
I wrote earlier about Mac clones and where Apple may draw the line. A recent example I gave of the sheer bravado of the cloners was the story of EFI-X USA selling a dongle with PCs as pseudo-Mac clones. The company that supplies the dongle did not approve of this, and I mentioned in my article how EFI-X USA admitted as much.
Well, today comes a report that the company making the dongle (Arts Studios Entertainment Media) has officially severed ties with EFI-X USA as their North America distributor. According to the article:
The whole situation was triggered when EFI-X USA LLC (unrelated to ASEM as a company) started peddling generic PCs with pre-installed OS X and the EFI-X dongle. This upset ASEM which sought to block the American shop from selling machines. A falling out of sorts ensued and, as of the 12th of January, ASEM has come forward and denounced the EFIX USA business model as breaching its NDA and terms & conditions.
Good for them. As they had shown before, they see a difference between selling an item for a one-off Mac installation on PCs, and wholesale distribution of what are essentially Mac clones. As explained in my post, Apple has little history of going after one-off “Hackintoshes,” but are not likely to stand around while anything resembling a ready-made Mac is being sold to the public at large.
Keep in mind that the dongle in question is still available. ASEM has simply picked a more, shall we say, ethical, distributor:
ASEM has appointed a new EFI-X partner in the US. It’s named Express HD, a newly-founded hardware etailer that’ll take over selling ASEM’s EFI-X UEFI dongle.
Lest there be any doubt this was a case of ASEM knowing the difference between enabling a thing, and selling it ready-made as a “Mac,” comments from ASEM’s CEO should make it clear:
Not peddling hardware pre-installed with OS X and not pitching itself as a competitor to Apple is what sets the EFI-X apart from the likes of Psystar and other clone makers, says [ASEM CEO David] Rutigliano.
Exactly.
Obviously, I don’t know what Apple’s future intentions are regarding the practice of bypassing the Mac OS X EULA and installing it on non-Apple hardware. Maybe at some point they’ll decide ASEM’s dongle makes it a little too easy, and try to shut it down as well. But I tend to think they won’t, certainly not anytime soon, and will continue to focus their efforts on the Psystars of the world.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2009\/01\/20\/mac-clones-revisited-some-companies-know-the-difference\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_f50869d168b57d27a30e277dd969f626","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}