The PC with Mac OS X Reaches Benelux

PearC, a company dealing with Mac clones owned by HyperMegaNet, is expanding its business to Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and France. PearC’s business is similar to that of Psystar, whom Apple is currently battling in court for practices involving the modification of regular PC hardware for the ability to run the company’s licensed Mac OS X operating system. Apple still hasn’t contacted the German vendor shipping PCs with Mac OS X support.

PearC explains that its move is more than justified saying that "Hardware is often outdated, upgrade possibilities are limited, too few connection ports, still no eSata, etc." And let's not even get started about gaming and the lack of modern graphic cards," the clone maker says on its web site.

PearC, which advertises its clones as “the PC with Mac OS X,” earlier found out that Apple's EULA was void in Germany, thus providing it with a way to start into this business. Said EULA specifically states that no other systems than Apple's are allowed to run OS X. However, HyperMegaNet has argued on its web site that it believes it is immune to Apple's legal attacks. Dirk Bloessl, a spokesman for the company, later reiterated that stance, saying "The German law says explicit[ly], that restrictions made after buying a product are not valid." He continued by saying, "So, because Apple's EULA can [only] be first read after buying and starting the setup, they are invalid in Germany."

"First, we try to settle with Apple out of court," Bloessl said. "But if necessary, we are not afraid of going to court with Apple." Apple hasn’t contacted HyperMegaNet on the matter yet, although it believes it will do so in the future.

It should be noted that the company’s operating system tightly integrates with the hardware it uses. In the same way, for example, putting the iPhone OS onto other smartphones, which use different controls and accessories, will not have the same results. As such, Mac OS X will almost certainly not handle all the aspects of a non-Apple machine appropriately, starting with the built-in iSight camera and ending with its wireless capabilities. Still, most solutions enabling regular PCs to run OS X seem to offer fairly good results for the end user.