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posted by takyon on Wednesday August 31 2016, @11:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the pystar-redux? dept.

El Reg reports:

An outfit called "Hacbook" is channeling Psystar, offering Mac OS laptops for US$329.

The laptops are actually refurbished HP EliteBooks, with a 14-inch, 1600x900 display, Sandy Bridge i5 CPU, 802.11 a/b/g/n, up to 1TB of disk, and 8GB of RAM. That's a spec Apple could have sold you in about 2013.

[...] The machines ship with no operating system but do include an installer its makers say "shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes to set up."

Jack Kim, one of the people behind the project, suggests you buy an OS X licence from Apple.

[...] "We're merely selling kits that users can then do whatever they want with afterwards."

"It's optimized to run OS X, but you can install Linux or Windows on it and use it however you want--that's completely up to the user. If Apple contacts us with concerns we'll work together to solve them."

[...] It's not the first time someone's run up a version of OS X on much cheaper hardware. Those with long memories will recall Psystar, which fell victim to Cupertino's lawyers in 2009.

I wondered if these things come with Secure Boot--which I prefer to call Crippled Boot (orig)
or Security Theater Boot (orig). One source said that HP's 8460p did not. (orig)


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  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:07AM

    by theluggage (1797) on Thursday September 01 2016, @10:07AM (#396118)

    Psystar's primary mistake back in the day was actually buying copies of OS X from Apple and installing it on the machines they were selling.

    At that time, you could just buy a Snow Leopard disc which said nothing on the box about it being an upgrade or only licensed on Apple-branded hardware until you paid for it, got it home, opened it and read the EULA (debatable, but that would be the defence). So if Psystar had done what these Hacbook guys are claiming, and got the user to install OS X from a genuine original disc, the case might have got into interesting territory about the enforceability of EULAs, click-through licensing and all that jazz. Unfortunately, if I recall correctly, although Psystar included a genuine OS X disc in the box, they screwed the pooch by imaging their machines from a central modified installation, which made it straight unauthorised distribution of a derivative work. So the case was quickly lost.

    Otherwise, I suspect Apple would have prevailed anyway, but we'd have got through a lot more popcorn.

    These guys sound as if they've tried harder to ensure that its the customer that obtains and installs OS X and not them. However, as you point out, there's no such thing as a legitimately purchased copy of OS X any more. If nothing else, they're misleading their customers by saying they can buy a license from Apple.

    (ISTR the Psystar case did get as far as rejecting the argument that Apple's refusal to license OS X on non-Apple hardware was an antitrust issue. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the personal computer market, and other OSs are available for your Mac).

    Mainly, I hope these clowns don't cause Apple to clamp down on non-commercial Hackintoshing, either with lawyers or tougher DRM.

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