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Another boring desktop for sale on eBay, except that this one runs Apple's Mac OS X Leopard.

(Credit: Chris555 (via eBay))

Another entrepreneur is trying their hand at selling unsanctioned Mac OS X desktops.

AppleInsider spotted an eBay listing on Tuesday for a generic desktop tower running Mac OS X Leopard, weeks after Psystar made a very public show of defying Apple's licensing agreement for Leopard with its Open Computer. "Chris555" is selling the unbranded desktop for a fixed price of $549.99, plus $50 shipping and handling.

Is this the latest in a wave of Mac clone makers emboldened by Psystar? Apple has remained silent on the issue to this point, but lawyers think the company would have a good chance of enforcing its end-user licensing agreement against companies trying to make a profit on Mac OS X computers. The agreement says the operating system can only be installed on a single Apple-labeled computer.

Apple has left the OS X hacking community pretty much undisturbed, but it will be interesting to see how long it waits before taking action against commercial providers of its operating system.

At least one Psystar customer has received their Open Computer, as I continue to await mine.

(Credit: Psystar)

Mac clones large and small are popping up all over the place these days.

Psystar has managed to get past a tumultuous week earlier this month to get Open Computers into the hands of its customers. The Open Computer is being sold with Mac OS X Leopard as a preinstalled option for Psystar's customers, in what is expected to at some point draw some legal attention from Apple.

Check out this video on Gizmodo of the Open Computer, which sounds like an airplane taking off, in all its glory. I ordered a unit two weeks ago that was supposed to ship on Monday, but I haven't received an updated notice that it has left the factory. My colleague Rich Brown in CNET Reviews is also expecting a review unit for a formal review of the product, so watch for that in the coming days.

Engadget also found video of the Oqo handheld computer running Mac OS X Leopard, the result of a project undertaken by a forum member at Oqo Talk. I wouldn't call the Oqo Leopard model ideal, as it takes a full 2 minutes and 30 seconds for the system to boot. But if you wanted a preview of a future Mac mobile Internet device, this might be it.

Psystar is back online selling "white box" Macs with a few subtle changes, and one employee has already played the monopoly card.

As you might recall, Psystar's Web site was overwhelmed Monday after it was found to be selling cheap computers with Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled. This caused quite the commotion, as Apple does not license its operating system to other hardware makers, and specifically prohibits (PDF) end users from installing Mac OS X on anything other than an "Apple labeled" computer.

Psystar's OpenPro Computer, which is available with Mac OS X Leopard preinstalled.

(Credit: Psystar)

Ars Technica noted that Psystar made several changes to its Web site while it was down Monday. First of all, the product is no longer the OpenMac, it's the Open Computer. Psystar's owner, Rudy Pedraza, told Ars that Psystar did that on their own to "avoid any issues." Wonder what those might be.

The company is also now offering the "OpenPro Computer" in addition to the Open Computer, which might remind you of a certain desktop computer sold by a certain California company that uses a piece of fruit as a logo. That machine costs $999, can be upgraded to quad-core processors, and is available with Leopard preinstalled.

And, in perhaps the most necessary change, they changed the nails-on-a-chalkboard "not non-safe" phrase attached to the description of whether or not you should install Mac OS X updates to your Open Computer. Grammarians, rejoice.

None of those changes will allow Psystar to escape the basic question about its business model: Apple doesn't permit the installation of its operating system on anything but its hardware. One Psystar employee told Information Week that this requirement means Apple is behaving like a monopoly. "What if Microsoft said you could only install Windows on Dell computers?" the employee told IW.

Psystar is positioning itself as the "open" computer company. The Open Computer uses techniques--hacks, really--developed by the OSx86 project to free Leopard from the confines placed on it by Apple.

"Psystar has assembled a system that is completely operational with Leopard called the Open Computer. We call it the Open Computer to reflect the opening of what has previously been a hardware monopoly," the company wrote on a Web page describing the Open Computer.

Since they brought it up, let's review the basic definition of a monopoly, shall we? And remember, there's nothing illegal about having a monopoly, it's only when you use that monopoly for nefarious purposes that you get pinched.

The business section of Answers.com says, "A monopoly is a market condition in which a single seller controls the entire output of a particular good or service. A firm is a monopoly if it is the sole seller of its product and if its product has no close substitutes. Close substitutes are those goods that could closely take the place of a particular good; for example, a Pepsi soft drink would be a close substitute for a Coke drink, but a juice drink would not."

Debate the aesthetics all you want, but I'd argue that Windows and Linux are, for the purposes of personal computing, close substitutes to Mac OS X. They can run a personal computer. They can connect you to the Internet. They can run a basic suite of productivity applications.

You may prefer Mac OS X for a variety of reasons, but Apple's requirement that you can only run Mac OS X on Apple hardware doesn't prevent you from using a personal computer. If the only other substitutes were Palm OS phones or AIX servers, maybe you would have a beef.

Answers.com goes further to say: "The fundamental cause of monopoly is barriers to entry; these are technological or economic conditions of a market that raise the cost for firms wanting to enter the market above the cost for firms already in the market or otherwise make new entry difficult."

This is not the only computer in the universe.

(Credit: Apple)

If Mac OS X was the only operating system in the entire universe, and Apple required you to use its hardware, lawyers would have a field day. That's because the barriers to entry into the personal computing business would be impossible to overcome, since a license for Mac OS X is not for sale.

The meat of Psystar's sales pitch is that they can sell you a Mac for cheaper than Apple. So let's consider the third element of a monopoly: the ability to set prices.

Again from Answers.com: "The major difference between a monopoly and a competitive firm is the monopoly's ability to influence the price of its output. Because a competitive firm is small relative to the market, the price of its product is determined by market conditions.

There's a long-standing argument about whether or not Macs are more expensive pound-for-pound with Windows PCs. But however you slice it, Apple doesn't have the ability to force people to pay astronomical prices for the Mac; if Macs cost four times as much as similarly configured Windows PCs, no one would buy them.

Companies are free to charge somewhat more for a similar product if they can prove to people that there is a value attached to that price. If they can't demonstrate that value, people won't buy the product. No one cares that Porsche charges more for the Cayenne than Volkswagen does for the Touareg, and those are practically the same car. That's because Porsche demonstrates more value with a better interior, cushier options, and the cachet associated with driving a Porsche.

The Psystar employee, identified only as "Robert," said the company had no plans to stop selling Open Computers with Leopard preinstalled, and hinted Psystar would be willing to fight Apple. However, Pedraza, who is likely in more of a position to decide those things than Robert, declined to comment to Ars on Psystar's next steps. Apple likewise declined to comment on Psystar or any possible action it might be considering.

I think they're tilting at windmills, but I'd be very interested to see if Psystar has the wherewithal (and the cash) needed to finance a legal test of Apple's end-user license agreement for Leopard. Courts have ruled on specific provisions within EULAs, but it doesn't appear that the general concept has really been tested under U.S. law. Maybe it's time.

But until that day, companies are not required to sell products simply because somebody wants that product.

The wireless backup feature that disappeared from Apple's promotional copy for its Leopard operating system has snuck in through the back door.

Macworld did a little poking around with the recently released Mac OS X software update for "Time Machine and Airport" and realized that Time Machine now recognizes a generic USB hard drive plugged into an Airport Extreme base station, allowing Airport Extreme users to wirelessly back up their notebooks with Leopard's Time Machine. You need to mount the external hard drive using Finder to make sure Time Machine can see it, according to Macworld.

Time Machine will now work wirelessly with MacBooks after a software update.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple had promoted this aspect of Time Machine--wireless backups via Airport Extreme and a USB hard drive--in its advertising for Leopard, the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X released in October. But at the last minute, that capability was pulled from Apple's ads, and Leopard early adopters found they were unable to use Time Machine with a notebook unless they plugged a USB hard drive directly into the notebook, or if they set up a complicated storage-area network. It was never clear what led to the disappearance of that feature, but perhaps the code just simply wasn't ready for prime time.

In January, Apple announced Time Capsule, a combination USB hard drive/wireless base station that allowed for wireless backups. But at $299 or $499, depending on the storage capacity, it's a pricey option for people who already own Airport Extreme and USB hard drives.

Time Capsule is a pretty easy way of getting the wireless backups up and running if you don't already have a wireless access point or USB hard drive. But if you bought Time Capsule to replace your Airport Extreme access points and USB hard drives, well, um, turns out you didn't need to do that.

Updated throughout at 12:33 p.m. with additional details and analysis.

The first update to Mac OS X Leopard has arrived, with fixes for bugs in Time Machine and Finder, among other things.

Version 10.5.1 is now available through Software Update or on Apple's Web site. It's a 110MB update that smooths out some of the more notable bugs reported in the first three weeks of Leopard's life on the planet, and it arrives just one day after Apple shipped what will probably be the last update for Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4.11.

The first update to Leopard is out, with fixes to Time Machine and Finder.

(Credit: Apple)

This is a little faster than Apple moved ahead with the first update for Tiger, which launched in April 2005. The Leopard launch went smoothly for most of the 2 million Mac OS X users that upgraded over the first weekend, but the first release of any operating system is usually problematic for some. And Apple was under the gun to deliver Leopard in October, after missing its first deadline in order to make sure that the iPhone shipped on time.

Time Machine was probably the most hyped feature of Leopard prior to its release, but a number of problems cropped up with formatting and restoring files. Those are now a thing of the past, according to Apple, as the new software fixes issues related to backing up on MBR (master boot record) hard drives greater than 512GBs and drives that use the NTFS file system. The update also fixes a problem where some files that have been restored did not appear in their designated folders.

The well-publicized Finder flaw, where data could be erased from a system if the connection was interrupted following a "move" command, is also addressed in the update. And changes were made to Leopard's firewall; Apple tweaked the wording on one of the firewall selection tabs to make it more clear, according to a support document released along with the updates. The default setting for Leopard's application firewall is still, "Allow all incoming connections," but you can now set the firewall to "Allow only essential services" instead of "Block All."

Leopard comes with an application firewall that can be set to allow anything to access your Mac, allow nothing across the wire except for essential networking communications, or allow access on a case-by-case basis, as determined by the user. If you chose that third option for the firewall settings in Leopard, it was still possible for the executables attached to some background processes that run as "root" to gain access to the system, even if you had identified those executables as things you wanted to block. That's not good.

The update corrects that issue so that any executable file marked as "block incoming connections" is blocked, even if its process mate is running as "root," meaning that it has full access to your system. And now when you make changes to the firewall settings, they are enabled automatically so you don't have to restart for the changes to take effect.

There are also fixes for issues with Back to My Mac, Airport wireless networking, and several features. Here is the complete list.

Apple developers are currently testing what will become the first update to Mac OS X Leopard, according to a report.

The first set of bug fixes for Leopard is on the way.

(Credit: Apple)

AppleInsider says the 10.5.1 release will correct several bugs that were reported in the early days of Leopard's life on the planet, including problems with Leopard's firewall, Time Machine, and the Finder flaw related to moving files between different volumes. It's expected in a couple of weeks, which would be roughly the same amount of time that elapsed between the initial launch of Tiger and the first update released for that operating system.

If you were one of the Leopard early adopters, you'll be able to download the update when it arrives. We'll let you know when it's ready.

Update 10:50 a.m.: Apple confirmed that the iMac patch corrects the freezing issue reported by some users, and it's encouraging people to download that patch as soon as they get a chance. Also, the Macbook Pro patch is just for Tiger users; the graphics stability issues fixed by the patch were corrected in Leopard.

If you haven't been prompted already, iMac and Macbook Pro owners should wander over to Apple's downloads page and install new patches released Friday.

Apple didn't provide any details on what the patches correct, but it calls them "important bug fixes," so they're probably important. MacFixIt and AppleInsider said the update fixes the graphics problems that caused iMacs to freeze. The patches are for the latest iMacs introduced in August, and there are separate versions for those running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) and Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5).

There's also a Macbook Pro update that is said to improve "graphics stability" for owners that are using the 2.2GHz or 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo chips. There's only one patch, and it's not clear whether that applies to Tiger or Leopard users. I'd assume it applies to everyone, but I e-mailed Apple for clarification just in case.

The patches are available here on Apple's support site, but you can also find them by clicking the "Software Update" menu choice under the Apple menu. They might also be waiting for you the next time you boot.

As Yogi might say, it was deja vu all over again on Stockton Street as Apple released Mac OS X Leopard to the general public.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET Networks)

It wasn't exactly iPhone Day, but hundreds of people lined up on Stockton Street on Friday outside the San Francisco Apple store to get their hands on Mac OS X Leopard, the newest version of Apple's operating system.

Tyler Howarth (middle) is psyched to be first in line in downtown San Francisco for Leopard.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET Networks)

About 30 minutes before the doors of the store opened at 6 p.m., the line stretched up Stockton and around the corner onto O'Farrell Street, maybe two-thirds as long as the iPhone line at its longest on June 29. Still, prospective customers waited hours in line to buy Leopard, even though they could have preordered a copy from Apple or Amazon.com and have spent that time installing their new OS.

"That's kind of lame," said Tyler Howarth, first in line, referring to those who took the preorder route. Howarth, a student at San Francisco State University, arrived at 2 p.m. to start waiting in line, although the actual formal queue wasn't set up until 3 p.m. He planned to use the $100 store credit he received after the iPhone pricing snafu to defray the cost of the Leopard upgrade (click for CNET's review) for his Macbook Pro.

Granted, standing in line on a cool autumn evening in San Francisco isn't exactly as demanding as dodging raindrops on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And it's really, really hard to run out of software; I'm pretty sure you'll be able to walk into any Apple store later tonight or tomorrow and pick up a copy without a wait. But line-waiters seem determined to be part of something, to have an actual experience associated with their upgrades that's a little more interesting than signing for the package.

Apple's retail employees do everything they can to deliver that experience, cheering the early adopters like they just completed a 14-point comeback with 2 minutes left on the clock. The free coffee went quickly, but the first 500 people in line were given T-shirts to mark the occasion.

Apple retail employees welcome Leopard customers with a standing ovation and T-shirts.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

Several of those in line cited Time Machine as the single most important reason they're rushing out to get Leopard, sheepishly admitting they don't regularly back up their system. Not many people do so on a regular basis, even if they've taken the step of purchasing an external hard drive or going as far as to set up a home server.

Amadeus DeMarzi, about halfway back in the line, was relatively new to the Mac, having purchased his first Mac about a year ago. He was also planning to use his iPhone credit on the purchase of Leopard, and cited Time Machine and Spaces, a feature that lets you switch between four separate work areas to help organize your thoughts when working with multiple applications.

Passersby gawked at the crowd as things backed up in the area in front of the Apple store, which is adjacent to entrances for the Powell Street transit stop. "Ooh, I think they're giving out free iPhones!" one woman exclaimed as she passed by with several shopping bags. At around 6:30 p.m., the line was still around the corner onto O'Farrell, but things were moving in an orderly fashion.

It was probably a pretty good night for Apple's retail operation, but we'll get a better sense of the pace of Leopard adoption over the next few weeks and months. I'll check back over the weekend to see how the installation process is going for the early adopters. If you run into any problems, let me know in the comments below.

iPhone Day it wasn't, but foot traffic still backed up in front of Apple's downtown San Francisco store around 6 p.m. as commuters tried to figure out what was going on.

(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)

Progress is measured in steps both big and small. The smaller ones may get less attention, but they are much easier to take.

It's been a year of big steps for Apple. The company dropped the "Computer" from its name in January as a way of showing Apple was no longer just about the Mac, and the clear priority for 2007 in Cupertino was to get the iPhone out the door and selling briskly. Then, perhaps for kicks, it decided to overhaul its entire lineup of iPods.

Later today, Apple will take a smaller step, with the launch of Mac OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard. Leopard's coming on scene later than expected, almost 30 months after Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4) launched in April 2005, in part due to the push to get the iPhone out in time. CNET'S review is in, and my colleagues Elsa Wenzel and Robert Vamosi are positive.

Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, goes on sale at 6 p.m. today wherever you live.

(Credit: Apple)

There are dozens of important new features in Leopard, perhaps most notably the Time Machine application that could make it easier for users to back up and restore their files. Backing up your files is generally a simple exercise with a external hard drive, but Time Machine is interesting because of the friendly way in which it lets you restore files, flying back in time (and space) to the last instance in which that file was saved.

But all the reviewers, including Apple favorites Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal and David Pogue at The New York Times, felt compelled to point out that Leopard is very much an evolution of previous versions of Mac OS X, and not a dramatic breakthrough like some past releases. It's certainly nothing like the tectonic shift Microsoft users went through in the switch from Windows XP to Vista, or Windows 98 to XP.

That can come off as a negative assessment. But it's not.

Computing trends change so quickly now: are you doing the same things with your Mac today that you were when Tiger was released in 2005? Maybe, but you're definitely capable of doing much more today, and even more so compared with when the first version of Mac OS X arrived in 2001. With Leopard, Apple will have made five major upgrades to the original Mac OS X operating system in six years.

Guess what other operating system made its debut in 2001. After the launch of Windows XP that year, it took Microsoft a well-documented eternity to release Vista, during which it changed its goals for the operating system several times and wound up releasing a solid, if underwhelming product earlier this year.

Here's the lesson: making smaller, more frequent changes to your product makes it much easier to stay on top of a changing industry than a five-year plan will ever allow. It keeps engineers on their toes and also makes the bean counters happy. That's because modest upgrades can be released more frequently that still have enough new bells and whistles to justify charging for the new software. A new copy of Leopard, for example, will set you back $129.

As my colleague Ina Fried noted to me as we watched the World Series on Wednesday night, Microsoft does make incremental changes to Windows. But it calls them service packs, and it gives them away for free. Apple sits in a happy middle, where it can make substantial--yet relatively modest--additions to Mac OS X, charge more than $100 each time, and have customers walk away satisfied that the upgrade was worth their time and money.

Of course, life is different for Microsoft. As they add new features, they have to make sure everything plays nicely with a 20-year history of code, so their business customers don't freak out. This makes it much harder for Redmond to turn on a dime to respond to new trends like mobility or multimedia.

Leopard's a run-scoring double, to stretch the baseball analogy. It's not a revolution in Mac software, but it's a nice advance for older Mac owners as well as those new to the company in the last year or so. If Apple can get back on the 12- to 18-month pace of new releases that CEO Steve Jobs told The Times he'd like to stick to over the next several years, Apple could be able to pick out the next trend in personal computing well ahead of Microsoft if the engineers in Redmond stay on their current schedule.

The age-old Apple-Microsoft debate is changing. Microsoft continues to run a very profitable business, and even if Apple continues to expand its Mac market share, Windows will remain by far the dominant PC operating system when this decade ends.

But Apple has more momentum, as the iPhone and iPod continue to make both the mobile phone and music industries take notice. It has more investment, now worth more than tech-industry stalwarts IBM and Intel but still well behind Microsoft. And it's more nimble, a crucial advantage as an era dominated by the PC comes to a close and something new takes its place.

I'm not touching the Vista versus Leopard question until I've had a chance to use them both more thoroughly. But is Leopard a more significant advance compared to Tiger than Vista is compared to Windows XP? Nope. And Jobs is probably fine with that.