Wikipedia defines Vaporware as: ‘a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle’ .

Is EFiX’s USB Dongle, which allegedly will Boot and install OSX on any PC, another vaporware? According to this gizmodo article, it is supposed to be released on June 23rd. But it’s already been at least 4 days since June 23rd and nothing. There’s also nothing on the EFiX website about the delay and it is half done up that it makes one wonder if it’s all a hoax. Or could they have stopped working on it because or pending lawsuits? It’s doesn’t surprise me if they are sued, considering that Apple is a even more monopolistic bastard than Micro$oft.

Anyway, it all began with Psystar’s Open Computer, which I become aware of while clearing emails in Hotmail (I still find it hard to call it Live Mail or whatever). From what I gathered, it was probably called the Open Mac originally, but was renamed Open Computer just to avoid some legal tussles, not to mention that it is offering OSX as an optional component while Ubuntu is the choice of OS for it.

From the links, I became aware of the OSx86 project. Ya, I know it’s been around for some time and I am being out of touch. And from reading if my laptop or desktop is compatible to have a hacked copy of OSX installed, which I found tedious (though not necessary difficult considering what I do for a living) that’s how I chanced upon the EFiX USB Dongle.

So what is this EFiX dongle anyway? Apparently it’s supposed to be the magic bullet that will remove all these hassles of hacking OSX to get it installed on the PC. And if you are wondering why I am looking at hacking OSX to install on a PC when people are getting Windows to install on a Mac with BootCamp, let me just say it’s just done because it can be done. It just gives me a sense of achievement and an opportunity to give an up yours to Apple. Furthermore, I am not going to pay Apple a ridiculous amount of money to get a ‘Mac Experience’ and their ridiculously proprietary hardware when I seriously despise Apple’s way of doing business.

Whether this dongle is vaporware or not, it is interesting to note that Wikipedia states this: ‘The marketing angle to “releasing” vaporware can be two-fold. On one hand the intention is to create the demand for a feature or product which did not previously exist in the market. On the other, the intent is also to judge the public reaction from the “release” and prepare a concrete marketing plan’ .

Is EFiX purposely doing this to test the market to see the reaction of PC users out there to see if there’s a demand for a Hackintosh, and hoping that if there’s a demand, some other company will jump the bandwagon to produce just such a thing?

It remains to be seen. Frankly, I haven’t heard of anyone talk about this in Singapore and if this is same level of interest – or rather, the lack of it – worldwide, I would say maybe that’s the real reason why EFiX remained silent so many days after June 23rd with their website in shambles. Perhaps, there’s really just not that many geeky people out there… and if this dongle thingie is really vaporware, I guess I’ll have to go back to the drawing board and read up those articles on how to manually install OSX on my Lenovo X61.