Forums | MacLife

333imacman wrote:

http://www.psystar.com/index.php?&page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_images.tpl&product_id=19&category_id=3&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=72

Presenting the OpenPro, the Open Computers better half.

::Updates percentages::

Fight's on. Apple's out to kill it, and Psystar's going to fight.

The Second Clone War, begun it has.

However, Apple found a perfect target to vent its frustrations on when, when Psystar dared to try to make a business undercutting Apple's own marked up hardware.  Psystar came with the EFI V8 emulator which tricks OS X install disks into thinking the computer was an official Mac.  Apple couldn't directly assault Psystar as there was nothing overtly illegal about its hardware.  So they dug.  And they quickly discovered a caveat -- Psystar offered to preinstall users' copies of OS X on the system.  Leopard’s End User License Agreement (EULA) states:

This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

Apple's lawyers, armed with this clear violation of the EULA promised to challenge Psystar and coincidentally, the site just went down only to come up renamed.  Whether Apple's legal team can lay Psystar's $399 Mac to rest remains to be seen, but its clear Psystar is going to fight what it calls an "illegal EULA" to the bitter end.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=11495

Pariah wrote:

Not interested. It's to low end. I never asked for a $400 Mac. Show me a decent $1000 tower and I would perk up.
And, ya, Integrated graphics...no smurfing way.

By the way, Psystar is also marketing a "Pro" version with a shinier box and heavily upgraded entrails – optional Quads, standard 150GB Raptor 10k drive, optional 8800GT and up to 8GB of DDR2 RAM.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … urn-clones

They should not pre-install leopard.
It's easy enough for the user to install, just sell the hardware and boxed leopard disks.

resedit wrote:

They should not pre-install leopard.
It's easy enough for the user to install, just sell the hardware and boxed leopard disks.

The thing is, no boxed Leopard disk will boot on any generic PC. You MUST rip the disk, patch it, then re-burn it. At the least, they could pre-load a linux distro with a script that involves popping the leopard disk in, running the script, popping a blank DVD in, and spitting out a fully patched leopard ISO. But i'm guessing these guys are too dumb to figure out how to do this.

At least, i've not come across, in my own VERY extensive hackintoshing, of a way to just pop in an official Leopard disk, boot it, and have it install.

I have an official retail leopard disk, and I had to download 3 different leopard ISOs before I found one that worked (and I use that term VERY loosely) with my PC.

mo' ron wrote:

The thing is, no boxed Leopard disk will boot on any generic PC. You MUST rip the disk, patch it, then re-burn it. At the least, they could pre-load a linux distro with a script that involves popping the leopard disk in, running the script, popping a blank DVD in, and spitting out a fully patched leopard ISO. But i'm guessing these guys are too dumb to figure out how to do this.

DT did mention

Still, in the shadowy underground of Apple-loving hackers, following Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel processors, some users found ways to patch or emulate OS X to get around Mac’s Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), one of Apple's main barriers to cloning... Psystar came with the EFI V8 emulator which tricks OS X install disks into thinking the computer was an official Mac.

Most end users would rather buy prebuilt, as most would rather not install an OS on a PC from scratch.

The Consumer Mac Tower finally arrives!!

kman wrote:

Apple's reluctance to do this, despite screaming demand, over the past 5 years or so has really soured me to the brand.

Factor in Jobs historic anti-upgradability bias it all makes sense. He was fighting with others at Apple during the early 80s over lower specs and limiting expansion options. I am quite positive that the fact that he pretty much has to offer a pro tower is galling to him.

This 'company' and its 'products' do appear at this point to be close to a write-off, but the attention garnered just might (possibly) prod Apple in that direction...

To compound the problems, Engadget reports that Psystar has issues with licensing from more than just Apple. Psystar allegedly didn’t get permission from developers working on the OSx86 project to use their work. The developer of the EFI emulator used by Psystar, Netkas, went so far as to call Psystar "liars," and that its code is released specifically with the caveat that it can’t be used for commercial purposes.

The drama continues with Engadget saying that it called Psystar and the company president, Rudy Pedraza, asked Engadget to have Netkas call him -- he did not know their contact information. Pedraza later denied using the EFI emulator altogether.

To call Psystar suspect at this point would be a serious understatement.

...altho, even if, I'd expect pricing more in line with current practice.

My Bro-in-Law had a PPC Performa with mini PCI & TV tuner as well. All he could ever get for it was an ethernet card (for the communication slot), RAM & hard disk.

ScifiterX wrote:

My Bro-in-Law had a PPC Performa with mini PCI & TV tuner as well. All he could ever get for it was an ethernet card (for the communication slot), RAM & hard disk.

I had a 6400 with an additional video card and Ethernet card in the PCI slots a modem in the com slot and a scsi HDD in the open drive bay above the CD drive. Not too may people knew that the open internal scsi and power plug were available up there. It had 136 meg of ram of course.
Moved all that into the 6500/275 I got after that.

Last edited by Pariah (2008-04-16 9:52 pm)

But those weren't the only choices.  And Steve was a pretty adamant appliance visionary -- especially back in the day.  There are several well-documented cases of Steve scolding engineers for attempting to sneak expandability --like RAM slots-- into early Macs (RAM was a big deal back then, too).  In other cases, he mandated that those pesky cooling fans be removed from hardware designs; heat be damned.  Pretty much, what Steve says goes..

Bat wrote:

DT did mention

Still, in the shadowy underground of Apple-loving hackers, following Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel processors, some users found ways to patch or emulate OS X to get around Mac’s Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), one of Apple's main barriers to cloning... Psystar came with the EFI V8 emulator which tricks OS X install disks into thinking the computer was an official Mac.

Most end users would rather buy prebuilt, as most would rather not install an OS on a PC from scratch.

What are you pointing out there?

I think the "EFI V8 Emulator" allowing booting for a native CD is a mis-statement, or a lie.

Because i haven't been able to find anything online that allows a generic PC to natively boot a standard OS X disk at all. I'd be very interested if such a beast existed though (and the programmer side of me has casually been wondering if one could custom-hack their EFI to allow it).