After all the drama and shifting addresses of (unauthorized) Mac clone maker, Psystar, the real truth is starting to emerge.  The site was simply overwhelmed but that’s only half the reason that Powerpay, the original credit authorization service dropped Psystar as a customer.

The reason for all the shifting addresses was explained as follows by the company,

“The first new address posted (10481) was in error and our correct address is 10475 NW 28th Street. PSYSTAR was, prior to this past week, not ready to handle the enormous production capacity demanded by the online community. Due to the incredible response we have now expanded to a larger commercial unit to handle the supplies and assembly of Open Computers. THANK YOU for all of your orders.”

That’s all well and good but that has nothing to do with posting the wrong information in the first place, it’s not that hard to post the right address in the first place.  The placement of orders, increased traffic and related have no effect on static information like address and corporate contact information.  It just doesn’t make sense to me but maybe it does to someone.

Then there’s Powerpay which Psystar says,

“Powerpay, dropped the ball on us and refused to process any more transactions from our company. We have reverted to Paypal until we can find a high-volume merchant. Apparently Powerpay was not ready to handle the community’s demand for Open Computing.”

That’s only half true.  While it is true that the number of orders did overwhelm Powerpay and that was part of the reason it dropped Psystar, that’s only half of the reason.  The other half is that Psystar didn’t actually tell Powerpay they were selling Mac clones and essentially violating Apple’s EULA (End User License Agreement) and did not receive permission from the OSx86 project to use their technology which they claim the open computer is based off of (at least those that run Mac OSX).  Doing the previous would violate Powerpay’s terms of service which is the real reason Powerpay terminated it’s contract with Psystar.

I still find it hard to believe that the highest end model of its OpenPro computer can be purchased for just a little over $2,100 and find it a little suspicious that there is no estimated ship date in the configurator which is offered by most PC manufacturers, even mom and pop operations.  The jury is still out on Psystar, until a review site gets their hands on either the Open Computer or OpenPro Computer, it may as well be vaporware.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2008 at 9:48 am under Apple, Uncategorized.  Print This Post

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