A company is now promising a 399 mac clone.  I think the problem will come when Apple says you are in violation of the EULA.  I think it would be wildly popular though if Apple did this.  Everyone wants a reasonably price headless mac.

These guys apparently lasted only a week. Now they’re closed down.

Actually according to their site they are back up and running.  I really don’t trust them to deliver, but it will certainly be a good gauge of mini-tower demand, and EULA enforceability.

IT’ll also be interesting to see how customers respond with the first few reviews, especially after the next Mac OS X Leopard update, should it break compatibility with the clone. Even at $399, a brick is a brick.

An expandable mini-tower at $1999 is a possibility, but not a probability. Would Apple go to all the trouble to redesign the current tower to a mini?

It’s more likely that we’ll see more speed bumps in the iMac line, perhaps with a quad core Penryn chip.

IF only that Mac pro was not so blessed expensive!!!

I think if Apple is going to make a mini-tower it wouldn’t be a s a replacement for the MacPro tower, but an addition to the line.  As for the clones one big problem as I see it is you would get no support from Apple, who knows what kind of support you would get from Psyster.  Also the company doesn’t support reinstalls of leopard once you have the machine, you need to send it back to them for 150 bucks.  So if your HDD dies, you need to send it back to them to get a new one, I don’t find that very appealing no matter what the form factor.  I am guessing this clone company will be a flash in the pan.

“a sucker born ever minute”

The Pystar clone is junk PC hardware.  Save your $500...it’s a future hassle guaranteed. No support...no iLife..no engineering..no deal.

Amen.

I’m a Mac user who enjoys not having any headaches. It’s fine for the geekier folks with nothing better to do than track down solutions to problems.

What’s interesting about all this isn’t that it’s really a crummy, cheap PC, which seems to run OS X, it’s that Apple has been totally dead silent about the threat. Maybe they don’t consider it a threat to the Mac. Maybe it isn’t.

At $599 the Mac mini is not cheap as a PC, but it’s a full-fledged, honkin’ on little Mac which works very well out of the box. Save $200 and get some expansion and a loud fan? No thanks. How much expansion does one need on a cheapo clone? External hard drives are $100 or so, USB or Firewire, and that gets a Mac mini another hard drive. Graphics cards? Admittedly, the mini isn’t great but it’s better than some dedicated graphic cards of just a few years ago.

This is an exercise, not a trend.

mac_the_mac - 08 May 2008 01:27 PM

This is an exercise, not a trend.

Amen.

There is always someone trying to crack into this or that, build something cool from scratch. That will never end. It’s the general trends we need to pay attention to. A Mac mini is a very good, durable, dependable machine. The trade off in features and expandability vs. lower price tag is fine for some. It’s a Mac. A Frankenmac, Frankenclone, or Open Computer PC running OS X is NOT a Mac.

The difference here though is that they are selling it.  Generally the “proof of principles” are an exercise, but they are not sold.  The hack to get it to work may be published but generally they aren’t sold.  That is the big difference in this case.  Psystar (shyster) has taken it one step further in implementing the hack and now trying to profit from it.

BunsenHoneydew - 12 May 2008 09:43 AM

The difference here though is that they are selling it.  Generally the “proof of principles” are an exercise, but they are not sold.  The hack to get it to work may be published but generally they aren’t sold.  That is the big difference in this case.  Psystar (shyster) has taken it one step further in implementing the hack and now trying to profit from it.

That’s really the deal for me. OS X just has to work and on the Psystar it does not. What’s a few hundred dollars worth for time and aggravation?

I consider most of the clone and hack efforts to be exercises, not trends. No one is going to get rich selling $399 mini towers on the cheap.

Absolutely, my time is well worth spending a little extra $$ to save the aggravation.  I think it is cool to see these types of hacks done, but it is not something that I would want to do for a machine that I wanted to put all my important stuff on and use of a daily basis.  Not worth the risk IMHO.