More Psystar news for you. We now know that the Florida-based company will have to pay Apple $2.68 million in damages over its little Hackintosh business. (That’s a partial settlement, not court-mandated or anything.) Go ahead and go to its Web site: everything is out of stock!

Some more Psystar news for y’all. You’ll recall that the renegade company was more or less shut down last week, slapped with an injunction and expected to pay Apple an awful lot of money. Put all of that aside for a minute, for there’s new news: Apple and Psystar have struck a deal! The deal, which ends a 17-month-long legal battle, means Psystar will stop selling computers pre-loaded with Mac OS X. This ends our long, national nightmare.

Apple has been fighting for a permanent injunction against Psystar, preventing the company from selling Hackintoshen and their Rebel EFI software. The company has been accused of “trafficking in circumvention devices.”

Apple’s charges of copyright infringement and DMCA violation against Psystar have stuck and, friends, things ain’t pretty for the two brothers in Miami. The problem with Psystar’s approach wasn’t that they were crazy for trying it. It’s that the were selling a counterfeit unit.

Apple contends that Psystar has violated its distribution right by offering and selling Mac OS X on Psystar computers to the public. Psystar admits that it has distributed Mac OS X (Chung Exh. 17 at 4).

But Psystar responds that its conduct is protected by the Section 109 first-sale doctrine. Section 109 provides that “the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.” 17 U.S.C. 109. This provision is a limitation on the distribution right. It applies only to an owner of a copy.

For some reason I always imagined Psystar differently. The company has been making Hackintoshes – against Apple’s wishes – for nigh on a year and their various lawsuits and machinations have given lazy Hackintoshers everywhere the opportunity to buy OS X hardware for a fraction of the cost of a new Mac and, more recently, the ability to Hackintosh almost anything.

Well, it turns out this hive of industry is actually just two dudes, Robert Pedraza and his brother Rudy. Yes, the company that has been making Apple cry for the past year consists of the kids you knew down the street who were really good at computers.

Reader Louis sent in this longish missive about his own experiences installing a Psystar Hackintosh. We were stymied last night by the authentification procedure so we didn’t even get as far as Louis but it seems that the install, while fairly seamless, is fraught with problems. The speakers on our HP, for example, don’t work and while Apple’s Ink feature shows up in the control panel, the touchscreen is about useless.

Here’s Louis’ take:

I saw your article about the success you’ve had. I’d like to share my experience to date.

I’m running a G31M-ES2L and an 8800GT. It’s an original PsyStar machine with an upgraded video card.

I purchased the app yesterday. Followed install instructions posted .
The SL install reports a failure but I could boot to the desktop in SL with the Rebel EFI CD. (The instructions have since been revised to reflect this).

When the Psystar Rebel EFI software launched yesterday, the Internet collectively gasped at the wild claims but a few people in the Hackintosh community probably knew better. Sites were claiming that the Rebel EFI software would allow OS X to be installed on any computer, but that simply isn’t true as I’ve found out over the last 12 hours. In fact, it doesn’t seem to offer any more hardware support than the open source Chameleon bootloader.

You can almost hear Steve Jobs flipping out right now. Psystar, notable for its efforts to sell generic PCs with Mac OS X pre-loaded, has just released something called Rebel EFI. It’s software that allows you to instal Mac OS X on generic PCs without having to Hackintosh said PC. (Hackintoshing isn’t for the weak of heart!)

Update: Psystar’s site is down but here are the installation instructions if you managed to grab the trial version in time. Anyone manage to get it to work yet?

This Apple-Psystar business sure is hotting up! Both Apple and Psystar have asked for summary judgments based on what they believe to be What’s Going On. Such an action would avoid a pesky trial, which would necessarily costs both companies a whole lot of money.

Nobody expected that this Apple-Psystar affair would be rapid or easy, but at this point it’s positively interminable. Psystar has just switched out a lawyer, who probably just about keeled over from constantly parrying Apple’s well-founded injunctions against his client’s business. Here’s hoping Mr. Welker takes a well-deserved vacation.

Psystar, putter-togetherers of Hackintosh PCs, are suing Apple for monopolizing the market for premium computers, a move akin to a prairie dog popping its head up under a lawnmower. The lawsuit states:

“By tying its operating system to Apple-branded hardware, Apple restrains trade in personal computers that run Mac OS X, collects monopoly rents on its Macintoshes, and monopolizes the market for ‘premium computers,’” said Psystar’s lawsuit, filed last Wednesday. “Apple’s share of revenue in the market for premium computers — computers priced at over $1,000 — is currently 91%.”

I was actually pulling for Psystar before but now it’s clear that the company is fast on its way to being sued into oblivion. Their quixotic quests mixed with a consistent failure to deliver support – just try getting a “repair disk” from them: you have to send in what is essentially copy of your original invoice and esoteric proofs of purchase – shows that they’re not quite serious when it comes to the manufacture of quality hardware and are instead going the troll route.

And you thought that Apple finally drove the front running clone maker off of a cliff. Nope. Psystar successfully navigated the bankruptcy courts and is back at its old game of annoying Apple. The ongoing lawsuit is still in play, but bankruptcy no doubt allowed the company to shed some debt and reorganize under Chapter 11 guidelines. Now the company is back and just released a new Core i7 clone.

Picking apart the bankrupt Psystar corpse has revealed a debt of $75,000 to Apple for “Unsecured Nonpriority Claims,” whatever thoseare. Nobody knows what exactly that might be for, although some savvy mathemagicians have decided it might be for 581 (and a half) copies of Leopard. Not knowing Psystar’s actual sales volume, that number means practically nothing. Did they maybe order all those copies and never pay? Or was that just the unsold ones left over after Apple caught them up in the ongoing legal tiff?

Psystar put up good fight. The small company first released a $399 Mac clone little over a year ago followed by rackmount servers a little later. The company was eventually sued by Apple for using OS X on clone machines. But Psystar showed some backbone and sued Apple back . But even if Psystar had secret financial backing, the company just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Maybe RussianMac is thinking that Apple’s legal team will not notice as they’re too busy with the suing Psystar. Oh, perhaps, the Mac clone maker thinks that they are legally immune being located in the wild west that is Mother Russia. Whatever the case, a full range of Mac clones, including a pro and notebook models, are now available from another maker. Interestingly enough, RussianMac may have beat Psystar to a Mac Netbook.

Psystar, the crazy folks that have stood up to Apple’s legal behemoth and continue to produce Mac clones, might be working on a netbook according to MacRumors. Apple has been very quite on the netbook front, and seems to not want anything to do with the niche market — although rumors state otherwise. But there is nothing stopping Psystar from producing its own OS X-running netbook. Chances are it would be very similar to the hackintosh netbook mods that have become somewhat popular.

It seems like just yesterday when we were unboxing our very own Psystar system, and apart from some build quality issues, were surprised at how well it worked.

The Open(3) system they announced last month was expected by some to be a no-show, what with the ongoing dispute with Apple, but it looks like at least one person with a camera has gotten his delivered.