EFI-X boots US partner

ART STUDIOS ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA (ASEM), the company behind the EFI-X UEFI dongle, has severed its relationship with EFI-X USA LLC, its North American distributor.

The whole situation was triggered when EFI-X USA LLC (unrelated to ASEM as a company) started peddling generic PCs with pre-installed OS X and the EFI-X dongle.

This upset ASEM which sought to block the American shop from selling machines. A falling out of sorts ensued and, as of the 12th of January, ASEM has come forward and denounced the EFIX USA business model as breaching its NDA and terms & conditions.

ASEM has appointed a new EFI-X partner in the US. It's named Express HD, a newly-founded hardware etailer that'll take over selling ASEM's EFI-X UEFI dongle.

Speaking to Davide Rutigliano, CEO of ASEM, the company, The Inq got some input on the "Why's" and "How's" these things happen, and uncovered some interesting factoids about what's to follow.

First of all, according to Rutigliano, there's a very thin line between selling Apple clones and selling something a small percentage of enthusiasts will want to install on their PCs - something that will allow them to boot OS X, bought off the shelf from a shop - the latter being totally legitimate, while the former is in violation of Apple's terms & conditions.

So where is the line drawn? At marketing clones that are labeled as competitors to Apple's own Mac Pros, with a general disregard for the Apple business that is - as we know - rather unique. That's what EFIX USA LLC did, according to Rutigliano, while wildly fluctuating the retail price of the dongle and providing poor customer support.

Not peddling hardware pre-installed with OS X and not pitching itself as a competitor to Apple is what sets the EFI-X apart from the likes of Psystar and other clone makers, says Rutigliano.

In fact EFI-X, the wundergadget, will get Mac OS X running on your PC, but only if you have the right hardware. There is a compatibility list available on the EFI-X website, which is updated on a regular basis as the company's R&D people work out what they need to get the whole thing working with different chipsets and other hardware.

Discussing this subject brought about Rutigliano's accidental carpet-bombing of the conversation with a preview of upcoming features, something we found far more interesting than the partner announcement (sorry Davide). The words "Core i7" and "OS X" were involved.

In short, EFI-X will support Intel's X58 and Core i7 marchitectures, starting this month. That will be followed by support for DAAMIT's Radeon HD 48x0 and Nvidia's GTX 285 graphics parts, which will bring some serious performance to OS X.

If you're thinking "Core i7, triple channel DDR3 and a GTX 285 running OS X", then you're absolutely correct. µ