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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

PYSTAR's REBEL EFI

Snow Leopard is an upgrade because you need 10.5 to use it, they sell another copy of snow leopard for 10.4 users in the form of the "Mac box Set" this is $169 and includes ilife 09 and iwork 09 Home premium is $199 for the download + $14 for the backup disk I would still say that OS X has better value, and it still lists a mac computer under the system requirements so I'd say if you can shoehorn it onto anything else your entitled to it but if you start selling those machines for profit I think thats when you start running into problems.
The upgrade for home premium is $199 which is still a hell of a lot more then the upgrade for OS 10.6
 
Craig W. Bickerstaff said:
Snow Leopard is an upgrade because you need 10.5 to use it, they sell another copy of snow leopard for 10.4 users in the form of the "Mac box Set" this is $169 and includes ilife 09 and iwork 09 Home premium is $199 for the download + $14 for the backup disk I would still say that OS X has better value, and it still lists a mac computer under the system requirements so I'd say if you can shoehorn it onto anything else your entitled to it but if you start selling those machines for profit I think thats when you start running into problems.
The upgrade for home premium is $199 which is still a hell of a lot more then the upgrade for OS 10.6
Click to expand...

You can actually install SL from the $30 disk on a blank drive that doesn't have 10.5 installed as far as I know - it's more of an honesty system...
 
I gave it a try...

I gave it a try...

I went ahead and put together a "hackintosh" machine and used the Rebel EFI to install Snow Leopard. I'm an editor and AE guy so I need the machine to be consistent and fast. So far, it's awesome. I'm going to build another one with the newer i7 chips after I spend some time making sure it is going to be a stable enough system.

It did take me about 5 hours to get it installed on my system though, it's not "easy" as Psystar makes it out to be. I'm a IT guy too, spend quite a bit of time in a command line, so I'm no dummy when it comes to this stuff. I have built a hackintosh before using the free alternatives, which work, but I wanted to give this a try as I have been following Psystar's systems for some time now.

If anyone has any specific questions, let me know! So far, the core 2 duo system I put together for about $550 is performing about the same as my quad core mac pro (v2).

Philip
 
Simon,
Most of the issues were related to my bios settings. There is no mention in the psystar directions concerning the sata settings in the bois, my bios was configured for windows and linux, and had to be changed in about 10 ways to make rebel efi work.

Also my first graphics card I tried didn't work, it just sat on the grey loading screen on the installer forever. I tried it a few times and finally swapped it out for an older matrox I had lying around. I'm going to try the other card now that I have the os installed as it almost the same card currently being used in the mac pros.

The other issue was the hard drive formatting, pystar says you can format the drive from OSX installer, I couldn't. I had to use my macbook to format it with the proper startup partition for OSX.

Lastly, the IDE DVD drive I had the install disk in isn't compatible with OSX installer, so it would fail every time it started. I used my SATA blue ray burner and it finally worked.

Those were the issues I had, nothing major, it just took lots of testing on each setting to finally get through it all.

I plan on doing some more formal benchmarks at some point and will post the results if anyone is interested. The computer really isn't all that fast, when you look at the specs. I mostly put this together to check stability and see if building my own i7 next month would be a good way to go.
 
There's a lot of misconceptions out there about Apple licensing. In fact, none of the OS packages that Apple sells grant the user license to use the software! The license to use the software is included with a system purchase. Everything else is an upgrade.

Yes, you can buy the $29 ($25 w/ free shipping from Amazon) copy of Snow Leopard and install it on any system, or as many systems as you want. It's an honor system, that's where Apple is running into problems.

EULA's are very difficult, if not impossible to enforce these days. Most consumers and even the courts simply shrug them off. Additionally, protecting a EULA is much like protecting trademarks and copyrights on other intellectual property. Once you let someone get away with infringement, it becomes increasingly more difficult to fight future infringements, or even impossible to do so.

I can think of a few potential ways that Apple could shut down Psystar's use of OSX. But I often wonder if they really want to? Apple doesn't want to be another Microsoft with an iron fist. And in the long run, I think companies such as Psystar may actually help OSX gain marketshare in a way. Not going to say what they're doing is right, but I think Apple feels more comfortable just watching Psystar and keeping a little pressure on them. Because what is the realistic alternative? They shut them down only to have another two or three companies just like them spring up from the ashes?
 
Apple's intention is to keep a good user experience and keep the reputation of making computers that "just work." I have both windows and osx and the user experience is not remotely comparable. People often try to paint the picture that Apple is trying to be exclusive rather than that they're trying to protect the user experience. I would hate to see OSX ever turn into a windows thing where it has to be bloated and always breaking with incompatibilities.
 
There is a big question if all that Apple is doing fall's in the antitrust rules...

There are markets like the milk related markets (Dairy products market) that have sub markets like the children yogurts... If a company has a market share in the sub market of milk products of children yogurts thats bigger than 30% then the antitrust rules are applying...

In the same analogy the computer systems market (in which Apple has a small share and feels protected) has a sub market which is the video editing market in which OSX has a bigger than 30% market share... the last measurement of market share was 50% for Apple in Video editing area...

This is a very simple argument that can force Apple either to abandon FCP or to open it up to all OS or open the OSX to other platforms...

I have asked the antitrust authority in European Commission and they find my approach quite interesting to investigate... :thumbsup:
 
laselvasurf said:
Simon,
Most of the issues were related to my bios settings. There is no mention in the psystar directions concerning the sata settings in the bois, my bios was configured for windows and linux, and had to be changed in about 10 ways to make rebel efi work.

Also my first graphics card I tried didn't work, it just sat on the grey loading screen on the installer forever. I tried it a few times and finally swapped it out for an older matrox I had lying around. I'm going to try the other card now that I have the os installed as it almost the same card currently being used in the mac pros.

The other issue was the hard drive formatting, pystar says you can format the drive from OSX installer, I couldn't. I had to use my macbook to format it with the proper startup partition for OSX.

Lastly, the IDE DVD drive I had the install disk in isn't compatible with OSX installer, so it would fail every time it started. I used my SATA blue ray burner and it finally worked.

Those were the issues I had, nothing major, it just took lots of testing on each setting to finally get through it all.

I plan on doing some more formal benchmarks at some point and will post the results if anyone is interested. The computer really isn't all that fast, when you look at the specs. I mostly put this together to check stability and see if building my own i7 next month would be a good way to go.
Click to expand...

I thought the installer checked all your gear before the install ? thats what the screengrabs on the sight lead you to believe!
 
Simon,
The installer does that after you install OSX. I had to do all that I mentioned just to install OSX. The Psystar program is basically the darwin bootloader for initial boot choice and then the program is a thing you run once you are up and running OSX. If you don't unlock it, you'll only have 2 hours of runtime. At that point, it will tell you what works and what doesn't, but you have to purchase it first.

Overall, it's probably not worth the $50... But I had to try it. Their support has been good though, you can place a support ticket from their program and request them to build custom files for your hardware... Pretty nifty!
 
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