Psystar Releases Mac Clone Software

does the EULA from apple say i agree to install this OS only on an Apple branded machine? guess i gotta go digging through my paperwork to find out
 
keenan said:
It's yet to be seen if installing OSX on non-Apple hardware is illegal to begin with. I'm not sure how it would be, it's certainly not copyright infringement. Since the only 'law' that can make companies liable for making 'enabling' tools is the DMCA, and that relies on copyright infringment being the act enabled, I'm wondering too.
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Yeah, its why they don't chase after people that build Hackintoshes or mod iPhones and AppleTVs. They only seem to be after companies that do it for profit.
 
There are a lot of legal definitions to be sorted out. "Apple-branded hardware" can mean anything with an apple sticker on it to actual hardware from Apple.
 
xjmtx said:
does the EULA from apple say i agree to install this OS only on an Apple branded machine? guess i gotta go digging through my paperwork to find out
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Even if it does, it's far from a sure thing. Courts are divided on whether EULAs are binding or not, and reverse-engineering is protected and lawful, especially for interoperability. Personally I think it's ridiculous, and I'm hoping the courts would uphold that. It's like putting a chip in your car that would only let you drive on Apple roads using Apple gasoline and then making it illegal to circumvent.
 
keenan said:
Even if it does, it's far from a sure thing. Courts are divided on whether EULAs are binding or not, and reverse-engineering is protected and lawful, especially for interoperability. Personally I think it's ridiculous, and I'm hoping the courts would uphold that. It's like putting a chip in your car that would only let you drive on Apple roads using Apple gasoline and then making it illegal to circumvent.
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this sounds similar to the nvidia schemers disabling physx when an ati is present. i'm with you though, eula doesn't mean a whole lot, but apple is just a box of XXXXXXXXs. although i can say this much. we wouldn't be as far as we are today computer wise if gates and jobs wouldn't have been so passionate. there couldn't be one without the other, regardless of where your loyalty lies. oh btw. i purchased my iso copy from psystar.
 
well I got snow leopard installed, on my pc though i have a macbook pro, but the thing is nothing is working unless you buy the software and installe the drivers, and what sucks is you can buy it and it is a hit and miss if all your hardware is gonna work or its 50 bucks down the drain, I mean if they let me use it for 30 days or something with everything working than may be it will work, but paying upfront and than betting on them having drivers for all of my hardware is not something I am betting on.
 
Is this any better then the methods for hackintoshing that have been around for a while now or are they pretty much charging for something that you can get for free? I have a hackintoshed Dell mini and it runs amazing.
 
ALSO (from their website):
"To alleviate some the incompatibility issues some devices will experience, Psystar has begun their home certification program. Once authenticated, users will be given the opportunity to send in hardware components that are not working correctly and have our engineers build a profile for the device."

so if you're willing to part with hardware for them to make drivers for it, you get that too....it's a little....iffy, BUT that's better support than i've seen for this type of service. and i wonder if say you sent in a gpu that didn't work, if they'd offer that driver to other users, or just you.
 
If you do this do you still technically have a hackintosh? I mean what's the difference between this and an osx86 distro that works flawlessly with your hardware? Just legality?
 
hmm interesting, is this something they are trying to build upon when their hardware business goes under. I mean we have EFI-x and now this, EFI-x doesn't seem to be in any trouble, so I don't see why psystar would be in trouble for doing this, even though I am sure selling pc's is something they won't be doing forever.
 
xjmtx said:
what you just said sounds a whole lot like napster arguement, cassette tapes, and DVDxCOPY. 'just because we made the means of doing this nasty shit, doesn't mean they will....'
they are the head shop, OSX is the weed.
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Its not quite like that, because you have purchased the media and you are trying to use it as it is meant to be used. Its more like buying a region code 1 DVD and modifying a region code 2 DVD player to be a universal player, thus allowing you to play the region 1 DVD.

You are purchasing the software from OSX legally. And you are trying to use it on a single computer as it is meant to be used.
 
DarkStar02 said:
If you do this do you still technically have a hackintosh? I mean what's the difference between this and an osx86 distro that works flawlessly with your hardware? Just legality?
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Not even that. It's effectively exactly the same thing. The screenshots even look just like Chameleon.

so if you're willing to part with hardware for them to make drivers for it, you get that too....it's a little....iffy, BUT that's better support than i've seen for this type of service. and i wonder if say you sent in a gpu that didn't work, if they'd offer that driver to other users, or just you.
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I really doubt they're going to be writing drivers, but it wouldn't surprise me if they'll help you get hardware going that should work (ie. has a supported chipset etc.) but has issues that can be solved with configuration tweaks/DSDT/etc.
 
no doubt about it, i think that the mac os is great for home theatre....not so much everything else, so this just means the next htpc i get doesn't have to be from apple. and that'll be cool, provided that my hardware is "compatible"
 
You know I was thinking about this. Apple makes it very clear, and even uses it a selling point, that you can load Windows onto their hardware. Windows is designed to load onto a "PC" spec motherboard right? Apples Bootcamp software is essentially doing exactly the same thing as this program by allowing Windows to see the EFI as BIOS. So can the say that Psystar it out of bounds by doing the same thing from the opposite direction?

You are purchasing OSX legally.
You are using it on the same hardware that Apple uses (new Intel)
You are loading a program that emulates the BIOS to EFI, which allows OSX to run. Which is the opposite of what Apple does to get Windows to run on Macs.
 
^^^ very true, I mean I don't think apple would have any issue with this software because shit if this works people will easily buy the osx snow leopard for 25 bucks at local retailers, they are not losing anything. though they are probably ticked off on psystar selling hackintosh, cuz I am sure they wanna be the only ones selling the OSX based hardware.
 
keenan said:
It's yet to be seen if installing OSX on non-Apple hardware is illegal to begin with. I'm not sure how it would be, it's certainly not copyright infringement. Since the only 'law' that can make companies liable for making 'enabling' tools is the DMCA, and that relies on copyright infringment being the act enabled, I'm wondering too.
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It's like running an emulator. Plenty of them exist, and they've been legit since Genecyst and Nesticle have bee around. Which has been since 1997.

There's no law that says you can't simulate the Apple environment. Hell, Apple allows you to install Windows OS's on their machines, so they're doing the same thing. The only difference is that Microsoft don't give a damn.

Also, does everyone forgot that IBM went after companies like Hewlett and Packard for making IBM compatible PCs? You know, before they became HP? Technically, the PC if front of you is a IBM compatible.

Companies are only afraid of Apples lawyers, and not the law itself. Psystar hasn't done anything wrong, except poking a short stick into a lion cage labeled Apple Inc.
 
xjmtx said:
does the EULA from apple say i agree to install this OS only on an Apple branded machine? guess i gotta go digging through my paperwork to find out
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Would be interesting to see. because it could imply that if you dont buy the $500 memory upgrade when you buy your Apple and instead buy the $100 memory from Newegg and install it, are you violating the EULA? Same with putting in a new harddrive that doesn't say Apple on it.
 
Installed to a Vostro 1720 and everything works mint except the Intel PRO Wireless 5300 card and one PCI Bridge adapter.

It's not an emulator at all. It sets up the needed boot code and installs custom driver files on the OS based on your hardware.

Runs VERY well for me on the 1720 so far.
 
westrock2000 said:
Would be interesting to see. because it could imply that if you dont buy the $500 memory upgrade when you buy your Apple and instead buy the $100 memory from Newegg and install it, are you violating the EULA? Same with putting in a new harddrive that doesn't say Apple on it.
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well since i worked at apple retail. and i did ram upgrades on a daily and was in the area where we were doing the data migration from pc to mac for almost a year this is simple.

you don't violate the EULA when you upgrade hardware. and until very recently (macbooks with SATA hdds), opening a mac would void your warranty. since the aluminum imac, they've made upgrading ram easy. as this area was considered "user accessible". upgrading ram on the plastic notebooks was user accessible as well (remove the battery, remove the bracket, swap the ram..i even think there was a diagram under the battery to show how). the thing though was this. If the end user upgraded the part themselves, that part was obviously not covered by applecare, so if you upgraded the HDD or the ram and the computer was failing because of this, no coverage. the mac mini as of the 9400m chipset was user accessible. (terrible idea but still user accessible). i upgraded my HDD and ram on my mini and those aren't covered under my applecare while the rest of the machine is. and it goes a step further than that. if the genius working the bar when you have your issue just doesn't like you, he can tell you that there's nothing to be done. i've seen both sides of that scenario where they shouldn't have done anything and did anyway, and where they should have covered it but didn't because they simply didn't like the customer.
 
Ive ran osx in some form on a 2nd hard drive since the 10.4 leak when the macbook pros were announced. This doesnt look like anything other than a skin for the current efi loader that comes with most of the osx distros going around. As far as getting your hardware working. All you need to do is see if it has a kext that supports it. About the hardest thing to do is lookup vendor and device ids and place them in the kext plist. Kinda like adding your hardware to a drivers .inf file. Most of them time you dont even have to do that anymore.

Now I am playing the waiting game... Waiting on apple to support the 5800 series
 
xjmtx said:
ALSO (from their website):
"To alleviate some the incompatibility issues some devices will experience, Psystar has begun their home certification program. Once authenticated, users will be given the opportunity to send in hardware components that are not working correctly and have our engineers build a profile for the device."

so if you're willing to part with hardware for them to make drivers for it, you get that too....it's a little....iffy, BUT that's better support than i've seen for this type of service. and i wonder if say you sent in a gpu that didn't work, if they'd offer that driver to other users, or just you.
Click to expand...

This actually helps Psystar, they don't have to go looking for stuff that doesn't work. People send them the stuff and they build profiles which fixes future problems.

Can't wait for the Apple ads a couple years down the road when Mac figures out he has become a PC.
 
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