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.?
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?
24" iMac: 2.33GHz Core2 Duo/2GB RAM/500GB HD/GeForce 7600 w/256MB VRAM | PPCMac: 1GHz G4 DP/768MB RAM/250GB HD | PC: AMD 3200/1GB RAM/250GB HD