Is this suburban house the real home of the OpenMac?

Psystar, makers of the OpenMac (now hastily renamed "Open Computer"), plans to fight Apple for the right to preinstall OS X Leopard on its 3rd party hackintosh. Apple's End User License Agreement expressly forbids installing the operating system on anything other than Apple hardware.

A spokesman for Psystar, named Robert (no surname given), told Information Week that his company believes Apple is committing some imagined anti-trust offense and violating US monopoly laws. Lets take a look at the arguments.

What if Honda said that, after you buy their car, you could only drive it on the roads they said you could?

Then don't buy it. This is a straw man argument. Apple's EULA might forbid the use of its OS on third party hardware, but would never chase individuals who do this. The clause is aimed at corporations loading OS X onto machines and selling them, a practice which would cut into Apple's hardware revenue. So Robert might better ask: "What if Honda said that it won't allow other car makers to put its proprietary self-parking software in their cars?" In this case, Honda surely wouldn't care if a lone hacker ported the system to an old Chevy Nova, but if Ford ripped it off wholesale, Honda would sue.

Robert also asks "What if Microsoft said you could only install Windows on Dell computers?". There would be an outcry, of course, as this would be a clear case of collusion between two companies – which sell different but compatible products – to attempt to tie up the market and exclude competition.

Apple, on the other hand, owns the whole kit and caboodle. It makes the software and the box it runs on, and can do what the hell it likes. Apple might not let anyone else make and sell Macs, but, to return to the previous argument, Honda doesn't let anyone else make and sell Hondas. The Mac is a combination of hardware and software: one product, not two. You might be able to buy a Leopard DVD in a store, but it is sold as an upgrade, not a standalone product.

It's also a little odd that "Robert" refuses to give a last name. Anyone inside the company would surely know who he is (it's a small outfit, as we'll see in a moment), so the only reason to speak without a surname (or perhaps a pseudonym) is to protect himself from Apple, which seems to keeping very quiet on this issue, almost as if it didn't care.

The Guardian's Charles Arthur did a little digging into the company and found out that it didn't exist until last week. No website, no presence at the Miami Chamber of Commerces (Psystar is based in Miami) and nobody answering the phones. Arthur managed to get ahold of an anonymous man on the support line number, but he was evasive: Remember that Arthur called the support line:

I'm not support. I'm just answering the phones.

The company seems to have mysteriously moved, too. The address changed from a small suburban house to an office in an industrial district. Is "Robert" the sole employee of Psystar? A quick look at the other products on the Psystar site shows a curiously eclectic selection, all of which have noncommittal, waffling descriptions. Communications Systems, Network Management Devices, Employee Management Systems, Surveillance Systems and Integrated Multimedia Systems.

Doesn't it seem odd that the same company will install high end A/V equipment in your home and also manage your employee payroll data? I'm not saying that this is a scam setup, but there's definitely something strange here. If the OpenMac exists, then the only worry is getting your order filled by this apparently sketchy outfit. If it doesn't exist, what on Earth is going on?

UPDATE: Gadget Lab reader Richard sent this screen grab, which shows that the Psystar store is currently unable to process credit cards. As Alice said when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole, curiouser and curiouser.

Product page [Psystar]

So exactly who or what is Psystar? We dig a little.. [Guardian]

Mac Clone Maker Psystar Vows To Challenge Apple EULA [Information Week]