Filed under: Apple Corporate
Psystar's Mac clones all sold out
It didn't take long, but it seems that sometime in the night, following their agreement with Apple, Psystar has mysteriously run out of stock on all of their Mac clones. Apparently their settlement with Apple on the order of $2,000,000USD has caused them to accept defeat. Given that they only sold 768 clones over the course of the past two years, I don't imagine the inability to sell their hardware will have much of an impact on their financial statements.Down but not out, however, Psystar is still selling its Rebel EFI product which is used to circumvent OS X's EFI requirements for installation. In other words, it aims to make it dead simple to install Snow Leopard on any PC. Psystar's basis for continuing to sell Rebel EFI is that it was not included as part of the original case in San Francisco.
Even though another major chapter in the Apple v. Psystar battle has come to a close, it looks like Apple has some more work to do in Florida in order to stamp out the Rebel fires and finally squash this little bug of a company. Remember that Psystar is suing Apple in its native state Florida and in this case the issue of Rebel's legality/legitimacy is likely to come up.
Psystar may be circling the drain, but they're not done kicking yet.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
StPaddy said 12:10PM on 12-02-2009
*ahem*
"past" two years...not passed. :-p
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Aron Trimble said 12:16PM on 12-02-2009
My head knows the answers but my fingers are too fast. Thanks for the catch!
Cameron Williams said 1:01PM on 12-02-2009
So Psystar is a "little bug of a company"? Glad to see we're going with balanced reporting.
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cowfodder said 2:42PM on 12-02-2009
First post didn't show. Comment system FTL!
It's a BLOG! An Apple blog at that. I view the articles here as editorials. If you want balanced news go elsewhere, though I don't know where you'll go. It seems like all news organisations have a slant now.
Dave said 2:50PM on 12-02-2009
Since when is a blog claiming balanced reporting?
Markus said 1:50PM on 12-02-2009
Who gives these people their money? With 768 systems sold, 2 million equal more than $2.5k per system they sold - an those systems were usually cheaper than $1k...
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Joey Sichol said 2:23PM on 12-02-2009
Someone who was willing to make a $2 million bet on selling Mac clones...
Stephen said 2:40PM on 12-02-2009
I wonder how many of those 768 systems were purchased by journalists and Apple lawyers. I bet a very small proportion (of that very small number) was sold to people buying their primary computer.
Their business model made no sense. Once you added in the same things which come standard with the low-end iMac (not just monitor, wireless mouse and keyboard but also bluetooth, WiFi, same amount of RAM and hard drive etc.), you were often paying more or at least around the same amount. Even if you could save a few bucks, it really was never enough to justify the hassle of running software illegally and worrying about updates etc. And that's before we even compare it to the Mac Mini, which is really a better implementation of the stripped-down Mac concept (and yet still has things like WiFi as standard!).
Putting aside all ethical questions, it would have been much more interesting to see what might have happened if they'd instead come to market with laptops or netbooks running Mac OS at sub-$500, or desktops at the low-end price range of $300-400 where the savings would have actually been attractive enough to make sense (to some people).
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airmanchairman said 3:22PM on 12-02-2009
When you lay their business plan (or whatever apology of one) bare as you have, it's obvious that the only market appeal they were betting on was the ignorant animosity of those who simply WANT things their own way, regardless of what their NEEDS are.
Such people would need also to be tech-savvy enough to jump through the various logistical hoops to create a complete working system out of what Psystar was offering. So we are talking about a tiny minority here, far from enough to warrant a sound business plan worthy of financing.
Unless of course, other more powerful, hidden and wealthy vested interests perceived an opportunity to remotely attempt to prise open Apple's PC/laptop marketing eco-system.
artifex said 4:49PM on 12-02-2009
Does that Refel EFI infringe on any open source software?
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Stace said 7:56PM on 12-02-2009
Wow, I feel like I have a collector's item!
My box is still running happily, with its 4 cores and 8GB of RAM for a fraction of what Apple wanted to charge me at the time.
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alf said 7:37PM on 12-03-2009
i've been watching this from the beginning, and to add to what stace said, and i couldn't agree more, it really comes down to proving one single thing, if nothing else - apple overcharges for their hardware! no matter how you slice and dice it, the same components in pc's [which i personally hate] is often cheaper. not even us apple fans can argue with that fact. so, with all their billions in the bank from us willing to pay a premium, they'll just keep churning out great overpriced computers, and will always stick to their biz motto of overpricing via that 'mac tax' that everyone always refers back to.
when you compare apples to apples, i.e., configure a dell with the same exact specs as a mac, it's usually slightly cheaper, but a mere $2-300 would never sway me over to the winblows side of the fence. however, it does make the same statement that psystar does/did, in that why can't apple just cut the fat from their pricing once and for all, and shut the pc people up once and for all with that dead horse topic?! just like all those desperate ms ads harping on that one lonely topic that keeps coming back to haunt apple incessantly.
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