Building my Own Alternative to a MBA.

HUH? How do you run Lion on that machine?

 

Perhaps you can build a few of them, sell them for 5-10% on top of your cost and buy a MBA eventually.

 

nice post and looking forward to pics and updates on your success and final cost.

although i buy Macbooks fairly often i also have built many hackintosh units as well and if you get the right setup they run and update perfectly.

good luck

 

I didn't read the entire terms of service for OSX but I would imagine it's not legal to use it on non apple HW as well.. If you are concerned about laws, I think breaking one more isn't going to hurt you.

I would take them to swap meets and sell them..

 

No problem.. If you need any other ideas on how to save a few dollars let me know, I have lots of ideas.

 

I like this idea. Let us know how it turns out, and post pics, geekbench results, etc. in this topic!

I had an HP Mini 1000, which I had hackintoshed. My advice: Go with Snow Leopard instead of Lion. SL ran pretty smooth and good on it, Lion was ssllloowww. Another bonus is that installing system updates on a hackintosh is a PITA, but since there probably won't be any more major updates to 10.6, this isn't a problem.

 

Any updates?

 

I really respect the technical experiment here, but I cant help but wonder if you couldn't just buy the Air if you spent 30% of the time you are spending on this Frankenstein working a parttime or side job.

Regardless, I'm watching this thread and waiting to hear more...

 

when i was building my hackintosh's it was the thrill of the success probably more than the dollars saved.

maybe the OP here thinks differently though

 

Subscribed!
This is a great experiment

 

Believe me, there's no such a thing as fully hackintoshable.

Last year I bought a HP that was in theory fully hackintoshable as per the internal components (mother board, GPU, etc)... Well, I got OSX installed and running, but there's always been little glitches that I never managed to patch:

- the volume control would be stuck at max level. I never figured out why.
- my headset would only receive audio, not voice. Never figured out why.
- It would not wake up from hybernation. Never figured out why.
- and many other small little things like that.

Eventually I got fed up of trying a hundred patches that would fix an issue and would break something else, and I bought a proper MBA.

Hackintosh'ing is fun for nerds like me, but it's a very frustrating and never-ending patching/fixing/updating process that eventually drove me nuts. All in all? not worth the few hundred bucks you save.

 

Definitely sounds like a fun project. Look forward to seeing what it looks like, especially with a nice chicklet keyboard.

 

Buying an HP was your problem. There are PLENTY of super easy builds that are FULLY functioning (sleep, wifi, bluetooth, App store, updates etc.) and can be put together for less than 1/2 the price of the Mac. If you can build a PC you can build a hack and install OS X Lion (and Mtn Lion) very easily.

Just browse around here and see for yourself. http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewforum.php?f=264&sid=5362f5dec1395123e663dbebe7ec307d

 

The aluminum case. The machined, honed, perfect aluminum case.

The thing is: You just can’t duplicate or approximate the MBA that way. Your efforts are misguided.

You need to focus on the paint scheme of a MBA. The only downfall of the MacBook-A is the paint.

When is should look like this:



The paint in fact looks like this:

 

So to revive an old thread....

from the lack of updates, guessing this didn't work out so well?

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Or did it end up costing more than that?

 

Why go through all the trouble. Google, there is a China Air Clone out there that can be had for usd$400. Looks identical, but they are honest to warn you it's not an Air, the case is not as rigid (don't hold it with one hand!) and the battery only lasts 3 hours so in actuality 2.

 

This was doomed from the beginning...

 

Donate it to the museum as a prototype that never got out the door because Apple beat you to it!