What are Mac clones?

the Gates. No, pretty good. Yeah, I've already extinguished. I could have said, uh, ish fistin is holds a bit, which is pretty much the only other German I know. Okay then, which unfortunately will just have people speak to me in German more. Yeah, yeah, you never want to do that, speaking of foreign languages and things that aren't what they seem. Yes, I think. Weren't we gonna talk about some cloons. We are going to talk about some clones, but we're not going to talk about cloning people or

anything like that. No, and nor are we going to talk about the Star Wars prequels. Please less said the better. No, No, we're talking about Macintosh clones. I'm sorry, I'm still stuck on the prequels. All right, do we need to give you a second? I'm good. All right, So we're gonna talk about Mac clones. And the reason why this is such a big deal in the first place is if you, if you're a PC user, you might be wondering, Okay, so what's the deal with the Mac? I mean, what

what's so important about it? What's so cool? Um? You know, because PCs they come in a variety of different flavors from a variety of different manufacturers. Right, yeah, I mean you could you could walk into your local uh gigantoid computer electronics stores, assuming that it's still in business, and pick from two dozen manufacturers Dell, Gateway. I mean, you've got all these different asir, You've got all these different

companies that make these different PCs. Um, they're all running you know of either usually either Windows or LINEX I mean mostly Windows. Uh so, but but they're coming from all these different manufacturers, and um, you know, an HP may be less powerful than Dell that's in the same

price range or whatever. Uh but when you when you're started looking around at Max, there's only one source for Max that's Apple sort of Yeah, but uh one official official Jobs would have it, Steve Jobs would have it where there's only one source for MAX, and that would be Apple. So you wouldn't find a Dell computer running the Mac operating system. No, well not today, not usually. Good Lord Pete. You know there is such a thing called a hack intosh. Yes, there is such a thing.

Isn't gonna this is off topic, but I'll just point out that, Um, for you, those of you who are less Mac interested, I won't say MAX SAVY, that's that's different. Um. If you're not really interested in the MAX and you're going, what are you what are you talking about? A Dell can run the macOS. It could theoretically, but you kind of have to take her with it a little bit

because now that MAX run on the Intel processor. If you have a Dell with an Intel process and you want to violate lots of warranties, and you could, Yeah, you could fiddle with it. And the thing is, the mac OS is generally designed to work with the parts that Apple puts in the maccatas. That's one with the reasons why it works so well. It's because it says, okay, well, you're looking for a or B it's like, oh, well

I found b Well, there you go. You don't have to worry about whether or not you have a video graphics card or an A T I or you know whomever else because you know, that's that's sort of what the Windows clones are all about. So in order to in order to run it on a PC, you have to create essentially what's called an emulator. Yeah, we've talked about emulators before when we were talking about multiple arcade

machine emulators. Um, So, an emulator is just really it's it's usually software, but it can be software and hardware working together that mimics the way another piece of hardware and or software works. Um, it's not a copy. It's just trying to copy what that other piece of equipment does.

And people who do this generally have a varying level of success with it, depending on the kind of hardware and the age of the hardware that they're familiar they are with it, right, So, um, you know that's that's different when we we're talking clones, and that would be like you go into the store and buy an HP right out of the box, it works with Windows, and it's going to work with Windows because that's you know, it's authorized. It's a clone of the IBM PC from

back in the day. So but mac clones, well that's a little different, you know, but it wasn't. Let's let's take a little walk down memory lane. Well all right, we both were going to do that at the same time. It's just pathetic that we both thought of that. So anyway, we're gonna go all the way back to the Apple two days. Yeah, that was when cloning was cool for Apple. They were happy with it. Yeah, well sometimes the laws

was not so happy when they weren't. There were official licensed cloner there were, there were, but but the very the first one I'm thinking of is the Franklin Ace. Did go back. Yeah, I'm talking about way back to the Apple too. Yeah. Well, you know when dinosaurs ruled the computer world. So Franklin Ace. The Franklin Ace was a computer that came out of the Franklin Computer Corporation. And uh that was a clone of the Apple too.

And um, it was not licensed. It was not It was not authorized in any way, shape or formed by Apple. And it actually became the the first success It became the the subject of the first successful attempt in a US court of law to prove that computer software could be protected by copyright. Thank you Joshua Coventry, who are

a great article about this. UM. But yeah, so so way back and this is back in Uh it was nineteen eighty three that um, that ruling came down where they said, okay, you know what an operating system can be under copyright, can be protected under copyright, which was a big, big deal. I mean, you know, it sounds you know, of course, it sounds like it's it's common sense now, but this was back in the very early days of personal computing. Yeah, they had to decide whether

it was basically an original work. And you know, because even recordings were not covered by copyright forever and ever. You know, once the recording industry came online, if you will. Uh, the courts had to wrestle with that and try to figure out how to incorporate copyright law in for music.

So every time there's some new technology like this, and you know, these authors are writing software, they're not writing a book, so they have to say, well, you know, does this protection extend And they ultimately decided it did. And uh so nineteen three, the the court makes the ruling and it's not until nine that Apple is able to uh to force Franklin to withdraw its clones from

the market. But yeah, that's the earliest UM example. But if you if you move forward a few years, you start to see licensed Apple software and ending up on non Apple computers. So you want to talk about this a little bit, Well, UM, I just know that when I was in junior high and high school, the Apple

two was the dominant computer and education. So when my friends had computers at home, they had one of two machines, UM, the Apple two, which was more popular and in educational circles, or the Commodore sixty four, which was more popular with I don't know people who write today's video games, because they were the kind of computers that people were writing programs for. And an Apple two was considered, at least by my friends, something of a word processing machine or

something that you played Oregon Trail on. UM. So you know, I first started seeing those machines back in the day, and I think the ones that I remember seeing we're very similar to the Apple to see UM, you know, and uh, I don't. I don't remember much about that time because I was just getting my first Commonore Amiga at that point, and you know, at that point, I'm kind of blown off the Apple. We can't go off of that. I'm not going off at the dangent. I'm

just saying, all right, so let's pull it back. Let's skip ahead a few years. We're gonna go all the way to the Mac years. Actually we don't have to go that far, to tell you the truth, because I remember the the the healcyon clone days of the nineties. But as I started doing research, I u site that I visit every so often called low End Mac dot com Um. They generally worked with older Macintosh computers, hence the low end name. You know, you're, oh, well, this

thing is five years old. What am I gonna do with it now? Well, they have a lot of options for that. And they also had a bit of a history of the Mac cloning world. And one of the this is a good segue from our previous topic, because one of the very first cloners was a Brazilian company called Unitron, and they were licensed to make Apple two clones in Brazil. That's because at the time Brazilian law didn't allow the importation of computers, so they wanted to

make maclanes. When the matt came on the market in four and around UM, they basically talked to Apple, found out that Apple was going to one stake in the operation. UM, and uh, basically Untron said yeah, I don't think so. So they essentially reverse engineered the thing hardware and software. UM. They got ten million dollar alone from the from the

Brazilian government and unfortunately applectt winded their scheme. They actually got hold of a prototype that had a mac rom in it rom chip in it and as soon as they did that, they were able to prove, look, these guys are hacking off our stuff. We've got to uh, we've got to stop this. This is our intellectual property. And basically A pressured the Brazilian government to make him stop.

You know, they already had a few hundred built. UM. So they essentially sold their steak, all their their plans to another company in Taiwan, backed out and there they still exist actually apparently today, but they're um, they're no longer in the Apple business by any means that so that was it really goes back that far. That's true. But if you if you think about it, jobs one of the things he was really famous for is that he wants. He wants lots of control. Oh yeah, he

demands the best possible product. Um. He also is famous for supposedly knowing what the consumer wants, even at the consumer doesn't know, and that he skates to where the puck is going to be right exactly, he he Whatever it is that he offers you is what you want, whether you know it or not. But Apple decided it didn't want jobs around, and new jobs was kind of pushed aside for a while, and eventually he left the

company to go found another company. We don't need to get into that because we did a whole podcast about Steve Jobs. But in the meantime, Apple that made a decision. First of all, they formed an alliance with IBM and Motorola. So then you've got Apple, IBM, and Motorola. They called the alliance aim A I M. Yeah, it's got a message on that and not wrong. That's all instant messenger. So anyway, they decided to create this new computing standard based on the power PC architecture. UM skip ahead a

few more years. Okay, so they're working on this. This thing doesn't really I mean, it doesn't take off the way they wanted to. In n the summer of that year, Apple starts to license the Mac operating system to other manufacturers, hardware manufacturers. Yes, and then um, things kind of fall

apart for Apple a little bit. Actually, it got it got a little crazy because when I started comparing timelines, not only were the author Ris Matt Clooners at work, other people were taking apart Apple machines and building new max like the Mick Mobile, which was a plexiglass portable Mac and UH an outbound laptop Bound was named the company. And these were all you know in the early two mid eighties, but they started to overlap into the late eighties.

And that's right about the time that had started getting crunch time for Apple because they were starting to lose some money. Yeah, the Apple was really in bad shape. And they ended up purchasing the company that Jobs had founded. That and we should go ahead and say that that company, the next computing company that just that was that was not doing so well either. But they bought the company.

Jobs was brought on sort of as a consultant. He ended up essentially taking taking over again, becoming the interim CEO and eventually the CEO of Apple and UH and so in September. Um they you know, the power PC processors process us, I get CENTRADID by Motorola and then Apple says, you know what, we're done with this licensing thing, and they buy back the licenses. Yeah. See there they were a handful of very popular clones, uh with from

names like day Star. Motorola had the Star Max. Of course they were making the power PC chips, so it was certainly easy for them to get ahold of them. Power Computing which had a very seriou very favorable opinion because they had all these you know, fight back ads that were just very popular in the at the time, and U Max who made the super Mac and the EU Max and and power Computing were sort of the

last hold overs. They really pushed back against Apple saying you know, hey, look we're building a business here, We're adding to your market here. What are you crazy? But Jobs was saying, you know what, this is not the way I envisioned computing, um and I if I can't do it my way, it's not gonna get done at all. And so he was very much adamant on getting back all those licenses and and really dictating why it means to you know what a Mac product really means in

the marketplace. He he wanted to make sure that that was his vision and not someone else's. And by his vision, we should go ahead and say, of course that he's not necessarily the one who designed all the really pretty Mac features, but he certainly um is the one who

champions them well, and and he is um. He is the was the founder of next and next step was the operating system ran on those boxes, and that basically provides the underpinnings, or at least it did when he first came out with OS ten or OS X as it appears on boxes UM or all sex as I call it, right, UM, So you know it's it's not like they they had him come back just so they

could have him back. I mean, they actually got some very valuable technology out of it and essentially changed the way McIntosh computers operate completely, you know, once they incorporated those changes. So let's skip ahead now pretty much to present day, really to last year, UM, and they're gaining market share back and they have beautiful products that people like to spend money for. Yeah, so now you get to a point where Jobs has has pretty much proven

his worth to the company once again. I mean, he brought it from the brink of bankruptcy back to I guess it's most profitable ever really, UM and people are more people were buying MAX. I think at one point it reached it about a ten percent share in the market, which is pretty phenomenal really when you consider they were down below five at the time at the low point. So that's that's a lot of computers. That's millions and

millions of computers. So now we're at a point where all the max are again coming only from Apple, all the authorized max are coming only from Apple. And now we have this other company that popped out of seemingly nowhere called side Star p s y s T A r UM. This is a Florida based company that claimed that what they were going to do was sell a low end, a low price computer UM that is going

to run the Mac OS ten operating system. It was not going to be a Mac You were not going to buy a Mac computer that was just marked down. It was going to be made out of off the

shelf computer parts but running the Mac OS and UM. Again, this is one of those things where you have to make sure that your equipment is going to run this OS properly because it's designed for a very specific hardware set up, and um, you know, without the Apple ROMs, you're gonna have sort of a limited experience where you're definitely gonna you're definitely gonna have to do some workarounds to to be able to get the operating system to

to perform correctly. Um. And one of the big drawbacks to the side Star approach is that they have said that they are not able to guarantee products support that everything's gonna work exactly the way it's supposed to. What they're guaranteeing is that you can buy a much cheaper computer running the Mac operating system then you would if you were to go to Apple directly. And I mean that might be true. And for for a while people were wondering if this was even a real company at all.

Um I read, uh, I read a report from Charles Arthur from The Guardian, and he did some investigative reporting and it was it was very uh interesting. He first was looking to see where this company was located and discovered that the address had changed while he was looking for it. The original address was apparently in the middle of this suburban area in Florida, and the second address

was in a more industrial area. So there's that question. Um, there's a question of are there other entities behind size Star that are really interested in just taking Apple down, taking the whole Mac computer down a few notches, um, and opening it up to make it to make it a more open environment, because as Mac Apple is very

famous for being a very closed environment. Um, it's part of what makes them Apple side Star argues that Apple has created a monopoly because it's the only you know, they're the only ones who offer any equipment that can run the Mac os, and therefore it's, uh, it's you know,

a monopoly on that operating system. UM. Apple for its part, argues that it holds the copyright and therefore anyone trying to to put this software on an unauthorized computer is violating their copyright as well as their end user license agreement. But here's the thing. End user license agreements aren't law. Well, it depends on whom you ask. Well, I guess we're

gonna find out because they're not law. Right now. It's funny because when I made that point about copyright earlier and how they have to make these decisions based on emerging material like this, This really is going to force the hand of judges. And I'm suing plural because it's going to keep going. You know, as soon as one side loses, they're gonna appeal. So this probably is going to go high up in the courts, and it's not a schedule to go to court until November two thousand nine.

For their part, I I know that size Star claims, hey, we bought the OS off the shelf, therefore we are allowed to use it. Apple doesn't seem to find that hold much water. No, there end user license agreement specifically states that you can only use the Mac operating system on and on Apple hardware. Well, there you go. So, but the question is does is the end user license agreement?

Is that actually binding? UM? I thought it would be interesting to kind of run down a comparison of the the product that size Star offers versus a basic iMac oh by all means, So here we go. For five and ninety nine and nine cents you can buy from side Star. The Open three, which runs the Mac OS ten Leopard version ten point five, has a two point eight giga hurts do duo or dual core processor. Um it's got two gigabytes of d d R to eight

hundred memory. It's got a five hundred gigabyte hard drive. UM, it's got a DVD burner, it's got the g E Force eight four hundred graphics card. But you don't get a keyboard, you don't get a mouse, you don't get a monitor. There's no Bluetooth support, there's no FireWire support, and there's no wireless support. So those are things you do not get with that. Now with an iMac. The iMac comes with a two point six six giga Hurts processor.

It's not as powerful. It comes with two gigabytes of d d R three rams, so pretty pretty comparable to the Open three three gigabyte hard drives and not as much space. UM it's got a DVD burner, but it's not as fast as the other DVD burner, the one in the Open three. UM, it's gonna it's gonna the video g E Force graphics processor, which technically is better than the other one. But it also comes with a mouse, keyboard, It has the twenty monitor because that's built into the

I mean, that's the iMac UM. And it has wireless and a webcam and come with some software and right. That one costs twelve hundred dollars, so it's twice as much. So the question is if you throw in the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse, a webcam, a wireless uh you know card, things like that, how much more would the Open three be. It'd be a little bit more, and it still wouldn't be as expensive as the as the

the iMac. My question is is it worth trying to save a couple hundred bucks when you know you're not going to have the support that you would get from Apple. There's no guarantee that you will be able to keep that machine because there may be a recall in the future. I mean, does it make sense to buy one? In my opinion, the answer to that is no, thank you

for listening. No, No, I totally agree with you because, I mean, okay, so you don't want to spend an iMac, but you do want an excellent, you know machine that's going to be reliable. Well, then by a PC clone that comes from a reliable source as an authorized copy of Windows on there. That way you can be assured that you're going to be okay. I mean, people who switched to lennox Um there's some support, but it's not

you're not paying for support. Um, of course there's a very robust community that helps out with that sort of thing. But I mean, if that, you know, makes you a little squeamish, then you know you're probably going to opt for in general on Windows or a Mac computer. And you know, then the the options sort of drop away because you start going, well, you know, I just don't trust these guys. I don't really know much about them.

And if Apple doesn't like them, if they're not authorized and they release an update that bricks my computer, that's not good. And I think also that a great deal of the appeal of Mac comes in the form factor. I mean, Max are gorgeous machines. There's no getting around it. They are beautifully designed. And uh, I'm not so sure that that many people would be like, you know, I just want that operating system. I don't care if it looks boxy, you know. I mean, it's it's a style

an esthetic question, not just a you know, performance question. Well, otherwise Vista and Windows seven wouldn't look like they do, and uh, the Ubuntu community wouldn't be working so hard on trying to improve the look and feel of its interface. Well, it's obviously he's serious. It's not just the interface I'm talking about. I'm talking about the actually hardware. I mean, you know, you look at an iMac. It's a beautiful machine, you know. I mean it's just and the power box,

everything that. All of those look very nice, so um what they can charge extra for them? I'm thinking that size Star may very well be an effort to bring down Mac and and less of a viable business model. Right, so you're going to conspiracy theory route. I'm not going to call it conspiracy, not calling it a conspiracy, but but I would not be surprised to learn that the ultimate goal of size Star is not to try and sell these computers, but rather to try and take down

Apple's stance of keeping a closed system. Sort of like the politicians who have no chance of hades of getting elected, but they bring up considerably different issues just to get them out there. At least they say similar to that. So basically they're not really there to make a buck, They're there to raise these issues and get these barriers broken down. I would I would not be surprised to learn that. I know, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but

I would not be surprised to learn that. I'm a fan more of the os anyway, So it would be nice if it's spread to more people, unless, of course, that means that more people right viruses for it, in which case never mind. But um, you know, so not exactly anti size Star necessarily. I would like to see that they, you know, can work things out and maybe have some license clones. Again, I don't know that it would necessarily be a problem for Apples, which Steve says,

I don't know. Well, it depends if jobs is still there. I don't see it happening. Well, I just don't think of that. I don't think it will happen. But I think that's a good discussion on Mac clones, which of course rings us around too. Oh listener mail. This listen mail comes from Kimberly, who also made a request for an episode topic. But we're playing on tackling that in the future, so I'm just gonna take the last little

bit of her email. I really enjoyed the April Fools podcast, especially when you mentioned thinking the whole time you were talking about their many product gags, I was wondering when you'd get to the soundtrack T shirt True to form. You guys did mention it. I've had my eye on that thing for a while, but being a poor college student, it's kind of on the back burner. Thank you again for all the informative podcasts, and I hope there will

be many more in the future. Kimberly, Well, thanks Kimberly. Um, there definitely will being many more in the future. There's no way of gainner around that. Uh, And I too want to think geek shirt. I asked for it for I had that on my Christmas wish list if you remember way back when that was on my stocking stuffers. Many podcasts Ago, any many podcasts AGO. I have yet to receive that, probably because my wife has threatened everyone we know with bodily harm should I receive such a gift. Um,

there's no way. I would not be able to enter a room without playing the music from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It's just that's the way it is. And I'm talking everywhere. I'm talking work too, so I would not be popular here either. I would definitely need a laugh track, right yeah, yeah, I mean that would at least get some last for your jokes. Zing Instant

rim Shot said trombone. Thank you very much, Kimberly. If any of you would like to write us, you can do so at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. And remember, you can go to our website read all up about different technical issues and interesting articles. That's at

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