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$399 Mac Clone Most Likely a Hoax
timholman writes "According to Gizmodo, an investigation has shown that the $399 OpenMac is almost certainly vaporware, as is Psystar itself. The company's address has actually changed twice this week, according to its web page, and Psystar is no longer accepting credit card transactions. Too bad for those who may have already ordered an OpenMac."
If they've been accepting orders (and credit card numbers) for a product that doesn't exist -- isn't that called fraud?
I know there can be concern about legal implications in making such statements... but surely the way to protect yourself is to make only statements backed up by evidence? Being vague is certainly not a way to sidestep libel laws...
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Did anybody check their ip address to see if they are located at Nigeria?
Some guy probably read up on OSx86 stuff, realized there'd be a market there for creating computers using hardware very similar to Apple's configurations, and then went to work. He clearly didn't think out the legal implications, or plan for such a huge amount of attention so early on, and this is the result.
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I say "Fraud"
Let's call the whole thing off.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How is this a hoax? It's a bloody SCAM!
Res publica non dominetur
Cnet has this article which goes into a little more detail. From what I've gathered it seems they "just moved" to the new building, and got the address wrong the first time (this sort of explains why they put up 3 addresses in 2 days if you buy it). It seems they had to switch payment processing companies from Powerpay to PayPal, because of the rights infringement stuff. But I doubt PayPal's policy is going to be different. Whats next? Cashiers checks to Nigeria?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
As far as paying by credit card goes, you're likely protected by your card company against fraud so you shouldn't be too concerned there.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
Amazed that ANYONE actually signed up for this thing before anyone credible had reported that it was real and worked as expected. This is one of those cases where the early sucker...I mean adopter leads the way with their pocket book and loses everything.
The real interesting question here is how much did they get away with before they were busted?
This story is what, a week old? "Wow here's a story about a company that I have never heard of selling suspiciously cheap Mac compatible computers! I hope I don't melt my credit card taking it out of my wallet so fast!" I've no doubt that probably a lot of people may have gotten taken here, but I'm just having trouble understanding why anyone would be so quick to order something like this that just comes completely out of the blue. I mean at least wait a couple months for Tom's Hardware to review one or something.
Where's the Box
That what it will all boils down to, when people get their computer (7 days from purchase, so should be seeing post about them next week). Or do a hand-on review (I saw a few pages called a review on the OpenPC where they were just reviewing their opinions.
Until there is something more than phone calls and photoshopped corporate website images - a lot of this is just empty speculation.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
... people have bought a true Mac Air ;)
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
"According to Gizmodo...
For a moment, I read that as Gizmondo and thought to myself "Well, if anyone would know about hoaxes..."
If they've been accepting orders (and credit card numbers) for a product that doesn't exist -- isn't that called fraud?
Only if they can't create and deliver it within 30(?) days and don't contact the people who ordered it within that time, notifying them of the delay and refunding the money of those who don't consent to the extension.
Back in the early days of home computing a number of companies started up by selling vaporware, collecting the money, and using it to fund the development. (I don't recall if Apple was one of the companies that started up that way. But Woz and Jobs were pretty hard up for cash back at the start.)
The FTC tightened up after some con men calling themselves "World Memory Systems" took a picture of a few chips sitting on an unstuffed PC board, ran an ad claiming it was a new peripheral board providing four serial and one parallel port for Altair/Imsai home computers (with a name, 4S+P, similar to another popular product, 4P+S), and pulled a major fraud.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
even if they are a real company, it's still rather scammish. that $399 they're saying is for the box. if you want the Mac OS X installed, that's another $155. L-A-M-E. patric
read my comics, please, at http://www.funfactorycomic.com
Dollars to Donuts if there was such a thing you couldn't call it "OpenMac"
They (or you even) can't legally install OSX either can they? Not an Apple guy so dont know terms but i would assume not.
I suppose in theory one could reverse engineer a clone but it is kinda spendy for a doorstop with no OS. Even then there would be no legit uses and you still couldn't sell them since it is clearly intended to infringe.
Here is Psystar's business model:
1. Set up a website that accepts credit card orders.
2. Collect orders and credit card numbers.
3. Charge the cards.
4. Vanish.
Seriously, if you can't recognize that this is a scam, you really should consider getting off the internet, while your credit card and bank account are still in tact.
Psystar = Shyster
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
Tell me it will be of at least the same quality as this fine product?
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
http://www.osx86project.org/
I'll be receiving a P-p-p-powerbook from them any day now.. it has firewire!
Don't click parent links, they're NOT friendly. After enough -1s, does your account get deleted?
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Well I could have saved a bunch of people the grief, but I guess when I submitted this story two days ago I didn't tag it right or something because it never got out of the firehose. Hopefully not to many people got scammed between then and now.
I want my mod points back from the fanboys of apple. Since the story should have been verified before being salaciously posted by editors not being editors, the whole event should be null and void.
Please get a real hobby (or job) instead of posting crap like this. BTW, aren't you sick of your Mom's basement?
--Q
It's obvious who's behind it. The most insightful comment on the earlier story went something like this: If Apple is so hell bent on protecting its IP and enforcing its license terms, then why are they selling off-the-shelf copies to anyone who plunks down the cash?
Psystar. PsyOps. Nothing but Jobs looking to drum up more support for sales and mindshare. Mindshare is probably more important for Apple lest they lose their niche cult status and drop out of sight completely.
that is a cheap PC that runs a pirated version of Mac OSX that can run on Non-Apple branded PCs.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I'd like to thank this troll for reminding me to add a list of shock sites to my adblock filter in safari. I can now browse safer because of your asshattery.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
http://www.osx86project.org/
granted it's not an exact science
Is steve woz behind this? He is the one who wanted slots in the mac form the apple 2 on.
Is it some who is pissed off at the high priced mini with it's laptop parts and apples lack of DESKTOP with DESKTOP parts in the $500-$2000 price range the mac pro starts at $2200.
they changed their address 4 times if I remember rightly, can't remember which news article it was though..
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
Only if you print it. If you just say it, then it is slander. However, I say don't do anything half-way! Go the full monty, and go for libel!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
My guess here is that the $399 is just a PR gimmic. If you actually spec it out on their site, the basic model+Leopard+firewire+shipping is over $650 dollars. Whereas you can get a mac mini for under $600 including the shipping. The difference is the mac mini is small, quiet, lower power, and has wifi, blue tooth, optical dolby audio, and software update will work. (The pystar has a bigger faster hard disk and a 15% faster CPU). Personally I think you'd have to be retarded to think the mac was not a better value for a low-end end user, especially due to the software update,noise and power.
So I think that was just a stunt. The real bargain on the site is the openPro which has a bigger power supply and better case permitting it to hold a high end graphics card and quad processor. A nicely specced unit of the openPro would be $1800 for quad 2.6Ghz and an nvidia 8800Gt card, including shipping, Leopard (firewire built in, and USB jacks on the front). This is actually now compartable to the apple powermac quad, which simmilarly speced runs about $2700, with a 10% faster CPU, blue tooth, wireliess, optical audio, and an amazing case design, and relatively quiet operation.
However to be fair, the apple's sweet spot for powermac pricing is at the 8 processor model. That's "only" $500 more. The psystar is not available in an 8 processor.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Once again the quote "If it's too good to be true, then it probably is" applies here.
$399 Mac? Even for a Windows PC that is some ridiculously low price unless you build it yourself very low price parts.
I didn't check if Psystar has a SSL system and how they authenticated the, if any, the credit card transactions when they where up.
Obviously you're not a golfer.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There are apple fanboys out there who would pay money for that box.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Psystar.biz is available for registration...think of the possibilities...
Hackitoshes DO exist. You CAN build one easily with 400$ worth of components from Newegg. Leopard 10.5.2 CAN be installed with vanilla kernels. None of that is a hoax. I just recently built myself a quadcore mac pro clone for the startling price of $1000. It runs flawlessly because I built it to spec. All this IS possible. What we have here is a business owner who thought it would be a good idea to sell some of these types of systems pre-built. He was ill prepared to make such a risky buiness venture; he was simply not able to meet the demand or handle the media circus it evolved into. Think back to that old commercial in the dot com heyday. An eager team of entrepreneurs excitedly watch as their web store goes live. Nervous as first because nothing is happening, then the orders start coming in slowly and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Orders continue to come in and everyone is high fiving each other, then the speed of the orders coming in grows exponentionally. Suddenly everybody is looking at the screen in absolute horror. This is what I imagine happened to Psystar, only instead of a team of dedicated staff, this is one dude running businesses from home. He stuck his neck way out there for this, and if Apple isnt going to sue, other more capable entrepreneurs should try to sell some of these prebuilt hackintoshes with leo installed before the partys over.
Pre-order.
In addition to one of my previous replies. This is how late this psystar guy is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxWyoA-wIKI [youtube.com] http://www.macgeekblog.com/blog/archive/2006/10/14/jas-10-4-8-combo-sse2-sse3-is-out.html [macgeekblog.com] Just google 'jas os', or 'osx86'
Conjecture is a different matter: eg. saying "If it is vaporware and they are accepting money then they are commiting faud". Those "if"s make a big difference.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
There's also step 4.5: Sell the credit card numbers to a "business associate" so they can tack on more charges.
The bulk of credit card scams are not investigated or prosecuted, which is part of the reason they're so common. Paying private investigators and lawyers costs money, so from a business perspective the credit card companies only go after the larger scams where more than, say, $100,000 has been stolen by a single scammer.
The popularity of this OpenMac scam will hopefully come back to bite them. Granted, they will get a lot more "orders" than they were expecting, but they are also getting a lot more visibility, and presumably a lot more complaints to the Florida Attorney General. I'm hoping that 3 months from now we'll see the Slashdot story "OpenMac Scammers Indited."
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
"It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!"
Would it be legal if someone completely reverse engineered both the machine and the OS and sold it as "Apple" or "Mac" Compatible. Technically, how hard would it be today if Apple's machines become hugely successful & profitable? After all, the HW is Intel based and SW is BSD based.
Pystar was discovered to be the performance art of a Yale art student. She said that she wasn't really going to load it with Mac OS but rather just say she was going to. First she needs to not get pregnant several times and then get pregnant and put some kind of not real blood on the cases.
It's not a Hoax nor a Scam. It's art. And the artist said that if Paypal or the Credit card services takes the site down to say that this is not legitimate she will say that is.
It's all for art.
Good for you... now go over and see the receptionist for your cookie.
Wow. I love how getting an email from 3 anonymous people constitutes an "investigation" now.
:-(
Internet, you have disappointed me.
I've been curious about OS X for a while, and this little debacle served one purpose: it got me off my ass to investigate further.
... well ... I liked it... So with that, on Monday my shiny new Macbook Pro arrives, and I'm actually excited about getting a new computer for the first time in a decade.
Something smelled fishy to me, so I wasn't quite ready to send my credit card info to Psystar (I didn't even get far enough notice they weren't using https!)
Anyway.. Call it illegal or whatever, but I did some research and found myself turning my trusty old Dell laptop into a Hackintosh (a HUGE thank you to the OSx86 community, BTW). While it wasn't 100% perfect, it certainly ran OSX well enough for me to get a taste. And
The only insightful thing I can say at this point, is I sure hope Apple doesn't ever unleash the lawyers on the OSX hackers (not that they could stop 'em, but I digress). I found I'm definitely not alone in a large group of people who found themselves "trying before buying" as it were. While I could just as easily continue using my Hackintosh, I wanted to upgrade my laptop anyway -- and the OSx86 enabled a situation that made it a very easy choice to buy Apple. Were it not for those folks providing an easy way to test drive on hardware I already own, I'd likely have bought another Dell and stayed within my comfort zone.
The above links are to Last Measure. It would be nice if the system would pretend to open the link, as to follow the forwarding.
399 is the base point for a wally world computer
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
At least THAT product was delivered.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Just tried to order onc. This is the response... Error: 2-1-2-P-N--This transaction has been declined. Error: Failure in Processing the Payment (ps_authorize) PS. I was using a real credit card/address/etc.
As far as paying by credit card goes, you're likely protected by your card company against fraud so you shouldn't be too concerned there.
Legally someone using their credit card is liable for $50, but the credit card issuer may cut some slack and swallow all of charge.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Adblock filter?? I put in my favorites.
Those whose orders were accepted will probably receive the configurations they requested complete with retail copies of Mac OS X in the box. But, the various issues currently affecting PsyStar's business and warnings from Apple Legal will probably result in the end user being left to figure out how to get OS X up and running on the system with maybe a sheet of paper explaining whatever process they initially intended to use.
After all, these are simply custom built PCs constructed from parts you can buy anywhere. All PsyStar has to do is provide an assembled system and some evidence that the system is somehow capable of running MacOS X, without having to actually deliver a pre-installed setup ready to run out of the box.
Sure, it'd be a low blow to the customer, but it'd probably be technically enough to keep someone out of prison.
8==8 Bones 8==8
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You can f*ck with Apple and Snobs as much as you want, but leave my Dark Chocolate alone!
Fill In The Blank:
A __________ and his ___________ are soon _________.
...all I'm seeing is a lot of hurf-blurf.
Okay, the company is currently doing some things that look suspicious to a highly jaded crowd, but actually make a lot of sense for someone who's been swamped with genuine interest. So we just wait and see how things settle down.
And we haven't seen or heard ANYTHING from Apple. It's been more than a few days, and Apple is not known for sitting on their laurels when it comes to such things. If this were illegal or fishy, Apple would be all over them like white on rice and crowing from the rooftops about it.
So far, zip from Apple.
Here's an idea? How about we let these folks SETTLE IN for a bit and see how things turn out before we start writing their obituary?
They're using credit cards for transactions, AND they're using PayPal on top of it. It's not like your money will vaporize without a trace, folks? There's a reason Nigerian and other scammers want you to use money orders and Western Union.
[End Of Line]
what is slashdot? I thought talking about nothing, thats cool, but this was LESS than nothing, HelLO.
At first, I was going to say that you misspelled "indicted", but then I realized you are talking about the title for a Slashdot story, so it probably would be "indited".
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
WTF guys, Few things, First, Apple made generic x86 devolper boxes when they were in transition from CPU archs, they were not pretty and artistic. Secondly, the Mac isnt really anything special anymore, its based on generic cheap intel hardware. apple did this because the PPC was becoming to expensive (less of that grand 80% profit) and was not thermally effeciant; thusly rendering the mac platform no better than an ugly windows box. Mac guys, im one of you too, but i was broken into macs by OSX86. mac guys need to know this: your mac is a PC, the only thing that separates apple macs from pcs are EFI, but guess what EFI is coming to the pc market very soon, and who knows OS X might just run natively on standard hardware with out hacking it, and you fan boys will be crying like little emos. also, there is no craftsmanship left in the apple brand, they outsource all of their manufacturing to taiwan, india and any other low bidder. you are not buying the quality box that the comercials have seduced u into believing, its just a hacked up ibm pc clone with EFI, nothing more, nothing less.
[img]http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/9936/signstreetlevelpm1.jpg[/img]