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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...
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."
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.
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
There's nothing wrong with criticizing the good sense of people who fall prey to a scam, but I find it difficult to come up with a non-contrived situation where the poor judgement, ignorance, or even stupidity, of someone who falls prey to fraud or a scam is sufficiently damnable as to justify the crime committed by the fraudster/scammer. How can you have no sympathy for an unjustified crime?
It seems to me either they deserved what happened and deserve no sympathy, or they don't deserve what happened and thus deserve at least some sympathy.
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.
...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.
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