Mac Clone Maker Psystar to Develop Laptop, Ship Blu-ray Drives

Apparently Psystar isn't one to sit idle while mediation over their legal battle with Apple takes place. Some might be inclined to not "rock the boat," but not this firm.

First, in a press release, Psystar announced it was going to begin shipping systems with Blu-ray drives as well as NVIDIA 9800 GT video cards, beating Apple on both counts. Of course, you may recall that Steve Jobs went so far as to say that "Blu-ray is a bag of hurt." and that:

The licensing of the technology is so complex that we're just waiting until things settle down and waiting until Blu-ray really takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the drives."

He may have a point, as the ongoing economic crisis has led some analysts to say that Blu-ray is going to miss the boat, so to speak, of widespread consumer adoption.

But at any rate, Psystar isn't hanging around waiting:

Psystar Corporation, the leading manufacturer of OS X-compatible PCs, is now shipping PCs with Blu-ray optical disc drives and the nVidia 9800GT graphics card. Psystar is shipping Blu-ray and 9800GT equipped computers before Apple's release of these peripheral products on their own computers. Apple, developer of the OS X operating system, has chosen to delay support for Blu-ray with Apple CEO Steve Jobs citing it as "a bag of hurt" during the recent release of the new Apple notebooks. Psystar president Rudy Pedraza countered:

"Blu-ray has already won the format war. Not only is there fully functional and mature support for Blu-ray in other operating systems but you can now rent Blu-ray discs from almost any rental chain. Blu-ray has become pervasive technology that is being widely adopted by consumers everywhere."

At the same time, an email sent to an AppleInsider reader, which said the company was working on a MacBook clone, has been confirmed by the company as well. The email said:

Thank you for your interest in Open Computing. Although there is no mobile open computer at the moment, I can tell you that it is something that is in development. Once we release a final product, it will be posted on our website along with an automatic notification for all Open Computing newsletter subscribers.

No release day or price has been set for any potential mobile product line. However I can assure you that at release it will be very competitively priced.

Thank you for your inquiry.

This makes sense, as one doesn't need to be hit over the head with a notebook to know that notebooks are in, and desktops, while not out, are on the decline. Just this week IDC announced that notebook shipments have overtaken desktops for the first time.

Time to wait and see if Apple takes more offense at this and decides to back out of medication.