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Forget the Courts — Apple May Fight Mac Clones With Tech

wired.com — Apple may have a hard time shutting down the new maverick Mac-clonemaker Psystar, say legal experts.

Who dugg this? Made popular Apr 16, 2008

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  • MacParrot, on 04/16/2008, -3/+192"Based on the company's website claims, engineers at Psystar appear to be emulating parts of the Mac firmware on a Windows PC -- fooling Leopard into thinking it's running on top of genuine Apple hardware."
    Good God, it's NOT a Window's PC. It's just another Intel based computer with some trickery to install OS X. Does that mean that when you install Linux you're installing it on a Window's PC too?
    I'm all for this and hope that Psystar can beat the odds, but I would think that Wired would have better writers
  • sagat, on 04/16/2008, -3/+101Psystar: "Can't we all just get along"
    Jobs: "No *****, I'm going to cut you to shreds and eat your children"
  • DonCarcharo, on 04/16/2008, -4/+85The only reason this box even exists is because Apple refuses to make an expandable entry level desktop. If they would fill in that gap themselves, gray market products like this would be far less appealing to people interested in running OS X.
  • ChrisGray, on 04/16/2008, -17/+65Ultimately, this is a good sign for Apple. It shows that there is such demand for their product, that entrepreneurs feel there is room in the market to make a profit from generics/clones. Personally, I feel that part of what makes Apple's products so high-quality is that the software and hardware are so well integrated, so a clone has little appeal to me, but I see it as a very positive sign for Apple.
  • halik, on 04/16/2008, -8/+29OSX is pretty cutting edge... especially on my iphone
  • yt2005, on 04/16/2008, -3/+21Well, it's a very small-time vendor; I would say it's much more likely that it was a move to take advantage of the fact that Apple overcharges to a niche market (though "overcharge" and "niche" could be disputed, you get the point).
  • yt2005, on 04/16/2008, -2/+20Bryan Gardiner actually writes for PC Magazine as well. Anyways, it's possible that he was trying to dumb down the information being presented--after all, most of the article is pretty non-technical... Still, you're right--it IS pretty sloppy.
  • rdsmith1, on 04/16/2008, -0/+16You guys might want to check out this article: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/15/ ...

    The Miami Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau have never heard of the company, and the company's website was registered in 2000, but any google searches for Psystar prior to last week returned zero results.

    Also, the original address listed on the company's website was a residential address. Then, it just changed overnight, and as someone in the comments section pointed out, the new address appears to be a T-shirt manufacturer. So, everyone's getting all worked up over what's most likely some guy in his grandmother's basement selling really cheaply-made Mac clones.
  • Cougarcat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+15Forget the courts, yes. But "firmware" is the wrong tech. If Apple comes out with an 899-999 tower with a Geforce 8800, sales of this thing would plummet. Firmware will always be circumvented, as we have seen on the iPhone.
  • FRAGaLOT, on 04/16/2008, -3/+17Well this will make Apple look like a monopoly on hardware that runs Mac OS X. Considering Mac hardware is really no different than a typical PC now, it's not right that Apple over prices their hardware. I could head over to pricewatch, and match the same hardware specs and build a "mac clone" for a lot less, even for a refurb mac.

    But the moment Mac OS X becomes "open" like Windows and Linux Distros are, then they run into the same compatibility problems Windows and Linux have, since there's thousands (if not millions) of different hardware combinations. The reason why "Macs just work" out of the box is because their hardware profile doesn't change. So the OS can be set up properly for a very narrow hardware specification. this is why Windows has always been flaky since they had to keep it compatible since the days of the 386.
  • TylerDCA, on 04/16/2008, -7/+20Not licensing and fighting clones killed Apple in the early PC wars. Why would they do it now? This is some of the best news of the year for Apple.

    A fancy case is not going to attract the serious computer user, but a better OS will.
  • theblueprint, on 04/16/2008, -5/+18The only reason this box doesn't exist directly from Apple is because it's not profitable for them to do so.

    If they would make MORE money selling these kinds of boxes, it would be "one more thing" two keynotes ago.
  • chesscat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+13Assuming this company even exists. This story puts doubt on it: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/04/15/ ...
  • DEIx15x8, on 04/16/2008, -1/+13Apple just needs to release an iMac without the screen. The main desktop market is with all those computers sold at places like Best Buy. Apple offers the Mac Mini (small desktop with laptop parts), the iMac (all in one desktop with desktop parts), and the Mac Pro (desktop with desktop parts). They have no low end small case desktop. The Mac Mini doesn't have the power of the desktop, the iMac has no expandability and the Mac Pro is a maxed out computer compared to most of the market. I would love a $1,000 desktop that weighs allot less than the Mac Pro with a smaller size but still let me open it up and modify it. Make a "generic" computer and add the Apple magic.
  • kratsnitram, on 04/16/2008, -3/+14How are they a monopoly? Last I checked, they owned roughly 5% of the market.
  • Dakk, on 04/16/2008, -3/+14Expandable usually just means someone wants to upgrade their graphics card.

    Apple DOES NOT want to hear people whining because their spiffy new graphics card doesn't have working drivers. Instead, Apple is sticking to a select handful of graphics cards/chipsets and making those work. Any other type of expansion card ... forget it.

    Now if all the manufacturers of different expansion cards (graphics, sound, etc.) suddenly approached Apple in mass saying (we will support Apple with drivers from now and forever). I think Apple might Think Differently in the future. Otherwise, Apple is focusing on a small subset of chipsets and devices and making them work really well, versus 'well really ... it should work".
  • tuartboy, on 04/16/2008, -1/+12The clones are what almost killed Apple in the 90's. Jobs came in and killed them and Apple has since turned into a profitable company.
  • tmart, on 04/16/2008, -0/+11Apple uses the same hardware as 99 percent of the rest of the PC industry. This is the kicker. Good luck to all those that try to do this.
  • RudeTurnip, on 04/16/2008, -1/+12Think of it in the same way that when you buy a PS3 or an Xbox 360, the software knows exactly what it's going to be working with and can therefore be optimized around that hardware.
  • inactive, on 04/16/2008, -23/+33Figures they'd get in a hizzy when someone sells one of their computers for what it's actually worth.
  • Sairynn, on 04/16/2008, -2/+11"Window's"?
  • gkingston, on 04/16/2008, -4/+12"selling gear that costs less than an equally equipped PC"
    Since when were apples less then equally equipped PC's? Please point me to the apple machine with dual 8800's, 4gb of ram, and a dual core processor for under $1500.

    There are good reasons to buy an apple. Being cheaper wasn't one I was aware of...
  • punkcat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+8apparently you don't remember that time well at all, Apple stock was at 6-9 dollars and it was the closest they had ever been to going out of business. the clones did not widen Apple's market, they only took sales away from them.
  • Steeple, on 04/16/2008, -0/+8it's just a regular pc with components known to be largely compatible- the secret sauce is a couple of hacked kexts in osx and an efi emulator so osx will run on a motherboard that uses bios.
    local geek could put one together overnight if you wanted it built for you
  • tnoy, on 04/16/2008, -0/+8If there were demand for their product, people would just buy it from Apple.

    This is being sold because it fills the gap in the Apple lineup.
  • y3rt, on 04/16/2008, -2/+10Macintosh, or for newer models, Mac, is a brand name which covers several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. / Wikipedia

    I always assumed it was a play on words, McIntosh is a type of apple (food), just like the granny smiths, or red delicious.
  • jkgm, on 04/16/2008, -2/+10Satire. Diggers does not haz it.
  • nobelief, on 04/16/2008, -5/+12Take Steve's ***** out of your mouth
  • PhillyMJS, on 04/16/2008, -3/+10It means, since there are only so many different components making up the different Mac models, the people developing OS X can craft it specifically for that finite amount of hardware-- they can optimize the code for and take advantage of every single feature those components offer.

    Windows, on the other hand, takes the lowest-common-denominator approach and programs for standards that the individual components comprising a whitebox PC are supposed to conform to. You have to rely on OEM-provided drivers to get access to the additional bells and whistles. Historically, those OEM-provided drivers are often ***** or conflict with other OEM-provided drivers used by other components in your PC, which can lead to a pretty miserable experience for you.

    Apple can test OS X on every possible combination of hardware on which it will run, to ensure it works well. Microsoft could never hope to test the infinite combinations of hardware that can make up a PC that will run Windows.

    That's why everyone who whines that Apple won't release OS X for generic x86 machines is talking out of their ass-- if OS X suddenly has to support all that potentially-flaky generic hardware and you're at the mercy of OEMs to provide good drivers, it becomes.... Windows.

    The best the "I'll never buy a Mac but I want to run OS X" types could hope for is what NeXT did when they stopped making their own hardware... they had a fairly short list of officially approved mobos and other components that NeXTSTEP supported. Build your box out of anything on that list, you're golden. Build it out of anything else, you're SOL.

    Since Macs are selling just fine with the way things are currently, I don't see them doing that anytime soon.
  • luchid, on 04/16/2008, -3/+10That's like saying Ford has a monopoly on the Focus. If anyone is being dumb, it's you. Apple is always being held to a high standard, even more so than Microsoft, just for being Apple. Just read any review and you'd see that when it comes to reviewing one of their products, nitpicking is always par for the course. And it's ok for it to be that way. Even serious Apple junkies nitpick their products 7 ways till sunday.
    Defining a company as "cool" is dumb, because well it's just a company. But I'd grant Apple the cutting edge tag. Not based on the amount of tech that goes into their products, but based on what they do with it and how they integrate it all together.
    Besides, Apple is not the company that's bribing governments, the ISO and their members to get their crappy, ass backwards "standards" approved.
  • blhack, on 04/16/2008, -5/+12"Personally, I feel that part of what makes Apple's products so high-quality is that the software and hardware are so well integrated"

    This sounds like the ads they were running 10 years ago. What does that actually MEAN? They don't manufacture or even design much of the real hardware that goes into their computer: the same as dell or compaq don't.
  • digitalpencil, on 04/16/2008, -0/+7I still don't entirely get the point of this firm.. People wanting to run OS/X on non-mac hardware are generally going to be tech-savvy and creating an OSX86 box is hardly difficult, plus you'd get it cheaper than what Psystar are charging.. Why would anyone bother?
  • tnoy, on 04/16/2008, -1/+8Apparently you've never compared the prices of a Thinkpad T61p to a Macbook Pro.
  • Braxo, on 04/16/2008, -0/+7Fanboy base? What about the customer's in film, design, or even application development?

    My company only uses Macs, thats how I got into them. We have a dozen or so Macbooks pro's and mac pro's. We certainly aren't fanboys, we use the computers as a tool for what we produce.
  • MacParrot, on 04/16/2008, -0/+7I remember those times very well. Microsoft didn't give Apple any money, they bought 150 million in non-voting shares which they later sold for a tidy profit. What was more important for the Mac platform was Microsoft agreeing to update Office for the Mac and to agree to some IP sharing for 5 years (which was later extended another 5 years). Apple certainly needed the consumer confidence boost from a Microsoft commitment as the Newton was dying a slow death, OS/9 was no great shakes and OS X was a few years away, the iPod hadn't been invented yet, and other than the soon-to-be released iMac G3, Apple had very little in their product line that was selling.
    So what did Microsoft get out of it? Well, Office for the Mac has been a big seller and VERY profitable since most of those sales were retail as compared to discounted bundling that Office for Windows usually is. Apple also committed to shipping Internet Explorer for the Mac as the default browser expanding IE's dominance onto another platform (most Mac users were using Netscape at the time). Apple also agreed to drop the "Look and Feel" lawsuit they had been persuing for years (and would eventually have lost anyway) and with Apple back on it's feet (or at least no longer on its deathbed), Microsoft had a legitimate, if very weak, competitor they could point to when the DOJ came knocking at their door.
    Considering how well Apple is doing now, I wonder if Microsoft would have agreed to all those things if they had known ahead of time how things would work out.
  • schwallman, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6Ive always liked the mac os, i used to own a g5. I paid way to much for it though. Its just a pretty case with an apple logo. now my "mac" is an old beige case that sits inside my desk. It performs better than my old g5 did aswell sure as hell didnt cost me $4000 either. if you cant see the case then why pay extra for it
  • Iwantawii, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6but why male models?
  • JasonCox, on 04/16/2008, -2/+8Or that there are people like us Diggers out there who just want to frak around with OSX and don't want to shell out $2000 bucks for a decent Apple-made Mac or worry about hacking drivers just to get the hardware on their Hackintosh installs to work.

    You are correct though in one aspect, it's Apple's control of the end-to-end experience on the hardware and software side that gives them such high ratings. I'm sure if certain *other* software companies did this they'd have better ratings too.
  • Speed, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6But what I want to know is why Apple seems to push this idea that it's not a PC, even though they are PCs.
  • smrekar, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6SSH?
  • humperdeath, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6No, it is just the hard drive that is windows. (and by hard drive, I mean the case and everything in it) /more dumb stuff
  • Kerrigore, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6Because most people associate "PC" with Windows machines, and Apple wants to differentiate their product.
  • insanewriters, on 04/16/2008, -3/+9Back when Apple briefly allowed computer manufacturers to license Mac OS, it crippled its hardware sales. Why? Because Apple had crap hardware in the mid-90's. Today, I think it would be different. It would force Apple to price its computers competitively and be even more innovative with design. Allowing Mac clones would ultimately be better for consumers; Apple zealots should welcome this.
  • chesscat, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6I'm beginning to think that this 'company' was made up for the sole purpose of trying to put some headline risk in Apple's stock. It doesn't take a whole lot of negative press to cause short term blips downward.
  • colincornaby, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6"Not licensing and fighting clones killed Apple in the early PC wars. Why would they do it now? This is some of the best news of the year for Apple. "
    Apple DID permit clones in the mid 90's, and it didn't work out well for them. I don't know if it would be just as bad now, but I'm just saying... historically clones actually ended badly for Apple.
  • cawpin, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6Yeah, talk about sloppy.
  • inactive, on 04/16/2008, -0/+6calling something by a different name does not make it different.
  • davidwasman, on 04/16/2008, -1/+7Their store is down because they can't accept Credit Cards right now...I guess Apple DID find a way to stop them.

    I assume by having their PayPal account shut down for TOS violations.
  • alliekins619, on 04/16/2008, -0/+5Oh noes, Apple users will start to realise the stability hit you take when you allow users to purchase hardware from any manufacturer, instead of being locked into overpriced Apple hardware! Maybe they will start to sympathize with Windows programmers who have to support thousands of products by hundreds of manufacturers, the majority of which will not have even been invented when the OS ships! The landscape of the whole MS/Apple Fanboy battle will never be the same!
  • 35263526, on 04/16/2008, -0/+5EFI yes, but logic boards are just motherboards nowadays. The term is only used because Apple machines had two boards in the '80s.
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