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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."
In fact, is there anything to suggest that Psystar isn't just making a quick buck from someone else's hacked Mac OS X installer?
So you have to go into preferences and renew your dhcp lease every 15 minutes or you have no internet? Yeah, these'll sell well.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
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".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
Except that it doesn't. I use Linux mostly, but I work in a physics research lab that uses exclusively* macs. We still use several G4s with OS X 10.3.9. I can't install network printers on half of them, for no apparent reason. I can't mount them using firewire on newer macs. No error messages, it just stalls.
We got two new iMacs last month. One of them turns off randomly. Both of them crash randomly when we use our analysis software (a two-year old powerpc program). The OS is so slow it's nearly unresponsive (to me, the people that only use macs don't have a problem with it). On a related note, the iMac makes no hard drive noise, so I can never tell if it is just slow in responding, or if I didn't double click fast enough. File sharing is a pain to figure out. I can't easily change my icon theme without buying third party software. Don't get me started on the usability of the single menu bar. I can't find any easy way to uninstall Garage Band, et al, so that the automatic updater stops bothering me about them. I can't find a way to move windows between desktops ("spaces"), and all new windows seem to open on the same desktop that the program originally opened on, making multiple desktops virtually useless. I need third party software to have an automatically changing desktop wallpaper. Our IT guy told me that to take apart the iMac you have to buy suction cups from Apple to pull the glass off before you can unscrew the case. The "mighty mouse" can fake a right button, but you have to lift your index finger off the left side for it to work. My advisor was so used to this that he didn't even realize he was doing it. I can't drag windows around by alt-clicking on the window. I can't close a window that is minimized without showing it.
These are just the bad things that I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of great things that I haven't mentioned. Maybe coming from Windows I would be blown away, but in Linux all this stuff actually just works, plus all the stuff that does work on the mac. If macs work for you, great. Just realize that you're paying a 100% tax for a pretty box, and stop telling me that it just works.
Note that I'm not claiming in any way that macs can't do something. All that I am saying is that if I, a power user of several decades, couldn't figure out how to do it over the last year it didn't "just work." I welcome any solutions to problems that I mentioned, except solutions that include spending money.
* The computers that run our expensive research equipment are windows. It's cheaper for them to give you a computer with windows than it is to develop a cross-platform solution.