Psystar’s Rebel EFI Offers to Put Snow Leopard on Everyday PCs

By Geoff Duncan October 23, 2009

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Florida’s Psystar is mired in an increasingly preposterous legal battle with Apple over marketing Mac clones. Apple sued Psystar, Psystar sued Apple (that was eventually thrown out, and the company appears to have applied for bankruptcy protection while it gets ready to go to court. Psystar might be back on its heels, but that doesn’t mean the company is ceasing to innovate! Psystar is now offering Rebel EFI, a $50 application that enables “smooth interfacing between operating systems and generic Intel hardware.” In practical terms, that means it enables users to install Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware…an action Apple is likely to view as a violation of Mac OS X’s license agreement.

Rebel EFI uses Psystar’s Darwin Universal Boot Loader as the core software enabling a PC to load multiple operating systems. Users burn Rebel EFI to a CD and boot their Intel-based PC with it; once the boot load is complete, users can then install Mac OS X Snow Leopard or other operating systems (like Windows 7 or Linux distributions) using standard installation disks. Psystar claims Rebel EFI will automatically detect and download any drivers it needs for the installation process, but it also warns that it assumes no responsibility “for possible data loss due to installation or use of Rebel EFI.”

Rebel EFI is priced at $50 (down from a “regular” price of $90), and users can download a demo that runs for two hours. Once users have determined Rebel EFI will work on their hardware, they can buy an authentication code from Psystar…at least until a court says otherwise.

Psystar Rebel EFI screenshot — Image used with permission by copyright holder

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Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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