New Mac Clone Maker 'Quo' To Open Retail Store 296
bughunter writes "Cnet is reporting that Mac clone maker Quo Computer plans to open its first retail location, selling Mac clones, on June 1st. To start, Quo will offer three desktop systems: the Life Q, Pro Q, and Max Q. While details of the components are not yet available, founder Rashantha De Silva said they are looking at Apple's system configurations for guidance. Pricing has also not been finalized on the desktop machines, but the company is looking to start pricing at less than $900. While Quo is starting off with the desktop machines, De Silva said it is looking at offering an Apple TV-like media server and a smaller computer similar to the Mac Mini. He acknowledges that Quo will likely face opposition from Apple, much like Psystar. 'They probably will (sue us),' De Silva said. 'There are others doing this, but we have a different attitude. There are thousands of people in the "Hackintosh" market, but many of them are creating bad products. I don't think anyone wins in that environment.'"
"I don't think anyone wins in that environment" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, OS X was designed with only one or two configurations for a Mac but with third party drivers its possible to extend it to almost any modern configuration in existence. There is nothing special about a Mac.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Intel builds their motherboards for for Apple http://news.zdnet.co.uk/emergingtech/0,1000000183,39244663,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]
A "company"? (Score:5, Informative)
Has anyone even looked at Quo Computer website? Its entire content consists of a "maito" link. They don't even have their own domain in the link, instead mail goes to "rush" at "izdigital.com". A check shows registrant as:
Registrant:
This Domain is expired
Please renew at
www.domaincontender.com
New Orleans, LA 70130
US
(504) 274-4800
Fascinating. Let's go to www.izdigital.com:
Index of /
[ICO] Name Last modified Size Description
[TXT] geforce.html 08-Mar-2009 12:43 462
This is one classy website.
Seriously, folks. This passes for news now on the Internet media? A fly-by-night announces they will dethrone Apple, but so far they haven't yet figured out how to build a website or handle email. Right.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
They could probably kill windows overnight if they invested in mainstream hardware drivers
Let's go over this one more time.
1. Apple makes OS run on any PC.
2. People buy PCs instead of Macs.
3. Apple profit tanks.
4. Apple stock tanks.
5. Apple tanks.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Except Microsoft makes about $0.75 of income on every $1 of OS sales that they do. See the client segment here:
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/reports/ar08/10k_fr_dis.html [microsoft.com]
Apple doesn't break out their revenues and income by product segment, so a direct comparison is difficult; also, they don't publish a fancy Annual report, just a 10-Q for the SEC, which is available here (and probably lots of other places), so no linking to the pertinent section:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107357&p=irol-sec [corporate-ir.net]
It is probably reasonably fair to compare Microsoft's above operating income for client sales to Apple's overall operating margin of about 20%:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=AAPL [yahoo.com]
The big difference is that Microsoft is selling OEM's licenses to Windows, with essentially no production costs (just development costs) and Apple has to buy all the parts for those computers from somebody, with costs that comprise a substantial portion of the eventual revenue that they bring in.
It's possible that computer hardware sales are more lucrative than other Apple products, but I doubt that it is a factor of 2 or whatever. So Microsoft could halve the revenue they are bringing in for OS sales and still probably be making more income on those revenues than Apple makes.
I think the biggest reason Apple doesn't want to license OS X for sale is that they would lose control over the experience ("It just works" is a big marketing point for them). Next in line is that they have significant hardware operations that would face lower margin competitors, likely eroding their revenues.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the situation you just described happens to real macs too. Every time they release a new machine or refresh one of the lines, something doesn't work. Lines across the screen, video chips that separate from the mainboard, random freezes, etc.
They haven't been able to make a legitimate "we build the whole thing so it's stable" argument in a long time, if they ever could.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe you should actually go to their web site [quocomputer.com] and read about the various configurations and pricing options before calling it "vaporware."
Did you even check the website yourself before linking?? There is nothing there...
Re:Vaporware? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You know this is going to end badly (Score:4, Informative)
"Apple does not want Mac Clones because last time they allowed Mac Clones they cut into Apple's own sales."
I'm not entirely sure that that's entirely true.
One of Apple's primary sales point is it's commitment to the total user experience, and the best way they can ensure it will be as positive as possible is to retain ironclad control over the hardware, so as to tightly tie the software and drivers to it.
As someone who was asked to demo one of the Power Computing clones in the 90s I can say categorically that at that time the clone maker product was inferior to a comparable Apple manufactured machine. It crashed more frequently, locked up and was less responsive. Whether it was poor components, or in-house drivers, the Power Computing unit was *not* a Mac.
So, while there may be some validity that Apple doesn't want to lose the tangible sales, I would suspect that it's more important to the company that the intangible value of the user experience that they've spent so long perfecting isn't diluted by allowing another company to manufacture hardware, install the OS and market it, in anyway, shape or form, as a "Mac".
Re:Maybe Apple will hug you to death (Score:3, Informative)
"You agree not to install, use, or run the Apple software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."
...which is what the Apple stickers in the OS X box are for.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
A friend brought over a Sony video camera. I wanted to grab a copy of what was on it so we chucked it onto my wife's Vista machine. After 30 or so minutes of futzing around we were unable to locate working drivers or get an import with Windows Movie Maker.
Plug into my Mini, camera detected, import into iMovie, import completed fine.
I have a Lemark laser printer, the driver it shipped with for XP and Vista was rubbish, with poor rendering of transparency and diffuclty in getting ome stuff to rpint with out a PCL error. On my Mac and Linux boxes, I just used the .ppd file for the postscript config and pointed it at the LPR daemon on the printers network port. Perfect Prints. I have had no trouble for 3 years now with this printer.
Logitec webcam, a huge driver set required to be installed to get it to go in Windows, and there always seem to be updates for it. On Linux and Mac it was just detected and worked.