RSOL: DIY Mac clone

RSOL says its new Jive Series Desktops will run Mac OS X, although the company is not offering any official support for the OS. RSOL joins Open Tech and Psystar in the Mac clone market, with the latter now facing a lawsuit from Apple. RSOL says the Jive desktop will run "just about any operating system" including Fedora and Ubuntu and, of course, Windows.

Although the company says the Jive desktop runs Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a warning on the RSOL web site says the machine is "considered to be a non-Apple labeled computer because it is not manufactured by Apple, Inc. Therefore you will be in violation of Apple's OS X 10.5 Leopard Software Agreement." That means no support from Apple, and no official software support from RSOL for those who choose to install Leopard. The company says such an installation should only be performed by "users who have a thorough understanding of the Open Source technology necessary" to allow a modified version of Mac OS X to run on a Jive PC.



The Jive comes with an 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2G of PC 5300 RAM, a 500GB hard drive, nVidia 7300GS graphics and a 20x DVDRW optical drive with Lightscribe. The machine has 8 channels of digital audio, two FireWire and six USB ports and a 500 watt power supply, but does not ship with a monitor. The Jive PC is available online without an operating system for $630. Other versions with pre-installed operating systems are available.

by MacNN Staff