Other Mac-cloners may
know their time is limited, but good 'ol Psystar just keeps on forging straight ahead -- despite being locked in a
nasty legal battle with Apple that could result in it getting shut down any second now. Ignoring that (sophisticated looking) elephant in the corner for a moment, the company has released its latest model, called the Open(3). It sports your choice of processors ranging from a 2.8GHz Core2Duo E7400 up to a 2.53GHz Core2Quad Q8200, up to 4GB of memory, 1TB of storage, a 6x Blu-ray burner, and graphics from an NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT, all packaged in a slim case that, while not quite up to Cupertino standards, certainly looks a fair bit more visually appealing than its previous
black boxes. Prices start at just $599, but tick all those option buttons and you'll be looking at something closer to $2,000 -- a lot, but close to $1,000 less than a comparably spec'd Mac Pro. Get 'em while you can.
[Via
Pocket-lint]
posted March 18th 2009 6:51AM
I guess they need everyone to get the highest end model so they are able to pay their legal dues; I wouldn't go about making money in the same way I got into legal trouble in the first place, though!
when the hell are they going to release a hacked netbook
Hopefully one day we can all pick up an OS X install disc and use it on any compatible machine. Sick of paying the Apple tax now :P
Free OS X :D
Ladies and gentleman, I present to you, The apple tax!
In the Mac Pro they charge you $2,600.00 for Two 2.93GHz i7 965 ($999.99) to upgrade from the 2 920's ($288.99)
The upgrade should only cost $1,422.
$2,000-$578 = $1,422.
That's 1.83x the normal price. They just overcharged you $1,176.
Yeah, great presentation Erb. Only your calculations are way off because you are a retard. The CPU in the Mac Pros are not i7 but Xeon 5500. And the two 2.26GHz Xeons cost about $600 a pop, while the two 2.93GHz X5570s cost $1,386 a pop. In other words a difference of ~$1,400 sounds just about right right.
@Erb
The Mac pros use Xeon chips which are a lot more expensive than the desktop Core i7 chips. I don't have any prices to hand, but the price hike isn't going to be as big as $1,176
In fact, Apples desktop machines are usually prices very competitively compared to equivalent machines from rivals, its the laptops that are massively overpriced spec for spec
And the funny point is 4 cores i7 Xeon are not faster than 4 cores i7. Only advantage is you can get 8 cores. Only 3D apps will take care of those 8 cores at render time. Even Adobe apps will choke on memory way before.
Be clever and get yourself a Studio XSP for 999$. Its the best deal right now.
i7 quad, 6gb ddr3, 1TB, ATI HD 3650. Vista 64bit (you can change that for any OS you want)
Be sure to get a 15% off from a coupon site.
"Only 3D apps will take care of those 8 cores at render time."
Only a very few 3d apps will take care of over 8 cores, in fact, usually 2 cores is enough and the rest are rarely used.
To those claiming nothing takes advantage of all those cores – firstly, that's not even true; secondly, Snow Leopard is coming.
Under the performance curve, the first extra core can give you around a 50% (average) of increase in the performance, the next core can give you less 20-40% extra performance and so on.
There is only a few 3D apps!! ;P
Lightwave is doing wonder using my cores and I think Mental Ray scale quite well too no? I've read Maya have problems with 8 cores mac pro, but I guess this is more a mac problem.
Use XP64!
Ok, its moderately confusing because its a "Nehalem" and similar clock speeds.
Two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processors give you a total of eight processor cores for the ultimate in power and performance. Choose the speed you want.
until the US courts overturn the ruling that Apple has every right to tie hardware and software you have really two choices.
1. get over it and buy the dang mac
2. build your own machine, hack the software yourself and keep it to yourself. don't go advertising that you did it or try to make money off it. (ie the 'what Apple doesn't know' game)
I
No, I.
No YOU!
Who me?
Yes, you!
No him!
Who, me?!
couldn't be!
Anything that pisses Apple off is fine.
I don't understand. Why the FUCK would you pay 50% more for the same thing you can build yourself, or have built for you. For the price of a cRap Pro you could get a system twice as powerful with the most expensive GeForce and still probably end up spending less. And there are no shortage of cool looking cabinets either.
Some people really want OSX either because of some specific app or just because they prefer the platform. Unfortunately if you want to legally run Apple's OS you are artificially tied to their brand of hardware.
Simple solution: Don't use Apple-only software. For my work I need to use Final Cut Pro. Excellent program but unfortunately Apple-only. FCP would smoke on my $1k machine at home but unfortunately I have to either use it at work or shell out around $2200 for the equivalent Apple brand PC with a lower video card and no tuner.
Theoretically, the tradeoff you get for less choice and higher cost is more stability, but for the past 10 or 15 years of assembling computers, I've never had an issue with stability in Windows or Linux either as long as I choose good, decently-supported hardware. So long as the components all have good drivers, my Win/Lin boxes at home crash no more than the Apple ones at work (which is to say rarely if ever).
I often read comments such as yours KURIAN, but when I got down to business I always (twice to be precise) found them to be inexact.
The only advantage I can see in building your system by yourself is the ability to make it exactly tailored to your needs but I never found it to be convenient on an economic poiint of view.
Moreover my time is getting more and more precious, and to buy all components, have many of them shipped home, assembling them, checking them out, installing all softwares, cards, peripherals, and assorted B.S. always required me about a week of hassles, returns, reinstalls, bug fixing, phone calls, etc.
Big companies buy components and software in bulk and therefore they can offer prices lower than those of all individual components used to assemble the system.
The last system I built is my HTPC ; I decided to start the job just because I could buy a 600 USD case with inbuilt LCD touch screen for 359,95 USD,; by the time I bought the 3 hard discs (10.000 rpm) , i7 CPU, and the latest nVidia graphics (1GBram o.b.g.) and 8gb DDR3, plus my dream sound card, I realized that I had already used more money than I would have needed to buy a top notch HTPC already assembled with 2 years guarantee.
And I still had to by : power unit, blue ray burners, MS Vista 64bit, d-TV tuners, WIFI/BT/IR sender/receivers, and other "minor" components and softwares, which when factored in added to quite a big amount of cash, at least for my limited financial means.
Moreover, before the system was 100% functionig with all connections ( 7.1 Amplifier/speakers/subs, SAT, Cab-TV, NAS, B/G/N WIFI, media extenders, all monitors & screens, etc.) almost a month of my free time was gone.
Conclusion?
Never again.
Or at least: never again for quite a long time.
Other companies' HTPCs are usually cheaper. I'm talking about crApple :)
@ KilgoreTrout
No wonder your custom build experience is so bad.
Who the hell builds a HTPC with the specs you've belted out, Thats a gaming rig.
I'm aiming to build a HTPC over summer with a cheap Core2 duo, 2GB DDR2, 2 500GB HDD's(maybe room for more later), a Blu-Ray drive ( don't exactly need a burner currently), 9600GT, TV card, Wi-Fi. Vista I handily can get for free. Oh n a decent CPU cooler n some low RPM fans.
You don't really need much more than this, except maybe bigger HDD's.
I agree his rig was fail. 10,000 rpm hard drives in a HTPC? epic lulz. blu ray can be played from a crappy 8500GT haha. Don't need anything higher than a 70 dollar 9600GT.
What you guys forget is that apple is much smaller than microsoft, still ALL inovations that really hit the market come from where? Apple....right.
iPod -> copied, without big research costs and timeloss for microsoft (and they have quite some MORE money)
iPhone -> Copied by a whole industry that didn't change their user interface etc a bit and wouldn't have it for the next 30 years if the iphone wouldn't have shown up
Mac OS X -> See Vista.
What you guys are saying about the apple tax is TRUE!
But you pay it for a REALLY all-in-one system and not some crappy plastic without a webcam etc.
AND you pay it because that company is pushing the techworld kinda "alone" as a little david vs all those goliaths who have money but don't seem to be able to get more than 35 % of the genius that apple manages to create in their company.
Innovation comes from all over the industry, apple just makes it easy to use. The iphone wasn't th first of anything(that i can think of) but it did change everything when it came into play. Everything else you listed is slightly true.
Apple innovates, as does Microsoft, IBM, Linux, etc.
Hate to point out the obvious Norman but Apple did not invent the iPod they copied it off Creative, Thompson & Rio
In 1998, Compaq developed the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive.
Where is all the innovation again ? Apple repackage other peoples ideas, yes the iPhone repackages fingerworks's ideas after they bought the company. And what about dashboard ? it's an exact rip of Konfabulator right down to which shortcut keys display widgets. (it's now called Yahoo widgets.)
Wake up Apple innovation is usually advertising spin.
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Apple is a smaller company compared to Microsoft, but you don't see MS locking down their software, and you don't see MS bulling other companies around.
How did MS copy the IPod?
How did "other industries" copy the iphone? i think you got this backwards.
The only thing apple does from any other company is sell high priced hardware with there software. Not sure if you haven't noticed but, mainly all apple pc, uses server qualified components, see what happens when you unload MS os on them, they will be the same.
But this is what happened when people don't know a shit about what they buy, and who enjoy dishing out money for no reason.
@Norman
Dont forget that Apple also invented copy and paste too!
Apple's behaviour tends to be waiting for a market to emerge and then pouncing on it. They wouldn't have made the iPod without a market that was receptive to it, and Creative and Thompson did that. Similarly the iPhone came to fruition far after they probably had the idea, because the networks weren't ready, and smartphones weren't massmarket.
The Apple TV is an example where they've jumped the gun, but I think they're just in that market for a foothold. If the Kindle comes into a Netflix-like position for delivering books, I think Apple will finalize an ebook, or at least optimize their existing devices for book reading.
The iPod is a ripp-off a concept of hard drive based multimedia Jukebox, that was commercialised by several companies all over the world years before Apple decided to had a click-wheel onto the platform..
Then, with the help of the best advertising and marketing team in the world they made it a Hit.
dont take marketing for technological innovation..
The problem with that assessment is that it ignores the constant innovation in the consumer electronics sector. Ideas are constantly being generated that become standards and other companies build on.
iPod? What about Creative or iRiver or all of those other mp3 player brands that were doing well before the iPod existed? Apple merely gave it a layer of polish and a shitload of advertising.
iPhone? What about my old Palm and WM and RIM devices that have used touch screens and given me amazing futuristic functionality like copy/paste, GPS, MMS, web, push email, tethering, and streaming media for years, even before the iPhone existed? Sure the iPhone (once again) added a layer of polish and a shitload of marketing.
Talking about Vista taking inspiration from OSX? I guess they also were inspired by OSX when it came to the issues they had upon rolling out a new platform. If you are old enough to remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Apple crowd when they went from OS9 to OSX then you would know that issues stemming from the launch of a new platform are nothing new. In the consumer OS space, Win and Mac OS have taken cues from each other for years.
So if your idea of innovation is polish and advertising, then yes. Apple is the only company that innovates anymore. But if you care more about what a computer or electronic device can do and how much you pay for that device rather than how it looks or how cool it makes you seem or how moron-proof easy it is to use, then there are plenty of other companies doing just fine.
The Apple Propaganda has taken its effect on the public.
Norman, get your facts straight
iPod -> copied from MPman ( http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/11/the-first-mp3-player-celebrates-its-10th-birthday/ ) the iPod appeared 3 years later.
Mac OS X -> the whole GUI concept copied from Xerox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_GUI ) The first GUI of apple appeared about 10 years ! after the Xerox PARC
iPhone -> I´m glad the "whole industry" has NOT copied the GUI of the iPhone, as a MOBILE PHONE it sucks (physical buttons are much better for dialing)... speaking about the iPhone; I remember I was able to buy/download & install 3 party apps on my Nokia 7650 in 2002 without any restrictive policy from Nokia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7650) If anything the GUI of the iPhone is a polished copy of the 7650 and yes it had copy-paste function out of the box. (and you could run programs in the background something that the iPhone still lacks)
Good grief. What an embarrassing parade of half-truths and misunderstandings there is here.
@Robin Jacobs:
Remember when rotary phones were the best for physical dialing? "Buttons" weren't well received at first, but look what took over after rotary phones. Don't knock the innovation simply because you don't like it.
@neodorian
--> "iPod? What about Creative or iRiver or all of those other mp3 player brands that were doing well before the iPod existed? Apple merely gave it a layer of polish and a shitload of advertising." ---
You're right. Apple didn't invent the MP3 player. Apple just made the first hard drive player that people wanted. Remember the Creative Nomad Jukebox? The thing was the size of a Discman... it was not pocketable at all.
Apple made a small MP3 player and actually advertised it. And Apple made decent software to manage your music... iTunes. Then they invented the iTunes Music Store. And, last time I checked, iTunes is still the largest retailer of music.
So, you're right. Other companies made MP3 players before Apple. But Apple didn't stop with just the player, they kept going down the pipeline. Players, online store selling music, movies and TV shows... everything. And they put commercials on TV so people would know about their products and so people would buy them.
Shitload of advertising? That's how Apple got their products in the hands of the consumers. There's a difference between having the first MP3 player... and having the best selling MP3 player.
i like how Psystar has a $300 option for a bag of hurt
Good luck actually playing a movie on that $300 Bag of Hurt. I believe that drive will be only for data, not Hollywood content.
It feels like this is a little bit whack-a-mole, but I don't think companies should be allowed to do this. People will always self-build though and that's great.
As for the question of value, everybody's going to use a different scale for that. My thoughts are that if you're a fan of OS X in the first place you'll also find value in the Mac Pro that you won't see in the spec sheet.
Anybody buying stock crap like that can't be helped anyway ... and wouldn't be in the market for an Apple PC anyway.
There is a really simple way for all the Apple haters to avoid the Apple tax............
DONT F BUY ANY APPLE PRODUCTS!!!
There you go and you don't even need to thank me, you can have that info for free.
Those of us who do buy Apple products know exactly why we don't mind paying the premium.
Toph.
Yes, just buy Psystar
Who in their right mind will tick the : Extended Two Year Parts and Support +$149.00 :)
The Apple tax is to keep the company alive, and thriving enough to keep its R&D well funder. Look at how many other companies are DEAD now, because they could not price their product to stay in business.
Yes we must all pay through the nose to companies so that they stay alive.
Don't know about you Mr. Stupid but I'm more interested in keeping money in my pocket that giving it all to a large corporation.