Submitted by Some more information regarding PsyStar and its Opencomputer have surfaced, that try to dispel some of the doubts surrounding the company. Last week, the company posted a video online that supposedly showed the inside of the company, as wel as a bunch of OpenComputers running Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows XP. In addition, a Gizmodo reader has sent a video to Gizmodo where he shows off his OpenComputer.The video tries to prove the computer in question is really the one booting Mac OS X that you see on the display (and not a Mac Mini tucked away under the desk). System Profiler identifies the machine as a Mac Pro, but Software Update won’t work. I must say, the case looks virtually identical to the ASUS chassis that houses my ageing x86.
The user later also sent a set of photos to Gizmodo, including shots of the interior of the machine, System Profiler, and, most importantly, the shipping sticker on the box of the machine. It comes with a still shrink-wrapped copy of Leopard, so you cannot re-install the operating system yourself.
Despite the above, I’m still a little bit sceptical about the whole thing. As a comment on the Ars coverage of these new developments tells us, the user in question only registered at Gizmodo this month, and only commented on the PsyStar stories, raising suspicions he might be affiliated with PsyStar in some way.
My original advice stands: wait for a big, established website (like Ars) to receive review models of the machine, before placing your orders.
I don’t see the huge fuss. You are paying (over the odds) – for an OSx86 machine, that you may not even receive at all, when you could build your own using the free information and software available on the Internet, for less.
Also, software update doesn’t work. Just wait until someone uses a ‘sploit to hose hackintoshes, and watch as the blame is placed on Apple for their “insecure operating system”.
Secondly – the reason to have a Mac, is the hardware. You will not understand this unless you own Mac hardware – no matter what argument you have. (How can you argue against the real deal, when you only have the counterfeit?)
I don’t care what “questions this raises”, the Psystar computer is a crap knockoff, badly done and not even as good as a Chinese effort. I would complain less if they made something that could actually *compete* with a real Mac.
Edited 2008-04-29 11:23 UTC
Competing on price is still competing, Kroc. It’s just not the kind of competing Apple people like.
But it’s not competing on price; it’s competing on features.
If the Psystar had exactly equal specification, and every feature of a real Mac – but was still cheaper then it would be competing on price.
But it’s not. It’s not an iMac, nor a MacPro. Where’s the webcam (iMac)? It’s slower. OPTIONAL firewire. Integrated graphics on base configuration. No bluetooth, no mouse or keyboard.
Is it a Mac Mini? No bluetooth, no IR, the size doesn’t even compare (the most important thing about the Mac Mini)
This isn’t competing at all. It’s just ‘cheap’.
Edited 2008-04-29 11:34 UTC
I think Apple is sorely needing an expandable PC that is not the full blown Mac Pro. I want a Mac where I can add a second hard drive, for RAID, and have the option to upgrade the video card. I can’t do that with the iMac or the Mac Mini. That said I wouldn’t buy from PsyStar. It’s very tempting to build my own but in my experience PCs from manufacturers like Dell, HP or Apple are quieter than these generic boxes. Being quiet is another important feature.
I agree that people should use the hardware they want. I don’t agree with EULA’s neither.
But buying from a company like PsyStar is not the way to do it; and I object to the comparisons on price being made (as pertains to features).
Apple only offer computers with a minimum of x number of features. Other manufacturers offer computers with less than x features, and therefore lower cost.
If you spec a Dell with exactly equal features to a Mac (x=x). The Mac is the same, if not cheaper price.
But since you cannot spec a Mac exactly equal to a cheaper Dell (with <x features), a comparison cannot be made. The Apple looks “expensive” because you cannot have <x features. However this is a false analysis.
People seem to have a real difficult time grasping this. Some people also don’t want to buy flat-pack furniture.
Edited 2008-04-29 14:00 UTC
You’re very anti-competitive. And very anti-psystar. Do you work for Apple?
If you spec a Dell with exactly equal features to a Mac (x=x). The Mac is the same, if not cheaper price.
True, but meaningless. What counts is not whether I can duplicate a Mac configuration I do not want for less. What counts is whether I can buy a different, better value computer which I do want, and which serves the same purpose equally well.
You always can. This is why Macs are expensive, not because you can duplicate them cheaper, but because they are poorer value than alternative non-Apple hardware for a given purpose. This happens because of the restricted range and poor hardware at the bottom end. At the high end they spend too much money on expensive processors and extra cores where it does little good in terms of performance. The result, buy a more sensible computer, and get the same on the job performance for far less.
Unless you really want to put it in your coat pocket of course….
Apple doesn’t need it and if you do you can get it elsewhere. Next thing you’ll say BMW needs $12000 car to compete with Hyunday. Yea right!
So what is the problem with being cheap. If I want a cheap MAC machine, at least I should have the option to get one.
Isn’t this how Linux compete by providing cheaper alternative?
The problem isn’t being cheap, the problem is being a) dodgy, and b) assuming that just because a knock-off costs less $, that that means that Apple is over priced. Feature for Feature Apple is priced equal to Dell &c. PsyStar is cheaper because it has less features, pure and simple, not because Apple is expensive.
People are drawing very wrong conclusions from this article, conclusions that would have them fail basic economics or math exams.
Kroc, that argument is so old and inherently flawed I’m amazed people still use it.
If computer A costs 300 EUR, and computer B 400 EUR, computer A is cheaper, whether it has more features or not. What you, and so many other Mac people, are referring to with this argument is value. 400 is more than 300, but if the customer thinks he’s better off with the 400 machine, it’s better value for him – but it’s still not cheaper than the 300 EUR machine.
And buying a computer that doesn’t have the feature you need is useless, no matter what the cost. Value is what actually matters. If your budget does not stretch beyond X, and Apple do not offer feature Y in price range X, then don’t buy Apple hardware. But also, don’t blame Apple for being “expensive”. It’s completely wrong terminology and reasoning.
Value is a different matter altogether, and cannot be quantified and generalised. Any statements that say “Macs are more expensive” or “Macs are cheaper” is completely ridiculous, as that depends on so many factors it is impossible to make any such statements. In my current financial situation, EVERY computer is expensive, be it Apple or Dell.
Whether something is expensive or not depends on so many factors, it cannot be generalised.
“So what is the problem with being cheap. If I want a cheap MAC machine, at least I should have the option to get one. ”
Your logic is a bit flawed. Using the same logic then you should be able to get a cheap Rolex, or a cheap BMW, or even a cheap Vista. Every company, at least here, has the right to produce models or not as they see fit. Anything else is a cheap knockoff. You can choose to buy what the company sells or you can buy another brand. In some cases the knockoff can be illlegal.
At the moment if you want to run OS X you have to buy a Mac or risk doing something that may not legal. That is for the courts to decide. I would think that in most countries Apple is probably on good legal footing.
I have a Power Mac G5 and an IBM here in my computer room. The IBM is much better engineered than the typical PC on the market today. But the G5 is head and shoulders above the IBM in its engineering and design.
While I can applaud what Psystar is trying to do I would tell prospective buyers caveat Emptor.
Rolex are mass produced (1+ million a year) watches with crudely made and inaccurate mechanical movements. Equally good or better watches can be bought for 1/10th the price. There are many excellent Rolex submariner clones sold for around $100. BMW made many very cheap cars in the 1950s and 1960s including 3 wheelers.
Well, things might not be too inconceivable, in relation to the BMW analogy. If you compare:
BMW
http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/modelselector/0,,1156___sit-bmwuk,00.htm…
with
Ford:
http://www.ford.co.uk/ns7/all_cars/-/-/-/-/-/-
You will see (unless I have scanned it too quickly) that Ford has but 5 models under the starting price of what BMW offers at its lower end (BMW vehicles appear to start from £15k).
So, you can get a relatively inexpensive BMW, yet BMW still has kudos as a quality, up-market brand (so I am to understand, actually, I don’t drive and detest cars).
Does Apple really offer the consumer this same sort of choice relative to its competition that BMW appears to be able to?
(I am over my bad-Apple Karma, so I am just wondering)
BMWs are only slightly more expensive than comparable Volkswagen, Ford or GM (Opel) models in Germany. The most expensive Hyundai limousines sold only in South Korea are comparable to 7 series BMWs in price. The 1 series BMW is locally manufactured in South Africa and is a very common car.
Wait… Let me get this straight… Offering a product that is broken by default for a lower price is competing?
Let’s see, with the PsyStar you get
1. A computer PsyStar doesn’t want you to upgrade the hardware on (from their FAQ).
2. A computer PysStar doesn’t want you to upgrade the OS on (from their FAQ).
3. A computer that may or may not be crippled should you choose to upgrade it.
So… Everyone is up in arms about Apple’s lock in and yet will champion the cause of a company that is breaking Apple EULA and using the EFI V1 – V8 emulator without consent of its author–all for a product that is BROKEN from the get go.
Yes, that sure sounds like competition… Sounds more like fanaticism to me. If you’re that hard up on cash that you can’t buy an Apple, build your own Hackintosh, it’s not like it hasn’t been documented to a T.
How good is Apple hardware today, my MiniMac mobo died after 30 days, Did Apple even apologize or compensate for this, nope, just changed the mobo like nothing had ever happened. My museum Macs still boot though after 15 years.
My own crap made PCs generally last 3-8 years depending on board brand and 3 years for drives, I’d expect the same from Psystar if I dared. Apple buys it parts from the same pool as everyone else but maybe steers clear of the lowest quality suppliers. Oh and I’d really love to know why an Apple DIMM upgrade for my MiniMac is worth $300 for a 2nd Gig.
All some of us want is a good deal more Mac choice at the lower middle end for expandability, like we had before.
Reminds me of all the stuff you see in Bestbuy or Circuitcity these days, put some gold plating on cable connectors and charge the punters 10x the usual price for same thing. There’s a big enough pool of people that don’t know better that you can keep on $ raping them till the cows come home.
I’ve been through four complete replacements and four repairs for a MacbookPro. Apple hardware is certainly getting less reliable, and “Rev.A” still plagues them. Price has come down though especially since the switch to Intel. PPC hardware always had a wee premium.
For all the trouble I’ve had though, I made the right choice – because Apple support is not Dell support
You want compensation IN ADDITION to the under-warranty repair?
What the hell are you on?
The PC I’m running now is fast-approaching eight years old, having various parts upgraded or added over the years, and still going strong. This specific machine did cost quite a bit, and was somewhere in between medium- and high-end when built, so that could be it too…
I have older PCs that would still work today if I didn’t take them apart for parts. And assuming I actually wanted to run a Pentium II.
Unfortunately, I’ve never had any Macs, so no idea how well-built those are… all I know is the Macs they had at my schools crashed like there was no tomorrow. That is… until OS X came out. Now, I’d like to get a Mac, but three problems:
1. They’re way too expensive.
2. What? Only shiny white? Bleh, where’s black?! Yes, paint job matters to me when it comes to electronics.
3. Where’s the customization? I like to be able to upgrade my system over time, and would sacrifice the “legendary” Apple look if they would allow you to buy such a machine without asking you to send an arm, a leg, and a testicle their way.
It seems that with Apple, you either go pretty decently-priced and non-customizable, or expensive (I would say overpriced) and customizable.
I would never buy it i guess .. BUT:
At least it shows that Apple has some insane pricing if you want all bells and whistles ..
For example a fully speced Mac Pro ( 32 GB Ram + 30 inch Screen etc + EVERYTHING ) is $26,020.90 .. that is just insane.
If you spec their $999 machine it only reaches 2,159.99 ..
Yah yah, i know i am comparing apples and oranges .. but intelligent people might get the point.
Edited 2008-04-29 11:59 UTC
LOL!
That was the worst comparison I’ve ever seen in the last decade.
))
Comparing an eight core with 32gigs of ram, 4tb of storage, hardware raid.. etc… to a … cheap clone ?
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Try again
Do you own one?
How many people own a HP blackbird?
The fact that I own or do not own such system has got nothing to do with it. It was a bad comparison. What were you trying to prove? That Apple hardware is expensive? That Apple should sell OSX? What?
I don’t own such system (I have a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro if that helps you). However, you clearly said: “Maxing out a Mac Pro costs 32k, maxing out a Pystar costs 2k”.
So.. how are both things the same thing and how does this translate to the “Apple has expensive hardware” thing?
Do you own a Ferrari? How many people own a Ferrari?. Oh god, the most expensive Fiat costs 20k yet there are 1.5 million dollar ferraris out there.
The comparison was bad.
Edited for typo.
Edited 2008-04-29 14:30 UTC
However have you considered that the high price of Apple PC’s is exactly why they are still in business?
Seriously, look at the price of PC’s – they cost more to build than they can be sold for. Even the few little guy screwdriver shops know this. They sell computers they build at cost and get their real money on upgrades, installs, and service calls. Dell & HP make their money from consumer PC sales on the extended service contracts.
Apple is the only one that actually has a real business model by simply using quality parts then charging enough of a mark-up to make money and continue to innovate. Because of that Apple will still be around decades from now whereas PsyStar even if they don’t get sued will end up out of business simply because their price point is too low to keep up with demand on orders.
Rob
yeah it’s better than one of those pieces of junk.
99% of people don’t buy macs because they’re 1. too pricey 2. too unchangeable. Here is a group making osx boxes that do work. That are cheap compared to apple, sure do it yourself is cheap but some people are lazy and will pay to be so. you can up spec it into the mac pro range drop a quad core in etc without wasting a ton of money. I could build a quad core hackintosh for under $1000 and it would blow any imac/mini away. Sure it won’t have a webcam do I care? no I don’t want to join the camwhores on 4chan anyway. This will fill a niche and all the mac lovers are whining. Sucks to be a zealot the rest of us will have cheap macs whether we build them ourselves or get someone else to do it for us. How many people use bluetooth and IR? not many if you want it you can add it, unlike Apple where if you don’t want it you can’t remove it and if you want it you can’t add it unless Apple say so.
Edited 2008-04-29 12:17 UTC
for bluetooth, buy a dongle, works a treat!
These machines are all well and good, indeed they are cheap with not bad specs BUT by not being able to upgrade the OS you are potentially leaving some LARGE security holes open.
How many people here still use XP SP1? I would suspect very few
I think its great that someone is trying to sell these machines. For YEARS people have been complaing that they wanted middle machines between the mini and the Pro. This shows apple that there is a market, people who are willing to spend money in.
This company will not sell the PCs for long, Apple couldnt allow the precident to be set BUT lets hope apple fills the void it left
Apple is highly profitable. Why do they need to enter a market that the regular consumer is moving away from (Standard ATX PC-Boxen sales are down, Laptops/Micros are up), and that the rest of that market is full of people who work on the principle that nothing Apple do is good enough anyway.
Even with a midi-Mac, you still couldn’t upgrade anything that you couldn’t already in a Mac Pro because of EFI-firmware / Drivers. Apple would release a midi-Mac, and all the people that have been bitching to them to make it, when then move onto bitching about the lack of choice in hardware because of drivers.
Apple cannot win with this crowd, so why break record profits because of a bunch of ingrates?
What I want is fairly simple and not out of the ordinary…I want iMac level hardware without the attached screen. I have a 23″ widescreen monitor that I already purchased. A mac mini has a driver limited gma950. It’s limited because I can only devote 64MB to it, not like in windows where I can devote A LOT more.
The same with my macbook. I can’t boost the video memory in OSX, but I can in Windows.
So I want an ATI video card in a mac mini, or an iMac without the screen.
Here’s what I don’t need, quad processors, 8GB of RAM, hardware raid, a big ass case.
A mid range headless iMac or a beefed up mac mini in a nice looking case would be great. If I can change the video card in my mac pro, i would expect to be able to do the same thing here.
I want a core 2 duo setup, not the xeons.
I think apple should cater for a midi-mac market because I think they have a market available to them and potentially a way into business.
In my case, our work recently updated our PCs, I was the one who put forward the proposals for the hardware/software combinations. OSX was an easy sell despite some ‘migration’ being required (our MD has a powerbook which helped) BUT the hardware wasn’t. We already have sufficient high quality monitors (imac out) and due to the work we do and the need for dual displays, onboard graphics is unfeasible (mac mini is out) That left us with the Mac Pros. These were (are) greater than our need and I could not justify the associated cost. If there was a midi-mac with upgradable graphics then I think we would have purchased them. This gap in their lineup cost apple the sale of a few systems from our company.
I appreciate a few machines isn’t many BUT i’d be surprised if we were the only business in this position.
However I do agree with your point that people would complain that they couldnt plugin <random graphics card> and it didnt work because of lack of drivers. This criticism can be aimed at any non MS os however. Yet Linux seems to be gaining more and more mindshare as an acceptable alternative in business. Apple are equally well placed to take advantage of the ‘not vista’ mindset going around. I feel a midi-mac could harness this market without apple having to lose the ‘mac platform’ that is proving so successful
The fact is that these OpenComputers are well worth it!
I can even hear the jet engine spinning up when it powers up.
Wow.
Sorry, but I can’t find another company ripping off its customer more than this.
Apple is going to sue the pants off of them. You can bank on it.
Or at least try.
At the moment all I’m reading is speculation from geeks who are unqualified in US law.
I love Macs as much as anyone, but if (big if) this takes off, then that can only be good for us OS X users. Apple may be forced to look at another market, one that wants cheaper machines. They may be forced to compete a little.
Maybe Apple can start selling stuff a little cheaper, and that can only be a good thing. They don’t have to go as low as Dell and make no money at all, but certainly lower than they currently do.
For an example, check out the price of any Mac in Australia and compare it to the ones in the US (taking into account exchange rate. The latest 24″ iMac costs US$2199 in the US and AUS$2999 in Australia. Right now the exchange rate puts US2199 at AUS2348! Why do we pay and extra AUS$649 (US$607)??? It used to be a lot worse by the way, Apple have improved a little.
As has been mentioned also, never buy any peripherals from Apple, the externals HD;s and Ram for instance is insane from Apple Stores (well, in Aus anyway)…
Apple make good machines that a very well designed, but for me the draw is the OS, which IMHO is hard to beat. I just wish it was available to more people.
Apple is a great company, but don’t think you get the best deal from them at all times, you don’t…
Unfortunately, I don’t think this company will make much of a dent before Apple shut them down.
That’s the problem people bought into the hype that apple is different. They are not, at the end of the day they sell pc’s like the rest of them. They are already competing. They are competing with the winpc market and eventhough apple is slowly chinking away at the winpc market they are still losing the by a large margin. The fact that Apple is what it is where its at is becasue they ARE competing. There commercials clearly are a retake on the Pepsi challenge (without the challenge) and clearly show that Apple already has a competitor. Apple strategy in this competition is to make users think that they are not running commodity hardware with nice packaging.
My argument looks like I’m for what Psystar is doing, but its the opposite. Apple can’t get competition becasu they already have competition in their market. A Mac clone is pointless because at the end of the day its justa pc with some firmware. Just like Dell, or Sony, HP, have the right to include services and software in their offerings that don’t work anywhere else, so does Apple. OSX is how Apple competes, its an exclusive piece of software that they include with their pcs as a service.
Being profitable, is not losing.
Apple are not after a marketshare game. If they wanted marketshare and nothing else, they would licence OS X.
Not really, because there is no guarantee that people would flock to OSX if Apple licenses it. What would differentiate Apple from every other Johnny-come-lately that ships OSX? What you meant to say is that its not about money, if all Apple wanted was money, then yeah they would license OSX. In-fact they would have licensed the classic apple OS a long time ago and MS would probably not be on the map as anything other than a software company that sells office. Many vendors, including MS tried to get Apple to license their OS. Apple refused. At the time they were the only real game in town and could do things like that. Things are different now but they still hold true to same ideals. They want to control the whole user experience, they want to be able to add a feature to the OS without worrying if some third party pc maker’s hardware supports the feature. They want to ensure that anything with the Apple logo on it has Apple quality (whatever that means to you). Apple wants to gain marketshare and sell products on their own terms, not by pandering and being held sway by hardware makers and businesses the way MS is.
Shipping, handling and fuel costs? 🙂
Actually…no. I spoke to an Apple rep some time ago asking about this price discrepency when the 17″ Powerbook was first released. The price was over AU$1500 higher in Australia than in the US. When I asked him about it he said very bluntly something to the effect of..”We charge what the market will accept”.
That was the last time I considered buying an Apple product.
It’s probably obvious to all of us that if you buy an Intel-based PC with a Q6600 CPU, overclocked to 3.0 GHz that that’s a better deal than you can get from Apple and you’d have a great system albeit you’d be violating the EULA for running it with their OS.
That being said, I cannot understand why Psyster thinks that they won’t be sued into oblivion by Apple in the very near future. The rule of that jungle is that you will lose and lose big if you ever try to take on Apple with their own intellectual property where their future sales are at risk.
This isn’t a bunch of hackers trying to unfree an iPhone from AT&T service or getting OS X to run on their PC. This is a commercial entity, up close and personal, diverting potential hardware sales out from under them.
[I know. The argument would be that the majority of these kinds of consumers wouldn’t buy an Apple PC anyway. Common sense says that that doesn’t matter to one bit to Apple.]
I cannot understand why Psyster thinks that they won’t be sued into oblivion by Apple in the very near future
Because Apple know they would lose the suit. That simple. Look up Data General 1984. Find out about post sale restraints on use. Look up competition law on linked sales.
Apple is going to have to argue in court that they should be able to prevent, by a condition of sale, someone from installing OSX on essentially identical hardware just because it was not bought from Apple. This is the test case: you put the same standard components used by Apple, but which you bought from Fry’s, into a box, and install a retail copy of OSX on it. Your honor, this is a violation of the Eula, we want damages for breach of contract.
No way, and they know it. They will not try. They are holding their breath right now, and hoping Psystar blows up for technical reasons.
Its virtually the same hardware but for the fact that you have to hack around the firmware that prevents you from running the software in the first place. There is nothing stopping you from doing this for personal use but for commercial use, I think Apple could argue that they are circumventing some sort of drm on the system and profiting from it, which is illegal in some areas. Most of the time you can get in trouble just for distributing the the drm circumvention, if that is the case then the EFI hack may have to get the boot as well.
Its pretty clear the Apple uses the firmware to lock the OS in, so the argument that their drm is being circumvented and profited from would probably be valid. Apple alos has a friend in its corner whe it comes to the firmware hack. The original EFi hack author has now included in his license that his work should not be used commercially with or without modification and that he should get credit for his work if distributed. That means that future versions of the firmware will not be distributable and basically any new version of OSX would most likely not work when Apple releases a firmware update. Now the argument about the EULA also applies here as well, is it valid. IF no then neither is the BSD or GPL and that could be disastrous for the opensource community.
Edited 2008-04-30 12:49 UTC
with all the same hardware as a mac mini. and with expandability. thats a good price
it sound like a vacuum cleaner
I have some dev work to do that requires a MacBook Pro. I’d like to run BootCamp and dual-boot Vista on it. The software that I’m going to run is the usual dev stuff: compilers, IDE, etc. The work I’m doing tends to chew up a decent amount of memory, so I’ll probably need something between 2GB-4GB. Guessing that the hard drive needs to be at least 60-80+ GB. Needs a very solid video card.
Would anybody please recommend a particular model/config that would be good for dev work?
Its a Mac PC in a ATX form factor.
That means there is no “brand” or “style” markup.
Still, I will contest to the perceived superiority of Mac OS X. I find it more interesting that the Pro system has a Linux option.
For the oldies here, remember once upon a time Apple sold the very well engineered but very expensive Mac II (thanks to JLG). It was several times the price of the affordable Plus and SE of the time. Only very high income folks and companies could ever afford it. I think Apple realized that the 6 slots it had were not usually filled so it came out with the 3 slot CX then CI models both of which were far more affordable and became pretty mainstream while the big chassis II and later FX were rarely seen. At one time MacWorld even built a wish list uber MacFX for $50K.
Today we have modern versions of the SE (all in one LCDs) and the FX but no CX. The gap in the middle is glaring.
Actually I wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more PC MiniMacs or MiniPC too for those times when one must run the other OSes without the OSX tax. Of course I doubt Apple could make MiniMac-OSX for much less.