USB device enables Mac OS X to run on common PCs

Stephen Withers
Monday, 16 June 2008 12:52

Opinion and Analysis

It also seems that the product may only be sold in a small number of countries, and the US isn't one of them. That's judging by the list of countries shown on the site when I began preparing this article - the 'where to buy' link now returns a 404 error.

One possible reason for the limited distribution is concern about the possibility of legal action under the DMCA or other legislation. Depending on how EFiX actually works, it is possible that it is neither be a workaround for any technological protection measures, or a device that has the primary purpose of infringing copies.

It's harder to argue that users (as opposed to the vendor) be on safe legal ground, as Apple's Mac OS X licence only extends to its use on Apple-labelled computers.

Still, the EFiX developers claim the device has been tested for six months, and "Industry leading professionals (who work for TV stations, recording studios and many others) rely on EFiX and Mac OS X running on standard PC hardware to get their tasks done."

No indication is given about the business structure that will be marketing the device, or the project members. The efi-x.com domain name used by the EFiX site is registered in the name Wilhelm Vnukov, with an address in Germany.

Perhaps more will be revealed next Monday when EFiX is due to go on sale.