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Psystar Activation Servers Down?
An anonymous reader writes "I purchased Rebel EFI in support of Psystar's crusade back in October. Just 3 short months later, I have no support. I found this out when I upgraded my hard drive and installed Snow Leopard using Rebel EFI. The program can no longer 'phone home' to activate or download/install drivers. This is a direct contradiction to Psystar's promise posted on their website: 'Psystar will continue to support all of its existing customers of hardware and software through this transitional period. Warranties on hardware will continue to be honored as long the customer has a valid warranty. Rebel EFI support for existing customers, as always, will remain exclusively available through email and the built-in ticket interface.' Has anyone else run into this issue? It has been 9 days with no response from Psystar by e-mail or phone."
Our Apple Certified Genius Ninjas have your IP address and are on their way over to assist.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
...to join a crusade.
Lots of people thought that the German National Socialist party was going to be able to turn the German economy around, restore Germany's relevance in the world, and ultimately defeat the countries that put them in that situation at the Treaty of Versailles.
Look, not every horse can place.
I really don't see how anyone in their right mind could honestly expect that Psystar was going to survive aggressively going up against Apple such as they did. Be glad you got the amount of use that you did out of the pay version of Rebel EFI. IIRC, RebelEFI is based on a open source EFI... can't remember the name, but I'm sure a fellow slashdotter will mention it.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
It seems you needed a lesson in respect of other's hard work. Now you've learned the hard way that it doesn't pay to try and rip off someone.
Speaking seriously though, after the injunction that included RebelEFI, what did you think was going to happen ? Why even purchase a product that requires activation when all it is, is a rip off of an open source product ? I'm betting there's going to be a lot of flames in this discussion.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I think she was one of the new X-men.
I know it's a slow news day but why is this news? The fact that the company that created the software lost a major court case and the company filed for bankruptcy wasn't enough indication that things are not as peachy as the company claimed?
#editorfail
1. This is why you don't buy anything (if you want support) from a company that is getting sued out of existence.
2. This is why you don't buy anything that you can just do for free. It really isn't difficult to make a Hackintosh these days. You bought something that only simplified the process marginally, if even that.
3. This is why you don't be really, really stupid about buying things.
The whole idea that Psystar was using strong DRM to protect their code to strip the honor-system-level protections from OS X installs was mind-meltingly ironic in the first place. The fact that they're so quickly demonstrating why buying anything protected by strong DRM is a bad idea just adds salt to the dish.
http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=Psystar
Who needs google?
RebelEFI was just copyright infringing code. They pissed off Apple and they also pissed off the development community behind EmpireEFI. This can't end well for them. It would seem that Psystar is just a scheister organization.
December 22, 2009
Psystar has voluntarily suspended the sale of our Rebel EFI software product. Psystar feels it would be prudent to halt the sale of Rebel EFI while we explicitly ask the court for clarification on the legality of Rebel EFI. Our patience has been tested but our resolve is unwavering. Psystar's vision of bringing the Mac OS to generic PC hardware is and always will be unyielding. Although Rebel EFI may be temporarily unavailable for purchase on the Psystar online store, those who purchase a t-shirt or donate over twenty dollars will receive one free copy of Rebel EFI once the court has ruled in our favor on this issue. ... (more moaning and groaning) ...
Any and all information regarding Rebel EFI, future software products and all other things Psystar should be directed to press@psystar.com or legal@psystar.com.
"Don't worry about the problems you have in mathematics, I assure you mine are much greater." - Einstein c.1919
Would you like Psystar to find the money to continue by a) looking under rocks along the highway b) selling plasma with the bums downtown c) rooting around in their asses until something is found?
Or maybe you think the promises of people who predicated a business on breaking the law* are actually worth something? That's almost endearing.
(*save your spiel about the laws being unjust. They were fairly well understood and the court upheld them, so reality wins over idealism here.)
This just in: Software that requires contacting a remote server doesn't work when the remote server suffers a total existance failure.
Up next: People die when they're killed.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Psystar had no respect for Apples intellectual property, why do you think they had hany interest in supporting you? After they were killed by the courts, who did you think would keep their systems operating? The magic IT fairies?
Psystar were just ripping off other open EFI emulators anyway. Search around, there are plenty of legit free ones, not stolen copies like Psystar were shipping.
Silly monkey, did you actually think Psystar was fighting Apple on some idealogical grounds other than justifying making money by ripping Apple off? The irony is thick. Psystar's infrastructure, which was to protect their profits, takes you down with them on the ship when things go south. Nice.
But, who knows, maybe somebody will start a company reverse engineering Psystar's DRM so for a small fee you can get your computer working again? ;')
thanks for the hashtag #slashdotisnottwitter
Did you honestly expect Psystar would honor the 'promise' they made to you when the steal, and re-sell the hard work of the hackintosh community in order to allow you to steal the intellectual property of Apple? The entire company was based on stealing the property of others hard work. Now, what I would have liked to have seen, is Psystar would have worked to improve Linux using some good ideas from OSX. Lets face it, Linux is not perfect, it has sever shortcomings, thats why people pay money for OSX. OSX does several things right, like application deployment (everything packed in a single directory), why not incorporate some of these ideas into Linux? Well, that would require hard work, instead of stealing from others.
"Also, seriously? What kind of retard would send those ass clowns money?"
That should be modded Insightful, not Flamebait.
Some things are so monumentally stupid the only appropriate response is scorn and contempt.
Also relevant:
Slashdot doesn't feature ways to crack Windows activation, but it does feature workarounds to Apple restrictions. Why?
Those not wanting to be a corporate bitch should not buy corporate software, water is wet, and the sun rose in the East.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
When Pystar first brought a machine on the market, it became quickly clear that their hardware was junk and they didn't know what they were doing. IIRC, one early reviewer bought a machine and found that it was unstable because they had OVERCLOCKED IT.
Having experimented (and failed) with overclocking myself, spending lots of time reading and dicussing on forums issues like Vdroop, Vgtl, Vdd, multiplier ratios, etc., etc., I can tell you that running a processor out of spec is challenging because you don't know where in that processor's performance bin you are, and your results are almost guaranteed to be different from someone else's, and Intel Quad cores are notoriously hard to overclock, and well it boils down to more of an art form of experimentation and testing than science because you can't get Intel to tell you the actual characteristics of the chip you bought. And moreover, you can run all the artificial tests you want and still end up with an unreliable system because memtest86 and prime95 don't test all the corner cases and enough combinations of scenarios. (I had run memory and processor tests for a week straight, and everything seemed fine, yet I would get kernel panics while parallel compiling Gentoo packages. I could just never manage to figure out the right combination of Vdd and Vgtl, and I could never for sure rule out the memory system being the source of the errors. So I just decided that I'd rather have a reliable system and longer life than 20% more throughput.)
It's irresponsible for vendors to sell you an overclocked system, because they can't guarantee that it's reliable. Rather, they are fooling you into thinking you're getting a better system than you are, ripping you off in the process. This is just one example of the many incompetent and/or highly questionable things that Pystar was doing that made me want to stay as far away from them as possible.
It would be one thing if this company tried to produce BETTER hardware than Apple. Trouble is, that would require intelligence and discerment, and people with that kind of smarts would also have been smart enough not to screw with Apple directly.
If I wanted to sell knock-off Apple hardware here's how I might go about it:
- Find a way to become an Apple reseller with minimal contractual obligations. This way, you can sell MacOS X discs without raising any major suspicions.
- Sell and support genuine Apple hardware.
- Also sell and support high quality Linux and Windows white-box PCs that just happen to have peripherals compatible with MacOS X.
- Add development support to an open source EFI project
- Let word of mouth get around that your systems are good for running MacOS
- But publically state that you do not provide OS support in this configuration because it may violate Apple's EULA.
- Get your lawyers to make sure you have plausible deniability every way you turn.
All of this requires forethought (or hindsight in my case). Pystar clearly did not have this. (I might not either. I might have just suggested a really bad plan.)
But like I say, the main thing that bothered me about them is that their hardware was crap. It's one thing to ride on Apple's shoulders. Directly supporting OSX but on GOOD hardware is arguably questionable, from a legal standpoint. It's entirely another matter to do incompetent things that could make them look bad. That'll REALLY get them chasing after you.
I've never really understood the whole hacking culture in the first place. People don't want to buy iPhones because they're not hackable enough. Ok, I support Free Software, so I can totally get on board with avoiding something that's proprietary and has DRM and all that. But even if the iPhone were 100% open source, it still would not interest me to hack it. I'm a professional chip designer. I like designing NEW hardware. I like being given an engineering challenge that requires that I create new functionality to serve a market need. I have no desire to confine myself to the spe
Err, who really wants their computer to last forever? (Hell I won't last FOREVER) What's really wanted is a reasonable life expectancy, AND the ability to take my junk off the computer and onto my next computer (where it must make some sense).
Mac OS X does that (even if my next computer isn't a Mac). Now you could argue that Linux does that (and I'll concede the point). What you probably don't do is buy from a company that is sure to get sued into oblivion (that's just not smart).
Since when did the creator of something have no right to say how their product can be used?! Microsoft sell academic versions of some of their stuff... How is this different? All Apple have done is say: Macs come with Mac OS X, and Mac OS X can only (legally) be used on Macs. Apple don't sell Mac OS X on it's own (they sell upgrades... but that's a different thing). Microsoft sell OEM versions of Windows - is that different?! Even the GPL (maybe I should say "Especially the GPL"?) makes stipulations as to what you can and can't do - ignore those at your peril! If I create something, I should be allowed any license I feel appropriate. I don't see how Windows users or Linux users can argue (I should know - I use all three). I wouldn't want to be told that Linux couldn't enforce the GPL, or that Microsoft couldn't distribute with a PC (no OEM pricing).
Step 1. Go to InsanelyMac and find the links for the Chamelion (sp?) boot loader. This will do practically the same thing, from what I've been told, and it worked extremely well for me when I used OS X on my Dell (took it off b/c I wanted real Office and some other Windows-preferred applications, but didn't want it in a VM).
Step 2 While you're at InsanelyMac, look for a tutorial on how to install OS X on your hardware. If there are none (which shouldn't be the case if the computer's popular somewhat), there are default methods to follow, which can help you give back by making one!
Step 3. Install OS X, hope that nothing breaks and enjoy!
There is no legal trick, no dirty tactic. Yes, EULAs are horrible, blah, blah, blah, I agree with all of that. But that is totally beside the point.
The point is that the software is Apple's. Period. They can do whatever they want with it. If they want to sell it, they can. If they want to open-source it, they can. If they want to attach a EULA, they can. If they want to _refuse_ to sell it to you, they can. If they want to bundle it with hardware, they can. If they want to add DRM, they can. Get it? It's theirs. They can do whatever they want.
Now, what can you do? You can: (1) Play by Apple's rules and do whatever their license allows you to do or (2) Feel free to create your own OS. When you create it, it's yours, and you can do whatever you want with it -- sell, refuse to sell, add DRM, not add DRM, etc.
Apple can do whatever they want. You (and psystar, and everyone else) can't do jack besides whatever is allowed by Apple's license. It's that simple. Tough luck.
Jobs? Which jobs?
People really are amazing.
In other words, you did so for reasons that were, at least in part, ideological. Unwilling to pay the price Apple sets for the hardware/software combinations it sells, and seemingly unable to use any of the available open source solutions for installing a retail OS X disc onto commodity hardware, you chose to patronize a company whose business model was widely known to be legally questionable at best, and which was engaged in an ongoing legal battle with a company with the intent and resources to defend their assertion that Psystar's business practice was illegal.
Now, having ignored those who posted that they felt Psystar was doing something wrong by selling their so-called "Open Computers" as well as those who suggested that the core of the Rebel EFI product itself was code copied without license or attribution from existing open source projects designed to accomplish the same aim, you wish to take Psystar to task for failing to meet the promises on its website.
What made you think this was a company that intended to keep its promises?
What made you think this was a company that would be able to stay in business long enough to keep any promises it actually did intend to?
You didn't spend your money on a product, and you didn't pay it to a going concern. You made your purchase to make a statement-- that you believed Psystar was doing something good, or at least something right. Your voice was heard; unfortunately, things did not turn out that well.
What more can you possibly ask? This is like picking a lame horse to win because of the great payoff odds, and then beating it into glue when it fails to place.
Sorry, I don't have a car analogy for this. Give me a minute.
Yes I know, I'll get modded offtopic. Don't care.
Windows Geek Gun - Looks sharp and advertises all sorts of 'new' features. However, one in ten times when one pulls the trigger the gun fails to fire and instead jams.
Linux Geek Gun - Good looking but also utilitarian. Very reliable but unfortunately the typical user of this gun is in the habit of taking it apart and rebuilding it often. In those cases it is unusuable until it's done being re(compiled)built.
Mac Geek Gun - Sleek, stylish, and very easy to use, but one has to buy bullets from only one manufacturer. It also only allows itself to be fired in certain directions because the manufacturer knows best.
DOS Geek Gun - A single action revolver.
CPM Geek Gun - A musket.
Give me a break. It's 4:00 AM EST here right now and I couldn't sleep so I'm not as sharp as I should be :p