Apple and Psystar may be talking in more reserved tones about their ongoing legal battle, but that doesn’t cut the smack-talk out of press releases. After Steve Jobs described Blu-ray as “a bag of hurt” for consumers at the recent MacBook and MacBook Pro launch, Psystar president Rudy Pedraza has criticized Apple for taking a back-seat on the next-gen optical technology. To hammer the point home, you can now specify one of Psystar’s OS X-running clone machines with a Blu-ray burner.
With Apple stoking the legal furnaces, Psystar facing the prospect of recalling each and every OS X clone machine they’ve sold, and Open Tech Inc. promising yet another EULA workaround, you could say we’re approaching a licencing milestone. Apple could be walking out of court with a watertight grip on OS X, or its EULA might be picked apart. But putting aside the terms & conditions, I’m left wondering exactly who would comprise the market for even a licenced OS X machine.
When Apple sued OS X clone-maker Psystar earlier this month, some commenters suggested that multiple other cloners could spring up depending on the outcome of the case. Open Tech Inc. don’t appear to have the patience to wait, however; the company will apparently be selling two new computers that, while not coming with OS X pre-installed, will nonetheless be able to run the Apple OS should the buyer choose so.
The budget ultraportable trend showed no signs of slowing this week, as Acer’s Aspire One hit US shelves priced from $379. Meanwhile, sources close to Dell’s suppliers tipped the company’s upcoming ‘E’ netbook as carrying a mere $299 price tag, and perhaps even landing as early as next month.
As for grown-up notebooks, Intel finally made the Centrino 2 platform official, and with it the promise of not only faster processors but native draft-N WiFi support and longer battery life. In fact this week the company had plenty to be pleased about, as they soundly thrashed arch-rival AMD with their Q2 2008 financial performance.
In an interesting – and potentially even more expensive – twist to the Apple/Psystar legal case, it’s now emerged that not only are Apple looking for financial restitution from the clone-makers, but the recall and destruction of every Psystar machine running OS X that has been sold. However, while this is remarkably thorough on Apple’s part, some are questioning whether the move could in fact leave them open to more copycat machines should the final ruling not go entirely their way.
Rating around “no surprise” on the predictability chart, Mac-clone manufacturer Psystar has just received some unpleasant legal documentation from Apple, alleging counts for violation of its shrink wrap license, trademark and copyright infringement. The suit, filed at the federal district court for the northern district of California, suggests Apple has been infuriated not only by Psystar contravening their EULA, but by the potential damage to Apple’s reputation what with the Psystar machines proving less than popular with owners and reviewers alike.
PsyStar, maker of OS X clone computers, have solved half of their most significant drawbacks, though there’s still some confusion over exactly how legitimate their solution is. Although the appeal of a cheap machine running Apple’s lauded software was a draw for many, the inability to load an existing copy of Leopard (you had to buy it from PsyStar) and the absence of Apple updates left them lacking polish. Now PsyStar are offering access to Apple Updates, but not in the way you might immediately think.
More speed, more gameplay and more pixels has been the theme of the week, with a variety of new hardware launches and upgrades together with some long awaited titles getting released. Apple lived up to the rumors and introduced new processors and faster FSB for their iMac range, together with stirring up a little controversy over whether they’d had access to Intel’s future product line first. Faux-Apple hardware also get plenty of attention, as Psystar’s OS X-running Open Computer took time out from being sniped at by fanboys to get benchmarked.
Psystar may have shown they can deliver their OS X-running Open Computer into customers’ hands, but now attention turns to whether this pre-built Hackintosh can offer comparable performance and, even more importantly, stability to Apple’s own range. Engadget have been running some preliminary tests [warning: loud autoplay video!] on their unit, and while the benchmarks seem to suggest the Open Computer falls somewhere within the Mac mini/iMac/MB/MBP range, they’ve also had some persistent hardware and software issues. These include regularly dropped network connections, incompatibility with the Apple System Profiler and a fan that sounds like a chopper taking off.
Psystar’s Open Computer video demo may have prompted more questions than it perhaps answered, but it did encourage one Gizmodo reader Patrick (username Whiskeyfrown) to reveal that he’d not only put down the money for a non-Apple system running OS X but had already taken delivery of it. At the time, his comments were:
“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” Patrick (Whiskeyfrown)
Now Patrick has produced a video of his Psystar system in action, including tracing the VGA cable from tower to monitor just to confirm it’s not some under-the-table Mac doing all the hard work.
SlashGear Japan
