IT Professionals

Psystar Is Taken To Task By Apple

Posted by on Jul 15, 2008 | 4 Comments

Despite having zero pity for the foolish choices made by Psystar, I do feel badly for those who purchased these PC. This lawsuit is not going to mean long term hardware support for their end users. This is not to dismiss whether Apple is or is not within their rights. That is something the law can determine. No, my gripe is that Psystar opted to try this entire idea in the first place.

The concept of the “hack-in-tosh” is hardly a new concept, dating back when Apple was still using PowerPC for their CPUs. As far as I am concerned the only reason someone would be duped into buying a Psystar machine running OS X is to save money. Because apparently, the Mac mini is not meeting the price point that it was intended. And this is sort of interesting, being Macs are “not considered more expernsive” than Windows PCs. It appears, the market supporting the Psystar option is a evidence that this line of thinking might be a fuzz off.

Are people buying those Psystar machine because they think the tower look is sexy? Perhaps users enjoy not being able to run all of the provided Apple updates on the Psystar machines? Come on, it’s obvious. Apple will hopefully consider what drove people to these boxes in the first place as clearly, it is not being addressed by Apple themselves. Thoughts?

  • Greg

    I “purchased” a Psystar as a curiosity. Before it shipped, I wanted to change the options on it. I was told I needed to cancel my order and resubmit it. Deciding the money could be spent better elsewhere, I ended up canceling my order and not resubmitting.

    I did not buy it because the Mini is too expensive. I have three iMacs, two Minis, a MacBook & a MacBook Pro. They work so well, it’s hard to justify spending all that money for the “other” Mac … the tower … the Mac Pro. This seemed like an appealing option … at first.

    People may not be choosing the Psystar over the Mini, but over the Mac Pro. That may be what got the ire of Apple.

  • Richard

    I have been doing primarily Mac tech support since 2001. I started my computer experiences with DOS and bought a DOS/Win 3.12 computer as my first home computer. At the time of my first exposure to Mac, my main home computer was Win 2K, which was far superior to Mac 6, 7, 8 and 9 that I was working with at work. As we moved into using Mac OS X my opinion of Apple improved; it was like night and day.

    My opinion now is that the functionality of Windows vs Mac is a toss-up. I know how to use all of the Windows versions, including Vista, and OS X equally and like and dislike things about all of them. I prefer to buy non-Apple hardware, because I can get more for my money. My last tower purchase was about a year and a half ago. I bought it from a local assembler and got to choose the components I wanted. I payed $1600 with XP loaded and a one year carry-in warranty. An equivalent Mac tower would have cost $2400.

    I would like to run OS X at home, but not bad enough to pay the Apple hardware tax. I have not found the Apple hardware to be superior to most of what else is on the market. I fix and replace Apple hardware on a daily basis and I run into the same problems with it as I do with everything else. The only advantage Mac has is with hardware drivers and that’s because they have complete control over this area.

    From a techy point of view I can see why there would be a market for a non-Apple machine that would boot OS X. Is there a big enough market there for Apple to consider? Probably not.

  • DavidR

    “Come on, it’s obvious. Apple will hopefully consider what drove people to these boxes in the first place as clearly, it is not being addressed by Apple themselves”…

    A lot of things are obvious, but that does not make them clearly seen. Apple has addressed this subject already and in doing so has found its brand perception to be advantageous to their high price points. So why bother to go where it does not have to? iTunes, iPod and iPhone have set the mass market perception and expectations from which the Apple brand benefits. People will still line up like cattle and pay high priced rollouts for whatever Apple branded latest digital toy comes their way. Getting into lower-priced market space could expose the Apple brand to unwanted competition and brand positioning erosion. Creating unforeseen competition threats to their flagship brands iPod/Tunes/Phone and market share/price points within those sectors.

    Who cares what drove those people to the Psystar machine. Sheep are easily led back to where the Apple brand plays. Apple will continue to eliminate the wannabes and strive to be the only player in town through domination. Sound like another company you know?

  • Greg

    While I agree with most of the points in the two above posts, I don’t totally agree with Richard’s price assessment.

    The cost difference for some of us is actually much less. Richard may not use the iLife suite, but I use it extensively. If you purchased comparable programs for the Windows platform, you’d find the cost difference began to evaporate. Sure, the Windows computers I’ve purchased came with “freeware” that can perform some of these functions, but it’s typically time-limited or crippled in some way. Also, I’ve found this type of software is not as user-friendly as I’d like. Personally, I don’t think a comparable integrated suite exists on the Windows platform.

    So, if one has absolutely no use for the iLife package, there’s a significant price difference. For me, there’s very little price difference.