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New face in Mac clone market plans high-end OS X desktops

A company called EFi-X USA reportedly plans to take on Psystar and Apple's Mac Pro with hacked hardware.

Matt Hickey
With more than 15 years experience testing hardware (and being obsessed with it), Crave freelance writer Matt Hickey can tell the good gadgets from the great. He also has a keen eye for future technology trends. Matt has blogged for publications including TechCrunch, CrunchGear, and most recently, Gizmodo. Matt is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. E-mail Matt.
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Matt Hickey

A company called EFi-X USA (no, that's not a throwaway droid from Empire Strikes Back) apparently plans to take on Mac clone maker Psystar by bypassing the consumer market and jumping straight to the power user demographic.

EFi-X USA

The machines it's prepping sound pretty nice, with a 3.8GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, 1TB storage on 7200 rpm drives, a 150GB 10k rpm system drive, 4GB of included RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GTS GPU.

What's more, according to AppleInsider, the company is planning to let consumers customize their machines, meaning that if the current crop of Mac Pros aren't what you're looking for, you can make up your own personalized system.

The systems will reportedly sell for $2,100, but that includes the proprietary EFi-X internal adapter that tricks OS X into thinking it's on a Mac. That's how this company plans to work the magic.

We haven't heard word from Apple's legal team yet, and we're not sure what the legal ramifications for such a dongle might be.

Apple has so far not dropped as big a hammer as it could have on Psystar. Currently the companies are in litigation over copyright infringement. We'll see how Apple responds to this new challenger.