Mac-clone company back online

Psystar, a small Miami company which has met with much attention for offering cut-price Mac clones, has said it has resolved problems related to its online store and physical location, and is once again ready to accept orders.

"It is our pleasure to inform you that our store is up and running, thanks to our new, high-volume payment processor," the firm wrote in a statement on its website. "Regarding shipping, orders placed the week of 7 April are currently being shipped."

Last week problems involving the company's online store and contact postal address led some industry observers to the conclusion that Psystar was nothing more than a scam.

The company changed the address listed on its website several times in the space of 24 hours, and its online store stopped processing credit-card transactions for several days.

The company did in fact move locations last week and the consequent address problems were due to a typographical error, according to Psystar.

The company admitted it was "not ready" for the rush of orders which followed a notice posted on 13 April on the website MacRumors.com.

The boom in orders also caused problems with PowerPay, the payments-processing firm used by Psystar. The company exceeded its anticipated annual volume of transactions in just a few days, according to PowerPay's chief executive.

That, and other problems, led to PowerPay suspending the account.

Psystar claims to be a small firm, and appears not to have expected that its initial notice on MacRumors.com would vault it into international headlines.

Aside from inevitable legal questions arising from the fact that Apple's licence terms prohibit the installation of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers, Psystar has also alienated the hackers who have developed the "OSx86" software that Psystar claims to use.

The installation of Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer is expressly forbidden by Apple's end-user licensing agreement. Nevertheless, some lawyers have said Apple will have a hard time stopping firms such as Psystar from breaking the agreement, because of the relative weakness of breach-of-contract disputes.

Apple has so far declined to comment on the matter.