Exclusive: Pictures of Psystar's corporate home; Clone maker's store is open
As this Psystar saga turns-the alleged Mac clone maker is either an overwhelmed legitimate business, a scam or something in between-it's helpful to have some feet on the street.
Context & Ripple Effects
Psystar surfaced during the preceding week with $399 OpenMac advertising and an offer to configure generic PCs with OS X Leopard. A profile of the Mac-clone mystery man underscored uncertainty about who was behind the Miami-based OEM.
An operating storefront shifts the immediate question from a product claim to customer verification: Psystar can take orders for a machine whose appeal depends on separating Apple’s software from Apple hardware.
First-order effects
- Prospective buyers can place orders with Psystar, giving the company a direct route to test demand for its low-cost Leopard-compatible configuration.
- Psystar’s commercial credibility becomes tied to fulfilling transactions, rather than solely to its advertising and claims about the OpenMac.
Second-order effects
- Psystar’s stated challenge to Apple’s licensing terms becomes a practical business dispute, because each order puts OS X on generic PC hardware at the center of the offer.
- Apple’s software license becomes the key boundary for the Mac platform as a commodity-PC seller attempts to compete on price while using Leopard compatibility as its differentiator.
Third-order effects
- If clone sellers can convert compatibility claims into completed sales, platform control increasingly depends on enforceable software terms rather than exclusive ownership of the hardware experience.
- The episode tests whether a proprietary computing platform can sustain its hardware moat when OEMs market lower-cost systems around the same operating system.
The trend: Low-cost clone vendors are probing whether software licensing, rather than hardware alone, is the enforceable boundary of a proprietary computing platform.