John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Bag of Hurt Support Added to Psystar Hackintoshes

Blu-ray is a bag of hurt.”

Apple CEO Steve Jobs

Mac clone maker Psystar isn’t letting its uncertain future undermine its product road map. Though embroiled in a nasty legal spat with Apple (AAPL) over the legality of its use of Mac OS X in its Open Computer, Psystar this week defiantly announced plans for Mac notebook clone and began shipping Hackintoshes with both Blu-ray drives and GeForce 9800GT video cards, neither of which is available in official Macs.

In a press release announcing these new options, Psystar president Rudy Pedraza upbraided Apple for delaying support for Blu-ray, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently described as “a bag of hurt” for consumers. “Blu-ray has already won the format war,” Pedraza said. “Not only is there fully functional and mature support for Blu-ray in other operating systems, but you can now rent Blu-ray discs from almost any rental chain. Blu-ray has become pervasive technology that is being widely adopted by consumers everywhere.”

And that’s all well and good. But until Apple adds Blu-ray support to OS X, Psystar’s Mac clones can’t play back Blu-ray video. Which means they’re only good for reading and writing data. From the Psystar FAQ:

Is Blu-Ray supported in my OS?
Blu-Ray Read/Write capabilities are fully functional in all operating systems offered by Psystar. Blu-Ray video playback requires support from the media player software. There is no Blu-Ray software capable of playing back Blu-Ray video for Mac OS or Linux.

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Moore’s Law means that more and more things can be done practically for free, if only it weren’t for those people who want to be paid. People are the flies in Moore’s Law’s ointment. When machines get incredibly cheap to run, people seem correspondingly expensive.

— From Jaron Lanier’s new book, “Who Owns the Future?” excerpted on Wired.com