The story so far: Psystar is putting together PCs, installing a hacked copy of Mac OS X Leopard on them, and selling them. It took Apple awhile, but they finally sued. Then today, Psystar counter-sued, citing antitrust laws.

While Psystar probably isn't going to win, part of me wishes that they would. I priced out a 4 core Psystar OpenPro with 8 GB of RAM for less than \$2k. The equivalent Mac Pro is over \$2k. Most of that cost is in RAM - Apple is charging absolutely exorbitant amounts of money for memory. Way, way over the market price.

But even more damning, Apple's machine choices in and of them selves are simply quite limiting. There is no direct Mac competitor to the Psystar Open Computer. Instead of going to court, Apple should just bring their component prices inline with the rest of the industry, and release the oft-fabled xMac. I'm willing to pay more for a machine with an Apple logo on it, but not more to the tune of thousands of dollars. And what am I supposed to do when Apple doesn't even make the machine that I want to buy? If Apple took these two steps, then the demand for Mac clones would plummet, and Apple would profit.

Seems pretty simple to me.

-Andy.