Psystar Offers $399 "OpenMac" Computer

mytrip writes to tell us that Psystar has announced a new line of Intel-based computers that promise to run an unmodified version of Mac OS X "Leopard". Unfortunately almost immediately after the launch their website went down and as of this story remains unaccessible. "Astute readers may well hear this news and ask themselves if it doesn't sound like a Mac clone, something whose time came -- during Gil Amelio's tenure at Apple -- and went shortly after current CEO Steve Jobs assumed the helm at the company. [...] It definitely defies the EULA for Mac OS X, which specifies that the purchaser of a legal copy of Leopard is entitled to install the operating system on an Apple-branded computer. If you buy the $399 OpenMac, you can check the EULA yourself if you also buy the pre-install option, as the company includes a retail copy of Leopard with your purchase."

Comments

No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[ccguy]

I'm sure it's gonna take Apple seconds to upgrade their OS so that it refuses to work on these things.

..but if they do, public perception of Leopard might go from 'just works' to 'upgrades may be fatal'. So no wonder they may want these units to not ship at all even if technically it would be trivial to render them into regular PCs.

BTW, how hard would it to hack this "EFI V8 emulator" into any PC that uses the same parts?

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[Joe U]

Courts really do frown upon lopsided unsigned pre-purchase contracts.

Basically, it wouldn't be an issue if the agreement was on the box for everyone to see. It probably wouldn't be an issue if Apple made you read and sign the agreement before buying a copy. But go to Best Buy, purchase a copy of osx, open it up, read the agreement, box it back up and then try and return it. Good luck.

Apple really might not like the outcome of a case like this.

EULA's

[dreamchaser]

So are they good and enforcable this week, or evil and unenforceable? Seeing as this pertains to Apple it's probably a coin toss. The fanbois will all chime in with how it's such a good thing that Apple restricts what hardware one can run OS X on, and how this company should be shut down. If this were about some MS EULA there would be a firestorm about how EULA's are bogus anyways and unenforceble.

If I buy OS X I'll damn well run it on any machine I want. In fact, one of my two OS X machines is *not* Appple Branded. That's right, it's a Hackintosh. Sue me, Jobs.

Re:"includes a retail copy of Leopard..."

[goombah99]

If TFA is right, the $399 includes Leopard.

TFA is wrong. they sell it as a $150 install add on, or you can do it yourself for $125.

And, as I keep pointing out whenever I hear this "bundling is great when Apple does it" argument: the whole point is I don't want half of the crap that a mac makes me pay for, anyways.

Well this comes down to philosophy. On most mac's i've owned there's been some feature I did not use. e.g. PC card, or a scsi port or bluetooth. that's true.

But what I have noticed is too things. First, developers can target more fully featured software because they can assume high level features will be installed. For example, who can foreget the old nightmare days if configuring soundcards or interupts on PCs and the difficulty of finding software that worked with your card. Macs all had (somewhat) high end sound cards from very early days and the driver's for them in the OS distro. So developers could assume they existed.

As a result even though I might not actually need some cheerful toon in some piece of software I bought, the developer just threw it in because they could have no fear it would work.

As a result, I actually tend to use the extras mac includes more often simply because software I buy happens for one purpose takes advantage of them.

The other thing I notice is that while I might not have used firewire on the first mac I bought I definitely started using it on later macs. And bought firewire disks. But then I noticed that my new hardware was backwards compatible with my old macs.

nice... this meant my macs had longer service lifetime because I was not going and trying to find comaptiblilty extensions and drivers. the old macs had them.

In the long run, specing at the high end and getting bundles that are quite cheap for what they include, seems to pay off even if you don't use all the features right away.

the only place where ala-carte specing seems to really pay off is on racks of servers or fleets of comuters (for say an office). There dropping something you know you won't need can save a few dollars.