him and since it will be Apple hardware MacOS X will not have too many hiccups running on it.
Apple could even explicitly include a paragraph in their OS X EULA in which they state that they do not garantuee, support or claim OS X to be fit for any non-Apple branded hardware.
Their hardware sales would go up, their OS X sales would go up and -most importantly- the Apple Clones would help Apple to conquer market and credibility with MicroStuffed IT Managers.
While Apple makes good hardware in a superior design with unequated software integration, they have to dump their 'People will buy it if they see the intrinsic superiority of our systems'. People will drool, will moan and will google for an MacOS X theme for Windows.
I'd call it aBox though since the concept is lumping hardware PC style in a box. The 'a' could stand for alternative.
Using the 'i'-nomenclature for hardware would be the same as wearing a 'iGotSuedbyApple' tag