Attack of the Clones
Analysis That's no Mac...
PSYSTAR HAS VOWED to fight Apple over the legal implication of selling third party kit pre-installed with Apple's OSX system software. The company announced yesterday that it would start flogging the OpenMac, a Mac OS X box that goes for $399 and runs a pre-installed retail version of the Leopard operating system.
A flurry of activity on the Psystar website, officially attributed to increased traffic, led to the site going feet up for a few hours yesterday evening. When it did come back on-line this morning, the OpenMac had miraculously been renamed the Open Computer.
Information Week managed to speak to a Psystar employee, who would only identify himself as Robert, who insisted that the company were "not breaking any laws." He added that Psystar believed that any prohibition order from Apple would not stand up in court.
The "Psystar Open Computer" is a desktop system with little of the beloved Apple Mac design features that are a staple of the fruit-themed company. It isn’t "beige", but it feels "beige". But then again, what do you expect for 400 bucks? On the other hand it’s running what is arguably a lot of people's favourite operating system, and no-one will hold it against you if you're afflicted by a bout of common sense and hesitate at dropping almost twice as much for Apple's equivalent.
The system runs an E4500 with 2 gigs of DDR2-667, GMA950 onboard (but you do have an option for a GeForce 8600GT), 250GB SATA HD, FireWire is optional (c’mon?!), a 20x DVD+/-R drive with Lightscribe and the usual run-of-the-mill features on any box.
Now, the price announced does NOT include Leopard OS X retail, which will run you an additional $155, which means the box with OSX actually costs you $554. Psystar holds no special agreement with Apple to market the box as an OEM so, although the OS is retail, the company is kind enough to ship it out pre-installed.
It would also be a nice thing if Psystar flogged these in Europe but without using Apple’s proprietary currency exchange converter. If Europeans were to get a fair deal ($554 converts roughly to €350) we think there’d be a market for it.
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.
It’s been 11 years since the end of the First Clone War, where a victorious Apple bought out Power Computing effectively killing off its biggest competitor. The remaining clone makers were choked into submission by draconian licensing deals. Today, Apple's plastic toys are sourced in Taiwan or mainland China and are no longer "Made in the USA", as was touted at the time.
So a box is a box is a box. And this might be just the kick in the pants Apple needs to release the mid-price upgradeable tower-based box every Macolyte has been crying out for.
After all, it looks like anyone can do it. On the other hand, considering Windows Vista OEM costs the same as Leopard retail, there’s room in the market for Apple to move into... and for others outside Cupertino it would seem. µ
Comments
Finally
Apple has always been tyrannical in the sense that they DO NOT EVEN create the hardware. They OEM the hardware from different manufacturers and tell the world that ITS THEIR INNOVATIVE work and charge an ARM and a LEG...Example
Processors - Intel
Memory - Samsung
Motherboard - ASUS/MSI
Hard Drive - Seagate
Video Card - Nvidia (or ATI/AMD)
They sell hardware they do not even manufacture, they just assemble for tons of money..
If you look at the MAC STORE right now, to go from 2GB to 8GB, has you adding 1500 to the cost..What they don't tell you is that the memory is OUTSIDE OF JEDEC specification running at 2.1v which means that is considered an OVERCLOCKED module along with ECC....which is great for servers, but lousy specially if it runs asynchronously. You can buy for 120 - 140 8GB of memory from Newegg.
Apple is afraid that someone will break their stranglehold over the hardware monopoly they have had for years..and it was TIME for someone to SUE. APPLE makes more money selling the HARDWARE than selling the OS that comes with it.
A lot of people do not buy MACs because of how expensive MACs are, but MAC OS X 10.5 has received very high marks and I certainly approve the OS over the hardware. I enjoyed trying it out...and it does accept my approval. It is promising...
The OS itself would flourish if people didn't have to spend a fortune for MAC hardware....And its not fair that in order to control the population, APPLE sells the OS through OEMing hardware....and telling people it was "MADE BY APPLE"...that right there should be its own lawsuit.
Also Apple choosing to not honor the WARRANTY to an OPERATING SYSTEM (A software warranty) if its not on their "HARDWARE" deserves a law suit as well.
Wait...
"And this might be just the kick in the pants Apple needs to release the mid-price upgradeable tower-based box every Macolyte has been crying out for."You do realize that its tailored (cough, overpriced) hardware that makes an apple an apple, right? Make it upgradable, and so much for the much-touted mac stability.
Bundling
A few years ago, give or take a decade or two, there was a mighty computer company the executives of which decided, in order to extract even more shekels from the pockets of their 'customers', to tie their operating system software specifically to their hardware. I won't name this company, but its initials are I.B.M.And lo and behold, the mighty Department of Justice of the United States of America, being, along with other agencies of the government of said nation-state, a rather substantial customer of said company, rose up and declared, "Yea, verily, this practice of tying software with hardware is troubling, and will be made illegal, and it shall be called, 'Bundling'". And the cry went out, and the villagers rose up with their pitchforks and cornered the beast called I.B.M, and the DOJ did make the beast cower and agree that it shall not for evermore use 'Bundling'.
Short story is, if Apple isn't careful, the DOJ will come out and bitch-slap Apple around like the hos they is.
Please
How many times do we have to have the "I want to put my ferrari engine in a yugo body" discussion?Wintel been there, done that....
This "open box" philosophy is precisely the reason windows boxes are so crappy to begin with (and largely why Microsoft is paralyzed to fix problems and innovate):
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE AND IMPRACTICAL FOR AN OS VENDOR TO TRACK, TEST, AND SUPPORT ALL THE POSSIBLE HARDWARE PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS OFFERED BY CLONE MANUFACTURERS.
The result of such foolish endeavors is excessive bloatware, rampant bugs, lost productivity, and NIGHTMARISH USER EXPERIENCE. Savvy computer users understand this. They are intolerant of such foolish business practices and seek a rational alternative. Thank goodness Apple provides a "choice" alternative to swimming in the wintel cess pool.
The integration of the OS and the hardware is the central distinction, design, and reason for the Apple value proposition as well as the system's stability.
No doubt someone would try to buy one of these Apple clones and then attempt to sue Apple when their XYZ expansion do-hickey didn't work properly.
Moral to the clone story:
We all CAN look directly at the sun without sunglasses, but that doesn't mean we SHOULD.
America better wake up and define what threshold of quality it's willing to pay for...
Though cheaper, the great Wal(mart) of China-imported "quality goods" is eroding the very foundation of this once great nation...
What did they expect?
This is what Apple gets for abandoning PowerPC and switching to Intel. Hope it was worth it, weaker Macs and now low-quality copies. IBM and Motorola must be laughing their asses off right now.So Apple, just give in a and become the next Microsoft. Remember, it's quantity, not quality.
Psystar Revenue Enhancement?
I have a different thought regarding the Psystar/Apple kerfuffle. Imagine a small PC company selling systems over the 'net. They make a few press releases about launching "Mac" clones.Next, the traffic on their website goes up by an order (or orders) of magnitude. In turn, their ad revenues increase by the same magnitude.
Once Apple unleashes the lawyers and/or the injunctions, they come out publicly and "change their mind". However, they've had a nice month or two of web traffic, no?
stability? the hell?
If OSX was really based on UNIX, a bad driver should not be able to crash the system anyway.OSX = Ferrari Engine? Are you on crack? The OS doesn't make internet browsing, word processing or iTunes anything faster. I mean at the end of the day, that's pretty much all OSX can do. It doesn't run half the shit the "real world" uses. I'm not even mentioning games here.
So it runs more stable (UNIX), maybe you should compare that to the energizer bunny or a honda accord.
I'm glad there's an alternative for OSX and I hope it sticks.
Oh I'd love to buy a psystar!
Well apple can sell whatever they want at whatever price they want with whatever restrictions they want, that's just the fact of life in the free market. But if bundling is indeed illegal then lets let the DOJ give apple its come-uppance.In the meantime I don't mind whatsoever buying a psystar for far cheaper, I don't care, I can hide that thing in the closet with wires leading out if its bad appearance bothers anybody.
Actually.. I wouldn't run OSX anyway. I used to be a fan of macintosh but these days Windows is just as good / OSX is just as bad.
Weaker computers?
Core 2 is weaker than a G5? That's news to me and probably a lot of other people (including Apple who raved about how much more powerful the Core 2 is than their old CPUs). The Power4 is one thing, but the G5 is not a Power4.I have 3 PCs that I use regularly and they're more stable than any Mac I've ever used and they're all about as open box as you can get. This Mac stability thing is a fantasy dreamed up by people who have a single perspective or who never had as much of an interest in learning how to use a PC as they did a Mac. Nothing wrong with that, it's all aesthetics on our end (for the most part). But, like I said, my PCs are more stable than my friends' macs or the Macs that I've used in libraries or computer labs. I know that I can't actually draw conclusions form that and that is exactly my point. People who are competent with their computers have stable computers.
Open Computer, after disconnecting power
Here are my favorite anagrams for Psystar:Saps Try
Pass Try
Rats Spy
Now, who can't be topical? eh?
Please overlook my comments last evening. I was pissed.
Apple Clone
Psystar is offering two specific configurations. This hardly smacks of "open box". In fact, by restricting the number of sold configurations, Psystar can, and most likely has, done testing to ensure the hardware is supported by OS X. Wouldn't make sense otherwise. This is exactly what Apple does, offer a few specific configurations. So how does someone offering essentially the same hardware as Apple, pre-configured and tested, differ from Apple? And don't declare that Apple's QC processes are superior unless you have specific information (other than Steve Jobs told me so) that indicates that Psystar is cutting corners more than Apple.The bottom line is that Apple has run a scam on people almost estatic to be scammed. It's the old "this is an elite product for elite people" pitch, so that those that overpaid can feel smug about their acquisition, when in fact, there is usually very little reason why the product should be considered elite, only that someone said it was.
In other words, Apple buyers are self-appointed elitist snobs, who feel that their purchase of an Apple makes them superior. However, because Apple has figured out that their customers are generally self-delusional, they (Apple) can sell them the same crap as "ordinary" people buy and pocket the difference in price.
My clients are S&P 500 industrial companies. I have NEVER seen an Apple in the 25+ years I've been in the industrial automation and process control business. I guess Apple computers are for sissies. They sure aren't for real men (and women) operating real machines.
@BG
Really, it's not quality currently anyway. So Apple's quantity is greenbacks pure and simple.Jobs should start a religion under USA tax laws. He'd be a natural at it.
iDIOT
"This "open box" philosophy is precisely the reason windows boxes are so crappy...""steve", you are an ihole. i build "apple quality" boxes for lunch money.
Ferrari in a Yugo
"IT IS IMPOSSIBLE AND IMPRACTICAL FOR AN OS VENDOR TO TRACK, TEST, AND SUPPORT ALL THE POSSIBLE HARDWARE PERMUTATIONS AND COMBINATIONS OFFERED BY CLONE MANUFACTURERS. "Oh really? Then what do you call an OS like Windows? Or Linux? Or even OSX-on-PC for that matter? They all can and do run on arbitrary hardware given a little work. What more, these OSes encourage the practice of updating the drivers to perform better over time. I recall my friend having access to NO new drivers for his Mac because he was stuck with some Apple-branded ATI card that only Apple had drivers for (and never bothered releasing for years). If you're calling an Apple a Ferrari, it's a Ferrari with automatic transmission, using commodity engines. It's no Ferrari at all at that point.
Did anyone actually do a price comparison?
Seriously - check the pricing. This is not a good deal. If you compare feature to feature, this machine is no cheaper than a mac. For example you can buy an IMac with more ram, bigger HD, monitor, firewire, etc. (Apples bottom end IMac) for about $1100,00. Use Psystar's shopping cart, add in the same features, and guess what - it's the same price.
Yeah, it looks cheaper, but that's because they've left out a lot of goodies. Depends on what you want I guess, but I'd rather have the goodies.
Nightmarish user experience ?
Well I guess it's a case of choosing your software.I run XP and a selected amount of 3rd-party applications and games. The worst things I have ever experienced have mostly come from Windows and its applications (Media Player 11, anyone ?).
I have a few gripes with some other, non-MS apps, but I am intelligent enough not to heap the trouble those give me together with Windows.
And, if I'm not mistaken, a badly-written Mac app will be just as "nightmarish" for the Max user.