A White Box Mac
Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on April 15, 2008
An IT consulting firm in Miami has taken to offering for sale something it initially called the OpenMac, but is now calling the Open Computer. This machine, the firm claims, can run OS X, and it is being branded as a less expensive alternative to the Mac Mini.
The problem is the Apple End User License Agreement for Mac OS X. Someone working for Psystar (pronounced SY-star) told Information Week that the firm intends to challenge Apple’s EULA in court. Good luck with that. Though I have to say, I’ve been wondering about the possibility that someone would try to sell a generic PC running OS X for some long time, ever since Apple started the move toward the Intel architecture. It seems to me that if a Mac can run Windows or Linux or OS/2 or whatever else strikes your fancy via virtualization on a Mac, that there should be some kind of allowance made for running OS X via virtualization on a box that originally comes with Windows. Apple would likely disagree.
That’s not what Psystar is doing however. It’s selling these boxes with Leopard installed directly on them. Or is that what it’s really selling. It would be one thing to sell a Windows box that meets certain hardware specifications, and then let the user bring their own copy of Leopard, and install it as a dual-boot option according to publicly available instructions with a “do this at your own risk” caveat.
Either way, I’m guessing a few people on Apple’s legal team are busily writing a cease-and-desist order today.
