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Why didn't any of the so-called journalists do this?

Is he running this at an air force base runway or a conference room" Darn the beast is loud!

I mean actually buying a machine and evaluating it. From the video, we can't be sure this was a Psystar vs. a home-made Hackintosh. And we see nothing besides a screen booting up. Nice job, tech news organizations of the world.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:14 am Comment from: Tommy Boy

I've seen articles from writers from Cnet, MacWorld, and ZDnet all saying they were buying one. Seems Patrick was just the first to get his (he's probably in Florida) the "real" journalist are in Cali at least three days further away.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:14 am Comment from: Lanzarote

Wasting Money.
Looks just like another PCBox
look & feel can't be the same like a real Mac.
Warranty? Support? ? ? ? ?

Well its very loud, this is true.

With no updates however, its a serious security risk.

And potentially useless. Updates provide new feature improvements that create value. And at 500 bucks, I think id rather go for a cheap imac. While the imac is minimum 1099, it still a better deal considering it also comes with a real video card.

In fact I would say that if the mini had a legitimate video card that we as a consumer could choose, it would be the perfect mid tower. Drives can always be added as externals.

Give me a mini with an upgradeable video card and im sold.

Otherwise i got to stick with my imac.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:16 am Comment from: JAYGEE

The thing sounds like a vacuum cleaner!!!

As well as point upgrades, how do install OS X 10.6 on it when it comes out? I'm pretty sure my current iMac will be able to run it with no issues, my other machines are 3-4 years old so will possibly run it but if they don't aren't of importance. The machine has no lifespan from the moment you buy it. Everyone knows you can get OS X to run on a non-Mac PC, but that doesn't make it a good idea and definitely not one you should be paying for.

Apple should sell OS X for PC's.

Just don't support it on non Apple hardware, or give it half-assed support, much like M$ does to get people to upgrade.

EFI is evil.

Next week or so we have 10.5.3 available and Psystar Open Computer is worthless...

Strange that apple hasn't said anything...

I'm wondering whether or not, Apple thinks it's not worth the venture of getting their legal teams out, or possibly wait for psystar to become a fat wagu meat, waiting to smack it down with the legal team, and sizzle the thin slices of wa-gu fatty meat over a nice barbie....

or maybe Apple is testing the waters.... all this is venting more conspiracy

It LOOKS like Psystar has begun to ship what they promised.
Be careful - you get what you pay for.

Wouldn't have it under a Christmas tree and I wouldn't advise anyone to buy one either.
Lanzarote is right, what about service and support?
If you want the true Mac experience get the real thing!!!

Apr 28, 08 - 10:29 am Comment from: Jubei

You see this is a fine example of what will happen if Apple let clone maker do this. You will get the great OS X alright, but the rest of the build is crap. It will run, but all the great things we take for granted with top of the line industrial design, fit and finish from Apple will be gone. No thanks. I'd rather have the real thing.

Sorry Patrick, if you think that's a fast boot, your insane

That's just a normal boot time of any recent hardware Mac.

Now my RAID 0 10,000 RPM G5 with Tiger boots faster than new Mac's, in about 10 seconds. But that's a gaming box naturally.

OS X can boot much faster than what everyone see's in a factory box, but Apple purposely slows down OSX , even how the images appear on the screen for consistancy.

I've seen special versions of OS X in Cupertino that boot within 3 seconds. YES 3 SECONDS!!

So why don't we get to have this SUPERCHARGED VERSION OF OSX???!!!

Noisy... and with this terrible and horrific DOS intro! Berk and re-berk!

Apr 28, 08 - 10:36 am Comment from: TowerTone

Cool! Just add an ionizer to it and you will have the perfect computer/air purifier.

People will be like "Wow! That OS X smells great!"

What's with the walk behind and the fondling of the cables? It looks like cheap amateur geek porn. Almost expected to see jiz dripping off the Dell logo!
No POST tone either.
This ain't a Mac, just some cobbled together parts stuffed into a box that somebody got to boot to Mac OS.
Crap like is what you would have if Apple would license it's OS out to box assemblers.

Possible Apple Business and Legal Strategy -
(Maybe why Apple has been quiet)

A shady operation announces it's selling illegal Mac clones;

Apple smacks them down with an apparently heavy-handed legal response.
Effect:
the problem is eradicated at some expense and with some (unwarranted) negative publicity to Apple for sticking to the letter of the law.
OR
Apple waits until the company outright rips off a bunch of dupes, or ships a shoddy, short-lived product.
Effect:
The problem goes away on its own when the "company" leaves bare wires sticking out of the walls of their office/factory, and no light bulbs, and no forwarding address, people learn again not to trust Open-Mac purveyours, and instead stick with legitimate Apple software and hardware. Apple acquires no negative publicity, at no expense.

I hope Apple takes these guys to the cleaner. They don't have a legal or moral leg to stand on.

Yeah,
That thing's louder than my Mirror-Drive Door Wind Tunnel, Dual G4 1.25. . . . Much louder!
At least the MDD sounds like a Convair 880 taxiing to the gate, . . . not an Oreck.

I wouldn't buy it for a dollar.

Apr 28, 08 - 10:57 am Comment from: taojones

the thing was SO noisy!!! you get what you pay for (my cousin had osx running on a p.c. 4 years ago)

@ DJ Jac
"You get what you pay for."

QFT, brother.

Apr 28, 08 - 11:07 am Comment from: JadisOne

For the life of me, I don't understand how this company thinks it's legal to steal someone else's intellectual property and sell it without actually licensing the IP. If a person wants Mac OS X then they buy a Macintosh otherwise they can just buy something else. Apple apparently wants to control their IP the way they see best fit for their company.

Besides, what good is a Mac system that won't update via the Software Update feature?

As far as updates go, you can just download the standalone updates and not use Software Update.

However, you can forget warranty support. If you think Apple's going to tough this with a 10 foot pole, you're crazy.

I am willing to bet that apple put out the new imacs and not the mini's because it realized that with psystar being legit and selling low end comps, and with the specs being better than the mini for about the same price,it makes more sense to but the psystar model. Maybe apple is reworking the mini, giving it better or comparable software so it won't lose all its mini sales to psystar

Well, the Shyster Hackintosh is still breaking the law. The OSx86 developer's terms of use do not allow commercial use.

And, if people want a cheap MacPro, just buy a refurbed one.

Apr 28, 08 - 11:44 am Comment from: s

"maybe Apple is testing the waters.... all this is venting more conspiracy"

If Psystar sells any volume, may be Apple will use them to get Dell and HP to cough up higher price for the OS X license (more fuel to conspiracy theory).

@JadisOne:

How do you know the company is stealing Apple's IP? Isn't it possible that they purchased every copy of Mac OS X that they install? Essentially just being a reseller? I for one fail to see what the big hulabaloo is all about. If the hardware is truly crappy, low quality stuff, the company will fail. If the support is lacking and enough people care, the company will fail. Do people really think that the folks who would likely buy one of these machines would really go out and buy an Apple if this company didn't exist? That's like Adobe and Microsoft claiming the full retail price of every pirated copy of their software out in the world as a "lost sale". If some high school kid gets a pirated copy of CS3 to play with, do you *really* think that if the pirated copy weren't available, that the kid would actually buy a retail copy of the product?

The ONLY shady aspect of the business is pre-installing OS X on non-Apple hardware, and I don't know if a shrinkwrap license like that would really hold up in court.

It would be bad for Apple evangelism to license the OS without support on the box. It would be inevitable that folks would have a cheap machine with some weird configuration or bum hardware and yet sell a lot of them. Then the OS would crash or would crash apps.
Apple would either take the high (minded) road and say, sorry if you want support get a Mac - that would piss off the people who bought the junk. Or they could be magnanimous and provide support for junk boxes which would cost them.
I think that they should (sorry to be such an ass) just brick the machines with each new OS update.

Apr 28, 08 - 12:23 pm Comment from: LordRobin

Bizlaw: As far as updates go, you can just download the standalone updates and not use Software Update.

No, I'm pretty sure you can't. This thing runs the hacked "FrankenOS" version of OS X. You wouldn't be able to apply any Apple updates to it.

Now, whether you could upgrade to the next hacked version is another story. But it might require a complete reinstall.

Seriously, does anyone really want this? It seems to miss the whole point of using Apple products, that they "just work".

------RM

Apr 28, 08 - 12:31 pm Comment from: Ampar

I'll crap in a shoebox and only charge you half as much.

Apr 28, 08 - 12:47 pm Comment from: TowerTone

Ampar, no! People will be saying "That OS X smells like crap"....

A selection from the news

Researcher discovers spoofing security flaw in Safari 3.1.1:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/04/28/researcher-discovers-spoofing-security-flaw-in-safari-3-1-1

Safari JavaScript DoS attack;

http://security-protocols.com/2008/03/19/safari-31-javascript-dos-released/

New flaw in QuickTime:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145189/researcher_finds_new_flaw_in_quicktime_for_windows.html

The point being, software has bugs, and internet-facing apps are the current focus of interest for the bad guys. This stuff is being patched all the time: Apple recently fixed eleven problems with QuickTime alone.


Major premise: Users should regularly apply patches or they will be using outdated, unsafe software
Minor premise: Psystar users cannot update their pre-installed software
Conclusion: Psystar users will, sooner or later, be using outdated, unsafe software

Only a very under-informed user would buy one of these. No one who had a clue would -- unless he only wanted it for offline use. You might be all right anyway; but what's the point in risking your data, your credit card, your identity, just to get a slightly cheaper (if rather shoddier) machine?

Apr 28, 08 - 01:08 pm Comment from: praus

@ shiva105

"How do you know the company is stealing Apple's IP? Isn't it possible that they purchased every copy of Mac OS X that they install? Essentially just being a reseller? "

You have to be licensed to be a reseller. You can't just buy some one else's stuff and sell it. You have to make an agreement with them to sell it and in Apple's case how to sell it.

Apr 28, 08 - 01:38 pm Comment from: LinuxGuyAndMacProdigalSon

While PA Semi will be used for Apple's mobile embedded devices, one of the predictions made is that its technology will also be used to build custom -- proprietary -- Mac motherboard chips that will make clones effectively impossible. All instructions in the programming code are valid for the X86, but on Mac hardware the PA Semi custom chips implement some of those instructions to do some advanced things, such as fast signal processing. And this technology will be made to work with the LLVM Low Level Virtual Machine compiler technology, so that the Mac will gain a spectacular performance advantage over any clone. The custom chips are not addressable directly, so cloners are screwed.

But is it 'snappy' ?

Holy that crap runs loader than my Lexus!

Hell will freeze over and the earth will explode before I ever consider buying one of those illegal Market trader macs.

I don't know what is worse, the Chinese illegal aliens selling pirated DVDs of movies not yet on the cinema or this company screwing apple's hardwork and billions spent on r&d;.

Apr 28, 08 - 02:22 pm Comment from: DogGone

Video cameras often pick up noise like that and make it sound worse.

Basically all this company is doing is setting up Hackintoshes on custom built machines and selling them.

Does the reduced cost and better expandability outweigh the inconvenience of some things breaking or not working like the software update? I'm not too sure. Will be good for some people but not for your regular Apple user.

Apr 28, 08 - 02:38 pm Comment from: HolyMackerel

Now if these guys could get MacOS X booting on an Asus EEE PC they would get a serious number of orders!

"You see this is a fine example of what will happen if Apple let clone maker do this. You will get the great OS X alright, but the rest of the build is crap. It will run, but all the great things we take for granted with top of the line industrial design, fit and finish from Apple will be gone. No thanks. I'd rather have the real thing."

I'll take the real thing, too, but you're wrong about "this is a fine example of what will happen if Apple let clone maker do this."

Back in the day of the original Mac clones, the clone makers (for the most part) were actually making better Macs than Apple was, and cheaper, too. I knew a lot of diehard user group members who couldn't wait to get their hands on those clones after seeing demos at user group meetings.

Instead of expanding the market (like the cloners agreed to do in their license agreements with Apple), the cloners cannabalized Mac sales, so Apple broke the agreements.

Apr 28, 08 - 02:48 pm Comment from: Spark

@shiva105
The OS X EULA prohibits the installation of the software on non-Apple hardware. Whether Psystar is paying for the software or not, they are breaking the usage rules set forth in the license.

Apr 28, 08 - 02:57 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

Sounds like my old Dual 800 G4! {for sale}

Apr 28, 08 - 03:20 pm Comment from: LateRegistrant

"Cystar" might be more appropriate.

Haven't decided if it sounds more like a vacuum cleaner or a Dispose-All.

Apr 28, 08 - 04:50 pm Comment from: phantasmosxmagnum

They claim to have better specs than the Mini but w/o Firewire as standard and an older graphics chipset I wonder if it really is a better deal? If I wanted a Hackint0sh I could build my own, it would be cheaper and way better in specs than this junk! At least the newer iMacs introduced today are bumping up the video cards but I'd like to have seen an optional 4 core cpu. Still I say bring back da Cube remied, refreshed and loaded and expandable. It would sell like crazy and fill that void.

<< "What's with the walk behind and the fondling of the cables?" >>

That's the first thing I thought of too. WTF?? Gee- I'm impressed. And then the FAN. No bluetooth and no WiFi. Did you notice the RF base unit. IDE drive instead of SATA.
S.M.A.R.T capability disabled.

No wonder Steve said no to clones. This is what happens.

Apr 28, 08 - 05:40 pm Comment from: AppleMacMan

Sorry but this thing is a joke. If you can't get updates on it via Software Updates or download them directly from Apple's website, your new shinny and ugly computer is obsolete pretty fast. He was better off just saving his money and getting a quality Mac. For some things in life there are no shortcuts. 

Apr 28, 08 - 05:54 pm Comment from: HolyMackerel

Don't forget: Psystar not only can't get Software Updates, but it doesn't even come with iLife, since this is not included with Leopard, but is on all new Macs, and is a huge part of the Mac advantage.