Interview with Davide Rutigliano (CEO of Art Studios Entertainment Media)

[John]

EFI-X is a revolutionary product; installation of OSX on a normal PC has never been this easy! Muzzle.nl had an interview with Davide Rutigliano, the CEO of Art Studios Entertainment Media!

Photo by Fredi Marcarini ©2000

John: Hello Davide, thank you for participating in this interview!

Davide: The pleasure is mine.

About Davide:

John: Davide, could you tell us something about yourself? About your work?

Davide: Sure, sweat, stress, raising body weight, receding hairline... Enough? (giggle)

Davide: Jokes apart, I am "Britalian", being born in Italy and having been brought up in the UK, and I love both my countries. At the moment I'm living in Asia to follow the development of EFI-X and all the upcoming products. It's a great job and gives me a lot of satisfaction. Also, I'm blessed with a fantastic team supporting me.

John: Are you a Mac user?

Davide: You bet, since '94, proud and faithful.
At the moment I have a Macbook Pro, a Powermac G4 used as a home RAID server, and countless Apple products, including a wonderful Cinema Display HD 30".

Davide: My father was a Mac user too, I fell in love with Apple when he brought home an amazing SE/30. He was a writer.

John: A dedicated OSX user! What would you say makes OSX Leopard so great?

Davide: Integration between applications, scalability, performances, great multitasking and multiprocessing, great unity of UI looks, and superb quality of applications.

The Device:

John: Let's talk about EFI-X, could you describe the EFI-X module in your own words?

Davide: headache? *giggle*

Davide: haha, just joking EFI-X is the realisation of our efforts of over two years. Actually, it will do much more than it does now. Multi OS booting is just one of the cool features it has been designed for.

John: How was the idea born to build an EFI-X module?

Davide: Basically, we wanted to fill a niche that nobody ever explored. The boot time of our PCs... Everyone focuses on what we do *after* the OS is loaded, but very few imagine how many things you can do at boot to enhance and ease our work on any OS.

John: So true, I can't recall any other hardware device that does this...

Davide: And the best has yet to come

John: What is your target audience?

Davide: We address our products to an audience of overclockers, computer experts, people that love fiddling with their hand-picked hardware, and people that realize that the more expert you are about IT, the better your work, whatever it is, will be.

John: The device has to be placed inside the computer, is there a particular reason for this? Why not on the outside?

Davide: If I may, I will answer with another question: do you place the CPU outside your PC?

John: I understand, personally I think the idea of placing it inside the computer is another innovative solution. I love it

Davide: And it keeps all the ports free.

John: Some people from the hackintosh community said that the efi-x module is the same as the boot-132 procedure, what's your point of view?

Davide: *censored* cough cough :P
Well, all I know is that if I said that to our development team, who has been sleeping really little lately, the company would need a new CEO as the old one would disappear in mysterious circumstances :-)

John: That's clear enough

Davide: Jokes apart, we implement real EFI in our device. there is nothing that links our product to the hack world.

Legal part:

John: Let's address the legal part of this device, you probably saw that coming
What's your point of view on the legal part? Is the device completely legal?

Davide: Yes, it is. We made sure to create a product that goes in the same direction of all other computer company and not against them in any way.

John: Did you investigate if Apple could / would go to court to stop this device? Knowing you can install OSX with this device on a PC.

Davide: It is possible that we will go to court with Apple, but most likely *supporting* them, in case we ever find out that someone is selling PCs with our module installed. Selling a computer that can boot OSX is a unique right that only Apple has. And we enforce it.

John: Did you hear anything from Apple about EFI-X? Did they contact you?

Davide: For sure they don't hate us, that is saying enough

Future:

John: Let's talk about the future, when do you expect laptops will be supported and which brand will likely be supported?

Davide: It is very unlikely that we will support laptop, at least regular, everyday laptops. We might support ultra portable devices like the OQO, though. that is very possible.

John: The HCL motherboards consists only of Gigabyte motherboards, what's the reason for that? Can we expect Asus to be on the HCL list for example?

Davide: We have no contract of exclusivity with Gigabyte. It is possible that we will support other brands in the future, sure. But we want to keep the HCL as restricted as possible to deliver better support and quality assurance.

John: So Asus is a possibility in the future?

Davide: As much as are other brands.

John: Are you planning to put server motherboards (SuperMicro for example) on the HCL list?

Davide: Hardly. it is very difficult to find a server board that can be overclocked and tweaked... But if we ever find a suitable one, we will support it.

John: How is the hardware tested that makes it in the HCL list?

Davide: Very thoroughly with our own tools that output all possible reactions from Northbridge and Southbridge.. Every time I enter the dev room, I get out like if I had a pint of whiskey crazy stuff in there!

John: Fascinating!
Can you tell us something about the upcoming October release?

Davide: Oh yes, I'm particularly proud of it! we rewrote it from ground up with a new structure, new code and a new modular system. now every single function of the device can be modified, enhanced and interoperated with the others in a much more efficient and powerful way.

John: Interesting! I'll be waiting for it

Davide: It's really good and it places the basis for all future functions. It will be very easy to add new apps and functions.

John: Earlier you mentioned that the best has yet to come, could you give us a sneak peek?

Davide: I'm afraid I cannot... All the new features are being developed and are top secret for now.

John: Okay, had to try

Davide: haha

John: Davide, thank you very much for this interview! I wish you the best!

Davide: Same with you, tot de volgende keer!