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Posts with tag psystar

Psystar tests luck with OpenServ rackmount servers



Amazingly, the commercial hackintosh maker Psystar (whose efforts in building non-Apple machines running OS X we've covered at some length) still hasn't been beat down by Apple Legal and now they're back for more. They are releasing the OpenServ series of rackmount servers which they offer with a variety of OSes including OS X Leopard Server.

There are two models: the 1U OpenServ 1100 (starting $1599) and the 2U OpenServ 2400 (starting $1999) either of which can be purchased with OS X Leopard Server pre-installed for an extra $155 (no clients), $525 (10 clients), or $1025 (unlimited clients). This machines are obviously in direct competition with Apple's Xserve. Frankly, I'm amazed that Psystar is still in business, and they keep pressing their luck. I wonder if this will be enough to push Apple over the edge.

[via Gizmodo]

EFiX USB dongle for installing OS X on a regular PC

A while back the Mac web was abuzz about Psystar, the first commercially available hackintosh. Now comes EFiX, an USB dongle that will supposedly allow you "to install Mac OS X straight from the original DVD [onto a regular PC] without having to worry about patches, replacing files and anything like that." Above you can see a video from netkas.org partially demonstrating a PC booting a MacBook repair disc.

They say the product is in "the final testing phase," with release planned for June 23, 2008. Whether Apple's lawyers will ever let this see the light of day is something else entirely.

[via Gizmodo]

ZDNet: Benchmarking the Psystar Open Computer

It's a big day for the Psystar Open Computer -- the quasi-Mac clone based on PC hardware and a cracked version of Mac OS X. ZDNet today published their comparison of the Open Computer with a Mac mini, and all three flavors of MacBook.

The results? The Open Computer fares pretty well against all of its Mac cousins. It scored nearly 147 with Xbench 1.3.

It beats the Mac mini, its closest price competitor, by nearly 50 percent. The Open Computer outperforms even a MacBook Pro (with a 2.4GHz Penryn processor) by 10 points. Not too shabby at all, if you can stand the sound of a jet airplane on your desk (Just kidding. Apparently the noise isn't too bad).

ZDNet promises results using GeekBench soon. UPDATE: the GeekBench results are here, and the Open Computer still leads most of the Macs, but by a narrower margin. The MacBook Pro, though, edged out the Psystar 3327 to 3244.

Engadget goes hands-on with a Psystar

Earlier this month, Psystar announced their intention to sell Leopard-ready, Core 2 Duo minitowers for $399US. The announcement drew a lot of attention, including that of Apple Legal.

Still, a few machines have arrived in the wild, and yesterday some lucky owner posted a very brief video of his Psystar hackintosh booting. That was interesting enough, but check this out. Our friends at Engadget have gotten their hands on one, and intend to put it through the ringer. Performance tests, software, hardware, you name it. Right now, they've got some great unboxing photos up.

As for testing, they're open for suggestions. Have you got a certain test in mind? Drop them a line and perhaps they'll try it out for you. Have at it!

Video of Psystar's Mac clone

Much has been written about whether or not Psystar's Mac clone, the Open Computer, actually exists, let alone if it's legal. A Gizmodo reader sent in some video of his Open Computer booting up and running Leopard. Software Update doesn't work, and the chances of Apple supporting this thing are less than zero.

I'm not against the idea of Mac clones (though I doubt Apple will ever officially sanction it) but if I were in the market for a Mac clone I would want one that was well built. As soon as the Open Computer is turned on the fan is running at full tilt, and it is far from whisper quiet. That's not exactly the mark of craftsmanship.

What say you, TUAW readers, is a super loud fan and boring case design outweighed by the savings and customization that a Mac clone offers up versus gear from Apple?

Psystar: What's the French Word for Lawsuit?

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.

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