“The payment-processing merchant for Mac clone maker Psystar abruptly ended its relationship with the company Wednesday after it discovered what was for sale on Psystar’s site,” Tom Krazit reports for CNET.
“Powerpay had been the payment processor for Psystar’s online store until Wednesday, when it yanked its services from Psystar’s Web site. That move sent the store offline for several hours midday Wednesday, halting sales of Psystar’s Open Computer, which comes preinstalled with Mac OS X Leopard in violation of Apple’s licensing agreement for its operating system,” Krazit reports.
“Psystar posted a statement on its Web site Thursday explaining the downtime. ‘Midday yesterday our store was not receiving any orders. This was due to the fact that our merchant gateway, Powerpay, dropped the ball on us and refused to process any more transactions from our company,'” Krazit reports.
“Louisa Deluca, vice president of loss prevention for Powerpay, said on Thursday that her company dropped Psystar because it violated the terms of its agreement with Powerpay. She declined to cite specific violations, but said ‘there are plenty of reasons why we shut the account off. We did not know that’s what he was selling, we learned that yesterday,'” Krazit reports.
“Psystar has since switched merchant services providers to PayPal, who processed my transaction with the company on Wednesday,” Krazit reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anyone who buys something from that outfit risks making Steve Ballmer look sane.
yo mamma
No comment, and you can quote me on that.
Wait till PayPal gets wind of it.
I ordered mine today! I can’t wait til it gets here and works for 2 weeks until apple updates their operating system…then i’ll turn it into a psyquarium for my fishies.
This is one time the smart move by Apple Legal would be deafening silence. A EULA is between Apple and the ‘End User,’ not the vendor: as long as PoopStar didn’t steal any of Apple’s microcode/bios, etc., it would be a difficult to win court case.
Wait a sec – they could file in Texas…
Eh didn’t I call this yesterday, go look at my post.
I explicitly said this could be a scam to get peoples credit card info or to sell other products to people from the attention of this with the short term goal of getting shut down.
I don’t blame that merchant for stepping away. They would’ve surely been listed in the lawsuit that is on its way to Psystar’s owner’s desk.
Hell, I say more power to Psystar. Worst case, they put together a crappy system and people realize why Apple’s license says what it does. Best case, they actually get more people to try Mac OS X who then become converts. Regardless, Apple isn’t competing in the exact market segment that Psystar wants to sell to (cheap minitowers), so I don’t see the harm.
Then again, I don’t hold alot of EULA’s in high regard. As long as Psystar isn’t pirating Mac OS X, let people do what they want with something they purchased.
If you buy with credit card it’s insured anyway isn’t it? So no worries if the goods don’t arrive, you just get a refund.
Surely Apple should stop selling Mac OS X to Psystar!
Or is Psystar illegally installing the OS?
With every new story on this Psystar “company”, the people running things sound less and less competent.
I’m still convinced that there someone else behind things, using Psystar for their own ends – either as a major prank (the phone number with all the sixes in it sure looks fishy when you know the original starting price of the Apple I), or as a serious attempt to challenge the exclusivity of OS X to Apple’s own hardware. The apparent cluelessness of the Psystar folks certainly indicates to me that someone with more of a purpose is pushing them to continue.
@JadisOne
“I don’t blame that merchant for stepping away. They would’ve surely been listed in the lawsuit that is on its way to Psystar’s owner’s desk.”
You are probably right on! That is probably what Apple told them what would happen, if the did not shut it down, now
@zek
“If you buy with credit card it’s insured anyway isn’t it? So no worries if the goods don’t arrive, you just get a refund”
Wouldn’t that be a compelling reason for the processor to shut it down?
They probably were not truthful when they got the merchant account. There is a magic number, of what your monthly sales are forecast to be, if it is under $10,000.00 , it is very easy to get a merchant account, over $10,000.00 you need bank statements, and must have assets to coincide with the business you plan on doing.
If they gave untruths on the amount of business they expected , and all of a sudden they are doing way more than their application said, red flags would go up
Eh didn’t I call this yesterday, go look at my post.
I explicitly said this could be a scam to get peoples credit card info…
If they’re using a merchant like PayPal, etc. They never get to see the card info.
“Psystar has since switched merchant services providers to PayPal, who processed my transaction with the company on Wednesday,” Krazit reports.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Bye-bye!
@ Joe
“I explicitly said this could be a scam to get peoples credit card info or to sell other products to people from the attention of this with the short term goal of getting shut down.”
Having a pay processor like Powerpay is like having an Escrow company. Psystar would not obtain any of the customer’s credit card info. Companies use pay processors to shield themselves from the liability of having credit card info. Psystar is up to something that won’t go far, but scamming credit card info isn’t one of them.
@QuadCore
they are using paypal NOW, they were not yesterday.
And if you read my entire post as i stated, there are different ways that this could be a scam. Even Paypal is scamable.
Apple is a Hardware company.
They make no money off of OS sales(or very little).
Let’s say Apple sells you a Macbook for $1099. $400 of that is profit.
They sell you a copy of OS X, they make $40 of profit.
So to make the same amount of money from OS sales, they would have to increase the number of sales by 10 times the current numbers.
Not going to happen.
Apple would lose 100’s of million of dollars licensing OS X for sale on cheap generic boxes.
Those of you who want this-why do you hate Apple and want them to go under?
Everyone needs to look at this: http://gizmodo.com/380488/psystar-exposed-looks-like-a-hoax
@nekogami13
Just because someone wants a tower computer running Mac OS X that doesn’t cost $2300, doesn’t mean they want Apple to go under.
MDN: Ballmer’s sane. And that’s the really really scary part.
Someone that evil & that dumb is actually sane.
D’oh!
A ‘Mac mini’ costs $800 for the 2Ghz one.
Would you be willing to pay Apple $1000-1200 for a Mac minitower?
Basically an iMac, in a minitower case — w/ 2 HD bays. Plus you have to get a good monitor.
–
SteveJ, Cube2? [8x8x10]
Has anyone even once thought that Stevie could be playing us all? Maybe he just wants to see how much interest there is for there “new” configs. That’s why Apple legal is being unusually quiet.
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This may be the longest investigation ever into a shady South Florida company where there is no sign of an Israeli being involved….
Anyone know of anyone who has placed an order for this?
Anyone know of anyone who has received a unit?
Until they ship and someone gets one of these machines I don’t believe it’s for real.
DogGone: basically you are asking “any of you have idiots for friends?”
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