On Tuesday we ran a brief blurb about a company called Psystar and their curious new $400 OpenMac, a preconfigured PC that runs Apple’s Leopard OS.
Mac fans asked questions about when and how Apple’s litigation team would crack down on the effort, but in the meantime — and knowing a good deal when they see one — started to order away before the Hackintosh was pulled from market.
And that’s when all sorts of oddities began.
As Richard Koman at ZDNet wrote yesterday:
Item: Credit-card processing. Psystar is taking credit card numbers. It’s not processing them. People who tried to order machines yesterday got this message:
Thank you for visiting Psystar. We’re sorry but the store is temporarily down due to the fact that we are currently unable to process any credit card transactions. Please send an e-mail to support@psystar.com with the subject line “UPDATE” so that we can update you when the store comes back online. For customers who have already placed orders: if you received a confirmation e-mail then your item is in queue to be built and shipped.
The thought here is that the OpenMac is a credit card and/or phishing scam.
To date, the company’s e-commerce provider PowerPay dropped them, Gizmodo readers went to the physical address on the company’s Web site and snapped a picture of what they didn’t find, and, as CNet succinctly puts it after the address changed three times in a day: “This is really weird.”
This is beginning to feel like an international game of Clue. Who, indeed, killed Colonel Mustard, and was it with a candlestick, lead pipe or rope? Possibly in the conservatory, and possibly in the study.
The sleuthing continues. You can follow it here.
