[Steve_S]

Schneb said:

Remember PowerComputing? They were better than Apple's hardware so they pulled their license because they were outselling Apple's overpriced junk.

Yes, that was definitely true at the time. However, much has changed. That was in the pre-Jobs era, where they had too many products, they were beige boxes that were under powered and over priced. Pretty much where the Apple stereotypes come from. The Jobs/Ives designed products are generally best in class, yet competitive in price. Especially at the high end. Apple doesn't compete at all for the very low end market.

[DPG4450Guy]

Apple cannot let clones loose as long as many of the mindsets shown in this thread are still extant.
Apple at this time cannot survive as only an OS company - Gates and his henchman thru years of illegal monopolizing have made that impossible. Had there been a fair playing field in the beginning, maybe (and Apple's board was also partly responsible - thanks, Sculley) cloning would have been an option, but that's history now.
Clones almost scuttled Apple. Apple has to pay for all their R&D and in a world with MS having its claws deeply imbedded in the PC makers, allowing clones will just cannabilize Cupertino and soon no more OS X.
I don't think anyone wants that.
Death to Psystar by slow torture.

[Tom_Diola]

Why would anyone pay for a huge box when for a bit more you could get a mac mini - Does Shyster have an extended 3 year warranty like Apple and a Genius Bar etc.?

[jedi228]

Tom_Diola said:

Why would anyone pay for a huge box when for a bit more you could get a mac mini - Does Shyster have an extended 3 year warranty like Apple and a Genius Bar etc.?

Some people don't want a mini that costs 50% more. Some of us want a huge box so that you can add in or change stuff inside it. Being small is an advantage and a disadvantage. The mini uses laptop sized components rather than higher capacity/faster/cheaper desktop harddrives etc.



The Psy warranty may not be as good and there may not be a Genius Bar. So if you live in a place where there is no access to Genius Bar, then I don't want the cost of the Genius Bar to be rolled into the end price of the product.

[Tom_Diola]

With the onset of USB 2.0 you can add other stuff via the USB...

[fspeirs]

I think it's fora.

[zarmanto]

Tom_Diola said:

Why would anyone pay for a huge box when for a bit more you could get a mac mini - Does Shyster have an extended 3 year warranty like Apple and a Genius Bar etc.?

and then he said:

With the onset of USB 2.0 you can add other stuff via the USB...

I think you may have missed the point. There are at least two potential reasons that people might want something like the Psystar computer (mind you, this is just off the top of my head):

1) Some people still perceive Apple's hardware to be overpriced. Never-mind that, (with certain notable exceptions) for truly comparable hardware from any other standard PC vendor, you'd typically end up paying more overall... the perception is that Apple still charges too much of a premium for their boxes. Regarding those notable exceptions: Unfortunately, Apple isn't really doing themselves any favors with respect to this perception, because they still do charge ridiculously high premiums for certain add-ons, such as RAM. (The fact that Dell has almost exactly the same ludicrous markups on their RAM is beside the point. In fact, it almost seems like Apple wants you to go elsewhere for those "user-serviceable" parts... but I digress.)

2) Some people want to have the option to upgrade different internal components (most notably, the video card and the processor) at a later date without having to buy a whole new box, and Apple's consumer systems (the iMac and the Mini) do not readily offer that; you have to buy the extravagantly more expensive Mac Pro to get that option -- which also happens to exaggerate the perceptions mentioned in that first reason, come to think of it.

So IMHO, the real reason that Psystar is such a hot-button topic right now has nothing to do with the fact that they're selling "Hackintoshes"; rather, the question is this: Is Apple missing a key demographic by not having some sort of pro-sumer mini-tower? Or are they ignoring that segment of the market because their research tells them that the ROI on developing and marketing such a system just isn't there?

Or... and this one is my personal favorite... is Steve already preparing to launch such a system -- and getting really-really annoyed at Psystar for stealing his thunder? ;-)

[smax013]

zarmanto said:

Is Apple missing a key demographic by not having some sort of pro-sumer mini-tower? Or are they ignoring that segment of the market because their research tells them that the ROI on developing and marketing such a system just isn't there?

I think this is the real key. I have no doubt that there are people out there who would fit the market segment of a midrange Mac tower (I certainly would)...after all the people that tend to speak up when such topics arise attest to that. The real question is how many such people are there. In otherwords, is there really an effective market there or not? And can Apple serve that market with their current business model without dramatic changes in cost and methods?



Personally, I won't claim to know the answer. Would I like a midrange tower that fits somewhere around the level of an iMac to somewhere between an iMac and Mac Pro? You bet. But, I am also smart enough to know that I tend to be at the higher end of the computer literate market (having built my own Windoze PeeCee and done the minor surgery on my MacBook Pro to upgrade the hard drive). Thus, I am NOT part of the "typical comsumer" level market. As pointed out by others, Apple as a company by an large aims the iMac at the consumer market. And the reality is the vast majority of the consumer market does not have an issue with the iMac and likely prefers the simplicity of an iMac over a typical tower/desktop machine. It certainly helps that Apple's market share is still relatively small. I have little doubt that at some point the dynamics will have to shift if Apple wants to continue to grow their market share, but right now they have done a pretty good job of hitting nice sized markets, even if there this does leave some market segments without what they might want/desire. Until they start to "exhaust" those markets, I don't see them branching into too many other markets.

[atsilver]

posted by folklore on Mon Apr 14 19:24:22 PDT 2008
-----
They seem to imply that their $399 model includes a better video card than the Mini, but the base model actually includes Intel's GMA 950. Adding a GeForce 8600GT (512mb) costs $155, adding FireWire costs $50, and Leopard costs $155 (from them, installed).
So, in order to have a roughly comparable system to a Mini but with better graphics, one has to spend $659.

Hardly the bargain the marketing materials suggest.

Add to that cost the hassles of probable driver issues, broken updates, etc
and the fact that you're breaking the EULA - and it's pretty clear that this product isn't going to save folks that much money.

-----
I was just going to post exactly the same arguments, but thanks to folklore, all that can add is: I aggree 100%
By the way, someone remember the lot of all kind of problems the we faced up when Apple decided to open the licencing to other vendors in the Mac-clones era? Yes we could get cheaper Mac's, but face a lot of compatibility problems concerning the citation made also here by lwdesigns
-----
The thing that scares the heck out of me regarding Mac clones is exactly the same thing that's terrifying about Windows boxes: They're a collection of parts that are more or less built to certain specifications that may or may not work together properly for an unspecified time period on a machine that will require frequent tweaking and service to be workable on a day to day basis.
-----
Then, Mac-clones? Until they couldn't solve this serious concerns (be "a collection of parts that are more or less built to certain specifications that may or may not work together properly for an unspecified time period on a machine that will require frequent tweaking and service to be workable on a day to day basis") I prefer to be on the safe side, even if it's at some cost.

[Windows2Apples]

Apparently, Apple developers are “shaking in their proverbial boots” as the specter of Clone PCs running OS X float in and through the ether. In at least one podcast Mac developers admitted they had been spoiled by Apples single sourced hardware. And here my Mackite friends is the rub. If Apple were 1st and foremost a software company as Microsoft was and is to limited extent now, Apple users and developers would be able to purchase hardware at 1/2 to 2/3s the cost of the Apple offerings but would be faced with same the reliability and user issues faced by the huge number of Windows users. I would love to see the Apple OS unleashed and see how well Apple faired in supporting hundreds of video, sound , motherboard and accessory combinations enjoyed by Windows users.
I suspect the Apple glow would fade and they would become another monopolistic “company to hate”.
Sam
Windows2Apples