Mac clones to rise again?
section: common, for your questions: KezNews forum, 14.4.2008
I remember fondly the heady days of the Mac clones. Cloner Power Computing promoted their 225MHz PowerPC tower at Macworld Expo in Boston by offering free bungee jumps off a 225 foot crane tower outside the Hynes Convention Center.
I took the leap over the Boston bay and lived to tell about it.
But that wasn’t Power Computing’s only stunt. They are also known for their boot camp, military-themed booth complete with camoflauge tents and drill sargeant booth babes. If that wasn’t enough, Power drove over PCs with a Humvee at Macworld Expo in San Francisco as part of their “counter assault” campaign.
After Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 he pink-slipped all the cloners by revoking their licenses to the Apple ROMs effectively ending the Apple-clone business model for good. Or did he?
A new company on the scene call Psystar (site severely swamped right now). The company is offering “OpenMac” a US$399 Mac-compatible tower built from generic PC components (Techmeme):
* 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* 2GB of DDR2 667 memory
* Integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics
* 20x DVD+/-R Drive
* 4 USB Ports
* 250GB 7200RPM Drive
For another US$110 and you add an NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT and for another USS$50 you can add FireWire.Apple’s current, lowest-cost machine is the Mac mini which starts at US$599. From the Psystar Web site (before it became unresponsive):
We are proud to introduce the new wheel: OpenMac. Mac enthusiasts have been experimenting on running the new Apple operating systems on commodity PC hardware ever since the Intel-based Apple computers were introduced in early 2006. This effort came to be known as OSx86 Project.
The goals of the OSx86 Project have been realized and even the latest releases of OS X can now run on PC hardware that is commonly available but compatibility can sometimes be an issue. Psystar has assembled a system that is completely operational with Leopard called the OpenMac. We call it the OpenMac to reflect the opening of what has previously been a hardware monopoly.
So how long before Apple releases the hounds on the operation? Will Steve Jobs stand for such flagrant insubordination?
source:
blogs.zdnet.com
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Comments(5)
if steve jobs was smart he'd let it go. the one thing hampering the mac from taking
over is it's cost and unwillingness to become build-it-yourself friendly. right now all
jobs is worried about are the mindless idiots that can't operate a computer so they buy a
mac. all because jobs wants a monopoly. he's affraid someone will actually make a mac
that's cost effective instead of the over-priced eye candy he sells.
buy a
mac, it just works they say. maybe that's because it just works with a few pieces of
hardware. pretty easy to be stable when you don't have to support thousands of hardware
and software vendors. grow some balls jobs and diversify your business. if you won't
someone else will and you'll be left with your little circle of eye candy.
i
laugh every time those pc vs mac commercials come on. yeah windows sux, switch to mac.
yet mac users always say windows will run better on a mac. get a mac and run windows.
why would i want to do that? isn't the whole purpose of owning a mac is to not use
windows? i don't buy it and no one else does either. the guts are the same and running
windows on mac doesn't make it any more stable, safer or faster.
i've seen
the poor qa apple has. many get sent back for over-heating and bad motherboards. hmmm my
pc has never over-heated nor have i had to send it to a tech shop. the fact is that
mac's are for mindless idiots that don't want to educate themselves on solving common
computer problems. if macs were the be all end all of computers they wouldn't need a
warranty or their own support service.
very well said "pc".
windows is cheap, softwares easy to find 'free' and pc is dirt cheap
hahahah n1
mao
owned !
one more thing i like chineses :d
but i am not chinese
cuz of one
thing you people of yhr repablic free the world from corporte
ternay (softwares
rip off ) xd
cya !
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If Jobs Was Smart...
By PC on 15.04.2008 - 01:04