EFiX Not Making Mac Clones
Several reports emerged this morning indicating that the company behind the EFiX USB module had jumped into the Mac clones business. According to EFiX creators, this was launched by an affiliate without authorization of Art Studios Entertainment.
We spoke directly with Davide Rutigliano, CEO of Art Studios Entertainment, and he confirmed to us that it is untrue. Whatever EFiX-USA announced, had no affiliation with Art Studios Entertainment—the actual company designing and engineering the EFiX modules.
According to Rutigliano, Art Studios Entertainment is entirely against companies that produce Mac clones. His reasoning is as follows, verbatim:
As you know, EFI-X uses a list of compatible to EFI and UEFI hardware. As strange as it seems, people have found difficulties to put together machines compliant with our standards, and we decided to create a Certification Program. This way not only we can make sure that people get the right hardware, (as non compatible hardware will even void their EFI-X warranty) but this opens the way to a much broader support, to new and exciting hardware, based on the user’s requests.
This, today, created a monstrous misunderstanding. Our USA distributor, following (I have to say erroneously) the certification program built up a quite nice PC, but it was presented to the press in a totally erroneous way to which we at Art Studios Entertainment Media are absolutely unrelated to!
To be honest it wasn’t intentional of them, but of course when I said that we at ASEM do not condone the merchandising of clones, I meant it. The press saw the "Millennium" project as a clone project, and I immediately ordered it to be scraped and abandoned. Because we at ASEM do not sell or condone the sale of clones that compete with ANY brand. We have our own clientele and our own small and nice market share, and we are really happy that way.
Therefore if there is any brand that would like to have their hardware certified and decides to market it the proper way, we at Art Studios are extremely happy to evaluate their proposal. But we will NEVER sell machines or condone the sale of machines that compete with any brand.
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The main point of EFI-X was innovation and integration, we are very proud of it and we like to keep it that way. We are the only one on the planet to offer such a device with such technology, and we are happy about it and very happy about our heterogeneous fans coming from all possible IT worlds, that understood and appreciated us and our unique philosophy.
And I can also proudly say that part of this philosophy was to respect all the brands that we admire, and follow their example to change the IT world into something better and friendlier for all of us.
Therefore, even though we are absolutely unrelated with last night’s "stunt", I do reaffirm ASEM’s spirit and philosophy of total respect and gratitude towards our existing affectionate customers. We may eventually in the future enforce our Certification Program, to deliver a more complete and better thought-after product to our clientele, but that will be made in total respect and fairness.
- Davide Rutigliano
Rutigliano and the rest of the Art Studios team say that the "Millennium" project has been immediately scrapped. Alas, checking the EFiX-USA website indicated that this is true.
The EFiX is a small USB module that allows a stock PC to run EFI-based operating systems. In this case, one of the major bonuses to this scheme is that Apple’s OS X Leopard can run fully functional on stock PC hardware. This means you’re able to perform normal system updates just like you would on a real Apple Mac.
Rutigliano indicated to us that the EFiX module is not an OS X "enabler" but rather a device that allows users to choose between BIOS-based and EFI-based operating system at will. We’ve tested the the module ourselves using the latest firmware release and can confirm Leopard does run like it should. Our review is coming shortly.
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chaohsiangchen I expect the new Snow Leopard will close this firmware loophole very soon. The new firmware upgrade is probably a step which Apple Inc prepares for elimination of none-proprietary hardware running MaxOS. Some of my friends refuse to run 10.5, and they stay with older 10.4 because they either can't crack it,or their old macs (like pre-Intel old) can't handle 10.5. Talking about people refusing upgrade to Vista.Reply -
Blessedman Steve Jobs is only looking at the little picture. That is what has always separated Him from Bill Gates. Numbers don't lie. IMO he is a moron for not actively seeking to get nvidia on board to release an open OS...Reply -
Tekkamanraiden Well if Apple would create a headless iMac with better upgradability I'm sure products like this one wouldn't need to exist. Personally I own one of these devices and its great. I was able to build my wife a $1500 system that performs better than either a iMac or a decent G5 (which are still quite expensive despite being over 3 years old).Reply -
jaragon13 BlessedmanSteve Jobs is only looking at the little picture. That is what has always separated Him from Bill Gates. Numbers don't lie. IMO he is a moron for not actively seeking to get nvidia on board to release an open OS...Reply -
philosofool ChaohsiangchenI expect the new Snow Leopard will close this firmware loophole very soon. The new firmware upgrade is probably a step which Apple Inc prepares for elimination of none-proprietary hardware running MaxOS. Some of my friends refuse to run 10.5, and they stay with older 10.4 because they either can't crack it,or their old macs (like pre-Intel old) can't handle 10.5. Talking about people refusing upgrade to Vista.Reply
People with antique computers should be asking for modern operating systems.
EFi-X has been available for months and Apple has not shut it down. I'm not sure why. Perhaps Apple doesn't care about Hackintoshes? It's not like DIY computer geeks make up more than about 0.3% of the market for computers. -
neiroatopelcc Hatecrime69So, if they are against using osx on it, what the heck is the point of it?Reply
They aren't saying that. They're saying that they do not support selling mac clones. Their module is intended to enable any efi or 'normal' os to run on a reasonably normal computer. It's not only meant for osx although that is what most might be buying it for. And from a legal aspect I suppose they have no choice but to have that opinion. If they officially support mac clones they could be accused of intentionally telling users to break their license agreements. They don't however, and it's the user that now breaks the agreement, not the device vendor. It's a bit like a dc hub really - the hub owners don't ask people using it to download illigal software, but they still can. So a hub itself isn't illigal, the actions taken by the users just could be.