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Comments: 233 +-   $399 Mac Clone Most Likely a Hoax on Friday April 18 2008, @03:42PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday April 18 2008, @03:42PM
from the too-good-to-be-true-usually-is dept.
mac
hardware
technology
timholman writes "According to Gizmodo, an investigation has shown that the $399 OpenMac is almost certainly vaporware, as is Psystar itself. The company's address has actually changed twice this week, according to its web page, and Psystar is no longer accepting credit card transactions. Too bad for those who may have already ordered an OpenMac."
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Submission: $399 Mac Clone a LIkely Hoax by timholman (71886)
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  • Vaporware? Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 26199 (577806) * on Friday April 18 2008, @03:43PM (#23122428) Homepage

    If they've been accepting orders (and credit card numbers) for a product that doesn't exist -- isn't that called fraud?

    I know there can be concern about legal implications in making such statements... but surely the way to protect yourself is to make only statements backed up by evidence? Being vague is certainly not a way to sidestep libel laws...

    • Will it exist in 30 days (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ungrounded Lightning (62228) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:08PM (#23122754) Journal
      If they've been accepting orders (and credit card numbers) for a product that doesn't exist -- isn't that called fraud?

      Only if they can't create and deliver it within 30(?) days and don't contact the people who ordered it within that time, notifying them of the delay and refunding the money of those who don't consent to the extension.

      Back in the early days of home computing a number of companies started up by selling vaporware, collecting the money, and using it to fund the development. (I don't recall if Apple was one of the companies that started up that way. But Woz and Jobs were pretty hard up for cash back at the start.)

      The FTC tightened up after some con men calling themselves "World Memory Systems" took a picture of a few chips sitting on an unstuffed PC board, ran an ad claiming it was a new peripheral board providing four serial and one parallel port for Altair/Imsai home computers (with a name, 4S+P, similar to another popular product, 4P+S), and pulled a major fraud.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by larry bagina (561269)
        When I had a merchant account for credit card billing, I had to close the charge batch within 48 hours and when I closed the batch I was agreeing that any physical goods would be shipped within 24 hours. They (cough, *he*) is (was) using paypal or similar, so they might have different rules.

      • Re:Will it exist in 30 days (Score:5, Informative)

        by nurb432 (527695) on Friday April 18 2008, @05:42PM (#23123540) Homepage Journal
        No Apple didn't use pre-orders for development, they used pre-orders to get the capital to go buy the parts. Development was already done.

        I do remember the Altair add-on scam... that was pretty funny.

      • Re:Will it exist in 30 days (Score:5, Informative)

        by JohnWasser (888342) on Friday April 18 2008, @05:57PM (#23123652)
        That was "World Power Systems" and I remember the incident well. They were caught when someone noticed that one of the important signals on the S-100 edge connector was not connected.

        You can read about it here:
        http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/wps/ [brouhaha.com]

      • Re:Will it exist in 30 days (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jafafa Hots (580169) on Friday April 18 2008, @06:14PM (#23123796) Homepage Journal

        If they've been accepting orders (and credit card numbers) for a product that doesn't exist -- isn't that called fraud? Back in the early days of home computing a number of companies started up by selling vaporware, collecting the money, and using it to fund the development.
        Microsoft. Sold an operating system to IBM before they had one.

          • Re:Will it exist in 30 days (Score:5, Interesting)

            by MojoStan (776183) on Saturday April 19 2008, @02:32AM (#23125884)

            Microsoft. Sold an operating system to IBM before they had one.
            No, they agreed to provide one and then bought it from someone else.
            Expanding the story, Microsoft told IBM that they didn't have an OS. MS bundled CP/M with one of their programming language products and IBM mistakenly believed the bundled OS was a Microsoft product. MS then referred IBM to Digital Research (maker of CP/M), but Digital Research dropped the ball. Paul Allen knew about a rudimentary CP/M clone (QDOS [wikipedia.org]) made by a small company across town (Seattle Computer Products), so MS convinced IBM they could fix up this OS and make it work for the IBM PC. Initially, MS licensed QDOS from SCP, but they later agreed to purchase it for $50,000 (deal of the century).

            The false "DOS was vaporware" version of what happened often gets modded up on Slashdot. This is the version told on that stupid made-for-TV, "based on a true story" docudrama Pirates of the Silicon Valley [imdb.com]. A much better telling of what actually happened (with actual interviews with Paul Allen, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer, Jack Sams of IBM, and Tim Patterson of SCP) is available from the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds [pbs.org] (transcript of the relevant part available here [pbs.org]).

      • Re:Will it exist in 30 days (Score:4, Interesting)

        by falconwolf (725481) <falconsoaring_2000&yahoo,com> on Friday April 18 2008, @11:40PM (#23125392)

        Back in the early days of home computing a number of companies started up by selling vaporware, collecting the money, and using it to fund the development. (I don't recall if Apple was one of the companies that started up that way. But Woz and Jobs were pretty hard up for cash back at the start.)

        The Woz [woz.org] already had a working Apple before offering one for sale. He was showing it to meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club [wikipedia.org], of which the Two Steves were members of. At the tyme the Woz was working for HP as an engineer [hbs.edu] and asked them if the company wanted to make the Apple, management turned him down. Jobs was able to find a store that would place a large order but in order to fulfill it the Woz had to quit working at HP. In order to fund the company the Woz sold an HP 65 calculator he owned for $500.

        Falcon

    • The OpenPro (Score:4, Interesting)

      by goombah99 (560566) on Friday April 18 2008, @05:24PM (#23123390)
      My guess here is that the $399 is just a PR gimmic. If you actually spec it out on their site, the basic model+Leopard+firewire+shipping is over $650 dollars. Whereas you can get a mac mini for under $600 including the shipping. The difference is the mac mini is small, quiet, lower power, and has wifi, blue tooth, optical dolby audio, and software update will work. (The pystar has a bigger faster hard disk and a 15% faster CPU). Personally I think you'd have to be retarded to think the mac was not a better value for a low-end end user, especially due to the software update,noise and power.

      So I think that was just a stunt. The real bargain on the site is the openPro which has a bigger power supply and better case permitting it to hold a high end graphics card and quad processor. A nicely specced unit of the openPro would be $1800 for quad 2.6Ghz and an nvidia 8800Gt card, including shipping, Leopard (firewire built in, and USB jacks on the front). This is actually now compartable to the apple powermac quad, which simmilarly speced runs about $2700, with a 10% faster CPU, blue tooth, wireliess, optical audio, and an amazing case design, and relatively quiet operation.

      However to be fair, the apple's sweet spot for powermac pricing is at the 8 processor model. That's "only" $500 more. The psystar is not available in an 8 processor.

      • Re:Vaporware? Hoax? (Score:4, Informative)

        by 26199 (577806) * on Friday April 18 2008, @04:49PM (#23123138) Homepage
        Libel laws have a lot to do with it if you say someone is committing fraud and they aren't...

        • Libel laws have a lot to do with it if you say someone is committing fraud and they aren't...
          Libel's only possible if:

          1: It's not true
          2: A reasonable person wouldn't conclude that it is true.
          3: A different reasonable person might believe that you're telling the truth.
          4: Said person's disbelieve causes harm to the libelee.

          Slander and Libel are pretty tough things, but like Assault, they require a common sense test. (Accidentally bumping into someone on a crowded street is not Assault, even if they scream their head off.)

        • It's in the wording too. (Score:4, Informative)

          by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Friday April 18 2008, @06:16PM (#23123814)
          If you make an incorrect assertion, then it could be libel: eg. say "It is vaporware and thus they are commiting fraud" and they are not.

          Conjecture is a different matter: eg. saying "If it is vaporware and they are accepting money then they are commiting faud". Those "if"s make a big difference.

  • Comoany was located in Nigeria? (Score:3, Funny)

    by HaaPoo (696098) on Friday April 18 2008, @03:48PM (#23122492)
    Did anybody check their ip address to see if they are located at Nigeria?

  • Hoax? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lixee (863589) on Friday April 18 2008, @03:51PM (#23122544)
    How is this a hoax? It's a bloody SCAM!

  • You just won the Spanish Lottery! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gat0r30y (957941) on Friday April 18 2008, @03:51PM (#23122550) Homepage Journal
    Cnet has this article [news.com] which goes into a little more detail. From what I've gathered it seems they "just moved" to the new building, and got the address wrong the first time (this sort of explains why they put up 3 addresses in 2 days if you buy it). It seems they had to switch payment processing companies from Powerpay to PayPal, because of the rights infringement stuff. But I doubt PayPal's policy is going to be different. Whats next? Cashiers checks to Nigeria?

  • It's All An Apple Plot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Friday April 18 2008, @03:53PM (#23122576)
    It's all a nefarious plot by Apple to discredit the very idea of clones running OS-X. Who would ever trust one again after this?

    As far as paying by credit card goes, you're likely protected by your card company against fraud so you shouldn't be too concerned there.

    • Re:It's All An Apple Plot (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tibor the Hun (143056) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:22PM (#23122894)
      You are being funny, of course, but look at the fallout...
      Apple couldn't have hoped for a better fumbling of the "Attack of the Clones". It's as if Lucas himself directed this train wreck.

      I bet Apple and their lawyers are in their humidors sipping cognac, laughing at these amateurs.

      • Re:It's All An Apple Plot (Score:4, Funny)

        by Digi-John (692918) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:57PM (#23123204) Journal

        I bet Apple and their lawyers are in their humidors sipping cognac, laughing at these amateurs.

        Assuming you mean Steve Jobs when you say "Apple", I find it highly unlikely that Steve Jobs has a humidor, much less a humidor large enough to sit in--smoking's bad, mmkay? More likely, he would celebrate with mineral water and extra-dark chocolate (you see, the higher the cacao content, the snobbier you can act, never mind that it tastes like dirt), or maybe a joint rolled in Psystar's business registration paperwork--his company *is* headquartered in San Francisco, after all.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tanktalus (794810)

        Generally speaking, if you attempt to purchase something, and the vendor does not follow through, you can go back to the credit card company and ask them to reverse the charges. The vendor ends up not only not getting paid, but a penalty is applied as well - both in immediate money and in the percentage that the credit card company charges the vendor to be able to use their service.

        This often works even if you do get what you purchased, but it just plain doesn't work, as was evidenced when my neighbour bo

  • Proof again... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slashname3 (739398) on Friday April 18 2008, @03:53PM (#23122578)
    If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

    Amazed that ANYONE actually signed up for this thing before anyone credible had reported that it was real and worked as expected. This is one of those cases where the early sucker...I mean adopter leads the way with their pocket book and loses everything.

    The real interesting question here is how much did they get away with before they were busted?
  • This story is what, a week old? "Wow here's a story about a company that I have never heard of selling suspiciously cheap Mac compatible computers! I hope I don't melt my credit card taking it out of my wallet so fast!" I've no doubt that probably a lot of people may have gotten taken here, but I'm just having trouble understanding why anyone would be so quick to order something like this that just comes completely out of the blue. I mean at least wait a couple months for Tom's Hardware to review one or something.

  • Look at it this way ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jsnipy (913480) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:01PM (#23122678) Journal
    ... people have bought a true Mac Air ;)

  • Well, they *would* know...oh wait, my bad (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alzheimers (467217) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:02PM (#23122686)
    "According to Gizmodo...

    For a moment, I read that as Gizmondo [wikipedia.org] and thought to myself "Well, if anyone would know about hoaxes..."

  • think people (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hurfy (735314) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:17PM (#23122850)
    Dollars to Donuts if there was such a thing you couldn't call it "OpenMac"

    They (or you even) can't legally install OSX either can they? Not an Apple guy so dont know terms but i would assume not.

    I suppose in theory one could reverse engineer a clone but it is kinda spendy for a doorstop with no OS. Even then there would be no legit uses and you still couldn't sell them since it is clearly intended to infringe.

      • Re:think people (Score:4, Informative)

        by fishbowl (7759) <(ten.xoc) (ta) (kcahten)> on Friday April 18 2008, @05:11PM (#23123302)
        >IANAL, but I believe that you can install OS X on anything you want (as long as you buy it).

        Ok, wrong. Apple reserves all rights under copyright, that are not expressly granted by the software license.
        The license is very specific, and in its very first specific clause:

        A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

        You either agree to this license, or you have no right to install the software. Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringement :-)

        This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.

        • Re:think people (Score:5, Informative)

          by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Friday April 18 2008, @05:27PM (#23123422) Homepage Journal

          You either agree to this license, or you have no right to install the software.

          Bullshit. You bought it - you have the right to install it. I have old books that say you're not allowed to resell them, but that's BS too.

          Ok, you can put an "Apple" label on your computer. Then you're in worse trouble with a trademark infringement :-)

          Not if you put them on your own computer, you're not. Trademark only kicks in when you're trying to pass something off as something else. There's an Apple sticker on my wife's minivan, but we're clearly not infringing anything.

          This is not some nebulous "shrink wrap license are not enforceable" concern. If *any* license that is granted as a result of copyright is valid (hint, GPL, creative commons, SCSL), then this one is.

          Does Steve Jobs tuck you in at night or something? No. You're flat-out wrong. That is exactly one of those dumb EULA concerns, especially when you're trying to mingle it with copyright. As you bought the software, you have the legal right to use it so long as you're not installing it on a bunch of machines or distributing copies. It's kind of sad and scary that presumably rational people will try to argue otherwise.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Tanktalus (794810)

            I'm not disagreeing with you, but please tell me how that works out when you try to call Apple for support ;-)

            (I anxiously await the updates on groklaw about the lawsuit you file ;-) )

  • It's not a hoax (Score:5, Funny)

    by BattleApple (956701) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:32PM (#23122978)
    I'll be receiving a P-p-p-powerbook from them any day now.. it has firewire!

  • Jobs can run but he can't hide (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PingXao (153057) on Friday April 18 2008, @04:40PM (#23123050)
    It's obvious who's behind it. The most insightful comment on the earlier story went something like this: If Apple is so hell bent on protecting its IP and enforcing its license terms, then why are they selling off-the-shelf copies to anyone who plunks down the cash?

    Psystar. PsyOps. Nothing but Jobs looking to drum up more support for sales and mindshare. Mindshare is probably more important for Apple lest they lose their niche cult status and drop out of sight completely.
  • Is steve woz behind this? He is the one who wanted slots in the mac form the apple 2 on.

    Is it some who is pissed off at the high priced mini with it's laptop parts and apples lack of DESKTOP with DESKTOP parts in the $500-$2000 price range the mac pro starts at $2200.
  • Hackitoshes DO exist. You CAN build one easily with 400$ worth of components from Newegg. Leopard 10.5.2 CAN be installed with vanilla kernels. None of that is a hoax. I just recently built myself a quadcore mac pro clone for the startling price of $1000. It runs flawlessly because I built it to spec. All this IS possible. What we have here is a business owner who thought it would be a good idea to sell some of these types of systems pre-built. He was ill prepared to make such a risky buiness venture; he was simply not able to meet the demand or handle the media circus it evolved into. Think back to that old commercial in the dot com heyday. An eager team of entrepreneurs excitedly watch as their web store goes live. Nervous as first because nothing is happening, then the orders start coming in slowly and everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Orders continue to come in and everyone is high fiving each other, then the speed of the orders coming in grows exponentionally. Suddenly everybody is looking at the screen in absolute horror. This is what I imagine happened to Psystar, only instead of a team of dedicated staff, this is one dude running businesses from home. He stuck his neck way out there for this, and if Apple isnt going to sue, other more capable entrepreneurs should try to sell some of these prebuilt hackintoshes with leo installed before the partys over.
    • So, it's OK then?

        • Re:been here before (Score:5, Insightful)

          by node 3 (115640) on Friday April 18 2008, @05:46PM (#23123570)

          I can see you put a lot of thought into that reply.
          An odd criticism given your original post was just a regurgitated platitude.

          No, it's not ok. But I'm certainly not going to be offering any sympathy to anyone who was stupid enough to pay for one.
          So, you are saying you have no sympathy for victims of fraud?

          There's nothing wrong with criticizing the good sense of people who fall prey to a scam, but I find it difficult to come up with a non-contrived situation where the poor judgement, ignorance, or even stupidity, of someone who falls prey to fraud or a scam is sufficiently damnable as to justify the crime committed by the fraudster/scammer. How can you have no sympathy for an unjustified crime?

          It seems to me either they deserved what happened and deserve no sympathy, or they don't deserve what happened and thus deserve at least some sympathy.
    • >3. Charge the cards.
      >4. Vanish.

      5. Become the target of a fraud investigation by several credit card companies,
      you know, the ones who have litigation budgets in the tens of millions of dollars.

      6. Write letters from prison.
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