You might have read a report from us earlier about the mac clone maker Psystar and their new, very cheap $399 mac clone. Well, things are getting interesting now and the story is developing.Psystar says that Apple’s restrictive licensing terms violate US antitrust laws… and they want fight them by taking them to court. Shortly after they launched their $399 ‘OpenMac’ their site went down (as I suspected) due to heavy blogging reports and interest around the mac community. I know I certainly wanted to click in to check out what this fuss was all about.

Apple will hold Psystar in violation of their end-user license agreement, which strictly forbids any third-party installations of Leopard. On the other side of the coin a Psystar employee commented that they believe Apple’s terms violate U.S. monopoly laws.

“What if Microsoft said you could only install Windows on Dell computers?” the employee said.

Psystar is going to continue to sell the ‘OpenMac’ system for now. Lets see how long Apple’s lawyers let this drag on for. I would suspect not very long if they can help it.

For more info on Psystar and ‘OpenMac’, it looks like their website is back online. Check it out for yourself. Click here for the finer details and to order ‘OpenMac’.

[via MacNN]

written by Mr. Mayor \\ tags: $399 Mac, Apple Legal, OpenMac, Psystar