New Mac Clone

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April 3rd, 2003, 12:01 AM
cwk9

New Mac Clone

Source: http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,58310,00.html

Quote:

John Fraser, a 21-year-old engineer from Chanhassen, Minnesota, is finalizing the design for his flat "pizzabox" Mac and hopes to go into production in three to four months. If successful, Fraser will be the first third party to make a Mac since Apple shut down its three-year experiment in clone licensing in 1997.

Unlike the world of Windows PCs, which has many hardware makers, Apple is the only company making Macs. Apple doesn't license its operating system to outside hardware manufacturers.

Fraser hopes to sidestep the licensing issues by using older, off-the-shelf parts made by Apple and sold to computer repair outfits as spare parts. He will use Apple-made motherboards preloaded with Macintosh ROMs -- the vital piece of hardware-***-software that makes a Mac a Mac. Customers will supply their own Mac operating system....

I'm sure this guy will be swamped with law suits in no time.
April 3rd, 2003, 12:11 AM
MrLinus

Dammit, I hope they don't. He has said he wants to work fully with Apple on this. Power Computing made great machines. I still have my PowerComputer Power Tower Pro 225 and my b/f's PowerComputing PowerCenter 150. Both are still in use. I haven't bought a pure Apple (my last was a Quadra 650) in a long while because I find that while Apple makes good computers (albeit a bit overpriced) they went out of style fast. The clones were at least flexible enough to modify.
April 3rd, 2003, 02:05 AM
sickyourIT

if apple goes after this guy, they are shooting themselves in the foot. they tried suing emachines for "color copying" when the eOne came out looking similar to the blueberry iMac. luckily, they weren't successful on that. apple needs to realize that besides being in every single movie possible, they ad's aren't all that effective, and cheap apples would definitly get more people interested in the technology and the OS. I would be willing to bet taht if this guy sells a bunch of cheap apple-wannabe's then more people will start going for beefier macs in the future.

who knows. after all, there's always ebay