Low End Mac Reader Specials

Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core 8GB kit $232 / 4GB kit $116 / 2GB kit $72. New Macbook 2GB DDR3-$65. HARD DRIVES available -- Free shipping / LIfetime warranty.

Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com

LA Computer Company: Specials on AppleCare, iMac's, MacBook Pros and more. Optical Drives for Apple iBooks, Powerbooks, MacBooks, MacBook Pros in Stock. Call 1-800-941-7654 Click Here.

Other World Computing: Big Deals on Big LCDs: 23" 'TrueHD' up to 2048x1152 + USB2 Hub & WebCam $279.99. Specials on 20" to 30" from $167.99. Freight from only $3.95!

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Zis Mac

Alan Zisman on the Mac

Open Computer: The First Macintosh Clone in a Decade

- 2008.04.16 - Tip Jar

del.icio.us Bookmark in del.icio.us

In the news this week: a small Florida-based company, Psystar offered customers what it promised were Mac OS X compatible PC clones for $399. For about half the price of a low-end Mac mini, Psystar's Open Computer offered a faster and bigger hard drive, a more powerful dedicated graphics card, and expandability in a generic PC clone tower case.

No operating system for that price, though. Psystar noted:

"With the EFI V8 emulator it is possible to install Leopard's kernel straight from the DVD that you purchased at the Apple Store barring the addition of a few drivers to ensure that everything boots and runs smoothly,"

The company also offered copies of Leopard for $150, and if you bought it from them, they would install it.

The Open ComputerWhat's the catch? Ever since Apple canceled its clone licensing program in the late 1990s, the various versions of the Mac operating system have included a clause that customers could only run it on Apple-branded hardware.

By the afternoon of April 14th, the company's Open Computer webpage was no longer responding. Perhaps it was overwhelmed by the response after the news got out, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd heard from Apple's lawyers.

A little Mac-history:

In 1994 (in the era of System 7.x), Apple announced that it would allow non-Apple computer manufacturers to license the then-current Mac operating system. The company's hope was that these other companies would help grow the market for Mac OS-powered systems in market niches where Apple was not reaching out.

Several companies, including Umax, Motorola, and others paid Apple's licensing fees. By 1996, they accounted for about 10% of all Macs sold worldwide. In that same year, however, Apple's sales were some 30% lower than the year before.

While Apple's hope had been that the clones would bring the joy of Mac to new markets, apparently the bulk of the clone sales were to people replacing an older Mac - in other words, Apple's core customer base. With Mac-compatible systems that were either cheaper or more powerful than official Apple models, that should have been no surprise. (In this era, I owned a Motorola StarMax, built around a 160 MHz PowerPC 603e CPU. It used PC-style VGA displays and a PS/2 mouse and keyboard but ran Mac OS 7.5.3 and all the Mac software I could throw at it just fine).

Upon Steve Jobs' 1997 return to Apple, he realized that this was a problem for the company; Apple was primarily a hardware company, and there was a lot more profit in selling a Mac than in getting what has been estimated as a $25 licensing fee when Motorola or Umax sold a Mac clone. One of his first acts as Apple CEO was to announce that the clone licenses were not going to be renewed past early 1998, and that even existing licensees weren't going to be allowed to offer new versions of the Mac OS starting with Mac OS 7.6.

Apple has ignored calls to make the Mac operating system available to other companies ever since.

It was harder to make a clone Mac back then; much of what made a Mac a Mac was hard-wired into the computer's ROM chips. More recently, though, this code was moved to software. And even more recently, Apple switched from using PowerPC CPUs to Intel chips - the same sort of CPUs found in most Windows PCs. In fact, today's Macs are arguably standard PCs in fancy cases - and they can even be set up to boot to Windows XP or Vista using Apple's Boot Camp installer.

Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that there's an underground "Hackintosh" movement devoted to the tricks needed to build a do-it-yourself PC that can boot to Mac OS X. I haven't done it, so please don't ask me for advice. As long as the movement remained do-it-yourself, Apple seemed to be leaving it alone. But in offering products for sale - and in getting a fair bit of media attention - Psystar apparently crossed a line.

Psystar's "Open Computer" does suggest that there is a market for a lower-priced, expandable Mac - but will Apple listen. LEM

Alan Zisman is Mac-using teacher and technology writer based in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Many of his articles are available on his website, www.zisman.ca. If you find Alan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Columns by Alan Zisman

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.