Psystar to Countersue Apple, Take No Guff

Psystar, prominent makers of “Hackintosh” PCs running Mac OS X, is set to respond to Apple’s copyright infringement suit on Tuesday and file a countersuit of their own, just like we thought. Psystar owner Rudy Pedraza insists that his OpenComputer hardware is merely “providing an alternative, an option” to Apple’s pricey hardware. Pedraza plans to countersue Apple under two federal antitrust laws, hoping to prove that Apple’s fierce tethering of OS to hardware represents an “anticompetitive restraint of trade.” It’ll be an uphill battle to fight Apple’s legal team, but I kind of hope they win: it’s like David versus Goliath, if David and Goliath were both big nerds. [CNET]

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Psystar Offers Free Leopard Restore Disc

Psystar, the company that’s fighting back against being smacked down by Apple, has just decided to ship Leopard restore discs free of charge to their customers. If you remember, one of the (many) major problems with Psystar’s machines was that you had to ship your box back to them if anything went wrong because their “hackintosh” approach to putting OS X on whiteboxes wouldn’t allow you using a regular Leopard disc. Is this going to help or hurt their case against Apple? We’re thinking hurt, because now they’re shipping a modified copy of Leopard, but our only knowledge of lawyering comes from Phoenix Wright 1-4. [Psystar]

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MacBook Air Now Available for the Poor

The MacBook Air experience: take away the design, and you’re left with the portability and Mac OS X. That’s what the katexter has, thanks to his Hackintosh conversion of his MSI Wind. He (or she) claims it starts Word faster than a 2.4Ghz iMac, and more or less complete functionality:

What works: 1024×600 screen, Ethernet, USB ports, Keyboard, Trackpad, Webcam, Sleep, Bluetooth, Speakers, Audio controls

What doesn’t work: Audio Jacks, WiFi

Workarounds: USB Wifi and USB Audio dongles work.

Check out all the pics here.

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EFiX USB dongle for installing OS X on a regular PC

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4834256047390145703
A while back the Mac web was abuzz about Psystar, the first commercially available hackintosh. Now comes EFiX, an USB dongle that will supposedly allow you “to install Mac OS X straight from the original DVD [onto a regular PC] without having to worry about patches, replacing files and anything like that.” Above you can see a video from netkas.org partially demonstrating a PC booting a MacBook repair disc. They say the product is in “the final testing phase,” with release planned for June 23, 2008. Whether Apple’s lawyers will ever let this see the light of day is something else entirely.

Popularity: 13% [?]