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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."
My first power mac was a umax 600 - its great to see someone picking up the 'mac clone' business again. maybe it will help apple's overall marketshare... and w/ marketshare comes more users, w/ more users comes more software, w/ all of that comes reduced prices & improved performance, etc etc. All good stuff.
hopefully steve jobs won't try to shut him down out of fear that this will siphon sales away from 'proper' macs...
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.
I can already see Mike Tyson in the Switch ad:
"I was looking at this lolita sight and all of a sudden beep... beep... beep. I was like, bummer. It was a good sight.
I'm Mike Tyson and iBox."
In other news the iBox company mysteriously dissapeared after being sued in over 300 different lawsuits by an entity described as "a powerful fruit-based technology company" ...film at 11
"I think he would be wise to talk to a patent attorney before he does anything else,"
Apple isn't exactly known for their kindness to "clone" makers..
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!
"But I want to get Apple's full support. I want to make sure I'm on the up and up. I'm an Apple supporter. It's not something I want to clash with them about. I want to make sure what I'm doing is legal."
How is creating a low cost box that will cut into Apple's hardware sales (where they make the MAJORITY of their revenue) "supporting" Apple?
Sure sounds like "clashing" to me.
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.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
... a group of lawyers in Cupertino, CA. have gathered together and are finializing their cease and desist letter.
I guess in a couple of days we'll be reading about how this guy is no longer making these.
Good-Luck John Fraser, you're going to need it!
This kid has about a zero chance of succeeding. I'm not even sure why he deserves this much press coverage. It sounds like a story from The Onion.com.
Local Boy Discusses Cool Idea with Friends
Local boy has great idea to make his own macs. "Sure, it's been tried before but failed miserably due to Apple's licensing restrictions, but it sure would be cool to try," he says. "Just think of all the press coverage I'd get! It's guaranteed to make the frontpage at Slashdot. Maybe I'll even get some venture capitalists to invest mass amounts of money that I'll launder to a swiss bank account before succumbing to legal pressure and declaring bankrupcy. I can't go wrong!"
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.
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.
Apple's ROMs have always been the key reason that their machine hasn't been cloned.
I've always wondered why they don't use the same technique that the original BIOS cloners used to make a working IBM clone BIOS that was 100% legal.
I don't remember the specifics on the technique, but it involved two completely seperate groups of engineers within the same company who had strictly limited contact with eachother governing how one group reverse-engineered the BIOS, and how the other group created a new BIOS based solely on descriptions of how it operated, without having any specific copyright information that the first group had access to.
I remember being somewhat fascinated when I originally heard about it. Of course now, it's probably illegal due to the DMCA (which probably would've killed the PC revolution had it been on the books 20 years ago).
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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.
...new Apple computers are way too fast to run MacOSX. I'd much rather have an older slower one.
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*
Clones will kill that ability. And, make no mistake, it IS that ability that is keeping Apple in business after all these years. Those who don't understand this don't understand Apple's business.
Aha, but clones will also introduce the possibility of some of us running Linux on a PowerPC affordably. I don't want to pay Apple's prices, but I'd like to run a PPC. So, this dude would get my money, and Apple would get their cut, and on top of it all, I wouldn't even be running OS X! Imagine that! Now, as long as Apple doesn't force the vendors of this stuff to sell OS X preinstalled and nothing else, it'll be a great thing. Apple will actually be able to get a foothold in the LInux market without having to actually make Linux themselves. :)
Like what I said? You might like my music
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.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
On December 19, 2002, Tech TV's The Screen Savers aired an episode in which Kevin Rose built a G4 in an ATX case. Most of the parts came from Mac Resq and others. It's an interesting article for anyone who wishes to tackle the project by themselves.
The segment was inspired by an aricle on MacOpz Web Site. I urge all to check it out.
Though this might end up costing a little more, there are benefits: You get to choose your own case (which must be slightly modified), and get the pleasure of building a computer that normally isn't built by anyone except Apple and the pizza box guy.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
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)
-C
Corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
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.
It wasn't done with Apple because it would cost too much: Apple's BIOS was much larger than IBM's was. It contained basic code for keyboard, mouse, and windowing systems (including code to draw basic windows and icons, which were copyrighted). An original Mac with no disk could still boot to a graphical error mesage and working cursor, and there was cost/speed savings for Apple as well.
Newer Macs don't have as extensive a BIOS (and I'm not sure what is in it), but Apple now protects itself in other ways.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
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