New Mac Clone Maker 'Quo' To Open Retail Store

bughunter writes "Cnet is reporting that Mac clone maker Quo Computer plans to open its first retail location, selling Mac clones, on June 1st. To start, Quo will offer three desktop systems: the Life Q, Pro Q, and Max Q. While details of the components are not yet available, founder Rashantha De Silva said they are looking at Apple's system configurations for guidance. Pricing has also not been finalized on the desktop machines, but the company is looking to start pricing at less than $900. While Quo is starting off with the desktop machines, De Silva said it is looking at offering an Apple TV-like media server and a smaller computer similar to the Mac Mini. He acknowledges that Quo will likely face opposition from Apple, much like Psystar. 'They probably will (sue us),' De Silva said. 'There are others doing this, but we have a different attitude. There are thousands of people in the "Hackintosh" market, but many of them are creating bad products. I don't think anyone wins in that environment.'"

Comments

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone want to run Mac OS on unsupported hardware? It's going to be unstable, missing features, and chances are that getting updates from Apple to install with or without hosing your installation is going to be a bitch.

If you want OS X that bad why not just buy a Mac?

Re:Why?

[mario_grgic]

Yes, that's true for electronics inside the box. It's all commodity hardware. Apple does not make their own memory or CPU or hard drive.

But they do make their own motherboards, they make their own cooling solutions, they often meticulously design power supplies to be quiet, they will often times design the battery. They design the cases to be sturdy, have excellent heat conduction and they are quiet.

I was amazed when I first opened my Mac Pro how simple and elegant it is inside and how amazingly quiet (for heavy aluminum case that's quite a feat). As you can see I value quiet quite a bit :D.

And things like these are important to a select few users that choose to buy Apple. When it comes to notebook computers, case and tactile feel matters even more.

And in the end it is the integrated package that matters as well. User experience and expectation is well managed from the moment you receive the box, from opening it, to using the computer (hardware part) to using the OS.

Just providing OS X for users to buy and install on whatever hardware would not lead to comparable or even similar user experience. But if you ship your OS on your designed hardware you know that every user has the minimum accepted standard and same experience as others. This is why Apple leads the user satisfaction surveys.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Current sales offerings only provide a half dozen configurations that OSX supports, but OSX Leopard still supports G4 systems (and will unofficially run on G3 systems), and all the configurations from then until now. While the number of officially supported hardware pieces is smaller than Windows, the range is no less. Multiple CPU architectures, GPUs from 3 major vendors, RAM of all sorts, wireless from Atheros, Broadcom, and probably others, support for most USB devices and anyone else who will write a driver. Add in the knowledge gained from the OSX86 community and it supports damn near everything else outside of weird proprietary 3rd party stuff that Windows or Linux couldn't support without that manufacturer's help either.

That's no less diverse than other OSs, and better than Windows in most cases.

Re:Why?

[TheRaven64]

Because Apple for years have been ignoring a very BIG market for Macs: Those that want a midrange Apple desktop

Asserting it, even in capitals, does not make it true. Desktops, of any kind, now make up around 40% of total computer sales. Laptop sales passed desktops for Macs a few years back, and for the industry as a whole over a year ago. The only people who want a midrange desktop, as opposed to something like a Mac Mini or an iMac, are those that want to be able to upgrade their hardware, but don't want to pay the premium for something like the Mac Pro. Not only is this not a huge market, it is an incredibly unprofitable market to be in, with the lowest margins of any computer market segment.

Vaporware?

[slarrg]

Basically, they're launching a retail store on Monday and don't know what configurations and prices will be for offer.

Re:Why Apple won't tolerate Quo

[wstrucke]

This is probably the reason Apple will not see Quo just as a manufacturer who will help popularize their OS.

That and the fact that Apple is a hardware company, which everyone seems to forget. OS X is built specifically to sell Apple computers. Apple != Microsoft, but since most consumers see the computer for the OS, it becomes OS X versus Windows instead of Apple versus HP or Apple versus Dell, which is the way Apple sees it. Why do you think they are so ready to advertise running Windows on your mac? They don't care if you don't use OS X, they just want you to buy their computers.

Re:That article is from 2005...

[sandbenders]

It might be that they mean "Designed by Apple in California" and not "Designed by Apple in Shanghai". I love California even less than most people, but the bottom line is, jobs (small "j") in California are jobs in the USA.

On the original topic, I paid a premium for my Mac, knowing that I could get similar specs for cheaper on a PC, for two reasons. I prefer OS X, and I enjoy the fact that the hardware and software, including a number of included, free applications, are pre-integrated for me and function as a cohesive whole. I'm pretty nerdy, I could set up an easy workflow for my tasks on a PC or other OS given enough time, but I don't want to spend the time. So I spent the money.

It's not that one is inherently better than the other, it's that they are different value propositions. Certainly they have different strengths and weaknesses, and I would have thought that this community, if not the general public, would understand this by now.