to get osx on the machine, it needs to be modified/hacked. you can not just use a retail copy and just install osx
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First Customer Receives Psystar Mac Clone
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to get osx on the machine, it needs to be modified/hacked. you can not just use a retail copy and just install osx
So, you are prepared to pay a Windows Vista Ultimate price for OS X, then? Or maybe we should demand that MS stop selling crippled versions of Vista, and only sell Vista Ultimate. Better yet, we should demand that MS sell Vista Ultimate for $129 (and family packs for $199), because otherwise it is selling cheap clone software for 2-3x what it's worth.
CNET's review is in and it's a pretty strong one, 6.9 out of 10:
http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/psystar-open-computer/4505-3118_7-32978558.html?tag=slide_1
Mainly CNET cautions about the potential lack of upgradability and the lack of some software, like iLife and Front Row. They don't report any technical problems, in fact the review is quite positive on the system's operation. They don't even mention the noisy fans.
They were able to download software upgrades from Apple and install them without any problems. They report that Psystar has a plan to address future upgrades, by screening them and posting which are safe. Still they stress that the system may become orphaned.
Performance-wise, it's not a surprise that the Psystar easily outpaced their Mac mini.
http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/psystar-open-computer/4505-3118_7-32978558.html?tag=slide_1
Mainly CNET cautions about the potential lack of upgradability and the lack of some software, like iLife and Front Row. They don't report any technical problems, in fact the review is quite positive on the system's operation. They don't even mention the noisy fans.
They were able to download software upgrades from Apple and install them without any problems. They report that Psystar has a plan to address future upgrades, by screening them and posting which are safe. Still they stress that the system may become orphaned.
Performance-wise, it's not a surprise that the Psystar easily outpaced their Mac mini.
One other detail of interest is the Video card. The reason that we don't have a wide variety of video card options for our Macs is because Apple has held onto the keys in terms of licensing the needed firmware code that separates a PC video card from being one that works with OS X and in a Mac.
There have been PC cards hacked for Mac available for years on Ebay. Although these cards work just fine, they are anything but legal. Shame on ATI and Apple for not making better cards available to us Mac users and at better prices too... never mind just providing products to fill the needs out there.
To the point... unless they had some other fancy trick, that 8600 Nvidia card in the Psytar is likely a hacked video card and all the same an illegal one at that.
Just one of the various issues of selling this kind of thing. If Apple is to set a precedence and look the other way.... and take the OS revenue from a niche type product out there sold 3rd party and with no support they have to worry to... who knows, a new day may be dawning. Who knows... but I'd be amazed if this thing is allowed to fly for long.
There have been PC cards hacked for Mac available for years on Ebay. Although these cards work just fine, they are anything but legal. Shame on ATI and Apple for not making better cards available to us Mac users and at better prices too... never mind just providing products to fill the needs out there.
To the point... unless they had some other fancy trick, that 8600 Nvidia card in the Psytar is likely a hacked video card and all the same an illegal one at that.
Just one of the various issues of selling this kind of thing. If Apple is to set a precedence and look the other way.... and take the OS revenue from a niche type product out there sold 3rd party and with no support they have to worry to... who knows, a new day may be dawning. Who knows... but I'd be amazed if this thing is allowed to fly for long.
Since you have the ability to call things "nonsense", hopefully you will be able to apply the word when you see fit. In particular, to your own words: there is so little sense in the notion that Apple lawyers will be sending letters to Psystar customers--and, more to the point, so little sense in being afraid of such an event by said customers--that it makes me wonder why you feel the need to come up with such nonsense.
Then Dave could go and get your book, and your power would be exposed as non-existent.
Then you could go around, shout your right to stop Dave from receiving your book on the streets and from the hilltops, wear out the soles of your shoes walking in and out of offices of scrupulous attorneys, and hopefully at some point someone that cares about you and your well-being would take you aside and gently inform you that Dave is right, and you are wrong.
Should these Psystar guys be what they seem, one thing is clear: when they were born, they were not cheated in their testicle quota. 
It remains to be seen if they were equally blessed in the rest of their anatomy.
It remains to be seen if they were equally blessed in the rest of their anatomy.
I disagree regarding your first point, but I won't debate it (I don't think I have the time).
Your closing paragraph is much more interesting. Frankly, the "fanboy" reactions here, cheering for a big powerful well-funded lawyerly campaign to trounce a little tiny startup that won't even have the funds to properly represent itself in court... they're pretty despicable. Heaven knows, it's enough to make one want to use anything BUT an Apple machine.
Fortunately, these ethical midgets are not representative of the typical Apple user. Your version of Apple's friendly attitude is. Now, whether that friendliness extends to the company executive level, or the large shareholder class, remains to be seen. But there is wisdom in that friendliness, just as there is raving stupidity in the "fanboy" hostility.
Should Apple show the wisdom that you suggest, they will have gone a long way towards where we'd like to see them go: as a fully viable, accessible alternative to Microsoft's OS. No more should a lowly computer user be forced to boot and live with Microsoft OS. It's a question of human rights! In subsequent centuries, people will describe with horrified disbelief how oppressed peoples throughout the world were forced to suffer under the yoke of Bill Gates, much like we today speak of, say, the burning of heretics by religious fanatics in previous eras.
÷ 2Should Apple choose to close the deal, they'll do a very simply thing: they themselves will fulfill the need expressed by Psystar. That does not mean that they need to meet Psystar's price point; they can charge the usual premiums that we associate with "genuine" labels vis-a-vis knock-off labels. People will still overwhelmingly choose the Apple (should it be worth choosing).
Sadly, at the moment, Apple is not fulfilling that latter bargain. The iMac is a sad example; those of us that despise glossy screens are essentially told to, as it were, "shut up and eat the gruel". Those of us that see the mini for the lovable little cripple that it is are told the same thing. And those of us that sigh and fork out $3000 for a Mac Pro (this is where I come in) contemplate in horror the prospect that in two or three year's time, we'll be the proud owner of a machine made by a company that has acquired a reputation for overpriced, one-to-two-years-behind-the-edge-with-a-crappy-glossy-screen-to-boot "gotcha" hardware.
I don't know about you, but when the time comes, I don't want to go around explaining to people that I really did know enough about computers to put together the same hackintosh that they did, but chose to spend more money for a machine that was less flexible and up-to-date than the fruit of their own ingenious labor. They're liable to think that they can lecture me about what makes a good computer... and I PAID EXTRA FOR THAT.
No you can't, Psystar says that themselves. OSX won't install unless you do the osx86 hacks to it. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the way to install OSX on generic hardware requires patching the OSX installer disk and burning a new disk to install from. There doesn't seem to be any way to just put the EFI simulator and/or firmware onto a machine, or any other method that allows installing from the OSX retail disk. (and even if there was, I'd bet the code that emulates the EFI and firmware likely violates apple's copyright)
And from what I've read it looks like in many cases, people are just downloading a prebuilt image from a torrent instead of doing the patch themselves.
No, not without hacking. If you pop the OSX install disk into a PC, it's won't install. Sure, the hardware is close, but some hacking is required to make it work. And as the reviews have said, even after the hacking, everything still doesn't work completely seamlessly.
I'll bet that if Apple does take legal action, they may not even do it based on the EULA. They can probably just go after them for distributing the EFI/firmware code/simulator or a hacked version of the OS.
You're right, they should. And they do. Plenty of people decide that macs with OSX either are too expensive or not good enough and buy PCs. Why do you keep forgetting that 95% of people still buy PCs?
The American way is the company can pick their product and their price. And the American way is that the customer can decide that they don't like their product and price, and buy something else. Nobody is getting screwed over - if someone thinks buying a product is getting screwed, and they buy it anyway instead of buying something they are happy with, they're an idiot.
You keep saying apple "forces you" to do things...what, is Steve Jobs coming to your house and putting a gun to your head?
That's not exactly true - they said they couldn't get it to burn a DVD, which is a pretty big missing feature.
So what a buyer is getting is a homemade PC that's been hacked to enable OSX to run and is non-upgradeable software wise unless you do the hacking yourself.
They do include a standard retail version of OSX.
Do they need to be an Apple authorized reseller to essentially resell OSX as a business entity?
I'm just trying to get a grasp on this from different angles.
They do include a standard retail version of OSX.
Do they need to be an Apple authorized reseller to essentially resell OSX as a business entity?
I'm just trying to get a grasp on this from different angles.
Naysayers.
not everybody would like to spend extra $1000 for a quieter tower.
If you don't like it, then this obviously is not for you.
For a small company like ***star, they aren't aiming to tear apple down anyway.
Where are the naysayers previously claimed this is a hoax? lol, look at big picture, ppl, no one cares what apple stockholders think, its about the BIG picture.
not everybody would like to spend extra $1000 for a quieter tower.
If you don't like it, then this obviously is not for you.
For a small company like ***star, they aren't aiming to tear apple down anyway.
Where are the naysayers previously claimed this is a hoax? lol, look at big picture, ppl, no one cares what apple stockholders think, its about the BIG picture.
That's what the main point is. You can choose not to buy from Apple if you don't like their prices, they are not forcing you to buy from them. You can try to hack the OS if you want, but you CANNOT sell someone else's work, to make a profit (not talking if you buy something, and then sell it used, at the price of your choice). Or look at it this way, you can't run a business by using someone else's work to make you a profit, unless your authorized. Psystar is making an illegal business decision. That is that. They can do what they want, and hopefully this will make Apple see the desire for the machine, but I think that eventually, they will have to shut down, because Apple will force them to. Because they are doing something illegal, they should be shut down.
You think a midtower is necessarily going to have fan noise? This clone is only noisy because they didn't figure out how to make the OS fan controls work right with the cooling system. I'm sure a well designed midtower could be just as quiet as any other box.
I definitely agree that Apple is missing out by not offering a box in this price/feature range (nothing even remotely close). I doubt much will come of the Psystar thing and suspect they will get shut down if they get too big, but I am glad that it is inspiring discussion about Apple's lack of a product like this and it's showing that there really is considerable interest in a reasonably priced mac midtower.
O my. that table in the article sure shows how far behind the Mac Mini is. Maybe this will be a wake up call for Apple, maybe the decision of keeping the Mini around will be made easier by seeing the attention this is getting.
Not only that, it gives my 20" iMac a run for its money in most of the general use apps and absolutely destroys it in the quake 4 bench. I can't wait until Cnet reviews the new iMacs so we can get an up to date comparison.
People have been screaming about how out of date and overpriced the mini is for years. Arguably the weakest product Apple makes by far. In my book, anything that shines a spotlight on it and makes apple feel shame is a good thing.
Back to the Mini pricing debate. My stock 1.66 CD Mini with 512 Megs does video editing better than a $1,500 PC I tried building. Well, that's been discussed plenty on this site.
Anyways, isn't the Mini the only thing left that Apple needs to update?
Were you building that PC a couple years ago? I bet you could build a PC that would smoke the mini in video editing and everything else for about $500.
The mini is definitely the thing that has gone the longest without an update, although there's no guarantee that they'll update it any time soon, or that when they do finally update it the update will be fairly insignificant, leaving it still out of date and overpriced.
That's what happened the last time they updated it, it was barely improved at all and still way behind the times.
While I would like to have an upgradeable Mac tower made out of regular desktop parts (i.e. Core 2 processors instead of Xeons, regular RAM instead of FB-DIMMs) so that the price would be more affordable, I wouldn't shed a tear if Psystar went down in flames. Why?
-It's not only Apple EULA they're breaking, as it seems to be the case that they're violating also the PC EFI v8 license (source: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=8892). While I don't find all EULA restrictions reasonable, making money by knowingly violating several licenses is something I disapprove of.
-The thing is named OpenComputer. What exactly is open there? Violating licenses and resorting to hacks is not something I'd call open. Many open source advocates I know are very prudent when it comes to software licenses (some even refuse to use a piece of software if the license appears to keep the software "not free enough"), and I can imagine how frustrated those people are when a blatant disregard of licenses is called "open". Psystar also serves to strengthen the impression that if something's open, it's a shoddy knock-off (needs to resort to hacks and violate licenses, and you can fry your installation with an OS update) of a commercial product and sometimes also with dubious legality. This combined with the license violations makes Psystar appear as quite a dodgy company, and at least I won't be buying anything from them.
-It's not only Apple EULA they're breaking, as it seems to be the case that they're violating also the PC EFI v8 license (source: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=8892). While I don't find all EULA restrictions reasonable, making money by knowingly violating several licenses is something I disapprove of.
-The thing is named OpenComputer. What exactly is open there? Violating licenses and resorting to hacks is not something I'd call open. Many open source advocates I know are very prudent when it comes to software licenses (some even refuse to use a piece of software if the license appears to keep the software "not free enough"), and I can imagine how frustrated those people are when a blatant disregard of licenses is called "open". Psystar also serves to strengthen the impression that if something's open, it's a shoddy knock-off (needs to resort to hacks and violate licenses, and you can fry your installation with an OS update) of a commercial product and sometimes also with dubious legality. This combined with the license violations makes Psystar appear as quite a dodgy company, and at least I won't be buying anything from them.
Too much fan noise is common problem http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6778405�
and is relatively easy to solve - what would (and does) bother me is compatibility (printers work just like on a Mac, iPhone updates okay ? etc) - they (Psystar) seem to have found a legal loophole (preinstall OS X & ship a copy of X to the end user (which they can't use)
and is relatively easy to solve - what would (and does) bother me is compatibility (printers work just like on a Mac, iPhone updates okay ? etc) - they (Psystar) seem to have found a legal loophole (preinstall OS X & ship a copy of X to the end user (which they can't use)
yet i built a 900 dollar pc that scores a 6400+ on geekbench and have leopard on it
blows by my mb in every sense of the word
Rather than noise from the CPU fan, I'd bet most of the "fan noise" from the Psystar is due to noise from the fan in a crappy power supply in a micro-ATX case with poor airflow. The case looks like the Asus TM-210/211 series, which sells, with 300 watt power supply, typically for about ~$60, street prices. You won't find many $60 case/power combos that aren't noisy.