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.