Real Psystar Story: Mac Users Caught Looking ... or Apple != Hardware

Apple believes that they are a hardware company, even though their fabulous software and consistently broken, mediocre, (tech-and-policy-)crippled, and overpriced hardware make it clear that's not the case.

These folks have enablers, too: fans who think about the hardware like they think about tables at Design Within Reach ... who get a warm fuzzy knowing they have the authentic overpriced article. And other fans who don't think at all, but love a glowy apple logo because it makes them fit in with the crowd they want to imitate, er, um, that came out wrong, the crowd who all want to, uh, think different with. Identically. Or something.

Truth is, aside from the hardcore enablers, all the other Mac users don't give a damn about the hardware (until it breaks). They sit at the their glass desks from Ikea or Target (not DWR), they boot up their who-cares-I-just-like-Mac-OS machines, and they work.

The real Psystar story is not about a vaporware company, or unenforceable EULAs. It's a story about the story. The real Psystar story is this: it's a big deal because most Mac lovers don't love, worship, or want to pay for Apple's charade of being about hardware. So they would consider buying a Mac clone.

Think of it this way:

• PC users who don't want a Mac don't care about Psystar
• PC users who are technophiles and would like to play with Mac stuff without a real Mac don't care much, because they can build their own Hackintosh for very cheap
• Mac users who believe there is critical value in the Apple hardware don't care either, because they (and, they figure, those in the know) would not be interested in a Mac clone to save a couple hundred bucks.

Who's left? Why is everyone so spun up? (Google shows 220,000 results for Psystar right now, and only a few are psystar.com itself)

Because when the mere possibility of a Mac clone gets so many people feverishly looking, writing, and thinking, it puts the lie to the Apple-is-really-a-hardware-company positioning. And that realization ... if it were to take hold ... would have implications for Apple's strategy, product line, and stock price.

At some level, the Macosphere has always known, that the software was 98% of the experience. And a big part of them viscerally responded to the proposition that all they need is a software subscription to really nice OS.

A Workforce That's Never Seen Mac OS 9

I spent some time yesterday with a recent grad who is interviewing for a design position with IndustryNext. For some reason, I got the idea to ask him if he'd ever used a Mac before OS X. "Nope," he said, "I've been OS X all the way."

Damn, man. I'll resist the temptation to get melodramatic about feeling old or to reminisce about walking uphill both ways, hacking Think C and Think Pascal code for the old MacOS, with Inside Macintosh open on my lap 'cause there was no "line" for online docs to be "on."

Actually, the emergence into the workforce of a generation that knows only OS X means that Steve Jobs, for all his quirks, has pulled off something pretty amazing. Namely, making OS X successful enough for long enough that students are graduating who don't know anything about Apple's troubled bad ol' days.

I'm still ambivalent about Apple and Mac OS X, though. Great accomplishments include the design (both software and industrial), the first POSIX compatible BSD OS that your mom wants to use, and the first mass-market OS with a native OO API...

At the same time, Apple is still a high-maintenance partner with serious control issues.

Things have improved since the "authorized repair" racket in the 80s, where Apple required personnel to confiscate hardware if there were signs you had tried to install it yourself or put in something that hadn't been blessed by Cupertino (creating ethical dilemmas aplenty for the geeks with the case crackers and screwdrivers, at least where I lived). But vestiges of the program were still in force for factory repairs, at least up to the point just before OS X was released. And after that, there has been an unending series of minor scandals.

To be fair, selling high-end product in a Wal-Mart world is a tough gig. More power to 'em for trying. And nostalgia aside, if a new generation of designers doesn't know or care about the Mac legacy, good for them. Let's hope that their ignorance of the past opens their minds to new possibilities for the next generation of products.