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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...
Did anybody check their ip address to see if they are located at Nigeria?
I say "Fraud"
Let's call the whole thing off.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In other words...
His mom found out.
DUDE You're getting a (knockoff) dell.
"It's all just meme meme around here"
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."
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.
... people have bought a true Mac Air ;)
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
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
It is both a scam and a hoax.
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?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
It is both a scam and a hoax.
So, you're saying it's a scoax then.Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
--Q
>Then explain George W. Bush and his millions
:o)
Easy. They're not his millions. They're yours
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
Yep - abbreviated to SCOX .. as in..
http://www.pinksheets.com/pink/quote/quote.jsp?symbol=SCOXQ#getQuote
AT&ROFLMAO
>3. Charge the cards.
>4. Vanish.
5. Become the target of a fraud investigation by several credit card companies,
you know, the ones who have litigation budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.
6. Write letters from prison.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>IANAL, but I believe that you can install OS X on anything you want (as long as you buy it).
:-)
Ok, wrong. Apple reserves all rights under copyright, that are not expressly granted by the software license.
The license is very specific, and in its very first specific clause:
A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.
You either agree to this license, or you have no right to install the software. Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringement
This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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" $500 more. The psystar is not available in an 8 processor.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Bullshit. You bought it - you have the right to install it. I have old books that say you're not allowed to resell them, but that's BS too.
Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringementNot if you put them on your own computer, you're not. Trademark only kicks in when you're trying to pass something off as something else. There's an Apple sticker on my wife's minivan, but we're clearly not infringing anything.
This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.Does Steve Jobs tuck you in at night or something? No. You're flat-out wrong. That is exactly one of those dumb EULA concerns, especially when you're trying to mingle it with copyright. As you bought the software, you have the legal right to use it so long as you're not installing it on a bunch of machines or distributing copies. It's kind of sad and scary that presumably rational people will try to argue otherwise.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There's nothing wrong with criticizing the good sense of people who fall prey to a scam, but I find it difficult to come up with a non-contrived situation where the poor judgement, ignorance, or even stupidity, of someone who falls prey to fraud or a scam is sufficiently damnable as to justify the crime committed by the fraudster/scammer. How can you have no sympathy for an unjustified crime?
It seems to me either they deserved what happened and deserve no sympathy, or they don't deserve what happened and thus deserve at least some sympathy.
Hackitoshes DO exist. You CAN build one easily with 400$ 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.
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.
...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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