Psystar To Sell Its Mac OS X Enabling Software

Psystar, obviously not satisfied with the hot water is already in with Apple, has announced it will begin selling the software it itself uses to install the Mac OS X operating system on generic Intel hardware. According to company, the software, called the "Rebel EFI suite," allows users to easily install any OS on a computer.

Psystar has already been sued by Apple over selling Mac clones, with Mac OS X pre-installed on the computers. Apple says that doing so violates the EULA for Mac OS X, which says:

"You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."

which is a pretty straight-forward and simple statement. Still, to this point, Psystar has remained defiant. A trial date has been set for January 11, 2010.

According to the company, the software is compatible with the following CPUs: Intel Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem. Sorry, AMD.

Psystar has a demo version of the software available for download. Users can install Mac OS X, but with "limited hardware functionality as compared with the full version." The full version of the Rebel EFI suite, removing any hardware limitations, costs $49.99, which would be pretty reasonable, if it works.

Psystar says that its software, through the use of the Darwin Universal Boot Loader, which available in the full version of the Rebel EFI Suite, will allow installing and running multiple operating systems, including Windows 7 as well as XP, Vista, various Linux flavors and OS X Snow Leopard.

There's reason to assume that it does work, considering that Psystar says this is the very software it uses itself to install Mac OS X on its Intel-based hardware. Of course, one difference between Macs and PCs is the wide variety of hardware available on PCs. That's what makes Windows impressive, despite its criticisms; while Mac OS X is great, it only has to support a limited amout of hardware, and that's far easier than what Microsoft has to do.

Given that, Psystar also announced the Psystar Labs approval program.

Users who are having difficulties getting a specific device to work correctly on their machines would send in their component to have it certified. The most common hardware set-ups are compatible, and through PsyLabs we will continue to work toward the Rebel EFI supporting an ever-broader range of hardware profiles.

One has to wonder how long past January 2010, given the trial date, these Labs will be running.