Psychstar.

It seems that the company behind the recently-reported OpenMac computer may be even shadier than originally suspected.

Several recent happenings have called into question the integrity (and even the existence) of PsyStar, the company behind the “Open Computer” paradigm. No, it doesn’t just stop at EULA violations for pre-installing OSX.

From dailytech.com:

The company website had an address changed in the middle of the day. Gizmodo reports that the first address listed on the company’s website was a single story residence that didn’t appear to be a business. The second address listed on the Psystar website turned out to be the location of a company called USA Koen Pack. According to Gizmodo the manager of USA Koen Pack says it has been at that address for two years.

Certainly, then, PsyStar in its entirety is beginning to sound like a full-fledged scam. But wait… there’s more:

Psystar allegedly didn’t get permission from developers working on the OSx86 project to use their work. The developer of the EFI emulator used by Psystar, Netkas, went so far as to call Psystar “liars,” and that its code is released specifically with the caveat that it can’t be used for commercial purposes.

It would seem that PsyStar not only violated the user-agreement on OSX, but also violated a similar agreement with Netkas. Interestingly enough:

Engadget [say] that [they] called Psystar and the company president, Rudy Pedraza, asked Engadget to have Netkas call him — he did not know their contact information. Pedraza later denied using the EFI emulator altogether.

No EFI emulation? Amazing, considering the fact that it may be essential to making the whole Hackintosh work.

After searching through the OpenMac online documentation, I found something that I found to be extremely puzzling, namely this little bit from the Open Computer FAQ, regarding system updates:

We do not support that feature of the operating system. Supported updates will be listed under support on the Psystar website. Future operating system updates may cause severe system problems. Only install updates that have been tested and posted to the Psystar support website.

So, we are to believe that the machine is fully-compatible, but only custom system updates can be used? This is most likely a technical issue concerning OSx86, but regardless, it further calls into question the company’s integrity when they claim to be “fully compatible.”