Mac Clone Maker Psystar Files For Bankruptcy 366
StikyPad was one of several readers letting us know that Psystar has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. We've discussed the Mac clone maker's battles with Apple extensively. The company apparently has over $250,000US in debt, and states that it cannot turn a profit in the current economy. "The Chapter 11 filing will temporarily suspend Apple's copyright infringement suit against Psystar, which is currently before the US District Court of Northern California. But once the bankruptcy protection is sorted out, the copyright case will resume." And PC Mag is reporting that, on the other side of the Atlantic, two new clone companies are just getting started. Like PsyStar, FreedomPC and RussianMac promise to deliver PCs with OS X preloaded.
Re:$250 K ? Must be a typo (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe Apple was getting too close to finding the money behind PsyStar?
If that were the case why would they go into bankruptcy which will force them to disclose that information publicly? Did you even think this stupid post through before you posted it?
Re:$250 K ? Must be a typo (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Mac clone companies (Score:3, Informative)
Macs are over priced, but people pay that premium because they want an Apple product.
Or, they just want to use OS X and have barely any other legal option.
Re:$250 K ? Must be a typo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mac clone companies (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sorry guys, but... (Score:3, Informative)
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
CAUTION! OP contains a GOATSE Link!
Re:The question is: how come (Score:5, Informative)
Don't you actually have to sell something to make a profit? Has anyone actual obtained proof that Psystar actually shipped any products?
They shipped. What sort of proof do you want? The relevant forums are full of people who received them talking about them. Then there are the blogs of people who got them. The news coverage. The review sites... pretty much all confirm they were shipping (until the court ordered to stop).
I mean, at this stage, asking for proof psystar actually shipped any products is on par with asking for proof Alienware ever shipped anything before being bought out by dell.
Re:$250 K ? Must be a typo (Score:4, Informative)
What kind of an idiot CEO decides with a very small company and almost no capital, to lock horns with one of the largest companies out their with a very. . . let's say 'speculative' business proposition at best? I suppose, maybe, if you're going to test the waters, perhaps doing it as a small company with no assets might actually be very cunning, because if you lose, Apple really isn't able to take anything. . .but at the same time, without sufficient funds, there's little chance you can survive the legal battles you first have to face in order to try to attain a ruling from the Courts that your business doesn't actually infringe their copyrights.
(I mean, if I pay Apple for Mac OS X, in order to put it on a different computer, I fail to see how that has infringed their *COPY* rights - the copy is legal; they shouldn't have any say in what I do with that copy or what hardware I run it on, once the copy is licensed, but. . . it was obvious Apple would try to stop them with a lawsuit, and they'd have to fight the total GARBAGE law known as the DMCA,, before they could ever get to the point of, hopefully, getting a ruling that they weren't infringing).
Re:because OSX is good, Apple hardware not so much (Score:3, Informative)
Believe it or not, there are USB display adapters, and some even support the mac, allowing (apparently) up to 4 displays.
Obviously, a USB display adapter isn't going to perform as well as a GeForce 99E+27, but keep in mind as well that the latest iMacs come with a mini display port, so they already support 2 displays.
Re:Now,now, nothing to see here move along. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Now,now, nothing to see here move along. (Score:4, Informative)
Or Apple could take advantage of the TPM chip that's been present in Macs since almost immediately after they moved to the x86 platform.
As I understand it they stopped including a TPM chip after a short time citing cost and lack of interest from developers. A quick Google search finds this: Tom's Hardware Article [tomshardware.com] provide a source for such a claim (end of the first paragraph). Another response to your post claims Apple uses TPM to lock down OS X, but I've never heard any knowledgeable source make such a claim. Here's a detailed article [osxbook.com] explaining about Apple's use of TPM as a tool for cryptography and how it has never been used as DRM on OS X.
Re:Sunset (Score:3, Informative)
The tower is in its last days as a mass market product. Too much space. Too much power. Too much weight.
I agree totally. My most recent purchase was a 20" Core2 Duo iMac in January. I have towers and rack-mount chassis that I never opened. I used to buy into the notion that I needed all of the extra drive bays and PCI slots and the big power supply, until I realized that I never installed more hard disks or PCI devices.
The iMac takes up minimal space on my desk, and I have some FireWire hard disks for things like audio projects, the Time Machine backup and my iTunes library.
Sure, I suppose those FireWire hard disks could be internal, but they don't have to be connected to the machine at all times and are easily swapped out when necessary.
I do not miss the old clunkly tower chassis at all.
Re:Mac clone companies (Score:3, Informative)
You must have missed the clone companies in the 1990s.......they were eating Apple's lunch.
Unfortunately 90% of the Mac clones sold were junk that used Apple's valuable brand to make the sale then devalued it when the machine broke after a few months or crashed constantly. The only really decent clone maker was Power Computing, which Apple actually acquired.
Mac clones were a bust for Apple and not sustainable in the long term given the very broken desktop OS market, which persists to this day. Until that market is restored to something close to competitive, Apple would be idiotic to try and build a business model relying upon it instead of their current model which bypasses said market.
Re:Now,now, nothing to see here move along. (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine that you've upgraded both your software and hardware. The new hardware (perhaps a RAID card, or a video card) works fairly well with your new system, but not well at all with the system originally sold with your mac. Something goes wrong-- and your entire system has to be installed from scratch.
If you have to upgrade from the original system first, it's a real pain, and adds another hour or two. Now, I suppose Apple could just ask to validate the original system install disks after installing the new system, but the "10.1 upgrade" required an existing 10.0 system.
Re:Now,now, nothing to see here move along. (Score:3, Informative)
There's always the iMac... Quite frankly, Apple needs a Powermac G4 equivalent-- an Core i7 with a few slots. With USB 3.0 on the horizon, and games demanding better and better graphics cards, a cheapish PCI machine might just hold its value.
On the other hand, I have a late model PowerMac G4 with one additional IDE hard drive (for time machine), one USB 2.0 card (for an iPod), and very slightly upgraded graphics in the form of a Radeon 9600 Pro.
The hard drive was taken from a firewire chassis because the bridge chip turned out to be slightly incompatible with my system, and the videocard was taken from a G5, and modded down. Even the USB card was more than trivial to obtain-- most pci cards support only the other operating system.
Today Intel Macs have a hard time with most of the third party PCIe cards, because a BIOS is assumed.
Re:Sorry guys, but... (Score:3, Informative)
From the article you quote:
"For the first time, Linux has reached 1%. This past month the Linux share increased by 0.12% which is well above the average monthly increase of 0.02%."
What you have to say:
"Vista sucked the big wet titty and you couldn't even gain marketshare against THAT."
Ummm, you fail. Linux (and so has Mac OS X) HAS gained a market share, just because it's not the majority doesn't mean that the inroads are being made. It takes a long time to overcome a monopoly on the market.
Microsoft wants to force you to upgrade and pay for it at that. Linux will let you upgrade when you are ready and at no cost.
Re:because OSX is good, Apple hardware not so much (Score:3, Informative)
1. They want to consolidate multiple computers (Windows PC for gaming, Mac for other stuff) into a single box.
I fail to see how PCIe slots help that.
2. They want more performance than an iMac.
Cue the Mac Pro.
3. They don't want a built-in screen (and/or want to connect 2+ screens and/or need to connect particular types of screens).
We, for example, considered moving our staff onto Macs to take advantage of some Mac-only software. But since a) all our staff use dual screens in a portrait configuration and b) quite a few of them need to have "medically certified" screens, that would mean everyone has to get a Mac Pro, which is ridiculous when in every other way, a Mac Mini would have been sufficient.
Then the new mac minis satisfy your requirements - they can drive dual displays now since they have a mini DVI and mini display port.