Psystar Open Computer Notes, Benchmarks and Video

Engadget has had a chance to play around with Psystar's Open Computer and has a few things to say about the controversial machine. "Okay, so we've been playing with the Psystar Open Computer for a few hours now, and we've formed some early impressions and put together a short video of it in action. We haven't really tried to stress the system yet, but based on our other experiences with OSx86 machines, we're expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn't really built for this hardware."

Comments

Re:"it just works"

[RiotingPacifist]

If something "just works", your not trying to do anything cool enough on it
e.g install MacOS on non apple hardware
convert a 5 y/o box into a PVR
mount your HDD through a loop over a coat-hanger.

If I were apple I'd like this

[goombah99]

This thing is such a turd that If I were apple I'd be overjoyed someone made it. A mac mmin actually costs less, delivered! You lose less than a factor of 2 on graphics speeds and smidge on disk writes on the mac mini.

In return the mac mini has wifi and blue tooth, temperature control, software updates, you can re-install the operating system, optical audio, ilife, ...

oh and it doesn't sound like a supersonic jet landing. The mini has lower power bills too.

it's difficult to think of the niche where anyone could possibly want a turn like this.

SO apple should be please that no one can make a cheaper computer, since it sort of puts it to all the whiners who complain about the "apple tax".

Re:If I were apple I'd like this

[BrentH]

Please, stop the FUD. The Geforce 8600 is not only easily 2x faster than an integrated Intel X3100, it's easily 20x faster. Have a look at a few benchmarks and judge yourselves. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Graphics-Media-Accelerator-X3100.2176.0.html http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards/3dmark06-v1-0-2-hdr-sm3-0-score,538.html Note that Intel tends to optimize it's chips for these kinds of benchmarks, realworld performance their chips tend to perform even worse than Nvidia or Ati's chips.

Wrong price

[goombah99]

A mac mini delivered costs 599. Go over to mac mall and you get 2Gb memory, parallels, ilife, a printer, and free shipping for $599

Conversely, the a Pystar running mac OS costs
399$ + 155$ (OS) + $50 shipping. = $604

if you want firewire add $50 , the mini comes with it. (note you need pystar to install the firewire for you).

if you want wifi, blue tooth, optical audio, etc.. you'll have to buy them. Maybe they will even work with the OS too. who knows.

then of course the annual power bill is a lot less for the mac mini since not only is it lower power, the operating system power management actually functions.

The Importance of OpenMac

[saterdaies]

The machine doesn't look that impressive. The thing that's really important is that they've forced the ball into Apple's court. At this point, Apple can respond to the violation of the EULA and see if a court says that the provision is legal or they can ignore it.

If they ignore it, others are likely to follow Psystar (after a long enough time to see that Apple doesn't go after them). Of course, in this case, there's still some threat, but I don't think it's outrageous to argue that if Apple ignores it for over a year that the provision looses some weight.

Personally, I hope they get sued. If they win their suit, it will be a new era for the Macintosh. If they loose their suit, they've lost, but at least we know.

Re:Psystar- cheap, but is it a deal?

[MBGMorden]

Um, no. This computer runs a hacked copy of OS X using PC_EFI (by netkas) just like virtually every other OSx86 system. Those do NOT require a "Mac Edition" video card to run. I'm running a similar home-built Mac system and I'm using a regular old MSI Geforce 7600GT on mine. I had it in my Windows machine before it got donated to the Mac. It works just fine.