With all the Psystar-related drama going on in the OSx86 scene this week, it's easy to overlook the fact that people are doing some pretty wild things with the community-led project -- we've already seen OS X boot on a Sony Vaio UX, and now the crew at jkOnTheRun have managed to shoehorn it on to a Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium UMPC. The Q1's 1.33GHz Core Solo and upgraded 2GB of RAM are enough to run Leopard smoothly, it seems -- Apple sold Mac Minis with similar specs a while back, after all -- and while not everything works exactly right, it appears the digitizer is recognized, allowing Ink to work. It's not perfect, as there are some calibration issues, but it's a fun little peek into what an OS X tablet might look like -- minus the command button, of course.

Uh-oh, it looks like wannabe Mac clone maker Psystar has more than one licensing issue with the Open Computer: the company didn't get permission from developers working on the OSx86 Project to sell their work. Netkas, who developed the EFI emulator Psystar is using, posted up a blog entry yesterday calling Psystar "liars" and has re-released his code under a license that specifically forbids commercial usage. We chatted briefly with Netkas and he told us that not only did Psystar take his code without permission, it's using other code from the project like the NVInject graphics patch developed by Gotoh, and that he contacted Psystar when he learned about the Open Computer with no results. We also talked to several other members of the OSx86 scene who believe that Apple is tolerant of (and even subtly assisting) their efforts, and are worried that the Psystar flap might end that relationship and bring the hammer down -- after all, there's no Psystar without OSx86.

Interestingly, when we called Psystar to get comments on all of this, Rudy Pedraza, the president, first wanted to know if we could make Netkas call him, then denied using the EFI emulator, then repeatedly asked us for Netkas's phone number (in Russia!) so he could talk to him directly, and then finally promised to call us back. Yeah, he never called back. That's a lot of uncertainty around a pair of machines that haven't shipped from a company with two different addresses that's been in business for less than a year -- and Apple hasn't even gotten involved yet. At this point we're going to say that if you really want a hackintosh, you're likely better off rolling up your sleeves and building one yourself -- you'll probably have it done well before this whole mess gets sorted out.

Read - Netkas blog posting
Read - The Guardian "So exactly who or what is Psystar?"
Read - Psystar listing at the Florida State Department website

So the rumors swirling around would-be Mac clone maker Psystar are getting pretty wild out there -- we've heard everything from "Apple has shut the company down" to "Psystar is going to challenge Apple's EULA in court" in the vacuum following the company's site meltdown yesterday. That's a big spread, so we hit up Psystar's president Rudy Pedraza for some answers. Rudy was relatively cagey on the phone, refusing to answer any questions about Apple's EULA or copyrights -- or even confirm if Apple has talked with the company -- but he told us that he's got a "team" of people working on an official response and that the Open Computer (and the new quad-core Open Pro, pictured above) are still for sale. What's more, he told us that "a few" orders placed before yesterday's flood of interest have shipped, which means we're curious to see if any of these early adopters actually surface in the next few days. Rudy also told us that Psystar isn't out to infringe any copyrights or trademarks (really?), and that he has no idea how Information Week got a quote from someone named "Robert" indicating that the company was going to challenge Apple's EULA in court. Sure thing. Rudy promised us a machine either today or tomorrow, we'll see what happens -- honestly, it seems like things are chaos at Psystar's HQ in Miami right now.

P.S. -Remember MGM v. Grokster? In that case the Supreme Court ruled that a company that based its business around the knowing copyright infringement of customers was still liable, even if it didn't infringe directly. Kinda shoots a hole in the "just don't pre-install Leopard" theory, no?

Read - Psystar Open Pro
Read - Information Week ("Psystar vows to challenge Apple EULA")
Read - DailyTech: ("Apple Kills Psystar's $399 Mac")

Psystar's offer to build off-license OSx86 OpenMac clones was apparently pretty popular -- we saw a note from the company saying it was trying hard to cope with the rush of traffic, but it looks like things got overwhelming, and the site is now unavailable. People are speculating that Apple already shut things down, but that's pretty unlikely: nothing on the Psystar site infringed any of Apple's IP (as far as we can recall) and the company hadn't actually sold anything yet, which means there isn't much of anything for Apple to go to court over. On top of that, we doubt that Psystar wasn't expecting to attract Apple's attention, so we don't think a cease and desist letter would scare the company into shutting things completely down. Of course, we're still willing to bet that Apple's legal team is licking their chops in anticipation of something actionable happening, but we'd say the most interesting thing about this so far is the incredible amount of attention a low-cost expandable minitower running OS X has gotten -- maybe someone at Apple apart from the lawyers should be taking notes as well.

Update: They're back! They've changed the name to "Open Computer," which should totally throw off Apple's lawyers. Or... probably won't.

Folks hanging on the Mac side of life have surely been waiting in tense anticipation for DisplayLink to become OS X friendly, for like, ever. As promised, the first drivers have emerged in order to give Intel-based Macs (yes, MacBook Air and Mac mini are included) the ability to connect with up to four monitors over USB. Granted, the beta software has no 2D acceleration and no OpenGL 3D acceleration, but both limitations are known and will hopefully be ironed out in the final release. So, what are you waiting for? Tap the read link below to get your download on -- but be sure to read up on the documentation before forging ahead without a care in the world.

[Thanks, Mike]

After a week full of Red Bulls, Fruit by the Foot and dreams of In-N-Out, the mighty Sony VAIO loaded with Linux stood as the only machine unhacked by the end of the PWN 2 OWN hacking contest at CanSecWest. As you're well aware by now, the MacBook Air on display was seized in two minutes by the presumably well prepared Charlie Miller, and after two full days of work, Shane Macaulay and a few of his 1337 associates managed to crack the Vista rig on Friday. Reportedly, Shane and his pals weren't expecting to do battle with the extra protected SP1 version of Vista, and while the exact loophole won't be divulged, we are told that it was a cross-platform bug that "took advantage of Java to circumvent Vista's security." In the end, it was reported that some folks on hand had discovered bugs in the Linux OS, but many of them "didn't want to put the work into developing the exploit code that would be required to win the contest."

[Image courtesy of TippingPoint]

And just think -- last year you were singing Dino Dai Zovi's praises for taking control of a MacBook Pro in nine whole hours. This year, the PWN 2 OWN hacking competition at CanSecWest was over nearly as quickly as the second day started, as famed iPhone hacker Charlie Miller showed the MacBook Air on display who its father really was. Apparently Mr. Miller visited a website which contained his exploit code (presumably via a crossover cable connected to a nearby MacBook), which then "allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers [read: unashamed nerds] cheered him on." Of note, contestants could only use software that came pre-loaded on the OS, so obviously it was Safari that fell victim here. Nevertheless, he was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement that'll keep him quiet until "TippingPoint can notify the vendor," but at least he'll have $10,000 and a new laptop to cuddle with during his silent spell.

Last year's PWN 2 OWN contest at the CanSecWest security conference went over way better than expected (read: exploits were glorified), so this year, organizers have spiced things up by letting hackers have their way with three separate machines. The Linux, OS X and Vista-based rigs were all setup as similarly as possible in order to "make sure the attack surface was the same on all of them." For attendees in Vancouver, there sits a $20,000 top prize -- which dwindles with each passing day as restrictions on attacks ease up -- but it can only be acquired if an all new zero-day cyber roundhouse kick is used. Anyone here going to give it a go? You get to keep the freshly victimized laptop too, you know.

Mark your calendars, Apple fans -- WWDC officially kicks off June 9th this year (running until the 13th). Expect Mac, iPhone, and IT tracks for your varied Apple platform development needs. No official word yet as to whether El Jobso will be taking the stage at this WWDC, but it certainly wouldn't be an Apple event without him.

It's a good day for Leopard users, the latest update (10.5.2) is finally being released, and weighs in at a mighty 180MB+ (some are reporting theirs is over 300MB). As expected this update has a TON of fixes, including stuff in Active Directory, AirPort, BTMM, Dashboard, Dock, Finder, iCal, iChat, iSync, Mail, Preview, Safari, Time Machine, and more -- the choicer of we'll be publishing after the break. Go on, indulge yourself.

P.S. -Oh, purists, you'll definitely love the fact that you can now (finally) turn off menu bar transparency. Score one for the team. (It's in the desktop and screen saver system pref pane.)

P.P.S. -It would appear there's also a second update, the Leopard Graphics Update (about 50MB) which comes through once you've installed 10.5.2. No word on what that one does yet. Thanks, amidamaruflame.

If neither of Elgato's latest from Macworld tickled your fancy, there's a decent shot you may like what equinux has going on instead. The TubeStick hybrid is the firm's newly announced USB TV tuner, which is housed in a diminutive chassis that won't block nearby ports and offers up OTA reception of NTSC, ATSC and digital (QAM) signals. Furthermore, the unit comes wearing the whitest of white outfits and also touts an external antenna and a one-month trial of the TubeToGo software. Yes, this critter will play nice with Windows machines as well, but we hear it tries to avoid such predicaments whenever possible. Ready to snag your own? Catch one next month for $129.

[Via The Mac Observer]

Admirers of Macs and Z-Wave have longed for the day in which they could finally use their two dearest loves simultaneously, and thanks to Wayne-Dalton, that day is upon us. The WDUSB-10MAC is hailed as the world's first Z-Wave-enabled home control system "designed specifically for the Mac OS X operating system." Mac users simply plug in the USB dongle, install the bundled Houseport software and go wild creating and managing their home network. When all is said and done, OS X users will be able to "control light switches, appliances, electronics, thermostats and other Z-Wave-enabled devices from their computers or through the internet" -- a feat previously only achievable by booting into Windows. Not too shabby for $87, eh?

[Via CEPro]

He we go again. Like an evil pope preparing to recapture the Holy Land, Jeff Jones, Microsoft's self-proclaimed "Security Guy" (and Microsoft Director) just published the Vista One Year Vulnerability Report. As you can see from the graph above, JJ's methodology concludes that Microsoft's Vista easily bests the first year vulnerabilities found in XP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Apple's own OS X. As contentious as the report is, is anyone else reflecting on the fact that Vista is more than a year old for businesses (almost exactly one for consumers) yet XP continues to ship standard on many PCs?

[Via Slashdot]

Yeah, the BBC seems to be quite the indecisive bunch, but according to a recent blog posting by Ashley Highfield (Director, BBC Future Media And Technology), its iPlayer may actually see face time on Apple's revised Apple TV platform. Quite frankly, details are far too thin to actually make anything of this just yet, but he does note that the "effective relaunch of the AppleTV... coupled with its (long anticipated) move to a rental model, means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programs to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rights-holders currently insist." The post goes on to touch on a number of IP to TV-related topics, but not once does it mention actually being in talks with Cupertino to make this happen. Guess it's wait-and-see from here, eh?

[Via Electronista]

It seems that Elgato was most proud of its totally revamped EyeTV 3 software, but we couldn't help but notice two rather substantial hardware updates that it also chose to announce (albeit quietly) at Macworld 2008. Starting today, the firm's EyeTV Hybrid USB tuner and its EyeTV 250 Plus TV receiver / video converter (shown after the break) are both available with built-in support for unencrypted digital cable (Clear-QAM) channels. 'Course, they'll both still pull in NTSC / ATSC signals, but the addition of Clear-QAM support is a real boon for OTA addicts. Pricing for the extra versatile devices remains unchanged at $149.95 and $199.95, respectively, but unfortunately, existing owners will not be able to receive the newfound functionally with a simple firmware update.

Read - Elgato EyeTV Hybrid
Read - Elgato EveTV 250 Plus