Yesterday, Mike posted about the new commercial hackintosh from Psystar. Many of our readers noted that, wow, that was a lawsuit waiting to happen -- or as Fake Steve put it, Psystar is French for "We're about to go out of business". Update 11 am Tuesday: InformationWeek is reporting that Psystar believes that Apple's EULA is anticompetitive and violates US monopoly laws. Interesting.Here are a few of the high points that TUAW is aware of:
The Mac name Using "Mac" in the product name was probably a bad idea. Psystar just re-named the platform to "Open Computer" instead.
Pre-installing Leopard It would seem that installing Leopard on non-Apple hardware is a violation of Apple's EULA. Virtualization vendors such as Parallels and VMware have already acknowledged this constraint in their product development; otherwise, both would offer VMs capable of running Leopard on any PC and not just on Mac OS X Server.
Unlicensed PC_EFI It looks like Psystar is using an EFI bootloader without properly acknowledging the actual author or receiving permission to distribute the software.
If you haven't yet checked out the discussion thread on Digg, I encourage you to do so. It's especially useful with its discussions about hardware limitations and hackintoshes.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-15-2008 @ 8:28AM
mentalsticks said...
that'd be the first time ever that a Digg discussion thread is useful
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4-15-2008 @ 9:12AM
Victor Agreda Jr said...
heh, precisely what I was about to say. can you digg a digg thread?
4-15-2008 @ 8:34AM
jra said...
What's the French Word for Lawsuit? Procès, bien sûr!
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4-15-2008 @ 8:49AM
Nicolas Letarte said...
I'm sorry but am I missing something here? I'm french (from Quebec) and I never heard this "Psystar" word. A little research in Le Robert, doesn't reveal this word neither something close with that definition. Etymologically, every use of the greek root "psy" (from psukhé = soul) in a french word, refer to something related to the mind or mind health/balance. Maybe "Psystar" is an accepted specialized word in use in some business language or it is an "argot" (french/France slang) neologism but for sure, it's not french.
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4-15-2008 @ 9:05AM
neckaros said...
Hum je pense que c'est une blague mais au cas ou:
Psystar c'est le nom de la marque qui veut vendre un clone de mac. Donc ils disent que sa devient synonyme de "Going out of business" vu que sa risque fortement de leur arriver. C'est un jeu de mot :)
Sorry for all the non-french speaking out there. Just explaining a little bit the story behind Psystar.
4-15-2008 @ 9:13AM
Nicolas Letarte said...
Ha! bon. Un jeu de mot, hmmm. J'avoue ne l'avoir vraiment pas compris celui là !
Merci de m'éclairer quand-même.
'Still don't understand this joke.
4-15-2008 @ 9:22AM
WiLLGT09 said...
Honestly, I don't really understand why people want a Hackintosh, other than the fact that tinkering with computers is cool and you do it because you can. But I don't really understand people's anger toward Apple in not allowing OS X to be put on non-Apple hardware. Apple has no responsibility to do this. It's their company, with their hardware and their software. They design the software that works best with the hardware they design.
Sure people can complain about not being to upgrade a Mac as easily, but if they want to have this ability, well, I'm sorry, use a different OS. Go with Linux.
It's like putting a V8 engine in a Geo, it just doesn't fit. If you want a V8, buy a car with a V8.
4-15-2008 @ 9:23AM
WiLLGT09 said...
oops, didn't mean to put this in reply to a post.
4-15-2008 @ 2:25PM
Caspar PH said...
It's a joke.
Psystar means "we're going out of business" just as much as when someone says the f-word and then excuses their French.
4-15-2008 @ 8:54AM
ChOas said...
Uuuuhm, the discussion link actually goes to Macrumors, not digg :)
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4-15-2008 @ 9:40AM
Ted Trujillo said...
How funny, after reading WillGT09 comments, my minds flashback visual was of the Apple commercial that was so famous during the Super Bowl, you all remember(if you were born). the one of the lady throwing the hammer through the screen. Breaking the mindless drones reality.Now I know legally mac software is Apples, and Psystar stepped in it, but really one of my favorite cars was a bug eyed sprite with a 283 in it, then there was a Vega with a V8, a 400 pontiac in a 46 ford. Learned a lot about cars with those beasts, and I never felt like a drone.
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4-15-2008 @ 10:33AM
tves said...
Im not all about the hackintosh, but I can't get with the Mac pricing:
$2499 for a Desktop (or $599, really not a choice) ) (kinda high, so I'll keep waiting for features that match that price (what those are , i don't know)
$2499 for a laptop w/a 17in monitor.. this I can't understand ever..
And I'm not here to "compare" prices with a PC, cause nothing compares to a Mac period..
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4-25-2008 @ 8:20AM
kevin said...
no, 2499 for the 24" monitor. the 20" starts at 1199. don't exaggerate.
4-15-2008 @ 11:34AM
alakazarm said...
Although I agree with the general feeling, I am shocked by that "French". This is close to xenophobia and I don't understand why you Erica, copy that on TUAW.
And speaking of hidden meanings, Apple could easily be described as the american-english word for greate products but also "pointless cats and dogs game with unlockers", "lame restrictions on AppStore's contents", "ridiculous EULAs that tie OS and hardware" and of course crazy prices. And I'm not forgetting about "stooopid lawsuit against the Big Apple logo". See, nothing french here...
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4-15-2008 @ 2:14PM
Michael said...
"Although I agree with the general feeling, I am shocked by that "French". This is close to xenophobia ..."
Au contraire, it's a kind of compliment. It's just another way of saying "Psystar in _another language_ must mean 'We're about to go out of business'." And French is always the first language other than their own to come to mind to most English-speaking people. That's all there is to it.
4-15-2008 @ 12:33PM
JaXX said...
Pystar is no French word at all... You just can't mix up things like that...
Plenty of light-headed ppl are gonna think that the Psystar case is related in some way to french people... And besides having a crappy government, there's nothing in common (not sure this has neither but well)
(PS: looks like mypcproblems.info has ripped your article off btw, and that Psyisses me off :-) )
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4-15-2008 @ 2:48PM
ZeroCorpse said...
I'm starting to see why the English don't like the French; Are you ALL this humorless and prone to missing the point? Do you always sit around
This was not an insulting headline. I'm sorry your grasp of American English is so tenuous, but really, trust us-- This is not an attack on France.
Let me explain one more time for you:
The actual language chosen in the sentence-- in this case French-- is irrelevant. The POINT was that "psystar" is a non-word in the first place. It's a compound word made up from a misused prefix ("psy") and a common word ("star") in order to sound "techie" or something. The fact that it's not a real word makes it ripe for the joke that it must be a word in a foreign language.
So when a bad choice is made on their part, the joke is made that their nonsense word name must actually mean "We're about to go out of business" in a foreign language (that is: Foreign to the country of its origin).
The specific foreign language was not important. It was not chosen for any cultural significance other than the fact that Americans tend to use "French" as a place-holder for the idea of a word being "foreign" -- Not in a positive or negative sense. Just in a "not our language" sense.
Jeez. Do you think we'd have seen as much angsty complaining if he had said "Spanish" or "Esperanto"???
Seriously, this complaining does NOT reflect well on the French people... But then I've been told by many a Canadian that the French Canadians seem to always have a stick up their ass, and perhaps I shouldn't have passed it off as an exaggeration.
By the way, French-speakers, "stick up the ass" is an English phrase which means "tendency to be uptight and humorless." It does not mean you have an actual stick up your ass.
After all this, I thought you might need that explained.
4-15-2008 @ 2:51PM
ZeroCorpse said...
Cut off somehow.
"Do you always sit around"
was supposed to be:
Do you always sit around discussing the jokes' merits, or do you just laugh and go with it like the rest of the world?
Seriously. The English probably don't like you because you never laugh at their jokes. The English can make fun of themselves, but it seems like the French cannot stand a joke at their expense.
And for the record, I love the French! Great kissers. Good food.
Oh, and Psystar is pretty much screwed.
4-15-2008 @ 3:05PM
tendo said...
you side with apple on this. Which only really violates the EULA... but the majority of your recent entertaining news in based on the iPhone dev scene. Which completely violates the EULA. tisk tisk.
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4-15-2008 @ 3:11PM
james said...
alright, hysterical banter about xenophobia aside... let's let the author's silly use of idioms slide. there are better points in the article to discuss.
first off, am i alone in being generally unmoved by ELUAs? like... it's not a magic spell. it's not even a law (sorry, kids, it's not). it's certainly not a commandment. ultimately, fine... don't steal. i accept that. we all get that. fair enough. but don't load it on other machines? yeah, great. that's as abstracted as don't use the OS in a strawberry patch. ultimately, it's whatever and then some. like, the first thing my friend said when he saw the psystar move was to say "yup. illegal." really? is it? so what. aren't there better implications to talk about... even if psystar is scratching at those implications with a feint.
also, i'm not 100% sure that psystar is selling the OS preinstalled, per se. they've kind of found some tricky wording on their page. they seem to be wording it as if they're selling the OS as separate product that they'd deliver to you anyways - interestingly keeping the markup on the OS so they're not undercutting apple which keeps them legit. and if you buy that separate product they'll install it for you. so it's an optional purchase that they'll install for you as a courtesy. it's not a free assumed running OS that automatically comes with the machine, it's a courtesy service of a friend - a thank you, if you will. i think those might be two different senses of what preinstall is. i'm not really sure though, and would love to hear more especially from attys - not apple attys.
this whole sale of a non-apple OS machine might indeed be useless. i don't know if a hackintosh can practically go anywhere at this point. what interests me though is what it might do to the marketplace if it ever is viable. beyond the obvious shock and awe that psystar is going for, there is a nifty question. if, and this is a big if, a successfully update-able OSX were running on non-apple party machines, what would they really be able to do to stop it? especially if people sell the machines with no installing at all, just billed as "open"... i have a feeling it would only be good for apple to have to deal with that reality. sure, publicly they'd have to go against it. but i think it's the people who play frankenstein with various technologies who are more likely to find the awesome tricks and giggles some day, and who make development as a whole progress.
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