Psystar video demo OS X clone; at least one customer claims delivery
Psystar likely expected to incur the wrath of Apple at some point during their OS X clone business, but they perhaps didn't predict the amount of ire from outraged Mac fans. Having been branded both criminals and vaporware-peddlers, the company has attempted to rebuke at least the latter of those accusations with a video purporting to be their Open Computer system running, in three different setups, OS X, ubuntu and Windows Vista. You can see the video after the cut, but be warned it's already got the conspiracy theorists muttering.
Current theories include "Psystar have put a Mac mini inside a big tower case" and "Psystar have secretly wired up the monitor to a hidden Mac"; to be fair, in a video attempting to prove a concept they could've been more obvious about what was plugged into what. Of course, though, actually running OS X on non-Apple-sourced hardware isn't especially new. What will likely get them into trouble is falling foul of Apple's EULA; maybe they should release a video of their legal team limbering up for action?
Psystar are offering two main OS X systems, the Open Computer and Open Computer Pro, priced from $399 and $999 respectively. So far happy customers seem to be in short supply, though one Gizmodo commenter claims to have received his computer two weeks after ordering it:
I posted this yesterday in one of the older Psystar threads, but no one noticed. So far I haven't seen any other comments by people who've ordered and received a computer from Psystar so I'll stick my neck out once again.
Just so you know I ordered on April 10th, several days before the news broke about these guys supposedly being shady scamsters.
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Well...
I got mine today and it's awesome. Leopard preinstalled and included (still in shrink wrap) Core2Duo 2.66 w/4gigs of ram and a Geforce 8600GT w/256 mb ram. Everything as advertised. Clocked a very respectable 3585 on Geekbench.
Plus I got 3 calls from Psystar:
1. to let me know it had shipped.
2. to let me know UPS got it here a day early and it was on the truck for delivery.
3. to follow up and make sure I got everything and was happy with the machine.
Time will tell, but I think Giz may owe these guys an apology.
Cheers
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To follow up, I used this machine all day today at work without a hiccup. So far everything is working perfectly (something I can't say about my G5 it's replacing) Photoshop, Firefox, VMware Fusion (I know...ironic) as well as the OS itself all performed as expected.
These guys may have made some mistakes, and are obviously treading on very thin ice regarding Apple's EULA, but they ARE shipping plain vanilla PC's that run OS 10.5.2 like a champ.
Say what you will, but the black boxes they are using are not ugly (and who really gives a rats ass if it works)