Hackintosh, jail breaking, overclocking... I lump them all together into a hobby focused on doing more with less (or for less). It's a great learning experience and fun to tinker and tweak but I've had my fill of it over the years. I now loath the headaches associated with all of them and prefer for my computers and related devices to "just work" which is why I've moved exclusively to Apple products for their elegance, simplicity, and seamless integration. It's rewarding to not be fighting against the grain now... and just using something as it was intended! (What a concept!
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I think that this is probably a pretty good description of why many people build Hackintoshes. I fit this category pretty well myself. Last October I wanted a new Mac to replace my G5 iMac. I was getting tired of waiting for an Apple upgrade and I convinced myself that I needed/wanted a quadcore processor since I was doing some basic video encoding. I was also not satisfied with the external hard drives that I was using for Time Machine backups. I just hated turning them on and off and didn't think my backups were as current and routine as I wanted.
The niche I think I fell into was someone who wanted a little more than an iMac, but didn't need a Mac Pro. So I spent some time a did some research on the Hackintosh front. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was really quite advanced and stable, so I put together a bunch of parts that appeared to work with a standard install, made sure I had the Leopard Family Pack so I was good on licenses, and did the install. I got a nice system with the ability to have many hard drives. I have Time Machine running on a second internal drive (which is on a tray so I can pull it if I want). Everything came in at less than $1000. My only serious complaints are the sound on the monitor (Acer) isn't as good as my iMac and I went and bought a video camera that would have been standard in the iMac. However, I got a Q6600 system which is something you couldn't really do with Apple at the time - or even now.
I don't mind tweaking things, but the installation was pretty smooth. I had to make a few fixes with audio and sleep. The
www.insanelymac.com forums were very helpful. Right now the only thing not working ideally is the password on wake - which is frustrating. There is also the "hold-your-breath" factor on upgrade...Still, for $1000, I have a pretty nice system that will probably hold me for about five years. If I want, I can upgrade the processor and get more kick for a pretty small investment. I also have three empty 5.25 bays and three or four 3.5 bays internally in case I decide to go wild with hard drives. And, if I want, I can move up to a more robust graphics card. I have high confidence that Snow Leopard will work with it when released.
This February, I bought a Dell Mini9 after some research and about $400 (including larger SSD and more memory). It is very handy for when my wife or I am on the road. The forums at
www.mydellmini.com are extremely useful and that hardware package is quite well understood. I added a 32GB SSD into it and everything works great. I use it primarily for Internet and some word processing on the road. It is quite small. I do wonder if Snow Leopard will work on it, but it will be more than satisfactory even with "just" Leopard. I never would have bought a laptop or netbook except that I could put Leopard on it for less than $400.
I do like tinkering with my computer and having the ability to add things like a card reader or more drives in one package is appealing to me. The iMac is really quite fine for most of my uses, but for a little less money, I could get some flexibility and the appeal of a small hobby. In that respect, I've been quite pleased.
A Hackintosh is simply not for everyone, but for many people who are willing to make the time investment and assume some hardware reliability risk, it gives a good return on computer power and flexibility for the price. I agree with all the comments about not using this as something for a contract or business solution. You do not want to go down and not have a lot of recourse in terms of support. The premium you would pay for Apple equipment in such a case would quickly overcome the lower price point and architectural flexibility of a Hackintosh. I also wouldn't pursue this if you aren't comfortable taking apart computers. I'm not comfortable working with cars and have a lot of respect for people who are. A similar situation applies to Hackintoshes. My mother and sister both have Macs because they don't want to worry about anything. And they don't. I'll certainly get more Macs in the future, but right now I'm enjoying the novelty (as mentioned earlier) of having unique capabilities...
