Does Psystar Have A Benefactor?

It was pretty amazing when startup company Psystar decided to make its own Hackintosh, as Apple had fought and won against other upstart companies trying to horn in on their business. When the court battle was announced, the smart money was on the quick removal of this little thorn from Apple’s side, and never hearing the name Psystar again.

Now, the company has proven it has legs (not certain if they are legal legs) and is trying to really stick it to Apple. A new project will sell the guaranteed ability to put OS X Snow Leopard on any Intel Core processor motherboard.  The report from ComputerWorld states that the download, which costs $50 is called Rebel EFI, and already runs Windows 7 on these motherboards, a double slap, considering that Apple has not stated that it has a Boot Camp solution right now.

Mac clone maker Psystar yesterday started selling a utility that lets owners of generic PCs install and run Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system.

Dubbed “Rebel EFI,” the utility allows PCs equipped with Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem processors to run Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. Psystar has priced Rebel EFI at $49.99, and offers a trial version with “limited hardware functionality.” The free edition runs Snow Leopard only in two-hour chunks, however.

“The most common hardware set-ups are compatible [with Rebel EFI],” Psystar claimed in a statement. “Through PsyLabs we will continue to work toward the Rebel EFI supporting an ever-broader range of hardware profiles.”

There was no indication that Rebel EFI will run on lower-powered netbooks, which typically are equipped with Intel’s Atom CPUs.

The move is a follow-up to the announcement Psystar made earlier this month, when it said it would license its technology to other clone makers so they could offer Mac knock-offs.

The article states that there are two lawsuits still in court, one in California, one in Florida, and neither seems anywhere near settlement.  Also, the Windows 7 ability is explained, which makes the reticence of Apple to announce the availability of the Windows 7 solution all the more strange. (If Apple had the solution right now, perhaps some of those fence post sitters would be buying both a copy of Windows 7 and a new Apple computer.)

Rebel EFI also supports Windows 7, the new operating system that Microsoft launched yesterday, Psystar said. “Through the use of the Darwin Universal Boot Loader, available in the full version of the Rebel EFI, computers are capable of installing and running multiple operating systems, including the newly released Windows 7 as well as XP, Vista, various Linux flavors and Snow Leopard,” the company said.

The Darwin Universal Boot Loader (DUBL) — a small program that starts up Mac OS X 10.6 on Intel-based PCs — also is the foundation of the technology that Psystar will license to other computer makers. Psystar first talked up DUBL last July, and referenced it in its August lawsuit, where it said the utility “makes use of features of Mac OS X Snow Leopard designed to allow software developers to extend Mac OS X Snow Leopard to work with different hardware.”

The clone maker noted that Apple’s intent was not to allow rivals to build Intel machines capable of running the new operating system. “Admittedly, Apple hopes that this hardware [would] be peripherals such as video camera or USB memory sticks, but nothing in the technology of Mac OS X Snow Leopard prevents use of the same facilities to extend Mac OS X Snow Leopard for use on non-Apple personal computers,” Psystar’s lawyers argued in the August complaint.

The utility can be purchased or downloaded from Psystar’s site. Rebel EFI is delivered as a 7.6MB.iso file that must be burned to a CD before use. Psystar has also posted a set of instructions on how to use the utility to install Snow Leopard on a PC.

I know that many people have wished to build a Hackintosh of their own, but the nature of hacking itself has gotten in the way. Here, the solution seems almost boilerplate, and so just about anyone with a little money and lots of enthusiasm should be able to accomplish the task.

My son and I are talking about it, and we might have to deign to purchase an Intel motherboard and CPU, shedding our preferences for AMD processors for the compatibility of Intel. If it turns out broken with the next update, I guess we can still use it for Windows, but I’m hoping that Apple gets ahead of the curve on this one, and decides that it is better to do so, and become a supplier of OS X to all those who wish to have a copy. Large margins on hardware might go, but there are many who will purchase genuine Apple products, no matter the price, because they want the real thing.

There’s room in the cola market for Coke (the real thing!), Pepsi and a host of others, yet many still buy Coke during the times when it is the most expensive cola. So it will be with Apple. Plus, there won’t be anyone trying to make identical copies of the iPhone or the iPod anytime soon – and I think we all that’s where Apple’s money spring wells up from.

Oh, and the benefactor? Would it be too far from expected to find that a sympathetic benefactor from the northwest of America gets uncovered? All is fair in war and business they say, and a war has been carried on between Redmond and Cupertino for a number of years, if only in the minds of the old timers.

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