Psystar

[TSE]

Anyone remember the early days of Intel Macs when this was all the rage going on in the Mac news community?

Did anyone here ever purchase one?

And what do you guys think the result would have been or how do you think Apple would have changed if the United States government deemed Psystar legal and able to sell Hackintoshes?

 

[LeeW]

Never considered it, although followed with some interest. I believe the effects would have been short-lived though.

Apple very quickly from around that time started to become the company you see today. A lifestyle brand, integration between devices, more unique hardware and so on. For most that was 'into' Apple, they wanted to buy what Apple was offering, not a Hackintosh.

That aside, Apple would simply have stepped up their efforts to make it more difficult in whatever way they could to upgrade, update and generally have a smooth running non-genuine product.

 

[maflynn]

It looked sketchy to me, and Apple shut them down fairly quickly. I generally didn't have any temptation for them

 

[velocityg4]

They'd still have to pay Apple for licenses. If Apple had to sell licenses to third parties. Apple would've just made onerous license fees. So that they'd still make, at least, the same average profit per computer sold.