We went to the Apple store in Towson Town Center and priced out the model he wanted, which came to about $1,300. Out of curiosity, I wandered over to a Dell computer kiosk a few yards away and found a 13-inch laptop with nearly identical components, and I mean identical. The two computers were priced less than $50 apart: aside from the color of the case (Dell red versus Apple white), the substantive difference was the operating system.

Apple has not commented on the upstart - and it may not have to. It can always sabotage the usurper by issuing updates that won’t run on the alien machine, or that disable it. Apple has done that with iPhones that users have hacked to run on wireless carriers other than Apple’s chosen, AT&T.

Most users install operating system updates automatically by downloading them over the Internet, so this could be a no-brainer for Apple. Of course, Psystar could issue a patch to counter Apple’s patch, and Apple could issue a counter-counter patch in its next release, but that’s not much fun for users.