Psystar Offers $399 "OpenMac" Computer

mytrip writes to tell us that Psystar has announced a new line of Intel-based computers that promise to run an unmodified version of Mac OS X "Leopard". Unfortunately almost immediately after the launch their website went down and as of this story remains unaccessible. "Astute readers may well hear this news and ask themselves if it doesn't sound like a Mac clone, something whose time came -- during Gil Amelio's tenure at Apple -- and went shortly after current CEO Steve Jobs assumed the helm at the company. [...] It definitely defies the EULA for Mac OS X, which specifies that the purchaser of a legal copy of Leopard is entitled to install the operating system on an Apple-branded computer. If you buy the $399 OpenMac, you can check the EULA yourself if you also buy the pre-install option, as the company includes a retail copy of Leopard with your purchase."

Website is fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Web site works fine. Quit copying from the macobserver.com and do your own homework.

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[ldierk]

Psystar has already stated that they had to modify the OS to get it to run.

Alothough the article states:

that the company claims will run an unmodified version of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard."

Re:Website Slow...

[MightyYar]

This is fortunate:
coral cache [nyud.net]

(slow, of course...)

Here's the page specific to their Mac clone. [nyud.net]

Re:OpenMac website...

[blantonl]

In English, the word "slashdot" does start with the letter "S."

Stores already do this...

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

There are two independent computer shops near my place which will put together a hackintosh for you. They won't install the OS, but they'll build a computer that is fully compatible with os X and sell you a copy of osx too...

So... for me, this isn't news, really.

Re:Reality check

[diamondsw]

Profit margins are about 25% depending on the product line. This is according to actual financial figures. You know, profit reports and such. Things that have to be correct and accurate for legal purposes or they're in trouble with the SEC for misleading stockholders. Real data, instead of you pulling shit out of your ass.

Macs are not more expensive; they're just less flexible. True, you can't get a Mac with slots for less than a Mac Pro. You can't get a Mac laptop with a 7-inch screen and ultra low processor/memory/drive for $400. But for what they do sell - Mac Mini, iMac, Mac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro - they're similar, generally only varying by a few bucks here and there (except Apple's memory is damn expensive for some reason). This little dance has been done a billion times, and will be done a billion times again.

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[truthsearch]

Courts really do frown upon lopsided unsigned pre-purchase contracts.

Sources, please? The only case I know of on the subject decided that shrink-wrap licenses are enforceable [bitlaw.com].

Re:Not the first

[Life2Short]

Not only are others trying to do this now, there are also plenty of examples from Apple's past that illustrate how dangerous such a product would be to Apple's bottom line. Whether it's Franklin Apple II's, the Brazilian early Mac clones, or Apple's own licensing fiasco in the early PowerPC days, it's clear that Apple must be very protective or take a serious punch to profits. Remember Power Computing? In the licensing days of Apple, before Jobs returned and pole-axed the licenses, Power Computing was really starting to hurt Apple. They were releasing faster hardware earlier than Apple, and even their primitive marketing efforts (who remembers, "Let's kick Intel's Ass" with the Sluggo cartoon?) were getting the best of Apple. They were really starting to carve out their own share of Apple's customers before Jobs pulled the plug.

Filling a chronic void in the Mac marketplace

[Tumbleweed]

Apple has for YEARS flat-out *refused* to build a Mac of this type - a normal headless box. They come out with the Mac Mini, which many said was the same thing, but it uses laptop memory and harddrives, which are more expensive per MB/GB, and the thing isn't even upgradable. The Mac Pro is a Xeon workstation, and uses memory to match, and starts at, what, $2k or so? C'mon!

And here's what's really sad for Apple and their shareholders -- the profit margins at what Apple would likely price these things at would likely be much higher than those for iMacs and Mac Minis. Normal 3.5" HDs and regular DDR2 DIMMs are much less expensive than the laptop and workstation-class hardware.

This is a gaping hole in their product lineup, and it's been there as long as I can remember. It's no wonder someone wants to fill that hole. It's just too bad that Apple is going to wipe them out of existence by the end of the week for doing what Apple should've done ten years ago.

Of course, Apple knows all this. Selling machines with built-in displays and non-upgradable machines with limited storage is great for Apple's bottomline: it forces people to upgrade when non-replaceable parts break and non-upgradable machines are too slow to handle modern tasks. But it's also screwing the customer. Fortunately, Jobs' Reality Distortion Field overrides people's common sense (and lack of knowledge about computer hardware in general) so that they FEEL good about their purchase.

Re:Mmm....

[vought]

Why does this Apple-hardware-only provision of the EULA pertain to OSX but not to Safari?

I'm going to take a shot in the dark here, but I think it's probably because Apple makes Safari for Windows which runs on non Apple-branded computers.

OS X, on the other hand, is tied to hardware sales so Apple doesn't have to support the vast and sometimes flaky hardware of the greater PC world. And also so they can make more money selling hardware.

PC_EFI is not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

PC_EFI is a bootloader that's been around in the OSx86 community for some time now. Version 8 allows for GPT partition booting and a host of other features, including the ability to wrap OS X's early graphical booting to a card with a VGA BIOS instead.

These guys are just stealing work contributed to OSx86, throwing it on a standard PC, and trying to sell it. That's very shady, if you ask me.

BTW: OS X 10.5 boots on *many* different motherboards and *many* different configurations, if the kernel and kernel extensions support it (SSE3, PCI-E, etc). PC_EFI is purely a bootloader that emulates some EFI things so a stock Macintosh kernel thinks it's booting on a Mac. It has nothing to do with the hardware, there's plenty of kernel extensions and drivers floating around that support quite a fair chunk of hardware.

-DN

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[EverDense]

http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case209.cfm [internetlibrary.com] Court holds that Gateway's Standard Terms and Conditions, supplied along with and inside the packaging of a computer purchased by the plaintiff, do not create a binding contract with that consumer under either the law of either Missouri or Kansas. The court reached this conclusion despite the fact that the Standard Terms provide that they will constitute the terms of such an agreement if the consumer retains the computer for more than 5 days, and the consumer so retained the computer. Look up "Software license agreement", the law is not clear cut at all.

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[Joe U]

There has to be benifit to both parties for a contract to be valid. I can't just throw $200 at apple and get software that I they say I can't use without having the option to return it. Since the parties involved refuse to accept returned software the return policy is unconscionable and the license may be void.

Second, you can't agree to a contract that you never had an opportunity to read and accept or decline. I think that one is obvious.

So, yes, Apple might not like the outcome of a court case.

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[ePhil_One]

But is it presented before the sale?

I don't have a box handy, but I bet the "requirements" list on the box says requires a Mac. If you buy it and open it w/o reading the requirements, I think that qualifies as a lack of due diligence on your part.

Re:Reality check

[jmorris42]

Apple didn't use TPM or this discussion would be moot. I probably should not discuss it in detail due to the DMCA but I suspect that reminding people that Google is your friend is safely on the legal side of the DMCA.

And being a little more bold I'll narrow your searching and just mention that there is a fairly radioactive set of patches for Qemu to allow unmodified copies of OS X to boot.

Re:Fair Use

[notamisfit]

You're talking copyright law. EULA's are contracts and fall under contract law. Barring a few select exceptions (minors, contracts of adhesion, yadda yadda yadda), if you do something that constitutes accepting the contract, you're bound by it. And nothing personal, but could anyone discussing "fair use" on /. take a sec to learn what the term actually means? You know, section 107 of the Copyright Act and all?

Re:Filling a chronic void in the Mac marketplace

[Dekortage]

Psystar is doomed if for no other reason than that they are selling a computer with "Mac" in the name.

Actually the computer is called "Open Computer". Maybe the name has changed since TFA was posted, but Psystar's web site currently calls it an Open Computer [psystar.com].

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Right? But the idea was that you (the user) would do the install of OS X and be the ones breaking the EULA. Seeing that Psystar isn't installing it for you, they aren't the ones breaking the license.

If you RTFA you'd see, "...and we will preinstall Leopard for free so you can begin to use your computer right out of the box."

Re:Feature list

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple policy is that I'm not supposed to sell service parts to anyone but another authorized service provider, unless I install the parts in a computer.

Apple doesn't have a problem with me giving you a price quote on a part.

Now, I don't give a fuck what Apple policy is, and if I'm convinced you know what you're doing, I'll sell you the parts anyway. If it's a 661- (return dead part to Apple) part, you're going to pay a lot more to do it yourself, since I'm going to charge you stock price for the part. If you'd posted which model G4 and which fan, my reply would likely have a price for you.

I do have to be convinced you know what you're doing, because I don't want you calling Apple when you break something.

And I'm not a zit-faced dork. I've been working on Apple computers for over 15 years. The certification I have doesn't mean anything, but the experience does.

I'm posting as anonymous because I just admitted I break Apple's rules.

Re:Filling a chronic void in the Mac marketplace

[kris.montpetit]

*scratches head about vanishing reply*

Two points I'll make to you that you seem to have missed, one of which I addressed already:

OSx86 project [osx86project.org] As I mentioned before, this is a harmless and free way to get mac OS without buying a mac. It works on almost anything. So if you dont want to buy a mac but want OS X, once again, here you go...

I guess this is just me being an 'apple fanboy' (actually they regularly piss me off..) but realistically speaking, consumers LIKE apple's products! there's no force feeding involved! You can't really deny that.

Re:No wonder Apple wants to stop Psystar

[anagama]

Their only mistake is selling OSX pre-installed. Now if they sold it with Darwin (the open source underpinnings to OSX) pre-installed, how would that be bad? They could load up X11 and gnome or KDE for the GUI part of things. Granted, that isn't what people expect with OSX, but it avoids the EULA issue altogether. I would imagine, but don't know, that once Darwin is running, it would be relatively easy for people to install OSX over it. But as a business, Pystar needs to leave the dirty work to the end user if they want to stay in business.