The legal side of things; Apple
Tuan: May I play devil’s advocate with you for a second?
Davide: You’re welcomed to!
Tuan: Say I am Apple. I come to you and say: "we understand your business model. However, the fact that you enable users that don’t own Mac hardware to run our operating system, hurts our own hardware Mac sales — It negates the necessity of owning Mac hardware to use an Apple operating system.
How would you respond to that?
Davide: I can respond to that with another question. How many people with a limited edition motherboard, a liquid cooling setup and a hand picked processor for overclocking and low latency DDR2 memory do you know that would buy a Mac?
Tuan: Regardless of the number of those people, you cannot guarantee that those users would NOT buy or consider buying Mac.
Davide: Then we encourage those people to buy a Mac, but our main target is not the typical Mac user. Our target is who would not buy a Mac for a series of reasons.
Tuan: I see. That we can understand. But therein lies some ambiguity because since you cannot fully guarantee that your target audience would never buy a Mac, they then still remain as potential hardware sales losses. Correct?
Davide: That’s what the hardware compatibility list is there for. The EFiX will work only on what we want it to work. This is to limit the users to exactly those that we want to use the module. I’m telling you that our module will as a matter of fact boost [Apple’s] sales too. Because the kind of people we address the product to will not mind buying Apple accessories, software and such, or why not a MacBook Air to compliment their Frankenstein at home on the desk.
Tuan: And you avoid the EULA that prevents Leopard being installed on a PC because then that falls on the hands of the end user.
Davide: We do more than that. We take to court whoever sells our modules bundled with a PC — and we are very aggressive about it. Our distributors sign a contract that prohibits them from selling PCs bundled with our modules.
Tuan: Right, because then they’d be selling a hackintosh of sorts, going the route of Psystar.
Davide: Not only that, they are taking away from Apple, its rightful piece of the market. Apple must have what belongs to them. We want to be for Apple what Iomega or Lacie is to them; someone that goes in their same direction, not someone who challenges or damages them.
Tuan: Okay, back to being myself now. So you’re saying that those who are interested in the EFiX are already interested in buying a legal copy of Leopard.
Davide: Bingo. But they don’t want to spend money on a desktop not addressed to them.
Tuan: This is primarily a concern for many Tom’s Hardware readers. They want to try Leopard but the cost of entry is a barrier that makes no sense to them.
Davide: That’s why we want to go alongside with Apple. It’s not really the amount of cash that is scary. It’s the meaning of it.
Tuan: Explain.
Davide: To one one of Tom’s Hardware’s readers for example, an overclocker, modder, spending money for an iMac or Mac Pro is a waste.
Tuan: And the fact is, Apple doesn’t have enough hardware choices for them.
Davide: Exactly.
What's the estimated cost on these pieces of kit?
108 euros from mm services (swiss company)
http://m2-services.net/index.php?o [...] 29&lang=en
Well as you went to the trouble of interviewing this guy, you could of asked some more pertinent questions. Apple's EULA states that the OS should only be installed on Apple branded hardware, so what are they going to do...run of a batch of sticky back Apple logos? Can't see how that is going to fly. Also this thing about them wanting to move in the same direction as Apple...I'm assuming that wasn't to point of contacting Apple over this to see how they felt about it.
Don't get me wrong I think the concept is very clever and would consider it seriously if I thought it was going to last long term. However I can't help but think that Apple will just let them pour their capital into this project then haul them into court. Then whoever has coughed up for one of these will quickly find Apple has found a way to stop it from functioning, which is a loss of about £150 if you add the cost of the hardware and OSX.
He's right in so much as I believe there is a sizeable number of people who would like to try OSX but will absolutely not cough up Apple's hardware prices or accept the hardware limitations (especially the graphics). They might however be tempted by this set-up if Apple gave assurances that they wouldn't try and kill it.
There are wins for Apple in this. They get revenue from the software sale and possible accessories. Perhaps more importantly, with Vista struggling for acceptance, the timing might never be so sweet again to see how much they could eat into the market share of Windows. They must know that it will never be significant as long as they tie it into their own kit, but this way... well who knows.
As a neutral in all aspects of computing, I believe competition and choice is a great thing. At the very least, putting OSX into the melting pot like this would really force MS to pull their fingers out with regard to Windows.
So what do you say Apple, are you ready to try a new revenue stream with none of the risk. It may come to nothing, but it may just be a sea change.
I want to know where is the anti trust case for Apple. Come EU, you hassle MS for bundling a free media player with Windows (bit like prosecuting Ford for putting in CD players in their cars) but don't blink an eye at Apples dodgy practice of Knobbling software to only work on Apply H/W (which we all know is basically just a low end PC). My point is people shouldn't need these bloody usb dongles [/rant]
Go look at the spec's for the base model Mac Pro. I don't recall ANY low end PC's having Dual Quad core Xeon processors...come to think of it I don't think there are any low end Servers that come equipped that way either. Do your research or at least get current. As for getting exposure to OSX, why not just pony up for the Mac Mini? I support PC's all day in my job so I am not a PC hater...they keep me employed. =)
All this does is take over the functions of the BIOS with an EFI (extensible firmware interface) compatible system.
This in itself is perfectly legal and nothing to do with Apple. EFI is an Intel system they have designed to try to replace the ageing BIOS.
The fact that apple use the existence of EFI rather than a BIOS to confirm the machine is a Mac, is completely irrelevant to the conversation, and is frankly apples problem.