Psystar Claims $399 Mac Clone

Florida's Psystar says it's offering Intel Core 2 Duo PCs with a version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, starting at just $399. But for how long.

Florida company Psystar claims to be selling OpenMac, a Macintosh clone built using off-the-shelf PC parts and shipping with Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” operating system. Prices start at just $399 for a PC with a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 250 GB hard drive, 2 GB of RAM, a DVD±R optical drive, and 4 USB ports. For additional money, Psystar says users can get FireWire connectivity and an Nvidia GeFore 8600 GT graphics card…and Leopard pre-installed.

According to Psystar, OpenMac relies on Mac-compatible hardware and and EFI emulator that lets it run “unmodified” Mac OS X Leopard kernels. However, the compay warns that the OpenMac is not indistinguishable from a “real” Mac, and users may find that future updates to Leopard suddenly render the OpenMac non-functional. Psystar says users can install “not unsafe” updates using Leopard’s integrated Software Update facility, but that “decidedly unsafe” updates may require users to complete re-install Mac OS X. How are users to decide whether an update is safe? Psystar recommends checking with Insanely Mac.

For the moment, the OpenMac is largely hypothetical because the company’s Web site seems to have stopped responding to connection requests about the same time Apple’s legal team would have arrived for work on a Monday morning. Mac OS X’s End User License Agreement (EULA) would also seem to explicitly forbid Psystar from offering Leopard on non-Apple hardware (”You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.”) Apple has historically taken a very dim view of efforts to commercialize Macintosh clones; it’s difficult to see where Psystar might have found a magic, free-and-clear, legal path to Macintosh cloning where so many others have failed.