Home-brew Macs Appear, Disappear from eBay

A budding eBay entrepreneur that goes by the name "chris555" tried to cash in on Pystaris Mac clone scheme by offering his own knock-off Macs on eBay. His two "Non Apple Mac OS X" systems appeared at the beginning of the week for US$549 each, but had been removed by Wednesday morning.

The eBay product description stated "Run the award winning Mac OS 10.5 on this custom-built desktop computer for hundreds less than a computer direct from Apple. This desktop comes preloaded with Mac OS X Leopard with all the latest features. Finally, the power of Mac OS X at a fraction of the price," according to AppleInsider.

Pystar made news in April when it introduced its OpenMac Intel-based Mac clones. The computers claimed to be Mac OS X 10.5-compatible and came with Leopard pre-installed. While the $399 price tag might appear compelling on the surface, the systems were not Apple authorized and the installed copy of Mac OS X 10.5 violated Appleis end user license agreement, or EULA.

There is no word as to why chris555is unauthorized Mac clones were removed from eBay.