HT-NewsEFiX Not Making Mac Clones.
Several reports emerged this morning indicating that the company behind the EFiX USB module had jumped into the Mac clones business. According to EFiX creators, this was launched by an affiliate without authorization of Art Studios Entertainment.
We spoke directly with Davide Rutigliano, CEO of Art Studios Entertainment, and he confirmed to us that it is untrue. Whatever EFiX-USA announced, had no affiliation with Art Studios Entertainmentò€”the actual company designing and engineering the EFiX modules.
According to Rutigliano, Art Studios Entertainment is entirely against companies that produce Mac clones. His reasoning is as follows, verbatim:
As you know, EFI-X uses a list of compatible to EFI and UEFI hardware. As strange as it seems, people have found difficulties to put together machines compliant with our standards, and we decided to create a Certification Program. This way not only we can make sure that people get the right hardware, (as non compatible hardware will even void their EFI-X warranty) but this opens the way to a much broader support, to new and exciting hardware, based on the userò€™s requests.
This, today, created a monstrous misunderstanding. Our USA distributor, following (I have to say erroneously) the certification program built up a quite nice PC, but it was presented to the press in a totally erroneous way to which we at Art Studios Entertainment Media are absolutely unrelated to!
To be honest it wasnò€™t intentional of them, but of course when I said that we at ASEM do not condone the merchandising of clones, I meant it. The press saw the "Millennium" project as a clone project, and I immediately ordered it to be scraped and abandoned. Because we at ASEM do not sell or condone the sale of clones that compete with ANY brand. We have our own clientele and our own small and nice market share, and we are really happy that way.
Therefore if there is any brand that would like to have their hardware certified and decides to market it the proper way, we at Art Studios are extremely happy to evaluate their proposal. But we will NEVER sell machines or condone the sale of machines that compete with any brand.
The main point of EFI-X was innovation and integration, we are very proud of it and we like to keep it that way. We are the only one on the planet to offer such a device with such technology, and we are happy about it and very happy about our heterogeneous fans coming from all possible IT worlds, that understood and appreciated us and our unique philosophy.
And I can also proudly say that part of this philosophy was to respect all the brands that we admire, and follow their example to change the IT world into something better and friendlier for all of us.
Therefore, even though we are absolutely unrelated with last nightò€™s "stunt", I do reaffirm ASEMò€™s spirit and philosophy of total respect and gratitude towards our existing affectionate customers. We may eventually in the future enforce our Certification Program, to deliver a more complete and better thought-after product to our clientele, but that will be made in total respect and fairness.
- Davide Rutigliano
Rutigliano and the rest of the Art Studios team say that the "Millennium" project has been immediately scrapped. Alas, checking the EFiX-USA website indicated that this is true.
The EFiX is a small USB module that allows a stock PC to run EFI-based operating systems. In this case, one of the major bonuses to this scheme is that Appleò€™s OS X Leopard can run fully functional on stock PC hardware. This means youò€™re able to perform normal system updates just like you would on a real Apple Mac.
Rutigliano indicated to us that the EFiX module is not an OS X "enabler" but rather a device that allows users to choose between BIOS-based and EFI-based operating system at will. Weò€™ve tested the the module ourselves using the latest firmware release and can confirm Leopard does run like it should. Our review is coming shortly.