Clone Wars.

Saturday 26 July, 2008

It was inevitable really — IBM PC clones built to run OS X, such as that built by pystar — and yet there is still a fundamental issue with this solution.

“Another company is preparing to sell Intel-based computers that can run Apple Inc.‘s Mac OS X. But unlike a Florida clone maker that’s been sued by Apple, Open Tech Inc. won’t pre-install the operating system on its machines.”

Yes, they can run OS X Leopard (or Tiger). Yes, it even gives a very similar, almost identical experience. But OS X alone doesn’t make a Mac.

Design Emporium.

It’s the sum of all parts, from large multi-touch track pads on the mac books through the specific selection of base hardware such as motherboard reference design and choice of components. Windows XP (and to a lesser extent) Vista, along with a number of UNIX-ish platforms such as Ubuntu or Fedora have tended to obfuscate compatibility and reliability in component choice over recent years.

Today, it is possible to select almost any type of processor and mate it with a compatible mainboard, some ram, a random graphics card and a hard-drive of some description and you’ll be able to run Windows at the very least, with just about any other Linux derivative also working right-out-of-the-box. But that’s really not how a macbook or mac pro are built.

Components and reference designs are often tuned to suit each other. Something that was done to quite some degree early on in the development of both IBM and HP (Compaq) hardware (as an example) a few years ago. If you supported such hardware seven-or-so years ago, it was not at all uncommon to see very non-standard hardware in use by all the big name brands. Sure, one paid more for it (sometimes a great deal more) but ultimately that resulted in a better, more reliable product.

Clones R Us.

Fast forward back-to-the-future, and most IBM clones are built from off-the-shelf hardware. IBM’s are now in fact built by Chinese giant Lenovo. Customised hardware is still used in the Server realm, but far less often in PC clones. They are no longer built to survive, but rather to suit a market that demands the absolutely-lowest-price. Reliability and compatibility are no longer major watch-words.

Today’s Macs do actually share a lot of similarities with their clone brethren. The same graphics cards, the same hard-drives.. even the same CPUs. The switch to Intel was always going to be a smart one as high levels of component production is assured. It was considered foolish by many so-called Mac experts, surely it would fail. That is obviously not the case, sales are soaring.

This very machine I wrote this article on, can run (and has) run OS X. Indeed a number of clones can. However after observing my partner use her Mac Book, and having the (all too brief) opportunity to use it myself, it’s clear they are not just an ordinary clone. They have been built under an entirely different design philosophy. Macs are built with select components rigorously tested to ensure optimal co-habitation and reliability. Just as brand name PC’s were, years ago.

The Art of War.

Ultimately then, the philosophies can be best expressed as follows: Mac’s empower. Clones duplicate.

And so, the Pystar or Open Tech might well run Mac OS X — and run it just fine — but they are not a Mac. They use non-authorised modified code to bypass operating system constraints that keep OS X Mac only. And that is seldom noted in the push to sell these products. Buying one of those systems means almost no support, on a platform that has an unsupported Operating System (despite what they tell you) that may cease to function at any time.

You are not buying a Mac clone. You are buying a PC clone that just happens to run OS X. It’s not a 1:1 copy, it’s just a cheap, hacked and broken facsimile. Before I used a mac book, I would have suggested that a hacked clone was “almost as good as the real thing”. They are not. There is a difference.

The claims by Pystar and Open Tech that these systems are legally able to run OS X is a joke. They use published hacks to bypass code in the OS X builds. I am no lawyer, but that is still a direct violation of the EULA [section F] which forbids reverse engineering (or tampering with) any code that is not already published under an Open Source licence.

“.. you may not copy,decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, modify, or create derivative works of the Apple Software or any part thereof.”

That’s a legal view, of course, which is open to interpretation and potential legal challenge. But that really isn’t the point. That which makes a Mac stand out from every other PC clone is the entire package. From OS to hardware to support — a Mac is more than just the operating system it runs. It is the sum of it’s parts.

And that is something these cloners simply do not get. In turn, neither will their duped customers, who will continue to buy these systems under false belief.

Under-whelmed.

Monday 09 June, 2008

WWDC 2008 will be remembered for the launch — albeit in one month from now — of the worst-kept secret of ’08 and very little else.

MobileMe launched — providing a web-based version of what many other mobile synch tools provide out-of-the-box — that takes over where .mac left off and finally, Snow Leopard — sounding very much like an equivalence of a Windows Service Pack at best.

That isn’t a bad thing, mind. Stability is a sore-point for many Vista users looking for something different and, perhaps, better. But the amount of coverage for things not-iPhone was appalling.

Sure, the iPhone finally makes it to a wider global market without requiring various hacks. However, we cannot buy one now. Buzz surrounding the all-new device will have well and truly peaked before this thing actually hits market.

I awoke at 5am this morning, with expectation zinging over what might await me. I needn’t have bothered. A (not so) new phone, talk of an updated OS and a mobile service all of which aren’t actually here yet.

I really think Gruber has nailed it when he talks of what Apple’s announcements at WWDC this year really mean:

“The physical phone is not the story. A year from now, the iPhone 3G will be replaced by another new model. The platform is the story.”

Yes, it’s clear they are going to sell billions of phones. At circa US $199 how can they not, surely? Although it’s not entirely clear if that is actually based on AT&T contract pricing. It’s anybodies guess what that actually translates to outside of the US and how much it will end up costing to buy outright.

Watching the keynote isn’t all that inspiring. It’s simply going through the motions of officially launching everything we already new and confirming the pre-event speculation for the most part. WWDC ’08 is basically an all-singing-all-dancing version of their future road-map.

And that’s why I feel a little, well, let down by Apple. What they seem to have forgotten in all this new “sans-one-more-thing” world, is that I, the potential user, still need to feel important, that what I’m being offered makes me feel, well, cooler.. and that it really will be worth my time. Sure, there is a strong developer angle here. I get that. But we’re not all developers and as such we still look to these events and keynotes for inspiration.

I need assurance that Jobs and Apple are on the case. That they’ve got mega-cool-shit happening right here and they want me to be a part of it. Being told to wait a month for a yet-to-be-priced phone doesn’t make me feel cooler. Not being told availability or pricing doesn’t make me feel cooler. Not having anything else up their sleeve, really isn’t at all cooler. It’s just not assurance.

So we’ll see what Apple come up with moving forward. One more thing.. just not today.