Talk:Macintosh clone

Guessing IBM Strategy

It's fairly obvious Apple (and Steve Jobs) wanted to retain control over their computer with its miniscule market share but it's arrogance beyond the permissible to think IBM were ever after the same control.

On the contrary: IBM were (and are) smarter than that. And thus the IBM PC was deliberately designed with 'off the shelf' components, leaving only the ROM BIOS to be cloned. (And IBM were not tight with the annotated source assembly to their BIOS either - yours truly was given a copy graciously by Big Blue.)

The idea was to establish a standard - and thereby outflank the entire mini computer industry which caught the IBM board off guard.

And OK sure - you want to debate that, that's fine. But this is a factual article and claiming to know how the board of directors of IBM were thinking is a bit beyond the sphere of anyone here at Wikipedia.

The content of this article re IBM strategy is therefore questionable and should be removed.

Actually, "the IBM PC was deliberately designed with 'off the shelf' components," because of anti-trust concerns. IBM's board was obsessed with that and maintaining the mainframe's cash cow.TL36 (talk) 11:09, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

'I think we're a clone now'

Does anyone know anything about the 'I think we're a clone now' song and music video? -The preceding unsigned comment was added by ChrisErb (talk • contribs) 20:55, Jan 20, 2006 (UTC).

It was made by an Apple employee named 'Dave Garr' and is credited to 'the CISCs'. I believe it was on one of the QuickTime CD ROMs as an extra (He did more of these, like 'WinSongs 95'). I vaguely remember a remote control GUI, which had one unlabelled button that would play this music video, while the others were, I think, Apple commercials. The song makes reference to Michael Spindler and the Mac cloning efforts of that era. The original song which it is based on is 'I think we're alone now' by Lene Lovich (there's an English and a Japanese version of this song, released at Stiff records). Well, actually, the song probably was based on a parody of that song by 'Weird Al' Yankovic of the same name. -- Uliwitness

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjDSY8LczFw — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.60.106.111 (talk) 13:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

To the victor goes the spoils

We should mention that the secretive russian hacker 'Maxxuss' was the one who liberated the x86 version MacOSX. Now grey box computers enjoy the same rights as neon coloured ones. This is like the end of apartheid. 195.70.32.136 12:26, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

IBM Factual Inaccuracy

IBM did not get rid of its 'ThinkPad' series because it wasn't profitable; if this were the case, why would Levono have bought it? IBM got rid of the ThinkPad series because PCs no longer fit into their evolving business model. Though an 'evolving business model' may seem like a euphemism for 'unprofitable', there is a distinct reason for IBM's ejection of the laptop line. For the last 6 years or so, IBM has been shifting toward a 'service' model of technology. This strategy has included the adoption and advocacy of Open Source/Free Software projects such as GNU/Linux. It also relies on the sale of mainframes and large-scaled server distributions with business servicing by IBM. Finally, IBM has shifted to become a technology contracting/consulting company. As for credibility, I am an IBM stockholder and have this read this information in IBM's 2006 annual report.

(was unsigned)

I have a similar feeling about the IBM stuff in this text. It currently makes it sound as if the sell to Lenovo and the appearance of clones are directly related. This is utter nonsense; there are more than 20 years between the appearance of PC clones and the sell to Lenovo; if they would have had a direct relationship, then the sale would have occurred at least 15 years ago.

Of course, there is the fact that IBM would still have been the main supplier of PC hardware had it been able to prevent clones from appearing. However, the question remains whether the PC market would have been as successful as it has been should IBM have been successful in preventing clone manufacturers from entering the PC market. Of course the appearance of clones did hurt IBM in a major way in that it sparked a thriving computer market that their sluggish and outdated corporate culture could not keep up with. It happened in the PC market, but had they been able to secure that market for themselves, it probably would have happened in the home computer market as a whole instead.

As a result, IBM management decided to reorganize the company, which eventually resulted in the shift towards service more than hardware, as the above quote says; and that, in turn, resulted in the sale of the PC business to Lenovo. Thus, while it is true in a way that the sale was an indirect result of IBM being unable to secure the PC market for themselves, it is a bit shortsighted to claim that as the sole reason.

Yoe 11:29, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Made some attempts to expand this part of the article a bit. Jerry Kindall 06:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

NuTek clone

The NuTek clone was apparently the semi-compatible system, although it is stated as a recent Mac-compatible. What gives? --Blah2 12:22, 5 January 2007 (UTC) Oops... --Blah2 12:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Unitron ROMs

I helped on the hardware side of the Unitron Mac even though I was their competitor, as I described in [1]. I received one machine as payment and it did have ROMs that were copied from Apple. The project was not finished (there were never any official sales since the government never allowed it) and replacement ROMs were being developed by another external consultant (I don't know if he would like to be identified). So although the few machines that are out there have copied ROMs, the plan was to only use reversed engineered ROMs (the code was written in C and was much larger than Apple's) on machines actually sold. Jecel (talk) 19:34, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

PearC

Where's PearC on this page? Could somebody add it? --88.110.159.6 (talk) 09:52, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

It was removed because other than making an unlicensed Mac clone it is not notable.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:26, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Complete? list of clones

http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_processor/powerpc604e.html That lists all the known licensed Mac Clone makers.

There's Radius, MacWarehouse and Pioneer on the 601 page. http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_processor/powerpc601.html Bizzybody (talk) 08:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Akkord Technology "Jonathan"

The german company Akkord Technology showed a Mac Plus Clone (with some enhancements) at the CeBIT 1989 in Germany. It never hit the market because Apple sued Akkord. Specs: Motorola 68000, SCSI hard disk, one 3,5" disk drive.

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?46878-FS-Akkord-Technology-quot-Jonathan-quot-very-rare-Apple-Macintosh-Plus-clone-%28Prototype%29

Has anyone additional information about this machine? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.218.94.108 (talk) 14:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Steve Jobs' statement on the Clones

Steve Jobs' statement regarding the clones at the Seybold Seminar (October 1997) is within this larger (and likely not verifiable) video. In a nutshell after trying to get the makers of the clones to pay a "fair Price" five times and told to basicly pound sand each time he then killed the program.--174.99.238.22 (talk) 01:49, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

OpenCore Computer

Is the unlicensed OpenCore Mac clone notable to be included in this article? The one online article I found that wasn't MacRumors or AppleInsider:

• Can ‘OpenCore Computer’ Pull It Off?

--174.99.238.22 (talk) 06:31, 22 September 2020 (UTC)