Psystar "Open Computer" Mac clone & protools?

[day_tripper]

I'm curious if Psystar's Mac clone would run as a protools system.

check this link and comment as I'm seriously considering this option!



Psystar OpenPro

[c-tone]

Serious questions have been raised as to the legitimacy of Pystar. see this article.

Even if it is a legit company, they might not withstand the legal onslaught that Apple will bring on them. Even, if they survive that, the company's hardware will likely not run like a genuine Mac, especially when updating software, either OS or otherwise.

Some more interesting discussion on these issues in the MacRumors forums.

[sunburst79]

Why wouldn't it run Pro Tools? Assuming it meets the hardware specs, slot spacing (good luck on that) etc.

Macs run Windows just fine via BootCamp. People have been running Mac OSX on PC's since the P4/Intel 915 Chipset days way back in 2006.

Just think, You could run MAC OSX on truly fast hardware for a change-FBDIMM is not very fast. Actually FB DIMM is very slow.

Pystar is going to be in a heap of dung unless they have found the some legal loop hole every body else missed. Future OSX updates will likely break or cripple the machine like the bricked iPhones.

It's a much better deal than a MAC Mini but the rest of Macs line is actually fairly competively priced. I have been saying since the Intel transition that there is a huge void in Macs desktop market between the all in one integrated iMacs and the full tower MacPros. If a non Mac Pro tower came out of this it would be a good thing.

As Apple updates OSX these guys would need a full time crew of UNIX programmers just to keep things updated/patched. Ain't gonna happen (but I would love to be proved wrong)

It will be fun to watch the drama.

[John_Toolbox]

While it looks like a good deal, the whole reason you pay more for an apple is that it is tested and proven - not to mention it has great support. What they are selling can already be done, hackers have been putting OSX on PC's since 2006. I'm pretty sure this company will disappear quickly, or they will have to stop selling them with OSX at a minimum. Once that happens, they're just another "I built this PC in my apartment out of a bunch of crap I bought on sale from micro center"

I will say that apple should look at this for ideas though, they really need a simple desktop system that is a little more expandable than the mac mini. Even if they made something like the G4 cube where you could upgrade the graphics card, that would be huge. All of the cheap macs(mini, the smaller imacs and the macbooks) have two huge weaknesses, the hard drive and the graphics card. There's a hack to use a full size HD with the mac mini that works pretty good, but there's nothing you can do about the crappy integrated 64MB graphics card. At least one PCI, PCIe, or PCI-x slot would be a nice touch too.

They really already have this developed, a stripped down Xserve for $1000 would be perfect. All they'd have to do is put it in a more consumer friendly case.

[PastaViking II]

...while we can all agree on the PT TDM forum that it would be nice to see a a mid-range desktop Mac, I seriously doubt that Apple and 99 % of it's customer base concurs with this. Try to float the idea over at the Mbox forum and I think you'll find that most people are perfectly happy with the current Mac offerings.

[sunburst79]

Something like a G4 Cube/Shuttle XPC formfacter would be a nice upgrade from the Mini. The iMacs lose their allure after you have hung a couple of external FW drives, a USB hub, maybe a extra optical drive, speakers etc. Suddenly that sleek sexy all in one formfacter is a surrounded by wires and devices. The Mini and the iMac have for all practical purposed no expansion possbilities but in the word of normal desktops they are sufficient and folks love them. I don't think that the Mpowered/LE side is by any means limited to iMacs and Minis. There are a lot of Mac Pros there.

TDM/HD and expandbility.... The standard ATX form facter has 7 expansion slots the Mac Pro has 4? 3? full length and one double wide slot for graphics? How would you like to run HD5 or HD6 without a expansion chassis? Music production is not about running a 120GB database either so we could probably leave the ECC memory behind as well. A desktop that used the ATX formfacter or something compatable would be nice. I'm not sure if it would have enough sales to offset any market share it would be stealing from the Mac Pro though.

A Mac is supposed to be about more than just hardware and Psystar is not going to be able to offer support like Apple.

Digi just aproved a PCIe Windows box for HD finally, I haven't done any research to see how many slots it has available for HD cards, If it had a couple more slots than a Mac Pro and Psystar was able to offer it cheaper than a Mac Pro I think people would find it attractive.

I haven't heard anybody pronounce it but assume Psystar rhymes with shyster?

[c-tone]

...while we can all agree on the PT TDM forum that it would be nice to see a a mid-range desktop Mac, I seriously doubt that Apple and 99 % of it's customer base concurs with this. Try to float the idea over at the Mbox forum and I think you'll find that most people are perfectly happy with the current Mac offerings.

Maybe not 99%, but you aren't going to get 99% of consumers to agree on anything related to this. Yes, possibly true about HD users, but users in general seem to care.

Again, over on the MacRumors.com forums, a lot of Mac aficionados (or snobs, depending on your view) seem to agree that they don't like the form factor of the iMac (since it is tied to its monitor, which a lot mentioned they don't like or want). Many many users would like something with the specs and upgradability of the iMac, without the monitor. Computers get outdated a lot faster than monitors, and it seems like a waste to have to buy a new monitor if you have one already.

When rumors surfaced of Apple possibly trying to make an even smaller Mini model, a vocal majority suggested that the small size of the Mini was a lot less important than having decent performance and getting good value for the money. Installing more expensive and less powerful laptop components into Minis just doesn't make sense for a lot of us, but there aren't really many other good options for someone looking for a decent but affordable Mac for a general home / office computer. I got an early Mini model, mostly because of the limited options, and now have to have two FireWire drives (one to boot from, one to back up to) and a USB hub (2 ports isn't enough), just to get par performance. I had to pry the dang thing open with a putty knife just to install a measly maximum of 1 GB RAM (only one slot too, so I had to waste the old chip), and from what I understand, the lowly graphics card cannot fully use all of Leopard's graphic improvements.

If I had a slightly more powerful and expandable option that wasn't tied to a monitor that I don't like or want, then I might go ahead and upgrade to it now, but it isn't there yet, and the Psystar isn't it either.

[John_Toolbox]

I think you're right, this isn't really any major milestone for Pro Tools users. If you can afford an HD system, you can afford a mac pro. If you're running LE, the PCI slots aren't important(unless you still have a digi 001, which I don't think will run on Leopard anyways).

Most of the audio software out there runs on both platforms anyways. The two exceptions I can think of are Logic(apple only) and Gigastudio(PC only). If someone is going to run these two apps together, they'll buy a PC to use as a sound module with Giga on it, and buy a mac to run logic as a sequencer.

[the dude]

This by far the most ridiculous post and only deserving of being posted on April 1
For $399 you get a kit that runs with a processor that has been considered obsoleted for almost a year,
NO firewire Ports ($50 extra)
NO Operating System Installed ( $155 extra because it requires a hack )
NO decent Video Cards
and will absolutely never be developed for any Digidesign Product
Will certainly be broken with the next OSX security, iTunes, Quicktime, Or OSX system updates, and will never reach the same category of the iPhone hacking community support. With only like 12 of them being sold before the plethora of litigious activity commences, ceasing the likelihood that you will ever see one anyways, just buy a mac mini or used mac pro because it is a way better deal

[day_tripper]

This by far the most ridiculous post and only deserving of being posted on April 1
For $399 you get a kit that runs with a processor that has been considered obsoleted for almost a year,
NO firewire Ports ($50 extra)
NO Operating System Installed ( $155 extra because it requires a hack )
NO decent Video Cards

I was referring to the Open Pro set up:

Memory: 8gig
Processor: core2quad 2.5ghz
Hard Drive: 1tb sata
Video Card: Geforce 8800gt 512ram
Operating System: OSX Leopard

=$1909

The equivalent New Mac tower (with 2.8 quad cpu) = $4349

But I agree that macs are better. I have an imac set up at home and a PC in the trash. But I like the power/price here and in the unlikely event that this machine survives I would have to at least consider it.

Or course, it would still tick me off to be back in a pc box